How to Colonize an Asteroid

Chemistry

What This Section Is (And is Not)

Chemistry is one of our most important tools for colonising an asteroid - only slightly less important to us than electricity, and even our ability to produce and store electricity is dependent upon a working knowledge of basic chemistry. This section will not teach you basic chemistry, but will assume that you have a least one year of high school chemistry - or an equivalent knowledge and experience base. This is not difficult to achieve. There is probably a community college near you which offers basic chemistry as a night class, or you can delve into any good high school or college chemistry textbook for a few months. I would strongly urge you to actually carry out the experiments in these books if possible, as you will learn far more than you would through reading alone.

The Impact of Chemistry on our Colonization Project

Chemistry impacts on all facets of our colonization project. Electricity is generated and stored through the use of chemicular devices (solar cells, fuel cells, and batteries). Biological processes which produce food and recycle wastes are chemical processes at heart, and the extraction of raw materials from the asteroids is truely brute force chemistry!