Could life in solar system complicate space settlement?

On 4/15/12 10:45 PM, Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:

> I tend to agree with hitsquad when he hints that, instead of trusting
> their lives to highly unstable, chaotic and unpredictable miniature
> ecosystems, space colonists should instead use heavy industrial
> process to guarantee basic survival conditions like atmospheric
> composition. Those consume energy, sure, but that exists in abundance
> in space. In fact, AFAIU CO2 could even be broken directly into C and
> O by thermolysis/photolysis in solar furnaces. No need to try to make
> a scaled-down earthlike ecosystem a la Biosphere 2 - and indeed I am
> puzzled by the many lines of research that insist in doing so,
> creating unnecessary difficulties for space colonization. Leave plants
> and animals for food production, and that's it.

An ecosystem can be self-sustaining for much longer than an industrial
process. If your O2 comes entirely from machines, and the flow of
replacement parts stops, you're boned in short order. But your
ecosystem, if it's large enough and managed intelligently, could keep
you alive for years.

Of course the most sensible thing to do would be to have both. You
could look at it as primarily living off the ecosystem, with the
machines ready to correct imbalances; or primarily living off the
machines, with the ecosystem giving you a buffer when the machines break
down. Either way, you're safer than with just one or the other.

Best,
- Joe