Maintaining very small ecosystems

> A paper in Nature, Making Mars Habitable, C. P. McKay, O. B. Toon and J. F.
> Kasting, vol. 352, pages 489-496, provides some useful discussions. Sorry I
> did not find it earlier when our discussions were more active. The paper
> indicates there are many complex issues, but getting an atmosphere humans
> could survive in could take 100,000 years, and then again may never happen
> with known technology.
> Sincerely, Jay S. Huebner at jhuebn@...
>

Presumably this was creating an atmosphere for the entire planet that
could support human life? While that's certainly the ultimate goal (no
more biodomes), I don't think we should take that as being too
discouraging towards creating an ecosystem on a much smaller scale than
planetary.

--Justin