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Fancy futuristic ideas leave us all in awe, but it's sometimes low-tech solutions like the AirDrop that can solve the problems we face today. The AirDrop is an irrigation system designed to take advantage of the process of condensation to produce water out of air. According to its creator, Australian Edward Linacre, it was inspired by the Namib Desert beetle that can subsist in arid conditions by collecting very small amounts of water from the air around it.
AirDrop uses a turbine to push air into its network of pipes underground, which is quickly cooled to soil temperature, thereby creating an environment with 100% humidity. Condensation then takes place naturally, and water produced from the air is collected in a tank that's kept underground to prevent evaporation in hot areas. Crops are watered by pumping water directly from the tank. AirDrop is completely self-sufficient, and needs no external source of energy to work. During especially breezy times, the winds propel the turbine that drives the air into the tubes. But during calm days without winds, a solar panel collects the energy needed to move the turbine.

more @  also two videos
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/innovative-irrigation-system-conjures-water-thin-air-012748025.html

Simply fascinating! 8-)

Quote from: Solar on November 13, 2011, 07:51:05 PM
Simply fascinating! 8-)

You and I get this almost ever morning, from due produced over night or from morning fog on the deck, roof or ground and it runs off as water. 

One of the accounts I read of this gadget points out that there's a traditional water-gathering technology that's essentially identical. Except for the solar cells and such. But a wind-catching opening directs surface winds down into a buried ceramic vessel where the air cools and the water condenses.

Some like this could be made over for a servival drinking water system also.

Quote from: walkstall on November 13, 2011, 08:18:58 PM

You and I get this almost ever morning, from due produced over night or from morning fog on the deck, roof or ground and it runs off as water. 

This is pretty cool in that its much like an underground green house.
Same principle applies in survival techniques using a piece of visquene plastic. ( spelling unsure)

As long as this doesn't displace the habitat of some random dung beatle then great!

Seriously, this is a really cool idea. Sometimes the best ideas are the simple ideas. This could be really big in the great plains and really help agriculture all throughout the American west.