(06-16-2014, 10:12 PM)Cray Wrote: Wasn't the finding that the water was chemically bound or at least mixed into ringwoodite, or did I misunderstand the finding? If it's bound into minerals, that's not a pumpable water supply but rather an ore that needs mining.
I was assuming that in some terraforming operations with similar geology-(planetology?) Von Neuman or bots or ufog would be used to mine the rocks then crack it,(in the way lunar regolith might be used to get oxygen or some other process) release the water then store it in liquid form on the surface as a depoist for canals/aquaducts/rivers/lakes etc. Given y11k tech this might be used at some point in the history of the setting instead of or as well as bringing comets in and certainly a lot better than bringing water off earth