How’s the insulation on that “home”?

I kid, there’s no way in hell those are adequately insulated or waterproofed.

Enjoy your corroded tin can.

Water from non-Earth sources might contain dissolved minerals at poisonous levels for agriculture, much less human consumption.

Oh yeah, it’s practically guaranteed to contain nasty stuff! We’re gonna drink it anyway though.

Most of that water on earth that we’d consider “not useful” would fall into the “100% useful” category if found in space. As long as the contaminants have a different boiling temperature from water, you can always boil the water into steam in order to separate it. Or you could also use electrolysis to separate out the hydrogen and oxygen and then recombine then in clean tanks.

These are expensive methods of purification, energy intensive, but solar panels really well with no atmosphere and 24/7 sun exposure, so this is all feasible.

Nice reference!

The kind of psychopath that uses the first?

Entirely possible. But hey, in a space station you could have a separate agriculture ring, it may turn out that plants grow most efficiently at some particular amount of gravity, having its own ring would let you experiment, to maximize yield. Also you can use shades and mirrors to precisely control the amount of sun the plants get, even provide them constant sun if that speeds up growth.

That’s true. Local water, even as trace ice crystals, would be easier to harvest than chipping apart a comet in deep zero g. But ultimately, your materials for both construction and life support are going to have to start coming from space, and asteroids and comets are the obvious choice.

The best strategy would probably be to send a relatively small vehicle to the comet (small relative to the comet), something like the power and propulsion core for the new lunar gateway, essentially just a big ion thruster with a bunch of solar panels. This can push the comet into an orbit that swings it by the moon to capture it into an earth orbit. You may need to do some earth flybys to lower the comet’s orbit first, so the mission could take years. But to make up for that, comets are huge, and after it’s done you have a source of many different materials to work with right here in earth orbit, enough material to last decades or more.

You’re totally right, but that gravity, that green stuff, neither of those are on Mars. In orbit at least you get the gravity, rotating habitats aren’t that much more complicated than static ones.

I’m not sure if Mars’ poison and irradiated soil will ever be useful for growing plants. I’m telling you while it is a similarly sized planet, it’s still barely useful.

The point of medicine? I think it is.

It sounds like the patient is doing fine.

How else is she going to learn?

I’m a space nut, and people often ask me about colonizing Mars. And I always think, sure I guess you could, but why? Once you’ve made it to orbit, make the most of it, why put yourself down at the bottom of a gravity well? Just colonize orbit, asteroids, or small moons. That’s where the resources are, and that’s where it’s easy to move them.

You’re right. This is my calling…

Post it!

I would welcome this reply in any thread. And from now on I expect to see it in every thread.

Are they BOTH running on a “more treats, less squirrels” platform!?

I can’t even tell the parties apart any more…

This is why we need to get rid of the electrical college and implement a ranked petting and snuggles system. We don’t want to vote for the lesser evil, we want a good boy!

Every organization should have a “spaghetti policy”.

What’s the US army’s spaghetti policy?

What’s Microsoft spaghetti policy?

What’s the Make a Wish Foundation’s spaghetti policy?

Do you know anyone who actually uses power over Ethernet? Every motherboard I’ve ever bought supports it, but I don’t know anyone who uses it.

Although the inverse, networking through your power line certainly used to be a thing. It looks like people still do it sometimes.

Sometimes humor just makes it easier to communicate, it can be a useful tool. For example, look at Ted Lasso, his whole thing is that he’s a leader who uses humor and empathy as his primary leadership tools. I know this is a fictional character, but those are real techniques, so I think this point still holds.

To prevent strokes and heart attacks. It’s pretty common.

I’m pretty sure this is the only ass song you need.