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Just what are the Terran humans building if they're sending out spaceships to excavate everything out of several mineral-rich planets?
Talking to the crew in the prologue explains it. Humans have colonized several planets, and they bring in resources from other worlds so they don't have to dig up their own homes.
To be fair, I don’t think they were digging the *entire* planet, just the crust. It’s still ridiculously huge, but if you actually need mostly the rarest elements but in huge quantities, it might make sense to strip mine a few continents, and keep only a little of the more abundant stuff. Even so, I still think an asteroid field would be a better target.
Maybe humans settle multiple planets with the metal from a single planet. Or they build dyson spheres.
Why, they're building more planet-excavating spaceships, of course!
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