Water from space

--- In spacesettlers, "Lucio de Souza Coelho" wrote:

> On 1/21/07, Xenophile wrote:

> (...)
>> Depends on what you want to do. For instance, suppose that there
>> are ten tons of water. That's it: ten tons. Well, you could support
>> quite a moonbase with ten tons of water, though a full-blown
>> "colony" of many thousands wouldn't be able to get by with that.

> Of course those ten tons of lunar water may not be of much help if
> they are some sort of ice powder diluted in thousands of tons of
> regolith...

Depends. Were you going to be processing thousands of tons of
regolith anyway? If not, then no, it probably isn't worth it just to
get at the water. If you were, why NOT use the water?