Re: All the water in the world

On Jun 30, 7:48 am, SolomonW <Solom...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <6b4dcd2a-bb0a-45ae-a6d0-695de1944628@
2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com>, shermanl...@xxxxxxxxxxx says...





On Jun 29, 11:14 pm, "n...@xxxxxxx" <Alien8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 28, 5:22 pm, Erik Max Francis <m...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Interesting visualization of the total amount of oceans and atmosphere
on Earth, relative to the size of the global itself:

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/06/all_the_water_in_the_world.html

  Wow, finally a clear representation of how _little_ water there
actually is on Earth. Kinda gives a better perspective to the usual
"Earth is three-fourths water" statements, no?

And at the same time a useful reminder of the _scale_ of natural
phenomena compared to Human technology right now.  I'm thinking about
all the casual terraforming discussions that assume moving huge
amounts of volatiles around without much thought as to the absolute
masses and volumes involved.  To move Earth-scale amounts of volatiles
we're talking about shifting objects the size of medium-scale nations
around, involving major delta-vee.  It isn't a 21st century project.

I would be quite surprised at the 21st century if we would not be able
to do that. Move around an asteroid   full of ice and bring it crushing
down on a planet like Venus.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

_An_ asteroid, almost surely. An asteroid containing Earth-scale
amounts of volatiles, or the equivalent number of smaller iceteroids,
that's quite another thing. When you look at the delta-V necessary to
move such huge masses from the asteroid belt, or more likely from the
outer Solar System, it begins to look a little daunting.
.

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