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How could a generation ship maintain a source of potable water?

Some questions about space travel just do not seem to be about world building. I am thinking they should be off topic. However some of them do seem to be about world building:

In space, do "shipping lanes" make sense?

So how should we handle these. Do we want to allow for space travel questions if they could be tangental to world building? I do not think we want to completely rule out space travel but rather limit it only to that which is directly linked to world building.

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My opinion is that "world" building can extend to the environment in which those worlds are located, i.e. the world's universe. Many worlds are located within universes which are primarily space. By extension, space shipping lanes would also be relevant.

Also, a "world" need not be a ball of rock - it may be any place that is a setting for drama of some sort (say, a novel or a game), which could conceivably include a spaceship. A generation ship would effectively be a tiny artificially constructed world.

As an example of non-standard worlds, several worlds I created were inverted tetrahedrons floating in the air inside a crystal sphere that was the whole universe. There was no "space", and no balls of rock that anything much bigger than a bug could live on.

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    $\begingroup$ Worldbuilding is about "Worlds and Settings" - This can be anything from the scale of multiple universes (or larger) down to a village (or small if it still has a significant impact on your setting) $\endgroup$
    – Mourdos
    Sep 17 '14 at 15:42
  • $\begingroup$ So basically any question at all can be asked here since it could be related to a world in which we want to build? $\endgroup$
    – Chad
    Sep 17 '14 at 17:34
  • $\begingroup$ @Chad not any question, just world building questions about any setting. $\endgroup$
    – trichoplax
    Sep 17 '14 at 21:05
  • $\begingroup$ I am not asking about world building just space travel with out a direct link to a world building component. $\endgroup$
    – Chad
    Sep 18 '14 at 0:37

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