From: Ross A. Finlayson (RAF@tomco.net)
Date: Wed Mar 31 1999 - 11:11:53 MST
The idea of space colonies is an interesting thing.
In terms of food and biomass preservation, I think one thing will be algae
tanks to grow biomass, and then conventional or nano-technology to produce
edible food from that.
Remember that for the few people that are on such a solar colony, they will
have the entirety of Earth to back them up.
The minimum limits of a gene pool for a self-sufficient and survivable
anthropological structure is about more than one person.
One key issue about transport and transit will be the ability to place some of
the passengers in a statis state, wherein they will not use life support
resources but can be awaken upon arrival. This is a bit more focussed towards
extra-solar travel, when the distances to be surmounted would require extended
travel times.
It has been shown that women are more suited for space travel in terms of
resource consumption, among other things. In terms of the expert skills
required that is not a gender issue.
Unmanned space ships show that as our skills and abilities with robotics
increases, we can use these "beasts of burden" of humanity to enable early
development of Mars or other structures and land humans later, when they would
be better able to survive in the already made and functioning habitat.
In terms of probabilistic clouds and wave particles, I believe recent and new
contemporary research is going to open some other options as well.
Ross F.
CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 99-03-31 10:55:13 EST, bbrown@conemsco.com (Billy Brown)
> writes:
>
> > As an interesting note, I will point out that no one has ever even come
> > close to building a real, completely closed, indefinite duration life
> > support system. Recycling air and water has been done, but no one even
> > tries to tackle the food production problem.
>
> Actually Biosphere 2 did. The pilot experiment worked fine; the main
> Biosphere
> would probably have worked too except for the humorous result of building
> scenery and artifical landscape. They used concrete, which sucked the CO2
> out of the air by a chemical reaction. The shortage of CO2 got replaced by
> the decomposers in the soil, which used up the oxygen in the process.
>
> The cost of the biosphere, however, isn't promising. $300 million for six
> people
> is a lot. Even accounting for the fact that 5/6 was ecological experiments
> it's
> still nearly 10 million per person, and that's on Earth, even.
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson 202/387-8208 http://www.tomco.net/~raf/ "C is the speed of light."
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