Coal mining device idea

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I thought of a good invention that would help the coal mining industry, it's a device that would scrape the coal seams and suck the coal out without requiring people to go in the mine shaft themselves, like a vacuum-type device.

Here are the advantages:

1. It would be safer, because it would lessen the risk of injury or death by automating the process.

2. It would reduce the need for that godawful mountaintop removal mining process.

3. Miners could be retrained to operate the new devices, without the need to lay anyone off.

one would hope that you have the entreprenurial skills to 1]make it happen, and 2] get rich off of it.

Coal mines are HUGE.
Maybe one of those machines they make underground train tunnels
and metropolitan water reservoir mains with could do it.
But coal is also flammable,
and we wouldn't want to make another hell,
like Centralia, Pennsylvania.

Great idea.
People could remote control the machines
and not get black lung disease
(isn't that a really long word, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?)
huh, looks contrived; pneumo ultra microscopic silico volcano coniosis.
Maybe that's something else.
I like working-machines, especially for jobs people can't do or really hate doing.

In other words, a sort of remote-controlled robotic coal miner? Anything that keeps people out of those hell holes would be an improvement.

I don't know specifically how many miners have died down in the mines in the past three centuries, nor how many have contracted black-lung disease, but I do know it's many times more than have died in the oil or nuclear or any other energy industry.

I think it would be a tough sell, however. Just from the sound of it, one of your machines could replace many miners, so the unions would fight it tooth and nail. Furthermore, there's probably no way the robots would be as efficient as a human miner in terms of coal yield from a given seam, so the mine owners would fight it as well.

I like the idea of a machine which removes coal from the ground but I think it is not the perfect solution to the ills of coal mining which exist.

1. The chances are that humans will have to enter the mine to service the machine.

2. The machine would have to be very good in terms of fire safety for a coal mine, this will raise the price.

3. The removal of coal will still have an effect on the land. If you remove lots of coal from a mine then the land will start to sink.

4. Many coal mines are not open pit, I think that the impact on the land will be no different.

5. I would say that coal mining will have to be done by humans in the future, I think that by using machines that the work can be made less physically hard. By improvements in protective clothing such as the powered dust mask technology which is used sometimes by asbestos workers I think that coalminers health will be greatly improved.