Awesome Mining

When companies mine the ground for precious minerals, what do they do with the materials they dug up and didn’t use? In the case of one kaolin mine in Bavaria, Germany, you turn the leftovers into a slope for sandboarders and skiers. Tom Scott takes us on a journey to the Monte Kaolino theme park.

Tom Scott recently showed us the UK’s last remaining gravity-fed aerial ropeway. While he was at the facility, he strapped a GoPro to one of its buckets, which captured the perspective of the shale on its rainy 19-minute journey from the quarry to the Forterra brickworks. It’s basically the world’s slowest and muddiest ski lift.

What you’re looking at here is one incredible feat of engineering. Developed by ski lift company Doppelmayr, the RopeCon system is a massive outdoor conveyor. This installation transports 1,000 metric tons of gold ore every hour over 1/4-mile of steep terrain at a mining operation in Mexico.

Many of the rarest and most precious materials used here on Earth comes from some form of mining. But might there be a better way to harvest these without depleting and polluting our home planet? Kurzgesagt explores the potential for mining a nearly endless supply of resources from lifeless asteroids.