🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Jones (dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com) wrote:
> John Black (black@breeze.rsre.mod.uk) wrote:
> > Maybe a near comet approach could be a good thing. I did a rough calculation 
> > and estimated that there must be something of the order of 10 to the power 11 
> > metric tonnes of water. Maybe in 130 years time somewhere on the Earth could do
> > with some water, eg the interior of large continents affected by drought. I 
> > know that one of the effects of the greenhouse effect is to make sea levels 
> > rise, but that is salt water, no good for crops, and still would be hundreds of
> > miles from a continental desert region. The comet presumably is almost pure
> > water and therefore would be ideal for crops, drinking etc.
> > 
> OK, I'll bite.  10^11 tonnes of water is a lake about 30km on a side and
> 1 meter deep.  I imagine Lake Eyre, in Australia, has about that much, when
> it has any water at all, and it evaporates PDQ.  Not much help.
> 
Whoops!  Make that 316 km on a side and 1 m. deep.  Still not a lot by most
standards: try 100km on a side and 10m deep, and compare with the Great Salt
Lake, though Lake Eyre may still be good....  Anyway, neither blooms the
desert, except on a strictly local basis.

One day, I'm going to sit down and work out if Asimov's Martian Way really
would have worked....soft land a chunk of Saturns Rings on Mars, when just
getting into Earth orbit takes 90% of your starting mass?  Hmmm....... 


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