Rosetta’s comet ‘sweats’ two glasses of water a second

esa.int

6 pointsgabzuka4 comments

This makes me wonder about the potential of having fuel-scoops like in Elite, only with chasing a comet rather than mucking about near the sun.

I don't see how chasing comets into the Oort cloud could possibly be profitable.

Folk once held that view of sailing far into the Atlantic.

Besides, I wasn't so much meaning going as far as the Oort cloud, was just thinking you could tag along with a comet for a bit as it went through the mid solar system and suck up some reaction mass from it without having to land on the thing.

In that case, you don't do it for the outgassing, you do it for the actual contents of the comet.

If you have practical hydrogen-hydrogen fusion, it is at least theoretically possible to sustain quite a lot of civilization in the Oort cloud, in terms of raw energy and atoms. Without fusion it's hard to see it as anything but worthless ice, though.

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