Your ideas for extracting water from other planets

[Waseemq1235]

Greetings fellow forum users!

I've been thinking about how we can extract water from other planets, such as Mars.

So far, I had a lot of thoughts about it. I am curious about your thoughts!

One of my thoughts are that if the planet's soil contains water we can have the ability to heat the soil and evaporate the water mixed with the soil. That's just my thought.

Tell me about your thoughts!

I had no gameplay questions to answer, so I decided to do this, hehe.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Waseemq1235

[Scotius]

Time and power consuming. And you'll have to shift a lot of soil to get enough moisture. I'd rather look for ice deposits underground, or go straight for polar caps. Melting and purifying it would probably require a nuclear reactor, but at least i would get mostly useful stuff instead of a few buckets of water and a huge pile of dirt.

[Waseemq1235]

4 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Time and power consuming. And you'll have to shift a lot of soil to get enough moisture. I'd rather look for ice deposits underground, or go straight for polar caps. Melting and purifying it would probably require a nuclear reactor, but at least i would get mostly useful stuff instead of a few buckets of water and a huge pile of dirt.

Anyways, that's my idea.

[Daveroski]

This is probably the lightest to transport and has the benefit of being the most cost effective in terms of power usage and initial cost. It is also about as real as it gets.

Dig a trench to get closer to the permafrost.

The device should work as follows;

It should be made mobile so that if a trench dries up it can be moved slightly downhill to another tench.

It consists of a pipeline which makes as much contact as possible with the floor of the trench without actually being buried.

The pipeline is filled with oil and circulated with a small low powered pump. Powered by solar panel.

It would be heated by a solar cooker and circulated to raise the temperature in the trench and of the ground by conduction.

A solar cooker can bring water to boiling point in The Andes reasonably quickly and so should be able to provide sufficient heating on Mars to bring water to its evaporation point.

A solar still would cover the trench and capture any evaporated moisture.

Moisture in the soil may thaw and run downhill before refreezing which is why we would dig another trench and move the whole device downhill.

The low atmospheric pressure on Mars should provide results quickly however the pressure in the still would also increase quickly and may need to be regulated. however it should be somewhat self regulating because as the pressure increases so does the boiling point and so the temperature of the oil would fall.

 

[Waseemq1235]

2 minutes ago, Daveroski said:

This is probably the lightest to transport and has the benefit of being the most cost effective in terms of power usage and initial cost. It is also about as real as it gets.

Dig a trench to get closer to the permafrost.

The device should work as follows;

It should be made mobile so that if a trench dries up it can be moved slightly downhill to another tench.

It consists of a pipeline which makes as much contact as possible with the floor of the trench without actually being buried.

The pipeline is filled with oil and circulated with a small low powered pump. Powered by solar panel.

It would be heated by a solar cooker and circulated to raise the temperature in the trench and of the ground by conduction.

A solar cooker can bring water to boiling point in The Andes reasonably quickly and so should be able to provide sufficient heating on Mars to bring water to its evaporation point.

A solar still would cover the trench and capture any evaporated moisture.

Moisture in the soil may thaw and run downhill before refreezing which is why we would dig another trench and move the whole device downhill.

The low atmospheric pressure on Mars should provide results quickly however the pressure in the still would also increase quickly and may need to be regulated. however it should be somewhat self regulating because as the pressure increases so does the boiling point and so the temperature of the oil would fall.

 

Huh, confusing but could work out great.

Thanks for sharing your idea!

[Daveroski]

Solar stills and cookers are current available technology.

On an world without an atmosphere it should be possible to construct a device which collects surface material as it travels and heats it as it goes. in a vacuum gasses would be released quickly and collected in much the same way as the air-conditioning on the space station does now. We have to bear in mind of course that the gasses collected may consist of some which we don't necessarily want.

 

[DerekL1963]

20 minutes ago, Daveroski said:

This is probably the lightest to transport and has the benefit of being the most cost effective in terms of power usage and initial cost. It is also about as real as it gets.

It also depends on there being no volatiles or contaminants that can be vaporized and/or captured and/or entrained in the condensing water.

And that's the real show-stopper in the whole thread, the methods of collecting and processing water from the environment is going to be heavily influenced by the environment itself.

[Daveroski]

1 minute ago, DerekL1963 said:

It also depends on there being no volatiles or contaminants that can be vaporized and/or captured and/or entrained in the condensing water.

And that's the real show-stopper in the whole thread, the methods of collecting and processing water from the environment is going to be heavily influenced by the environment itself.

I'm just getting the water out.. you clean it!

 

[RainDreamer]

This maybe?

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, Daveroski said:

Solar stills and cookers are current available technology.

On an world without an atmosphere it should be possible to construct a device which collects surface material as it travels and heats it as it goes. in a vacuum gasses would be released quickly and collected in much the same way as the air-conditioning on the space station does now. We have to bear in mind of course that the gasses collected may consist of some which we don't necessarily want.

If its a sort of permafrost or even solid ice the easiest might be to drill a hole, pump down steam to melt water take out the extra steam for water and add new hot steam. 
Benefit is few moving parts. drilling at an angle might be beneficial with an narrow layer. 

On Moon your idea makes some sense, rover with an skirt who lower down then use microwaves to release moisture and collect the steam 

[kerbiloid]

Secret Kerbal R&D.

Runs between hills, gathering the upper layer of ice and making an artificial canyon with an ice rink.

[Waseemq1235]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Secret Kerbal R&D.

Runs between hills, gathering the upper layer of ice and making an artificial canyon with an ice rink.

Ooh, interesting..

[p1t1o]

Soil/permafrost + heat = free liquid water might not be the most efficient or elegant of solutions but it is almost fool-proof and could be jury-rigged out of a great variety of things. Dont need motors or drills or geographical surveys, you might not even need electricity or moving parts at all.

Reliability, ease of use/repair and equipment lifetime whilst many, many, many miles away from support is more important than most other concerns, IMO.

[Bill Phil]

Ignore planets and go for the comets and roids. If you're stuck on a planet without launch capability, though, the ice caps of Mars and the craters where it's always dark (on the Moon and Mercury at least) are your best bet.

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Ignore planets and go for the comets and roids. If you're stuck on a planet without launch capability, though, the ice caps of Mars and the craters where it's always dark (on the Moon and Mercury at least) are your best bet.

It would be interesting to see how much water near earth asteroids have. 
Think most is baked dry, however the larger ones might have ice near the core.