On Wednesday, August 28, 2002, at 01:12 PM, Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:

> Talking about
> Biosphere II, I would hardly say that the bionauts lived "comfortably"
> in
> there...
>

True, but that was the first one. The first one never works very well
(see "Zorba the Greek," an excellent movie :-). We'll have a few
decades to work on improving things.

One of the reasons the bionauts were so uncomfortable is that the guy in
charge of designing the food system believed in a very low calorie diet
(1200 per day if I remember correctly). Since an active male actually
requires about 3000, the crew was very hungry most of the time. This
could be alleviated by devoting more space to food -- which the
bionauts apparently set to work doing fairly quickly.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Yes. Six people lived in Biosphere II for almost two years with very
minimal resupply. Since they survived, they must have got everything
they truely needed.

On Wednesday, August 28, 2002, at 01:14 PM, victoriatangoman wrote:

> But does your vision of "life-support system" encompass more than
> just oxygen generation?

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

--- In spacesettlers@y..., Lucio de Souza Coelho
> While I tend to agree with you when you say that a good
biodiversity is
> probably enough to provide a "more-or-less stable" environment,
the problem
> is: I think that humans need a *very* stable environment to live
healthily
> and comfortably. Moreover, not *any* "very stable environment",
but one
> occupying a somewhat narrow band of O2 and CO2 concentration in the
> atmosphere, humidity, temperature, etc. So, I much doubt that
the "more or
> less stable" state where a closed ecosystem will converge into
will be
> comfortable (or even acceptable) for humans standards. Talking
about
> Biosphere II, I would hardly say that the bionauts
lived "comfortably" in
> there...

I couldn't agree with you more. Stable doesn't mean much. Look at
Mars, it has a stable environment. So does the Arctic and so does
the Amazon.

The achille's heel will be this new science of environmental
engineering. The habitat construction, even though more massive in
scale than anything ever constructed before, will be very well
understood and should pose few surprises. But how do we get
environmental stability when we seal it up?

>
> So, since we have plenty of energy and raw materials in space,
lets just
> forget about using ecosystems to recycle air and water and use
machines to
> do that. Space habitats don't have to be Earths in miniature, they
just have
> to be a place were people will like to live.

Sure. Maybe. But what machines? None have been built, nor designed.
Here on earth, the ecosystem is a functioning process that can be
studied, components isolated, interrelationships understood, a
engineering trade can be developed from this science. That
engineering can then be duplicated in the future environs of the
habitat.

How can you design machines for tasks that can't even be defined. If
we don't know the complex interrelationships of a biosphere, how can
we design mechanical processes to replace the biosphere?
>
> Lucio Coelho
>
> From: "Al Globus"
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 4:57 PM
> Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Plant Nursery In Space?
>
> (...)
> > While this may be true, it's not necessarily the case. Consider
> > Biosphere II. They designed this extremely complex system with
lots of
> > different organisms and it quickly evolved in all kinds of
unexpected
> > ways -- but it did work. It took over a year to require a
resupply of
> > oxygen (note that running out proves that they did get good
closure).
> > Perhaps all that thinking was unnecessary. Maybe you can just
throw a
> > very wide variety of plants and animals in the system and let it
evolve
> > to something more-or-less stable, and that will be good enough
most of
> > the time.
> >
> > To test this hypothesis I took random clumps of soil, including
some
> > plants and whatever small organisms happened to be there, out of
my
> > backyard and sealed them in a couple of 1-2 quart plastic,
transparent
> > containers. Over a year later, with no care what-so-ever, both
contains
> > still had living grasses in them. While this hardly constitutes
proof,
> > it is indicative, along with the Biosphere II experience, that
simply
> > providing a very wide range of organisms in a closed environment
will

From: "victoriatangoman"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Plant Nursery In Space?

(...)
But does your vision of "life-support system" encompass more than
just oxygen generation?

Sure. I would say that a machine-based life support can provide:

- Oxygen generation.
- CO2 scrubbing.
- Water recycling.
- Nitrates generation (for agriculture).

Mechanically pollinate every plant that is needed to feed a
population of hundreds of thousands of people. No.

Plants would be pollinated by bees, which in turn are fed by flowers... I
think that there *are* closed greenhouses on Earth with beehives inside, or
am I wrong?

Mechanically feed
every fish, dust mite, bird, etc. No.

You have to build a food chain for that, but the beginning of *every* food
chain is composed by energy (sunlight, warmth, or chemical "fuels", like in
sulfur-based ecosystems) and raw materials (oxygen, CO2, nitrates). You
don't have to rely on the biosphere to provide neither of them through
recycling.

Do you see the question I'm
posing? Can a mechanical approach really and completely replicate a
functioning biosphere for a small nation. For the ISS, sure. For a
habitat, I'd definitely need some convincing because the complexity
boggles my mind.

I've never advocated that machines can substitute everything that
bio-organisms do. On the other hand, I think that a "complete" biosphere,
i.e., a biosphere as complex as that of a wildlife patch of land on Earth,
is unnecessary. We just have to reproduce agriculture and livestock to feed
people.

(...)
Lucio Coelho

>
> You have to build a food chain for that, but the beginning of
*every* food
> chain is composed by energy (sunlight, warmth, or
chemical "fuels", like in
> sulfur-based ecosystems) and raw materials (oxygen, CO2,
nitrates). You
> don't have to rely on the biosphere to provide neither of them
through
> recycling.

Ok, so the mechanical system does away with the need for recycling.
Now we are continuously introducing new inputs into the system.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to a mechanical system. I just
can't see it being less complex, nor less expensive. A biosphere
equalizes the inputs and outputs needed for life to exist.

It would be interesting if there were some mechanical engineers who
could add there knowledge to this thread. In large buildings, what
is the air exchange ratio? Multiply that for a:) 250,000 people or
b:) a cylinder with a volume of 5 km^3. What kind of winds will be
generated by having to suck 5 km^3 of atmosphere and exchange it
what, once an hour, once a day, once every 48 hours? How large will
the ventalation pipes have to be? Where will they be? Will we have
gale force winds near them as all of that air comes flowing into the
pipe? Where will the new air be introduced back into the habitat?
What equipment will be need to scrub all that atmosphere for CO2.
How many engineers and technicians to service that equipment? What
if it is damaged for two or three cycles? Do we suffocate because
there is no slack or resilency in the system?

Just because energy costs are lower in orbit doesn't mean that
energy is free. It will still cost money to build solar cells,
mirrors, gas exchange mechanisms, etc. It'll still cost money to go
to the asteroids to get nitrates that must continually be introduced
into the mechanical process. It'll still cost to mine lunar regolith
to extract the oxygen. It'll still take 4.74 MW/kg to launch from
lunar surface to mass catcher at L2. Then how much more
oxygen/hydrogen, crew time, processing time, amortization cost, etc.
to produce that new oxygen?

This is creating a whole supply chain to replicate a biosphere. I
don't yet see how this is more efficient, less expensive, or more
robust than a biosphere. I'd like to be convinced though I don't see
the answers you are basing your belief on.
>
> Do you see the question I'm
> posing? Can a mechanical approach really and completely replicate a
> functioning biosphere for a small nation. For the ISS, sure. For a
> habitat, I'd definitely need some convincing because the complexity
> boggles my mind.
>
> I've never advocated that machines can substitute everything that
> bio-organisms do. On the other hand, I think that a "complete"
biosphere,
> i.e., a biosphere as complex as that of a wildlife patch of land
on Earth,
> is unnecessary. We just have to reproduce agriculture and
livestock to feed
> people.
>

I don't yet know how to compare the complexity of a biosphere to the
complexity of a complete mechanical, or as you just wrote a partial
mechanical, replacement for a biosphere.

You could probably guess from the questions I'm asking you, that I
have no idea what the scope of the mechanical systems would be,
whereas with a living laboratory here on earth, I think
environmental scientists could flowchart the eco-cycle, determine
the size and complexity required to carry a starting population of
(fill in the blank) seek to minimize leakage and inputs or raw
materials, model it and test it thoroughly before starting
construction on a habitat. Granted they may not be able to break
every component down to its complex core constituents, but they
could use building blocks so to speak. As an example, they wouldn't
have to build it from the atom up, they could use molecules. Rather
than knowing all of the plants that are necessary for a forest to
function, they could just transplant all of the varieties of plant
life without understanding the full interrelationships.

But how do you design machinary, when you don't understand the
process it needs to replicate?

From: "victoriatangoman"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Plant Nursery In Space?

[snikt]
Ok, so the mechanical system does away with the need for recycling.

My intention is to give away with the need to rely *exclusively* on
recycling. No closed system is 100% efficient, so to expect that everything
will be solved by recycling alone is not a realistic assumption.

By the way, even Earth itself is *not* 100% efficient nor 100% stable. We
usually don't notice that because changes in a system this size occur
through geological timescales.

Now we are continuously introducing new inputs into the system.

Since no recycling is 100% efficient, of course we need to continuously
introduce new inputs into the system. Also, the system has to have outputs.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to a mechanical system. I just
can't see it being less complex, nor less expensive.

Considering that even an staggering complex system like an oil refinery is
probably much less complex than even a single-celled organism, I think that
the complexity issue should be obvious. ;-) Also, while ecosystems tend to
exhibit a chaotic, non-linear behavior, mechanical systems can be made to
behave as linearly as the engineers want. So predictability is definitely an
additional advantage.

As for cost, a biosphere is probably cheaper, since it is kind of
"self-constructing". But what would you buy to light your house: a bulb that
costs one cent but works unpredictably, like a candle in the wind, or a bulb
that costs ten cents but provides a continuous, unchanging, strong light
100% of the time?

A biosphere equalizes the inputs and outputs needed for life to exist.

As I said before, this is a completely unrealistic assumption. It amazes me
that I see this idea over and over again when closed ecosystems are
discussed.

[snikt]
Lucio Coelho

On Thursday, August 29, 2002, at 11:29 AM, Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:

> As for cost, a biosphere is probably cheaper [than a mechanical
> system], since it is kind of
> "self-constructing". But what would you buy to light your house: a bulb
> that
> costs one cent but works unpredictably, like a candle in the wind, or a
> bulb
> that costs ten cents but provides a continuous, unchanging, strong light
> 100% of the time?

Mechanical systems fail, and the more complex they are they more they
fail and the harder they are to diagnose and fix.

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

From: "Al Globus"
To:
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Plant Nursery In Space?
[snikt]
Mechanical systems fail, and the more complex they are they more they
fail and the harder they are to diagnose and fix.

The same holds for biological systems which, by the way, are inherently more
complex, as I stressed before. In the case of mechanical systems, however,
you can circumvent failure by adding redundancy, for components are
replicable and modular. In the case of a ecosystem, where all organisms form
an inextricable whole, you cannot.

Finally, talking about complexity, oxygen generation, CO2 scrubbing, water
recycling and nitrate production can all be achieved by simple chemical and
physical processes. The machinery would not have to be overly complex, it
would just have to be large-scale.

I confess that I am surprised to see so much fuss about having mechanical
systems guaranteeing the basic environmental conditions instead of relying
in a purely biological system. Are you sure that you're not being a bit
romantic and "green" when you defend 100%-biological environmental
maintenance?

Lucio Coelho

I've never defended 100% bio, just noticed that the existing
(inadequate) data suggest that semi-closed biosystems may be easier and
more robust than generally believed, and that building and testing small
scale semi-closed biosystems is fairly easy to do (I built two in about
5 minutes, and tested them for a year doing nothing more than looking
inside every few days).

On Thursday, August 29, 2002, at 01:48 PM, Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:

> Are you sure that you're not being a bit
> romantic and "green" when you defend 100%-biological environmental
> maintenance?
>

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html