Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

guynamedjames t1_j2bzmj3 wrote

Reply to comment by UmbralRaptor in Question by Psychological_Wheel2

This kinda demonstrates part of the issue with plans to colonize Mars or other planets. People look at mars with no ionosphere an atmosphere so thin it's basically a vacuum for all biological purposes and say "yeah, but it has land".

Yeah there's plenty of everything in space, but we're not running out of anything on earth, we're just polluting it. And it'll almost always be easier and cheaper to clean and use contaminated seawater for literally anything than it will be to drag heavy ass water from the outer planets or asteroid belt all the way back to earth.

78

MScarn6942 t1_j2c0bj6 wrote

Can’t we just get light ass water instead?

46

tonmoyle t1_j2cezbq wrote

We can just dehydrate it, then it will be lighter and not cost as much to move😜

6

FormsForInformation t1_j2c0fms wrote

What about lasers?

2

VenoBot t1_j2c9gk3 wrote

You’re talking about gravitational tractor lasers? Yeah nah, we a few hundred years away from that if we are lucky.

3

wookieesgonnawook t1_j2cyq1j wrote

Wouldn't you also run into issues introducing a large amount of extra water to our ecosystem if we haul it back from the outer system? Water is infinitely recycled so adding more would change the weather, increase sea levels, etc.

1

traumatic_blumpkin t1_j2d0bjt wrote

I would love to hear someone who understands this to expound on it.. fascinating.

1

guynamedjames t1_j2dxmbd wrote

The amount of energy required to cause changes that weren't very localized would be so high that you could probably fix any impacts for half as much energy

1