Eamon Dubois

Eamon Dubois is the design engineer behind the Sieve Ore-Sorting Rig, the 26-metre machine that scans broken rock with X-ray transmission and LIBS before blasting waste aside with air jets. Under his guidance the rig's throughput climbed from 22 to 40 tonnes per hour between 2180 and 2186.

Working out of Rheasilvia Toolworks on Vesta, Dubois focuses on the software that decides, in a few milliseconds, whether a lump of rock is worth keeping. He reckons a well-tuned Sieve rejects 70 per cent of mined material before it ever reaches a refinery, sharply cutting power and reagent costs. He supports every client installation in person, from Olympus Ring to Io, and keeps a running list of strange ores that fooled the classifier.