Agent Monkeysee on 7/3/2006 at 17:09
Quote Posted by Tony
At any rate, Earth is the only planet on which water occurrs naturally. Manufacturing water would be incredible costly, as would importing the oxygen and hydrogen.
No, it's not. There's water all over the goddamn place. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are covered in ice. We have trillions of comets in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. It's everywhere!
TenTailedCat on 7/3/2006 at 18:31
Yeah that's pretty scary.
Pyrian on 8/3/2006 at 01:38
Yeah, if we're ever running low on hydrogen&oxygen, we can always just grab a passing comet. There's no shortage of 'em...
daniel on 8/3/2006 at 06:21
hmmm, here's a bit about fusion with He3: (
http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html)
personally i dont get using He3, the energy pay off is a little greater than some other reactions, but the cross section is also greater, unless ITER really works well and there are huge fusion tech advaces, harvesting He3 off the moon wont do much for us.
Rogue Keeper on 8/3/2006 at 08:41
Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee
The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are covered in ice. We have trillions of comets in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. It's everywhere!
Although "ice in space" in many cases isn't just a pure H2O in solid form.
Often it's a mess soup. The ice on comets is usually a mix of water/ammonia/methane, plus variable traces of other elements like sulphur and others.
F.e. Triton is covered in nitrogen and methane ice. Variable magnetic field on Callisto suggested an ocean of salty water beneath the crust. So if we'd ever hope to drink it, I'd say it would be a pretty expensive drinking water, considering expenses on complex purification.
Tony on 8/3/2006 at 23:29
All right, I give up! You win. I think I'll stick to aerodynamics.
aguywhoplaysthief on 9/3/2006 at 04:08
...and then there was the Scion xB.
Fafhrd on 9/3/2006 at 04:28
Quote Posted by BR796164
So if we'd ever hope to drink it, I'd say it would be a pretty expensive drinking water, considering expenses on complex purification.
Of course, if you've already invested hundreds of billions of dollars into flying out there, the additional couple million for a large scale water desalinizer in the spaceship would be merely a drop in the bucket. (no pun intended)
