Ice Miners: The Most Profitable Job In The Solar System?

If you could travel to the future and live during the interplanetary space age, what occupation would you choose? Would you risk your life in asteroid mining, or would you consider making your fortune selling pigs?

Could you imagine yourself designing rockets, or would being a space pirate suit your fancy?

While choosing prestigious job may be more fulfilling, if you wanted to make "your zillions," you may want to place your investments (and skills) towards mining space water.

Our solar system is fortunate enough to be blessed by this precious liquid throughout its "borders." Water, in the form of ice, can be found from the polar ice caps of Mars to unvisited surface of Pluto's moon, Charon.

Having water available in virtually every planetary (and dwarf planetary) system (Mercury and Venus excluded) means that humanity will have a much easier time settling the solar system without the need of hauling millions of tons of water with them.

Yet despite the fact that water is abundant throughout our star system, most of this water would probably not be too healthy in a glass, at least for most animals, plants and humans.

Unlike most of the fresh streams that inhabit our globe, space water is often contaminated either by minerals, rocks or even salt. Simply melting these dirty ice cubes down will not guarantee that this water would be safe to drink, at least for complex organisms.

In order to make this water useful for future life, humanity will have to figure out an inexpensive way to filter out the contaminants. Any company (or person) who could find a way to meet this need would probably end up making a fortune selling this to the masses.

Another use of solar water would be that of fuel. Even though it is evident that this vital molecule is composed of two Hydrogen molecules and one Oxygen, it may not be very evident to the general population that hydrogen and oxygen are the basic components for rocket fuel.

While using chemical rockets may not be as appealing towards those living upon deep gravity wells (such as Earth, Mercury and Mars), other colonists living upon the Moon, Ganymede or Callisto may find them to be a cheaper alternative as compared to nuclear rockets.

As humanity begins to expand throughout our solar system, one will probably begin to see off world space hotels begin to take off. While the first hotels on the Moon (and in orbit) may be small and cramped, future hotels on worlds like Mars, Ceres, etc. will probably be wise to imitate Earth's native climate.

This will ultimately include having not only drinkable water in abundance, but also pools, hot showers and (if they are large enough) mini sized lakes for people to row across. Until terraforming is perfected, such attractions at hotels will potentially draw large groups, who will (ironically) probably be able to afford a trip back to the home planet.

Any ice miner (or company) able to meet the growing demand of water for this industry will probably find themselves with little financial worries in life.

While investing in computer software or asteroid mining industries could also help a future colonists achieve financial success, placing ones money within an ice miner (or ice mining corporation) could enable a fortunate individual to retire young and perhaps invest their money into moving humanity towards conquering the next star system.

Note: Due to lack of time, images will be inserted later on.

Update: Images added.



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