Keeping your habitat on the track

From: Darren Brown
To: spacesettlers@egroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 5:25 AM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Keeping your habitat on the track

Greetings from downunder Tom,
(of course it's only downunder from the perspective of those in the North ;-))

"Tom Tucker (Olympia)" wrote:

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

You may be right, perhaps we are talking about different things or at lest taking you too literally. Let me try to state my option.
We have to consider what we mean when talking about a habitat, first there is the small (relatively) orbiting workshop/factory that may have a number of long term, by that I mean as long as several years, residents acting as a workforce. I hesitate to call this a habitat, it's more like a station but given that such a structure would most probably only happen where the cost to orbit is lower than today but still too high to allow the building of a large habitat of the type envisioned by most members of this forum, the cost of getting mass to it would make a stringent recycling/conservation program very attractive. Such a station would be used to only for high value work, this could be military, scientific, industrial or perhaps just national ego. In this scenario the 'population' would be disciplined and motivated to follow whatever conservation rules are put in place by whoever is running the place. It is very likely that if it was economically sound then total recycling (or as close as possible) would be followed but if the cost of the equipment either in shipping or running was too high then I expect they would just throw the stuff overboard and resupply as needed, of course they may send the trash back to Earth instead of jettisoning it, not because of concern for what happens to it but to keep it from upsetting any outside projects.

Now if we scale up to the kind of structure that could hold a large population that intend to make it home with shopkeepers, teachers, babies, churches, gardeners, doctors and all the other occupations you need in a living city, then we also need a way to orbit that is very cheap and then we need a way build and work with the huge mass involved in such an object. With transport so cheap and mass sitting around just waiting for you tap, basic economics is going to play a huge part in how the habitat works. Money doesn't just make the world go round it also works with habitats, people need a special reason to do something in an expensive way rather than a cheap way, be it religion, ideology, security, ego or because they are forced to. Unless it is cheaper to recycle something than to throw it away and get new ones, people won't do it. Here on Earth we can say that you need to include the cost to the environment in any cost analysis but in space that becomes irrelevant, after all, what environment? With some of the processes going on in a habitat recycling becomes the best way to go, the movement of organic material is one example and in others the elements in the trash may have an intrinsic value that makes a recycling process the most economical or have other significant factors involved. But over all it comes down to money and convenience and in rare cases some other special factor. Going back a few posts somebody pointed out that mass, any mass would be important to the inhabitant of a habitat because of the cost of lifting it to orbit, this is totally wrong, if the cost was that high then this kind of large habitat would not be there for it to be an issue.

A final point, if you were using a fusion torch (not sure what that is but I get the idea) or a very concentrated beam of sunlight or any other kind of energy source to rip your trash into a plasma then what you will have is not a container of mixed gas and soot. This was raised sometime ago and I have read a little about since and it seems that you can use magnetic fields to sort out the charged ions from the plasma and then store your output as separate elements. Why don't we do that now with our garbage? Simple, the cost of building the equipment, the cost of the energy and I don't think anybody has a fully working model yet but really this is just engineering and in space the main cost, the energy, should be very cheap. Mind you, I really don't think that many things would need this kind of work and in general what they will have in a large habitat is limited recycling and a lot of new material entering the system with about the same amount going out. I just hope that most of what goes out is in the form of cargo.

All of this Tom is not to say that I disagree with the idea of recycling, I just know how hard it is to get people to do the things that they should do as opposed to what they want to do.

Tom - Good thoughts. A well designed economy will provide economic incentives to recycle. Perhaps people get back a recycling deposit when they turn the product/consumer good back in for recycling?

Which would you prefer if you were a space ship manufacturer: a) looking out at the space lanes at space ships that you will be able to scrap and recycle into your new products, or b) wondering if boycots or transport problem may interrupt your supplies of raw materials for making new space ships? Germany has already implemented the former for their automobiles. :-)

Cheers,

Tom

And thank you for an interesting discussion, some of the things I've seen in this forum have made me scratch my head and think, always worth doing.

Darren Brown

From:
Darren Brown
To:
spacesettlers@egroups.com
Sent:
Tuesday, December 05, 2000 5:25 AM
Subject:
Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Keeping your habitat on the track
Greetings from downunder Tom,
(of course it's only downunder from the perspective of those in the North ;-))

"Tom Tucker (Olympia)" wrote:
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

You may be right, perhaps we are talking about different things or at lest taking you too literally. Let me try to state my option.
We have to consider what we mean when talking about a habitat, first there is the small (relatively) orbiting workshop/factory that may have a number of long term, by that I mean as long as several years, residents acting as a workforce. I hesitate to call this a habitat, it's more like a station but given that such a structure would most probably only happen where the cost to orbit is lower than today but still too high to allow the building of a large habitat of the type envisioned by most members of this forum, the cost of getting mass to it would make a stringent recycling/conservation program very attractive. Such a station would be used to only for high value work, this could be military, scientific, industrial or perhaps just national ego. In this scenario the 'population' would be disciplined and motivated to follow whatever conservation rules are put in place by whoever is running the place. It is very likely that if it was economically sound then total recycling (or as close as possible) would be followed but if the cost of the equipment either in shipping or running was too high then I expect they would just throw the stuff overboard and resupply as needed, of course they may send the trash back to Earth instead of jettisoning it, not because of concern for what happens to it but to keep it from upsetting any outside projects.
Now if we scale up to the kind of structure that could hold a large population that intend to make it home with shopkeepers, teachers, babies, churches, gardeners, doctors and all the other occupations you need in a living city, then we also need a way to orbit that is very cheap and then we need a way build and work with the huge mass involved in such an object. With transport so cheap and mass sitting around just waiting for you tap, basic economics is going to play a huge part in how the habitat works. Money doesn't just make the world go round it also works with habitats, people need a special reason to do something in an expensive way rather than a cheap way, be it religion, ideology, security, ego or because they are forced to. Unless it is cheaper to recycle something than to throw it away and get new ones, people won't do it. Here on Earth we can say that you need to include the cost to the environment in any cost analysis but in space that becomes irrelevant, after all, what environment? With some of the processes going on in a habitat recycling becomes the best way to go, the movement of organic material is one example and in others the elements in the trash may have an intrinsic value that makes a recycling process the most economical or have other significant factors involved. But over all it comes down to money and convenience and in rare cases some other special factor. Going back a few posts somebody pointed out that mass, any mass would be important to the inhabitant of a habitat because of the cost of lifting it to orbit, this is totally wrong, if the cost was that high then this kind of large habitat would not be there for it to be an issue.
A final point, if you were using a fusion torch (not sure what that is but I get the idea) or a very concentrated beam of sunlight or any other kind of energy source to rip your trash into a plasma then what you will have is not a container of mixed gas and soot. This was raised sometime ago and I have read a little about since and it seems that you can use magnetic fields to sort out the charged ions from the plasma and then store your output as separate elements. Why don't we do that now with our garbage? Simple, the cost of building the equipment, the cost of the energy and I don't think anybody has a fully working model yet but really this is just engineering and in space the main cost, the energy, should be very cheap. Mind you, I really don't think that many things would need this kind of work and in general what they will have in a large habitat is limited recycling and a lot of new material entering the system with about the same amount going out. I just hope that most of what goes out is in the form of cargo.
All of this Tom is not to say that I disagree with the idea of recycling, I just know how hard it is to get people to do the things that they should do as opposed to what they want to do.
Tom - Good thoughts. A well designed economy will provide economic incentives to recycle. Perhaps people get back a recycling deposit when they turn the product/consumer good back in for recycling?
Which would you prefer if you were a space ship manufacturer: a) looking out at the space lanes at space ships that you will be able to scrap and recycle into your new products, or b) wondering if boycots or transport problem may interrupt your supplies of raw materials for making new space ships? Germany has already implemented the former for their automobiles. :-)
Cheers,
Tom

And thank you for an interesting discussion, some of the things I've seen in this forum have made me scratch my head and think, always worth doing.

Darren Brown