Hello Gang,
This should interest all would be space settlers,

Alex

http://discoveryenterprise.blogspot.com/2007/10/luna-gaia.html

Luna Gaia

We take our life support system for granted, we expect there will be a breathable atmosphere outside our doors, that rain will provide us with fresh water and our earth will grow our food. None of this can be expected for the settlers of Space and Sea. Settlers will require Advanced Life Support Systems (ALSS), ways of recycling their life giving consumables.
Considerable work has gone into learning how to do just that, Lloyd Godson received considerable publicity recently with his ground breaking underwater biosystem. Now the International Space University has produced a detailed report on a Lunar closed loop habitat:

Self-sufficient space habitat designed

by Carolyn Barry

SYDNEY: Australian-led scientists have designed a new space habitat that might one day allow astronauts on the Moon or Mars to be 90 to 95 per cent self-sufficient.

The development of such as system could save billions of dollars in shuttle trips to re-supply lunar or space colonies and brings closer the vision of a human habitat on Mars.

The technology could also have applications on Earth to develop more sustainable farming techniques and improve recycling processes.

... We take our life support system for granted, we expect there will be a
breathable atmosphere outside our doors, that rain will provide us with
fresh water and our earth will grow our food. None of this can be expected
for the settlers of Space and Sea. Settlers will require Advanced Life
Support Systems (ALSS), ways of recycling their life giving consumables ....

It is encouraging to see that space settlers are taking this issue
seriously. What intrigues me more than the technical aspects is the human
element. How will humans, with their individuality, cope when they are put
together in close quarters?

In this respect we can start doing revealing and very useful experiments
(useful for our planet too), without the enormous expense involved in
actually putting up closed cycle life support systems, to study how humans
behave in groups. Can they work together (with the aid of all human
knowledge at their command) to achieve a quality of life comparable to what
modern market driven economy makes possible. The groups, (hopefully every
country will think of setting up one group) will occupy a designated area of
land, with adequate water supply, and will try to prosper as a group.
(Perhaps it will be good to set up the groups in deserts with access to many
square Km of land so that they do not feel too boxed in.) The inputs into
the system in terms of raw materials and machinery should be as little as
possible. They will however have access to the full human knowledge bank,
and access to any specialist they wish to consult. Duration of the project -
at least 10 years. (People who just cannot make it will be allowed to drop
out).

Steps:

1. Identify the minimum number of people required for a vibrant group? 50,
100, 1000? The number in the Biosphere II experiment was too few.
2. Identify the type of people the group will have. All highly educated
specialists? Perhaps only half the number need to be highly educated? State
of health, age?
3. Will the group be ethnically homogeneous? Same religious leanings? This
will require some thought!
4. let every group decide what they will want to do for the ten years. In
groups where there is a high degree of technical competence they can even
try to set up closed loop ecosystems and try to survive in enclosed quarters
with farming done in sealed compartments. (Farming for all groups must be
based on recycling of organic matter. No import of chemical fertilizers -
other than a start up stock - will be allowed)

All the best to our future space settlers. Who knows, a very successful
group can be directly transplanted - on Mars : - )

Selvaraj

On 13/10/2007, Alex Michael Bonnici wrote: