No!
Colonizing the Moon only makes sense if the water is there. If we're going to harvest water from asteroids, we should colonize them instead.
Re:Can we colonize the moon?
by userulluipeste on Thursday July 23, 2015 @05:46AM
(#9934780)
Besides what tdy721 and monk_e_boy said, water would be tricky to be had in our near-space neighborhood for two reasons. First, Earth, being a real planet, cleaned its surroundings of most of free-roaming objects. Besides the (domesticated) moon, there aren't that many wild objects around to look for. Second, water has a relatively low boiling point and on the Earth's distance from the Sun there is a lot of solar energy to melt the asteroid ice and boil away (like what we see happening on comets) before we can extract it, and then having difficulties with its handling after we have it due to very same reason.
Re:Can we colonize the moon?
by monk_e_boy on Thursday July 23, 2015 @04:59AM
(#9934669)
I think the watery icy asteroids are a long way away. They also have a huge amount of kinetic energy, so they are hard to catch and move.
I am thinking about just one spaceship which could go back and forth between some asteroid and a moon orbit. It shoots the water down to the moon, so that it does not even have to touch-down and take-off again. How much energy would be needed for such a mission? Probably it would be a very complex mission to get right, but once it is established you might have water for free on the moon.