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Will water on Mars be mined or harvested? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If you mine something, you can't mine it again. It's gone from the ground.

If you harvest something, then wait a certain amount of time (a year, for example), you can harvest it again.

Is Water on Mars a renewable resource?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

Harvesting does not imply a resource is renewable. Most crops are annuals, and we eat the parts needed for reproduction, or harvest them before maturity.

That said, I'm not sure if "renewable" is the right word. On Earth, the water cycle purifies water through evaporation and ground filtering, but not quickly enough for human use, so we process our wastewater and distill our drinking water. On Mars, the environment is not suitable for a water cycle (too cold, not enough water, atmospheric losses), so any captured water should be processed and reused without release.