A basic question ....

Would it be possible to design a space hab which is fully passive? Make it whatever dimension you like, spin it up and leave it alone - there should be no gizmos. Seeded with microorganisms, plants and animals, would such a system sustain life continuously like earth.

Next, if this is not possible, then minimum of gizmos ...

Selvaraj

I once heard Gerard O'Neill make the point that a group with a low-tech
ideology, like the Amish, could nonetheless live in a space habitat
provided that they could overlook the electric motors which shift the
mirrors for the day/night cycle, and the electric motors which turn the
fans blowing air through the heat radiators.

In a pinch, one might even come up with a passive method of heat
rejection.

And on further reflection, one might have mirrors permanently oriented
to reflect light to the windows, and have mirrored shutters on the
inside of the habitat which might be turned manually twice each 24 hrs.
It would be labor-intensive, but if ideology were more important than
efficiency...

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sraj
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 8:13 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] A basic question

A basic question ....

Would it be possible to design a space hab which is fully passive? Make
it whatever dimension you like, spin it up and leave it alone - there
should be no gizmos. Seeded with microorganisms, plants and animals,
would such a system sustain life continuously like earth.

Next, if this is not possible, then minimum of gizmos ...

Selvaraj

On 4/20/06, Combs, Mike wrote:
(...)
> And on further reflection, one might have mirrors permanently oriented
> to reflect light to the windows, and have mirrored shutters on the
> inside of the habitat which might be turned manually twice each 24 hrs.
(...)

Depending on the side of the shutter mirrors, they could also be
turned using horses, oxen or other type of animal traction.

Alternatively, the habitat could have no shutters at all and receive
sunlight in a 24/7 way.

Lucio:

> Depending on the side of the shutter mirrors, they could also be
> turned using horses, oxen or other type of animal traction.
>
> Alternatively, the habitat could have no shutters at all and
receive
> sunlight in a 24/7 way.
>

What a wonderful idea for a science fiction tale !!!

A mix of high and low tech. A space habitat propelled by oxen!

Sorry lucio, but I already captured your idea. Please don't get me
to court when I publish the tale :)

Best regards,

Omar Vega

On 4/20/06, Omar E. Vega wrote:
(...)
> Sorry lucio, but I already captured your idea. Please don't get me
> to court when I publish the tale :)
(...)

I'll be content by being mentioned in the acknowledgements. Besides,
you are in another country and there is no such a thing as
international law. :-)

A primitive society in a space habitat? Sorry, guys, Mike beat you
both to it.

http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/alfasfer.htm

Brian Aldiss did something like this in Hothouse 30 years ago :)

From: "Xenophile"
To:
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 5:57 AM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: A basic question

--- In spacesettlers, "Alan Patrick" wrote:

> Brian Aldiss did something like this in Hothouse 30 years ago :)

I might have to check that out. Novel or short story?

Great
Selvaraj

From: "Xenophile"
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 10:27 AM

Interestingly, the inspiration for this story came from the SPACE: 1999
episode "Mission of the Darians", where the Alphans encounter an
interstellar ark that had suffered a catastrophic accident. The ark
crew had split up into two groups: one advanced, and one primitive.

I had already been noodling around a starship design in my head that
involved two counter-rotating habitat spheres (for
momentum-cancellation) which seemed to lend itself well to that concept,
so off I went...

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sraj

(Subject: A self-regulating space colony?)

I remember a few other stories where a colony had fallen, and the
people were no longer capable of maintaining it: Robert
Heinlein's "Universe", and David Gerrold's Star Trek novel "the
Galactic Whirlpool". In Gerrold's story, there had been trouble some
generations back, and like other such stories the inhabitants had
also split into an advanced and a primitive camp. Interestingly, only
the primitives remembered where/who they were, while the ones who
kept some technology had degenerated into an ignorant mythology.

"Xenophile" wrote:
> A primitive society in a space habitat? Sorry, guys, Mike beat
>you both to it.
> http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/alfasfer.htm

Selvaraj asked
> Would it be possible to design a space hab which is fully passive?
>Make it whatever dimension you like, spin it up and leave it alone -
>there should be no gizmos. Seeded with microorganisms, plants and
>animals, would such a system sustain life continuously like earth.
> Next, if this is not possible, then minimum of gizmos ...

I've been working on writing a Role-Playing Game version of such a
thing, and have been having trouble keeping it "hard S.F." -as in,
nothing too "far-out" involved, not too hard to follow or believe.
One of the early criticisms of the space colonies was that the
smallest self-sufficient, self regulating biosphere we know of is the
Earth, and the problem with space colonies wasn't building something
that big, but making a biosphere that small.
My answer is that even the Earth isn't self-sustaining. The biosphere
itself oscillates wildly, and a few hundreds of thousands of years of
ice ages seems to be the way it stabilizes itself for the next brief
warming period.
Humans aren't the only animal that eats up its environment and
leaves trash behind -just about everything does. All animals will
reproduce uncontrollably until they exceed the carrying capacity,
then probably suffer a massive die-off.

I fail to see how a space colony could remain habitable without
constant tinkering and micromanagement (Much the same for planets,
but leave that alone for now).
Until we've been building them and learning from mistakes for a long
time, we won't know how to make it even a little self-regulating.
Niven, on his Ringworld, had to introduce attitude jets and "flup
recirculators": mechanisms which dredge the seas of silt and send the
ooze up to be released from the top of mountains. After the fall of
high civilization, even the Ring was in serious trouble.
If there's rain in a space colony, the dirt will end up in ponds, and
eventually there'll be an even amount of swamp everywhere. If there's
any useful volume under the habitat wilderness floor, eventually all
the silt and water will end up there, unless things are maintained.
Opportunistic plants will cluster around the light emitters (unless
it's a constant overhead source) and take up all the light -like a
forest on Earth blocks sunlight to stunt the undergrowth.

This resembles the problem with making a Lunar mine fully automated:
you can spend money (buying mechanical complexity) eliminating all
but a skeleton crew without too much difficulty. You can then spend a
LOT of money eliminating all but a few of those. You must then spend
a vast amount of money eliminating all but one or two, but there's a
serious problem of diminishing returns on the mountains of money
you'll spend and the results you get in eliminating all but one, and
an even worse curve making it fully automated.
Given the present state of the arts, and the ever-present lingering
laughter of Murphy when you think of all the little things that can
go wrong, it's purely a fantasy exercise of imagination.

My heavy-handed solution for the RPG scenario I'm working on, was
nanotechnology (Like "magic", sometimes used as a catch-all term for
Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology" which is all too often
just a lazy writer's tool for simplification).
Fairly highly evolved nanotech, at that. If the people aren't
capable of maintaining the habitat -of taking their part of
the "macrolife" organism the entire colony is, then the automated
systems have to be very heavily overbuilt. For this game, I'm
postulating practically sentient master computers, with universally
versatile microscopic nanites in virtually everything. If a tree
falls, then what the regular scavengers don't get, eventually falls
to dust due to the activity of recycler "gray ooze".
Everything from the hull of the colony itself, to the internal
physiology of the people and animals must be monitored and adjusted
by the computers, or else species will probably go extinct due to
little imbalances in the environment or something new that Murphy's
Law introduces.
I'm even speculating on the game effects of this on the people: what
doesn't kill them outright will heal magically rapidly, and a dead
body falls apart to ooze in hours. If you examine a wound, it's
crawling with tiny gray bugs and it doesn't hurt at all, and I'm
going crazy trying to think of ways to not have it drive the
situation too much! If you postulate a space colony that heals and
runs itself, then what's the logical limit of it?