Ways to dig deep into a liquid core

Take for example, Neptune, a planet with a slushy mantle and outer core. Imagine we want to mine for water (or some substance beneath it - maybe an exotic ice form under all that liquid).

How do you go about mining into a liquid mantle/core? What would such a mining operation look like?

Some considerations:

1. Keeping the hole open and controlled (high pressure geysers could wreck pretty much anything)
2. Digging to a particular resource/point

Imagine that temperature of the substance we're mining isn't a problem - I assume the same basic principles apply whether you're mining into the Earth's mantle or Europa's underground oceans; only the materials used will change.

posted over 9 years ago

Josiah‭

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