ice asteroids as structural material

http://www.neofuel.com/iceships/
Interesting site. His tone is a little over the top and he jumps from
topic to topic without finishing the current topic. I found his need to
have an inner and outer skin unnecessary. The outer skin would retain
heat making the ice weaker. The words on his chart indicated that ice
had higher tensile strength when it is colder. So any retention of heat
in the ice would be undesirable.
I did some web searching as well.

http://yarchive.net/chem/water_strength.html
...Adhesive forces can amount to several thousand pounds per square
inch. Two flat plates pressed together with a film of water in between
would have enormous adhesive strength, far beyond the 14.7 psi of the
atmosphere. The tensile strength of water is variously quoted, but
it is no less than 3,000 psi. You can measure values of this
magnitude by bringing two pistons against a column of thoroughly
degassed water and then measuring the force required to pull them
apart.

http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_080/TECH_V080_S0098_P005.txt
Studies of ice "alloys," which now appear to be one of the most prom-
ising avenues of research, have been limited, according to Professor
Kingery. The only serious consideration given the problem wXas the
develop-ment of ice-sawdust mixtures during World War II in connection
with British plans to build a 2-million-ton aircraft carrier out of ice.
The addition of about 15 per cent sawdust, it was found, more than
tripled the tensile strength of the ice. Other and important alloys
developed by Professor Kingery are ice-Fiberglas mixtures. Ice which
contains as little as four volume per cent Fiberglas is 10 times
stronger than pure ice. Natural ice has a tensile strength of 200 pounds
per square inch, whereas one Fiberglas-ice alloy has a tensile strength
of 2,000 pounds per square inch.

http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~icelab/
The Ice Research Laboratory (IRL) was founded in 1983. Its purpose is to
perform research on the Physics and Mechanics of Ice.

I sent an email to
Erland M. Schulson
George Austin Colligan Distinguished Professor of Engineering
Director, Ice Research Laboratory
asking about information on ice frozen in a vacuum.

Questions:
What methods of drilling/working ice would add the least amount of stress?
What is the best method for defining a structure would require the least
amount of mass lifted from Earth?
Could Water/Oil combinations be used to simulate zero g behavior of water?
There was somebody on the space station that was playing with liquid
mixtures. Did he try anything that could be used in this type of
construction?
What deferential of temperature would cause cracks?
How to trim/balance a torus so that it can be spun up?
Ceramics and glass are cooled slowly to reduce stress. Water?
What would be the stress and tensile strength effect of hot water
droplet deposition? The frame could be reduce to just the wall section
that was being sprayed for the initial frame work creation. Could this
be done without a thermal shield? Even less mass to lift.

Mitchell James