>>6043551>I just thought of something, why do we even need to armor the water bag from micrometeorites? Why don't we just figure out a way to give it self sealing capability. I was going down this line of thought but we really do need to armor it because the water would boil off. I feel like because it seems like we have two lines of exterior storage.
Number one, we freeze it, and the just store the ice chunks in a nickel shipping container (does nickel even have the strength to be used for that? Answer, maybe, it's used in a lot of alloys so would probably have to be alloyed first for heavy use in grav but pure is probably fine for 0g)
We would have to armor and insulate the bags of water from micrometeorites because we would have to keep the water both insulated/heated to keep the temperature above 0C and pressurized at >1kPa. I suppose that self mending would work if the self mend was fast enough to prevent large loss of water. The meteorite hits the bag, penetrates, and depressurizes. The water starts to boil off before turning into ice. The bag mends (hopefully quickly) and the bag flexes to reflect its loss in volume. I think some of the water in the sealed bag would boil into vapor because of the loss of pressure, inflating the vessel to its full volume again. So depending on the fill level of the vessel you would have either all vapor, a vapor/liquid mix, or all liquid.
