Water is the single highest-leverage resource in the solar system — split into hydrogen and oxygen, it becomes propellant; kept whole, it becomes life support and radiation shielding. Overby Industries extracts water ice from permanently shadowed lunar craters and carbonaceous asteroid interiors, closing the propellant loop for every mission that follows.
Lunar polar water ice sits in permanently shadowed crater floors that have not seen direct sunlight in billions of years — some of the coldest known locations in the solar system. Extraction hardware has to operate reliably at cryogenic temperatures with zero solar power available at the excavation site itself.
C-class asteroid water is bound within hydrated minerals rather than existing as free ice, requiring a gentler thermal-release process to avoid destroying the surrounding carbonaceous structure.
Neutron spectrometer surveys identify sub-surface ice concentration across permanently shadowed crater floors and catalogued C-class asteroid targets before any excavation begins.
Extraction rigs deploy with dedicated power reserves — beamed power relay or onboard reactor — since permanently shadowed sites receive zero direct solar input at any point in their orbit.
Cryogenic-rated augers extract ice-bearing regolith without the thermal shock that would flash-sublimate the ice prematurely, preserving it for controlled processing.
Sealed thermal extraction chambers gently heat the icy regolith, sublimating water vapour away from the mineral matrix for capture — while hydrated C-class minerals are processed at lower controlled temperatures to release bound water without degrading surrounding organics.
Extracted water vapour is condensed, filtered of particulate contamination, and stored as liquid or ice depending on onward use — propellant production or direct habitat consumption.
A dedicated fraction is electrolysed into hydrogen and oxygen gas, cryogenically compressed, and stored as propellant stock ready for Starlifter II refuelling or orbital depot transfer.
No other single resource feeds as many downstream systems as water. One extraction site supplies propellant, breathable atmosphere, radiation protection, and recovered methane in parallel.
Electrolysed hydrogen and oxygen supply the cislunar depot and Starlifter II fleet, reducing the mass fraction of propellant that has to be launched from Earth to near zero.
Purified water directly supports habitat drinking water and, via electrolysis, breathable oxygen supply for every crewed Overby facility across the network.
Water's hydrogen content makes it one of the most effective radiation shielding materials by mass — stored water reserves double as passive habitat wall shielding wherever positioned.
C-class asteroid extraction recovers methane alongside water from the same carbonaceous volatile fraction, supplementing the Titan hydrocarbon stream for inner-solar-system operations.