Keeping your habitat on the track

Recycling is still a noble and realistic goal.

Since we have no idea when costs to obtain or to refine materials from
asteroids will drop to the level where we could afford to jettison or
discard consumables, it is difficult to project at what point what should be
recycled or not.

For now, those interested in settling space, and also Mars, are well advised
to study recycling technologies so that whatever improvements that may be
needed will be ready when needed in the future.
Implementing relevant technologies on earth today and tomorrow will help the
technologies mature so that they will be stable for use in space when
needed.

One key aspect to keep in mind is that the secret to recycling is to not
manufacture goods that can't be easily recycled, right? Compounds
containing chlorine, (e.g. chlorinated hydrocarbons) for example, would have
to be disposed of separately with disposal costs incorporated in to the
costs of the new product. Insisting that manufacturers make provisions to
recycle their products, whether they be automobiles of space ships, is also
a good idea.

Plastics should be limited to a handful that can be readily recycled. Same
for metallic alloys.

If the above simple rules are followed, recycling will be a breeze on earth
as well as in space.

Cheers,

Tom

From: "Dr. Omni"
To:
Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2000 10:00 AM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Keeping your habitat on the track

> Tom Tucker wrote:
> > What many people don't realize is that garbage, if made of recyclable
> > materials, may be very valuable to space colonists, especially if the
> costs
> > of obtaining more of whatever is still around $10,000/KG.
>
> However, as Ian said, space colonies will never be a reality if it costs
> $10,000/KG to transport your materials to the right place. In other words,
> they'll only be a reality if built with materials gathered from the Moon
and
> the asteroids, a case where the transportation cost will be probably
> something around, let say, $0.50/Kg.
>
> Maybe we are talking about two different animals. If you're talking about
> relatively small habitats completely built with materials transported from
> Earth to LEO, as ISS, then I completely agree that *everything* would have
> to be recycled till the last drop, since the cost of recycling something,
no
> matter how expensive is the process, will certainly be less expensive than
> the $10,000/KG transportation cost. But if you're talking about huge
> habitats many hundreds or thousands of meters long and weighting millions
of
> tons, then certainly they were built with lunar and asteroidal materials
> transported at a few pennies per pound; in *this* scenario (the one that I
> was referring to), there will be many recycling processes that will be far
> more expensive than simply getting rid of your garbage, and this last
option