"Traveling to Another Planet? Just Add Water! " Topic

"As NASA and other space agencies continue humanity's interplanetary reconnaissance, one thing is becoming very clear: on balance, the solar system is a rather soggy place. Water, mostly in the form of ice, lurks practically everywhere we look. There are water deposits on the Moon, on Mars, and even in the cold, shadowed floors of deep polar craters on sun-broiled Mercury. Water exists in even greater abundance further out from the sun, constituting much of the crust for a wealth of dwarf planets, moons, and asteroids and even occasionally forming subsurface oceans.

Planetary scientists speak often and with great eloquence about how all this water boosts the possibility of alien life right in our solar system; much less discussed is how it boosts the possibility of carrying human life far beyond Earth. Water will be a cornerstone of our existence everywhere we go, of course, perhaps in more ways than you realize. The killer app for all that extraterrestrial water isn't just beverages and baths—it's also rocket fuel.

Water already serves as a fuel for rockets, by way of its chemical constituents, hydrogen and oxygen. Today, the highest performance rocket engines burn liquid hydrogen and oxygen to create a very hot exhaust of pure water that propels them through space. Such rockets are very complex and expensive, requiring cryogenic tanks to prevent the liquid hydrogen and oxygen from boiling away. They are also very mature technologies, performing at the outer edge of what is possible for chemical propulsion. In cost and scope, they offer limited room for growth. Fortunately, there is another way to fuel rockets using water, one that requires no cryogenic storage and that has huge possibilities for further development. Plain, old water, combined with electric propulsion, offers many advantages that chemical rockets simply can't match…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Sounds very promising, assuming the 2x – 10x values are true.

Of course, in deep space, away from solar light, ships using this method of power would have very few options.

Reminds me a bit of the old Imperium boardgame, where you can move at will along "jump-routes", from star-system to star-system, but have to plod exceedingly slowly through deep space.

Now, we just need to snag a few comets, or asteroids with lots of ice on them, since I suspect lifting sufficient water from the planet's surface will be rather uneconomical.

The moon might work, given its lower gravity, but free floating ice outside of a gravity well is better.

Bussard Ramjets, forward!