You actually would probably prefer to work with something considerably smaller than Pluto, in roughly the comet category. No pesky gravity (well, negligible pesky gravity) to worry about.

I would imagine that in civilized space, the location of a few convenient small ice chunks in each "empty" system, and in the outskirts of each inhabited system, would be well known -- easily found in library data, or available with more detail as purchased "chart" data. There might be a dozen or two such listed ice sources to choose from along a particular route. You might run into another ship doing the same thing while you're there, once in a while. Depending on the circumstances, this might be an ideal place for pirates to lurk, then pounce once you've got a bunch of hoses and compressors deployed that make it impossible to run away.

For cases where a natural trade route needs a "stepping stone" for J2 traffic, you will usually find an actual installation at one such body, offering refined fuel and minor services -- basically, a class C starport. That part isn't canon, but it seems so incredibly inevitable that it's part of my personal canon.


On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

But Bruce, how many exo-system Plutos could one expect to be out there? I'd say may be debris fields of Plutos for harvesting are more realistic?

Greg C

On 24/02/2016 6:44 AM, "Bruce Johnson" <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Feb 23, 2016, at 11:31 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
> As has been mentioned before; it seems to me that the biggest problem would be the purity of the 'ice'.
>
> I'd think that It's bound to be 'dirty' in various ways, contaminated w/ who knows what unstable volatiles…

Well we have some real-world data on this stuff:

https://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i29/8429notw1.html

If they find something like Pluto, they’re golden because there’s a ton of water ice there.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs

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