Keeping your habitat on the track

Darren, and all interested,

We appear to have a semantic misunderstanding. When I said that 100%
recycling is a good goal, I did not mean to say that we must achieve 100% at
all costs, etc. Using a fusion torch to vaporize non-recyclable garbage
such a chlorinated hydrocarbons, is easy to say, but the practicality of
making new products out of a mixture of gas containing hydrogen, and
chlorine in a tank also half filled with soot, is not nearly a easy as
melting plastics such as chopped-up milk jugs and molding them into another
plastic product.

Your fear of restricting innovation could just as easily have been said by a
toy manufacturer who desires to use toxic or the cheapest materials rather
than durable and recyclable materials.

Lets get specific, shall we. What products from our economy do you think
would be on a colony that can not or should not be recycled?

Sure we will have visitors, cargo, refueling, waste disposal, etc. This is a
given.

What trash will have to be disposed of and not recycled?

I contend that there is no good reason why all products can no be recycled
except for perhaps medical drugs for which there are no substitutes and
which nature can not break-down. In this case, perhaps ozone in the water
may do the trick.

In summary, setting a goal of 100% is a bit like trying to do you very best
or of not breaking one of the ten commandments between now and next
confession. It is a target, not an absolute. OK?

Cheers,

Tom

From: "Darren Brown"
To:
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 5:10 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Keeping your habitat on the track

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, "Tom Tucker (Olympia)"

wrote:
> 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 will be the chosen one.
> > Cheers,
> > Lucio

Only too true Lucio, at 10,000/Kg we are not going to have a colony in
orbit any time soon. Even if all the raw materials were obtained from
the Moon or from asteroids we would still need to ship the people,
unless you are intending some kind of Adam and Eve scenario. Shipping
equipment that can not at first be made on site and the construction
crews, the people to form the first generation and the consumables
needed to kick start everything at 10,000/Kg is going to be a bill
that nobody is going to want to touch. Sorry Tom but he right 100%
recycling only makes sense if you are in a small habitat with limited
resources and few reserves and even then the concept of 100% is not
one that is going to happen, even the best systems will lose a tiny
fraction and over a long time line you will need a top up. Of course
the hook there is "a long time", how long? What kind of loss over
time are you looking at and how does that relate to your total
reserves?

With launch costs of $10,000/Kg we will not have the kind of habitat
that I think the average man on the street is going to want to live
in. If the best you can do is a cobbled together collection of cast
off fuel tanks or even a custom built habitat that is only 500 metres
long and 50 metres wide, then you don't have a home, you have
comfortable factory for long term, live in workers, something a little
better than a really big oil rig, without the weather. On the other
hand if you have a habitat a few kilometre long that has a population
of 10,000 or more, you have the basis of a new nation and a place to
live and maybe even retire to. If your habitat masses at say, 50,000
Kg's you will far more concerned at the loss of a few hundred Kg's of
mass than if you lived in a habitat that massed a few billion tonnes.
Either way I'm not sure that you would be too worried about 100%
recycling (or as close to it as you can get), the reason, simple, a
small habitat is most likely going to be some kind of orbiting
factory, with a resupply schedule and a constant input and output of
mass. At the other end of the scale a very large habitat will be able
to resupply any mass loss at small cost (if it couldn't then it
wouldn't have been built in the first place). The strange thing about
this is that the large habitat while the best able to cope with a
constant, modest mass loss would most likely be the one with an
efficient recycle system, I would guess that it would be the one that
you mentioned Lucio, those things that can be recycled easily would be
and then you would just heat up everything else until it broke down to
its basic elements and was ionised then separate and store until
needed.

The other problem with what you suggest Tom is if you regulate the
production goods too much then you will start to kill off the
incentive to innovate. Don't get me wrong, planning on how to dispose
of something at the end of its service life is a good idea and one
worth pursuing, especially in the context of a habitat but if you can
turn anything back into the elements that make it up then there is no
reason to prohibit their use. The energy needed to reduce and ionise
everything is considerable but as Mike points out, energy is one thing
habitats shouldn't be short of.

The final point I would like to make is a simple one, unless the
habitat has a completely closed economy and allows no visitors, in
other words is a totally sealed system, then there is going to be a
constant exchange of mass as goods, raw materials, people, food
stuffs, etc pass back and forth. There is always going to be a need
for a habitats inhabitants to go outside, opening airlocks and losing
small amounts of air in the process, then there will be the exhausts
of rockets and even the slow loss of mass as the rocks/metal and such
inside the habitat react with the inside biosphere, a continual
exchange of mass and a slow loss as water/air is absorbed and locked
up in places and in ways that the planners never thought of. On a
large habitat this exchange, both internal in chemical reactions and
external in the form of trade and travel is going to be considerable
and makes nonsense of the idea of 100% recycling. You really should
think of any habitat as a process, with inputs and outputs, what you
have to do is make sure the outputs don't exceed your inputs and you
will be fine.

Darren Brown