[extropy-chat] Water Marks the Asthenosphere

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:19:40PM -0500, Technotranscendence wrote:

> Reading this, I'm wondering if a lot of water on other words might be
> integrated into the mantle or other strata... Perhaps Mars has lots of

There seems to be lots of ice under the surface, with even
occasional surface melts.

> water, but it's all part of a mineral matrix deep below the surface.
> What about Luna?

Most of it was baked out during formation, but it might have recaptured
enough volatiles in the polar cryotraps from impacts, which are now most 
likely tightly bound by alumosilicates (rather like concrete).

Baking this out by putting the material in the focus of a large
elliptic mirror (made from aluminized mylar) and recapturing it
is rather trivial. Provided, your protons are really there, of course.

It is also arguable why one would need volatiles on the Moon, unless
one considers pressurizing a lava tube or excavating an artificial
cavity to build a habitat for primates. This only makes sense at a
very late state of the game, which primary stages are driven by
remotely operated and autonomous automata.

By the time you're done, people might look sufficiently different
(or be succeeded by their automata) so that heavy life support
based on volatiles could look quaint, or completely obsolete.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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