taking our water brainbug

[Skgoa]

The "they need specific water that our oceans are the best match for" explaination is what came to my mind, too. What if they have some sort of crisis and they need water with certain things in it to safe their species? What if they don't have the equipment ready to process that much water from other sources, but the water that is covering our planet is conveniently close AND is a good enough match to be used? Maybe the simply take their fleet and it's supply tankers to our planet to pick significant quantities up in one go, with energy expenditure not being an issue. (Because they use zero point energy or whatever.)

[Lord Pounder]

Where did the water stealer brainbug originate? The earliest I can think of is the original V but thats only the 80's.

[Serafina]

Where did the water stealer brainbug originate? The earliest I can think of is the original V but thats only the 80's.

Most likely before we discovered how abundant water is in our solar system.
Before we knew that (and it somewhat became public knowledge) you did not have to ask "why aren't they just mining asteroids or moons", and Earth appeared to be the only proper source for water.

[Sky Captain]

Maybe they have an industrial process that uses ridiculous amounts of water- hell, maybe just for coolant; a realistic power plant that runs at some of the extremely high power figures we throw around on this site comes to mind as something that would need a lot.

Thats a good point. Imagine a setting where wormholes are possible and use huge amounts of power to keep open, but you still have to travel STL to bring the wormhole generating equipment to destination. Setting it up in some ocean actually would make sense because water is good coolant and also contains H2 that can fuel the fusion reactors that power the wormhole generating equipment. Dumping hundreds of petawatts of waste heat into oceans would also do funny things to ocean circulation and weather patterns.


Imagine a scenario where alien STL ship (that is basically a big fuel tank with fusion engine pushing the wormhole generating facility and habitat module with no dedicated space to ground weapon systems) departed several hundred years ago and aliens are completely unprepeared to fight human armies and have to improvise a lot to defend their wormhole facility which they land in remote part of Pacific ocean to power up and establish a link with their home world to bring supplies and colonists. Since the wormhole facility is in water aliens could also send their surface navy to help to suppress human resistance.
Would make an interesting plot for realistic alien invasion movie.

[lance]

Where did the water stealer brainbug originate? The earliest I can think of is the original V but thats only the 80's.

The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring Bowie, was mid seventies, and involved building a rocket ship on earth, to get back. As well as advancing earth tech to the point where said rocket could be built.