Oil in Space?... Nay, WATER!

[Vehrec]

I'm at somthing of a loss as to how one would gently set down a chunk of ice, given that it would probably be constantly accelerating faster and faster as you got it closer to its target. Even if you park it with a relative velocity of 0 about 60 miles above the earth, you now have to deal with that sucker's acceleration as it ges pulled down into the gravity well.

Diverting comets to impact Mars sounds better to me. Although what sounds best is building a giant umbrella for Venus, and letting that sucker cool down. If we could break Venus out of its runaway greenhouse effect, it would be a much better planet in my opinion than dinky little Mars.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

A desal plant is all well & good, but you need to build pipelines, roads and/or rails, protect these assets, distribute the water, etc. Maybe it would be better to just drop a 'berg.

I don't think you're grasping the magnitude of the impact of a significant chunk of ice.

I know that thechnically there's plenty of water, but for some reason it ain't getting where it is frequently needed. Is cost & politics the problem?

Yes. The only way that water would get distributed is if companies can make a profit from it. This has led to various ideas such as towing arctic icebergs down to California and damming off James' Bay to create the world's largest fresh-water reservoir.

But there are ethical questions involved--namely, should water, which is vital to life, be considered a commodity? This was a major issue in the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. That agreement specifically declared that free-running water was NOT a commodity, which has led to semantics whoring over whether a dammed river is still considered free running.

So yes, there are cost issues and political issues, and I haven't even dealt with politics of power/control in third-world countries, which presumeably is where you want to deliver the water.