If you haven't yet, listen to one of the recent episodes of Star Talk Radio (Season 7, Episodes 4). They have Any Weir, author of "The Martian", and Dr. Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. Dr. Green describes how they now think extracting water from the Martian soil may be as simple as heating up soil. Supposedly, the Martian soil contains roughly 35 liters of water for every cubic meter of soil.
> Fortunately, I have water. But not as much as I want. To be viable, soil needs 40 liters of water per cubic meter. My overall plan calls for 9.2 cubic meters of soil. So I’ll eventually need 368 liters of water to feed it.
> The Hab has an excellent Water Reclaimer. Best technology available on Earth. So NASA figured “why send a lot of water up there? Just send enough for an emergency.” Humans need 3 liters of water per day to be comfortable. They gave us 50 liters each. There are 300 liters total in the Hab.
So if the soil already has 35 liters per cubic meter, he would have actually needed just 46 liters of additional water and wouldn't have needed to muck about with hydrazine.
Oh, I know that, and I love the book and movie, I just thought that it was ironic that it was a talk with Andy Weir.
As science progresses, he could in fact publish new editions of "The Martian" with the relevant stuff corrected, a la Ridley Scott's numerous editions of Blade Runner, or, God forbid, Lucas' editions of Star Wars.
The machines and the devices to gather that energy are going to have to be brought from Earth. Sure, it's eminently doable. We'll have to see what's most economical at first, in context.
But what if I told you that there were creatures and plants there that literally excreted locally high concentrations of water? Wouldn't we be champing at the bit to extract that water? What if I also told you that those creatures and plants carry no contamination/ecological worries, because they're humans and their crops?
