Two quick questions

[Zixinus]

First:

I have been thinking (well, dreaming) about Kuper belt colonies and stations. I also thought of making use (trough a form of FTL) of solar systems where there are no planets that you can use to your advantage (solar systems with only a couple of massive gas giants with a killer radiation fields) where only an asteroid ring would be basis for resources.

Now, the actual question, is that heavy elements are necessities for certain technologies, like semiconductors. I know that there are deposits of platinum, iridium and such that are found in asteroids. But what about elements beyond that? Would there be supplies of Uranium or Thorium found in such asteroid belts?

The reason I was thinking this, is that how would such Kuper-belt colonies gain nuclear weapons?

Now second:

A Japanese astronaut threw a boomerang in space. And it came back.

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boo ... t_999.html

How the fuck did that happen? Doesn't the boomerang fly the way it does due to its aerodynamic shape and form?

[Junghalli]

Earth is basically a collapsed asteroid belt if you think about it, so I'd think theoretically any elements present on it would probably also be present on asteroids.

If not, a civilization capable of colonizing other star systems should probably be able to do non-fission initiated fusion. Nuclear weapons are probably rather superflous in space combat anyway: the relative velocities we'd be talking about make kinetic energy weapons basically just as lethal.

[Kuroneko]

A Japanese astronaut threw a boomerang in space. And it came back.
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boo ... t_999.html
How the fuck did that happen? Doesn't the boomerang fly the way it does due to its aerodynamic shape and form?

Yes, and I'm willing to bet quite a bit that he didn't throw it in vacuum. In microgravity, he could throw it at a slow enough speed to accomodate a confined space.

[Ariphaos]

"threw a boomerang and saw it come back" during his free time

Emphasis added. Spacewalks are not free time, to my knowledge.

[Zixinus]

Earth is basically a collapsed asteroid belt if you think about it, so I'd think theoretically any elements present on it would probably also be present on asteroids.

But wouldn't the heavy elements make a planetoid or bigger during the formation of solar system? From what I get: more mass - greater gravitational pull of nearby matter - more likely to pull matter from surroundings.

[Ariphaos]

The size of the inner planets is dominated by temperature zones far more than the mass of the individual particles. Jupiter was able to form because of ice, not because of heavy elements, which disrupted the formation of any possible planet in the asteroid belt and stunted Mars. Mercury consists of a higher proportion of heavier elements than Earth does, which some suspect to be caused by the Sun's initial phases being so hot that it ablated Mercury's outer layers away.