[wowoc]

The article says that the water ice could be used as a source of oxygen, needed to power the combustion of hydrocarbons as fuel. But the oxygen is trapped in water molecules, wouldn't it need to be freed from the hydrogen atoms first (which requires energy)?

[FreeFull]

I have looked it up, and it seems the combustion of methane produces more energy than the combustion of hydrogen. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen won't be 100% efficient though, and neither will be turning heat into useful energy, so I don't know if you'll still be energy-positive in the end.

[sidek]

More realistic might be a long-term preparation scenario in which we send a first wave of robots to set up some solar panels and run them to store H2 and O2 for a couple of decades. We won't have gained energy necessarily, but we will have stored it in large enough amounts that early colonisation will have extra energy if it needs it.