Would Europa be a logical choice for commercial and industrial ice mining?

As we all know, hydrogen and by extension water, gaseous, liquid or frozen, is pretty much everywhere in our solar system besides maybe Mercury. The most abundant source may be the Asteroid Belt, which contains millions/billions of cubic kilometers of water, more than exists on the surface of our own planet. However, all that water is distributed incredibly sparsely over a large volume of space, meaning getting to it all is gonna be a bitch should we ever try to completely deplete the belt of its water content for whatever reason. Thankfully, there are other sources of water in our solar system that are far more consolidated, if not as conveniently close to Earth as the belt.

Enter Europa. Containing a similar if not superior volume of water to the Asteroid Belt, it's only slightly farther away cosmically speaking and unlike the icy asteroids in the belt, it's not going anywhere. Add on top of that the potential for alien life and all the revolutionary new scientific discoveries that come along with it, is it any wonder this tiny little moon might have investors salivating and smacking their chops?

But the big question is, is the extra distance worth it? Is there any reason prioritizing ice-mining on Europa would make more sense than just sticking to the local portions of the Asteroid Belt that are closer to us than Jupiter or its moons? The belt may be thinly spread but unless we're using water at an alarming rate (possibly as a result of the simultaneous colonization of Mars and the proliferation of both widespread fusion power and large space stations such as O'Neill cylinders), it'll probably suit our needs for the next two hundred or three hundred years.

Would going to Europa to mine ice or exploit its local wildlife make any sense to a potential investor or a hypothetical megacorporation, or would any visits to Jupiter's most interesting moon be purely scientific in nature?

posted about 8 years ago

Z.Schroeder‭

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