Skip to content

CONTRIBUTING.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
74 lines (52 loc) · 2.65 KB

CONTRIBUTING.md

File metadata and controls

74 lines (52 loc) · 2.65 KB
Raw

Contributing to Asteroid Mining Concepts

Thank you for considering contributing!
This is an open scratch-pad for ideas, calculations, and sketches around asteroid mining and space industrialization.
It is deliberately early-stage and incomplete — your input can help make it more useful.

What we welcome

  • Corrections to assumptions, math, or logic
  • Better / more realistic numbers, references, or sources
  • New calculations, parametric models, or Jupyter notebooks
  • Diagrams, flowcharts, or architecture sketches (even hand-drawn scans)
  • Papers, patents, videos, forum threads, or sci-fi references worth including
  • Criticism — especially if it’s specific and constructive
  • Alternative approaches, failure modes, or “what if” scenarios
  • Typos, clearer wording, better organization

You do not need to be an expert.
One good reference link or one fixed equation is already valuable.

How to contribute

Small changes (typos, wording, links)

  1. Fork the repo
  2. Make your change on a new branch
  3. Open a pull request with a short description
  4. That’s it

Larger contributions (new section, model, calculation)

  1. Open an issue first (preferred)

    • Describe what you want to add
    • Link any existing work (paper, notebook, sketch)
    • We can discuss scope & placement before you write code

  2. Or jump straight to a pull request if you prefer

    • Put new content in the most logical folder (or suggest a new one)
    • Include a short “why this matters” paragraph at the top
    • Add yourself to the contributors list if you want credit

Code & notebooks

  • Use Python 3 (preferably 3.10+)
  • Jupyter notebooks are very welcome (clear cells, comments, plots)
  • Keep dependencies minimal (numpy, pandas, matplotlib, poliastro if orbital)
  • No external APIs or paid services
  • Add a short header comment: purpose, assumptions, units, limitations

References & reading list

  • Add to references-and-reading/must_read_papers_and_books.md
  • One-line description + link + why it’s useful
  • Prefer open-access or arXiv when possible

Diagrams & visuals

  • Mermaid for flowcharts & simple diagrams is ideal (renders in GitHub)
  • Draw.io / Excalidraw / ASCII art / scanned sketches are all fine
  • Name files clearly (e.g., mass_flow_sankey_v1.drawio)

Code of Conduct

Be kind, be specific, assume good faith.
No personal attacks, no spam, no crypto/NFT promotion.

Questions?

Just open an issue — even if it’s “I don’t know where to put this” or “is this idea crazy?”
We’re all learning.

Thanks for helping move the ball forward ☄️

Last updated: January 2026