In the future there may be mining on the Moon and even on Mars. The only problem will be how to obtain the water ice that all living organisms need for respiration. It is believed that if humans can survive on the surface of Mars than they may have a chance at harvesting the water hidden deep inside the lunar soil. There have already been some preliminary experiments with water drilling using the Swiss Alps.

The big question is whether humans will be able to extract enough water to survive. If they can, then we will have found another way to mine the Moon. This technique would be to use liquid water, instead of the air or space dust. Also the equipment used would be much smaller than what we use now. The drilling of tiny holes may not be too difficult, but extracting large volumes of water would be a different story.

Another idea is to use astronauts to drill holes and scoop up the water. It sounds like a very simplistic idea, but many of the moon missions landed by the space shuttles contained water. Unfortunately, we do not know if any of it was actually stocked on the moon. Although we know that we once mined water on Mars, it has since been returned to Earth. So, NASA may not be able to secure the water. And even if it could, it might be too heavy to be carried back to the moon.