The inspriation for this monster came from a strong desire to do something useful
with all those ridiculous orange pieces from various Exo-Force sets.  As I looked
at the pile of pieces and sketched out a shape in my head, I realized it was
going to use a lot of parts.  I also had no idea what it should be.

Then I started thinking about the large scale "mega-machines" we use here on
Earth.  Most of them are for resource procurement of one kind or another.  One
notable exception are the two Crawler Transporters used by NASA to move the
Space Shuttle and rockets around.

The obvious choice, then, was an asteroid harvester.  It's like a self-contained
strip mine, but for space rocks.  It grinds them down into ore that can be loaded
and taken away to be processed.  It can do this to any rock that will fit within
the diameter of the sixteen protective doors.

I figure that a spacefaring society like the ones depicted in George Lucas's Star
Wars must use machines similar to this.  How else could they rapidly build such
monstrous machines as mile-long Star Destroyers, 17 km-long Super Star
Destroyers, and the enormous Death Stars?

They probably use machines larger than what I've built, and with built-in smelting
and processing facilities - so that what they turn out are finished ingots of 
the various metals used in starship construction.

But I thought of this as a beginning.  It's not inconceivable.  The larger and 
more advanced any economy is, the greater its demand for raw materials.  The 
faster one can get those raw materials to market, the more money he'll make.  An 
economy like that of the Empire is not going to wait around for a bunch of guys in 
dinky little ships to slowly chip away at space rocks one at a time.  No, they're 
going to build something that can get the job done quickly and efficiently.

I'll try to do an .mpd of this monster, but I doubt it will be possible, as several
of the components are brand new and not available for MLCAD yet.