I am writing a somewhat realistic space game, and instead of the commercial 3 or 4 commodities model, I am making my players suffer with all 118 elements. I have gathered the data needed to create templates for several types of planets, but when it comes to a template for extraction rates I am finding it surprisingly difficult to come up with some statistics I thought everybody loved, and despite the dozens of pages, I cannot find a site that would give me the total number of tons of minerals extracted from Earth per year. Any working number would do, if you can make a guess.
I read 55 billion tons per year somewhere, but that hinted as including organic production as well. The issue is specially sensitive in my case because what is extracted is taken out of the planet...
Since I am here :D , I am also looking for an estimate of: (1) number of mines in the world (2) number of people working (anyhow) in them (3) Number of factories in the world. Though some of these might better suit some other subject, I'd appreciate if you can point me at some direction. Thanks in advance.
EDIT Only to clarify something about the 118 element model I was asked,as to the mining and usability of some elements: We humans haven't yet discovered all the possibilities, but then Tc didn't have a chance to have its possibilities fully explored because we didn't find any during most of our existence :) However, once you find the technology to perpetuate Tc in a Bose-Einstein state, it is noted that the very properties that make it unusable now makes it the best energy dispersor in existence (important in shield technology). As to mining, yes, on Earth, and Earth minerals, S is a result of Cu mining, but on the gaseous planet Pioi there is no Copper, but plenty of free floating Sulphur, CRUCIAL in terraforming barren planets :) and all mines mine all there is in a body by abundance, not separate mines for each element, or that would be a micromanagement nightmare! I mean, if a settlement has, say, 10000 mines, the output is proportional to abundances of this moon/planet settled (which takes into consideration multiple mining). That is actually why I need the numbers in question! (Incidentally I just remembered that an Rb surface is a great catalyst for alpha particle cycling during the first phases of ignition in star construction :P (It is 'realistic', but still as a sci-fi game)