[patrickxie]

could this idea work? tie these devices to balloons, so they can reach the high humidities of the clouds, then when waters collect the balloons will drop to the ground, dumping the water into a collector. as the water is dumped the device rises again to continue humidity collection.

[mchannon]

You're taking something simple and making it very complicated.

The reason clouds form is not because there's more water up there, but because temperatures and pressures are lower and the air can't hold on to the water anymore, and the water separates into droplets of liquid water or ice.

There's plenty of water at ground level, even in lip-cracking low humidity, as long as it's not also freezing.

The trick is getting what water there is to leave the air and to collect in your bucket, and collecting a meaningful amount.

[rungcc]

Leave it to Silicon Valley to reinvent rain.

[beamatronic]

s/reinvent/disrupt

[NegativeLatency]

Aside from the engineering challenges of this, think of the geopolitical and environmental impacts that something like this would have.

The water extracted was probably going to fall somewhere else, but now it won't.

[mirekrusin]

What about sandstorms?