09. How will we transport enough water to last the whole trip? How would we get enough water for a significant amount of people? (A K2S Question)
From The Space Library
Generally, since they will only be in space for a very short time, most manned space missions carry enough water supplies on board to provide for their needs. Long-duration missions are the real challenge. The largest issue we will contend with is not how to carry water with us through space, but rather, how to move enough water up from the Earth's surface to support a long-duration mission. Because of the expense of lifting high quantities of water up to orbit, we have considered a number of different alternatives: * Staging water in orbit gradually over time and well in advance of an expected mission. Excess LOH fuel can be salvaged from other missions and stored at the mission assembly point. * Developing the capability to capture small dormant comets, place them in Earth orbit and mine them for ice. We are not yet technologically advanced enough to undertake missions of this nature. * Mining ice from extensive deposits in the soils and cold-traps at the lunar poles. The mining technologies necessary are actually already available and in-use today in mining that is taking place here on Earth. If water can be efficiently refined from lunar ice deposits, it can be easily placed into Earth orbit or at one of the Earth's LaGrangian points where gravitational fields will allow objects placed in a specific location in space (relative to Earth) to remain there indefinitely. The projected costs, reasonable assumptions included, indicate that obtaining ice from the Moon may be 90 percent cheaper than carrying it into orbit from Earth. * Storing water, once it is already in space, in the outer hull of the spacecraft so that it provides radiation shielding for the interior. Galactic and cosmic radiation are extremely dangerous in space, and water is one of the most effective radiation shields available.
Answer provided by Joe Rhemann
Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer
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