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Comment by tantalor | Hacker News Reader

> story about a planet being mined to death

Is that true? Was Arrakis or the sandworm threatened by mining?

I always thought the mining was harmless to the planet's ecosystem.

I guess it depends on framing. (Spoilers ahead for anybody who hasn't read the book yet.) The mining did not have a direct impact upon the environment. But, the mining of course depended upon the presence of the spice melange and of the sandworm makers. This "natural" process which produced the spice was consuming and trapping the lion's share of the water on Arrakis, keeping the planet in an otherwise "dead" state. The terraforming of Arrakis into a more habitable planet would decimate the spice production - and thereby the spice harvest - and so had no support or interest from anybody except the Fremen. So, while it's not exactly accurate to say that the planet was being mined to death, it would be accurate to say that the planet was being kept in a dead state by mining interests, which is essentially the same thing in principle.

Was there something about the sandworms having been deliberately introduced for spice production? The desertification being collateral damage. I think this might come in a later book.

But yes, the planet was maintained as a desert against the wishes of the inhabitants.

But the Fremen were partly responsible because they hoarded vast amounts of water underground, contributing to desertification.

It's not explained until the third book, but hoarding the water was keeping it away from the things that are turning the planet into a desert.

It always seemed a contradiction to me the Fremen, who worshiped the worm and spice, would want to terraform the planet and make it less hospitable for spice.

While they saw the value of the worm in economic and spiritual (maybe even political) aspects, they wanted to achieve a balance where the ecosystem would support both species. They trapped water underground because that was effective storage against evaporation, and to keep it secret from the ruling Houses.

Spoilers below:

Down the line, Arrakis does get terraformed and a vast planetary desert preserved for the continued existence of the spice cycle.

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