Extract
Water and Gasses from the Smaller Asteroid
How to Colonize an Asteroid
Extract
Water and Gasses from the Smaller Asteroid
Enough carbon dioxide must be extracted from the carbon based asteroid to fill the interior of the colony. This may require that the colonists find a couple more smaller asteroids and process them also. Atmospheric pressure must be raised to around 14.7 pounds per square inch (PSI) at the equator of the asteroid, which is equivalent to the pressure at sea level here on earth. Careful monitoring of the humidity and of the concentrations of other gasses, such as nitrogen, will be very important.
The air we breathe here on earth is a complex mixture of many different gasses, and this mixture must be duplicated inside the asteroid colony. At this stage though, the oxygen content will be very low since carbon dioxide is eaisier to extract than pure oxygen.
As the colony starts to get an atmosphere, the production of large amounts of water will also become very important. Many of the Near Earth Asteroids are actually the icy cores of comets covered in dust {R.33.97}, and it shouldn't be too much of a problem to move them near the colony and melt them using concentrated sunlight.
See the section on construction of the colony for more information.
