Floating cities - the water supply problem

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Sent: sexta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2001 04:34
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Floating cities - the water supply problem

[snikt]
Cruise ships, nuclear submarines, I'm pretty sure aircraft carriers
and really don't know about supertankers though I have a sneaking
suspicion; use desalinization of sea water for their water supply.
No reason ocean villages couldn't do the same. If they also collect
rain and do some serious recycling so much the better.

Indeed, there is no reason ocean villages couldn't use desalinization; but
there is a reason they *shouldn't*: money. Even though recently invented
process like reverse osmosis have lowered the price of desalinization, there
are cheaper ways to get water in sea (like collecting rainfall). Cost
matters specially when one considers that, unlike cruise ships and stuff, a
sea village would use water not only for human consumption, but probably
also for agriculture - an activity that is by far the one with highest water
consumption. (Even though agriculture should be a limited activity in a sea
village; food directly grown and/or extracted from the sea would obviously
be cheaper and more abundant, and therefore preferred.)

By the way, as usual I thought a little more about sea villages and realized
that much of the domestic water consumption could use sea water directly.
There is no real need to use drinkable water in a toilet flush...

P.S.: yes, I'm back. Sorry for the week-long absence, but I was in Rio (just
400 Km or so from my city) for the Carnaval. Sometimes I think that a laptop
is really worthy the price...

[snikt]
Lucio