In the weeks before Tim and I's presentation on water conservation, I read a book aptly titled "Water". It's written by an ecologist from England, Julian Caldecott, and provides a wonderful overview of the topic.
In his chapters discussing the history of water on Earth, he describes a well-accepted theory on how water first appeared on Earth. It basically works like this. Comets and asteroids have been found to contain vast amounts of water, usually contained as ice. Throughout the Earth's billions of years in existence, comets and asteroids (many containing water) crashed into the planet, gradually filling up the Earth's oceans, rivers, lakes and aquifers.
I think that's pretty cool. So here's something to ponder: The Earth is running out of fresh water. What if we were to somehow access that water on those galactic rocks? Perhaps by landing on them and steering them to Earth and safely getting the water from inside. Or even directing them to hit Earth's surface. The human and environmental costs of that would be massive, but at least we'd get some water. There's all this talk regarding comets destroying the Earth and whatnot, but maybe it could have some benefits.
I think it's quite the idea.
Outlandish? Yes.
Expensive? Absolutely.
Technilogically feasible? Not even close (yet...).
Necessary? Probably not.
But it does have the makings of a ridiculous Hollywood motion picture. Let's see what you got, Spielberg.
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