>>>SF writers do it this way: We skip over the ruminations of the Bruce Moomaws
of the world, ...So here it is: The material? Water. The location? Europa. The
customer? A species from a planet in dire need of water. The propulsion system? Why,
the
usual, of course.
Greg Bear pulled that trick with _Forge of God_ but really, if you're going to market
water to other species in the galaxy (and there's no reason to think we'd want to --
star spectrums show that water ain't rare in this part of space. Besides, who's to say
we won't need it for our own colonial/terraforming use?) it's be a lot easier to just
go hitch an ion engine/mass driver to a Kupier Belt object, and move it to the desired
pickup window. After all, you don't have that big, nasty gravity well of Jupiter to
deal with, and there are no "native biospheres" to worry about.
Jayme Lynn Blaschke
_______________________
"The Dust" coming April 2001 in
THE ANT-MEN OF TIBET, AND OTHER STORIES
from Big Engine
http://www.bigengine.co.uk/index.htm
Blaschke Home Realm
http://www.vvm.com/~caius
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