Yeah I rewatched it recently and dug it. Lots of neat sf jokes.

I like the look of their technology. When I think Traveller, I imagine this stuff plus Blakes 7 and Alien and other '70s sci fi.

Quote from: Dumarest;993295No water at all.

Then mining will be very hard. They can dig up ores, but can't process them. So that ounce of gold in the ton of granite - well, you'd have to transport the granite. Thus, the problem isn't making transporting water economically viable, it's making the mining itself economically viable.

Humans don't need a lot of water just for drinking, cooking and washing - not much compared to what mining uses. And the water humans have used can be processed and recycled a lot more easily than mining water. So, lack of water would limit the mining much more than it'd limit the people.

If the planet has breathable air, it'll have water. Even if it's not breathable, so long as there's atmosphere, there'll be water, or the chemical building blocks for it. For example Venus with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead and a pressure of 90 or so Earth atmospheres has carbon dioxide atmosphere and sulphuric acid clouds, and many of the rocks will be oxides - so they've got oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms in plenty, the question is what's the best and quickest way to get the hydrogen and oxygen out and then together.

If there's no atmosphere there may still be ice in deep craters, like on our own Moon. Even Mars is known to have liquid water (very saline) flow on its surface from time to time in small amounts. And something like half the moons in our solar system either have water in some form, if only deep in the crust (Enceladus, etc), or are actually rock-ice lumps.

But the locals may be too busy mining to bother extracting the water and may want it brought in. Like if you have just 1,000 guys on the whole planet mining rare earths (lactanides etc) they don't want to spare 100 of them making water.

If the world's low-gravity and has no atmosphere, that's your best bet for having people just tow big chunks of ice up to them. But our best guess is that most systems will have lots of old comets floating around. Question is whether you want them to be towing the things through Jump - if you do, remember they may want to tow another ship one day.

Interestingly, this was related to the scenario in our most recent CT game. The scenario was that the mining planet was importing food from a distant world, they couldn't grow it locally because water was limited - not zero, but limited - and it was all used in mining. They discovered an underground aquifer which would have given them enough water to do both... so the agricultural world's guys put a deadly virus in it.

We discovered this, and then slipped the virus into the water supply of the Agr world's freighter heading back. That should send them a message.

The best thing I've read by Isaac Asimov is his novella The Martian Way where they tow a huge chunk of ice from the ring of Saturn to a Mars colony.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;994412Then mining will be very hard. They can dig up ores, but can't process them. So that ounce of gold in the ton of granite - well, you'd have to transport the granite. Thus, the problem isn't making transporting water economically viable, it's making the mining itself economically viable.

Humans don't need a lot of water just for drinking, cooking and washing - not much compared to what mining uses. And the water humans have used can be processed and recycled a lot more easily than mining water. So, lack of water would limit the mining much more than it'd limit the people.
 

Not to bust on your post but in all fairness traveller tech may have developed to a point water wasn't needed for mining.  Lasers might replace drills and don't need water cooling like drills do,  and the processing might be done by using fusion produced heat to vaporize ore and a centrifugal process to separate the elements of the ore while it's in a vaporized state.

Has anyone ever done a piece on mining tech in traveller?

Belt Strike maybe?  I think industrial uses are usually a tech level or two ahead of military applications due to larger size and slower deployment.  So maybe

7 Drills and Grinders
8 Hydrovac
9 Laser Cutting
10 Plasma Cutting
11Cyclonic Laser Cutting (laser cutting heat creates a mini tornado that sucks out debris)
12Gravitic Fracturing
13 Gravitic clearing (gravitic field used to suck out debris)
14 Gravitic Pulse (shifting gravitic field grinds and clears)
15 Gravitic Plasma Cyclone (gravity field clears molten debris)

Quote from: David Johansen;994432Belt Strike maybe?  I think industrial uses are usually a tech level or two ahead of military applications due to larger size and slower deployment.  So maybe

7 Drills and Grinders
8 Hydrovac
9 Laser Cutting
10 Plasma Cutting
11Cyclonic Laser Cutting (laser cutting heat creates a mini tornado that sucks out debris)
12Gravitic Fracturing
13 Gravitic clearing (gravitic field used to suck out debris)
14 Gravitic Pulse (shifting gravitic field grinds and clears)
15 Gravitic Plasma Cyclone (gravity field clears molten debris)

Excellent post.  Seems like in traveller water may not be vital to. Mining.

Quote from: Voros;994414The best thing I've read by Isaac Asimov is his novella The Martian Way where they tow a huge chunk of ice from the ring of Saturn to a Mars colony.

I'm not familiar with that. Is it a book by itself or part of a collection of anthology?

Quote from: Schwartzwald;994435Excellent post.  Seems like in traveller water may not be vital to. Mining.

It would all depend on the tech level on the planet, which isn't set in stone as this is essentially hypothetical. Tech in Traveller isn't consistent from world to world, or at least not if you are generating subsectors randomly as per the rules. So, could go either way depending on random roll or referee choice.

Quote from: Dumarest;994443I'm not familiar with that. Is it a book by itself or part of a collection of anthology?

Not a separate book. It can be found in November 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), or The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973).

It had some neat ideas.

Quote from: Dumarest;993753Sounds like most everyone agrees on no, not without changing the parameters. I always thought Ice Pirates made no sense on that level. But at least there are several other ideas to steal. Thanks!

I'm late to this party, but something I wanted to point out is that it's almost certainly cheaper to manufacture water locally as long as they have supplies of hydrogen and oxygen.  Since hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe by far, I don't see that being scarce, and since humans need oxygen to breath, that can't be too rare, either.

Quote from: Edgewise;994561I'm late to this party, but something I wanted to point out is that it's almost certainly cheaper to manufacture water locally as long as they have supplies of hydrogen and oxygen.  Since hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe by far, I don't see that being scarce, and since humans need oxygen to breath, that can't be too rare, either.

Yep. The Traveller universe assumes that liquid hydrogen is a common commodity, as is oxygen. Otherwise, the entire idea of spaceships moving around from place to place just wouldn't be viable. Hydrogen accounts for about 75% of the material universe (mainly in stars) and is easily the most abundant chemical. Both frozen Oxygen and Hydrogen have a lower volume than frozen ice (water being peculiar for expanding when the temperature drops). It's cheaper to manufacture water from hydrogen and oxygen, with heat, than it is to seperate water molecules through electrolysis, and both hydrogen and oxygen have other uses too.

Quote from: Dumarest;994443I'm not familiar with that. Is it a book by itself or part of a collection of anthology?

It is often reprinted in the better sf anthologies but is also out there as the title story in a short story collection.

Oh, I see Willie already answered. Thanks Willie.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;994541Not a separate book. It can be found in November 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), or The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973).

It had some neat ideas.

I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Thanks to you and Voros for the info.

Well, technically, there is a way to make up for this, depending on setting's technology  and for a limited time. If the jump or jumps would be faster than going to the belt and mining asteroids or comets, and the Belt is far enough, it might be economically viable just this once, if there was some reason a big share of the water already on the desert planet would be lost, or couldn't be used.
People are willing to pay a lot in order to drink, and a few Free Traders might be the difference between people going without water or not.