Artificial Biospheres In Space

Hello Gang,
If our long term goals of establishing a permanent human
presence in space are ever to be realized, we will have to develop
"Artificial Biospheres" on the scale of Biosphere 2. After the massive
failure the Biosphere 2 project how close are we to developing self
sustaining artificial biosphere? I think this is a question pertinent to
what ever side of the debatewe support concerning our long term future
in space. Whether in O'Neil space settlements or settlements on the Moon
or Mars.
Alex Michael Bonnici

Hi Alex! Well, You don't need a full biosphere to keep humans alive in space.
What you need to do is make sure the humans have what THEY need to live.
That means Oxygen, Nitrogen(to keep the Oxygen under control), food, shelter, etc.
Humans and any animals they bring with them exhale CO2(I can't do a subscript, sorry)
and produce waste.
The waste can be treated with the Zimmerman process. Heat the
waste at 100 atmospheres with oxygen at 500 degrees for 1.5 hours and out comes
high quality water, ammonia, fine phosphate ash, and an effluent gas rich in CO2
but free of oxides of nitrogen,sulfur, and phosphorus and its all sterile! Cool huh?
The CO2 can be broken up chemically to get the O2 out and/or you can pump it into a
closed farm. Generally, high heat breaks up most chemical bonds. The only thing you
need to keep track of is the atmospheric balance between the various gasses.
You also need to keep this sytem clean and functioning too or you will die in orbit but
that goes with any life support system.
A biosphere is complex with many interacting animals and plants in complex cycles
and with a large amount of randomness. The amount of randomness is what makes the
biosphere experiments fail. It involves the fact that there are always errors creeping
into any system from external effects, unknown conditions, accuracy of measuring in
instuments,the uncertainty priciple, the operators, etc. All these are often known as
unknown variables. The more complex the system the more unknowns creep in and the
more randomness occurs. This is why we cannot predict the weather accurately.
The study of such systems is known as Chaos Theory.
It should be obvious that the simpler the system is the more predictable and
controlable it becomes also the more controls you have on the behavior of the system
the more predictable it becomes. You can not ever have a completely predictable
system but what you can do is set boundaries around the system's behavior. If the system
stays in the boundaries then it is working properly. The tighter the you can set
your boundaries the better your system works. You tighten those boundaries by
making the system simple and adding a lot of controls.
Controls function by aiming. When the system functions within the boundaries
you set then no alteration of controls is required. When the system wanders out of the boundaries then the controls are adjusted so the system wanders into the boundaries
again. You are "aiming" the system so it stays in the boundaries. You probably
realized this is how you drive a car, set a TV volume, cook food, etc.
My system above assumes the folowing boundaries.
1. The air mixture in the habitat is to remain in such a way that the animals and
plants in it can survive but fire cannot get out of control.
2. Drinking water must be clean.
3. Waste must be removed.
4. Farm plants and animals must have what they need to survive.
5. Animals must not run loose of their designated areas.
6. Plants must not be allowed to grow out of control.
7. Animal and people numbers will be kept under control
My Controls are.
1. A machine filters the gas in the habitat and removes excess CO2, nitrogen,
Oxygen, etc or adds it to the system if there is a deficiency. This
machine breaks down some of the CO2 it collect to get Oxygen. Carbon
is sent to a storage area.
2. Wastes are processed by the zimmerman process. The resulting ash can be used
to make fertilizer and feed as well as other products. The CO2 will be sent to
the air machine. IF there is a use for the waste in raw form then some of that waste will not be processed.
3. Human Body wastes go in the toilet and humans will dump animal waste into
a toilet of sorts to go to the waste treatment area.
4. Loose animals will be rounded up. Sick animals will be treated. Population
Of the animals will not be alowed to grow beyond a certain size. Same goes for
humans too.
5. Plant growth will be monitored and sick plants will be treated and overgrown
plants will be trimmed down or removed.
6. Non body waste will be collected and recycled via various means including the Zimmerman process for useful substances.
Even in a system such as mine you can see how it will be constantly
having to correct itself via the controls and if I overlooked something a new control
might need to be added. You don't need a whole biosphere though and you don't need to
bring up pests and plants and animals you don't like to keep it working.
To explain how nature does it I will give you an example. There is an optimum
number for wolves, deer, and trees for a habitat but the system cannot stay stable.
Wolves kill deer and the deer number drops. Since wolves with deer meat can feed young
the wolf population grows as the deer population shrinks. The more wolves you have the
more hunters you have going for the deer and thus the deer population drops further.
At some point there are not enough deer to feed the wolves and the wolves starve.
There are too many wolves! The system has wandered out of balance(it's boundaries).
Weak wolves die and most young die from lack of food. What few deer are left
can breed safely since there are less wolves and eventually the numbers of deer are high
enough for the wolf numbers to go up too. You can see the aiming in effect, can't you?
How the trees figure in is that deer will eat tree bark. Deer have other perfered
foods but they will eat bark if there is nothing else. Trees die if they lose their
bark so the more deer there are the less trees there will be especially if there is nothing else for deer to eat. Now if there were nothing to eat the bark the trees would
grow into a dense forest which actually hurts the trees since the canopy blocks the
sun from the ground and the baby trees cannot grow. Also there ale limited nutients
in the soil so too many trees means a lot of sick trees. Deer eat tree bark killing
trees. The deer, having food, can produce young and the more trees will be eaten.
At some point, forgetting the wolves, the deer will kill too many trees and starve.
The week and the young die and the deer number drops and the tree number will rise
as there are less deer to eat the trees. Now add the wolves in and the number of deer
becomes closer to the optimum.
Now you can probably see the boundaries and controls but here they are anyway.
Boundaries.
1. There is a numerical range for the deer population that is ideal for the system.
More than this and the tree population goes down below the optimum and the wolf
population gets too high. Less than this and the tree population gets too high
and the wolf population get too low.
2. There is a numerical range for the wolf population that is ideal for the system.
If the wolf population gets higher than this the deer population gets too
low and the tree population gets too high. If the population gets lower than
this the deer numbers get too high and the tree population gets too low.
3. There is a numerical range for the tree population that is ideal for the system.
If the tree population drops below this the deer population goes down and so does
the wolf population. If the tree population is higher then the deer population
gets too high and the wolf population gets too high. High tree populations
prevents tree reproduction and causes nutrient starvation.
Now the controls.
1. Wolves eat deer. If the wolves don't have enough deer they die.
2. Stronger, healthier wolves can live without food longer than weaker ones
So in times with less deer there will be survivors to breed later.
3. Deer eat tree bark. If the deer don't have enough tree bark they die.
4. Stronger,healthier deer can go without food longer than weaker ones
so in times of less bark there will be survivors to breed later.
5. Trees need sunlight and nutrients. If they don't have them they die.
6. Too many trees use up too many of the avalible nutrients causing starvation.
7. Deer eating bark kills trees dropping their number.
8 Dead trees become nutrients
9. Wolves kill deer droping their number.
You can see the wolf population will be roughly proportional to the deer population
and the tree population within the boundaries, can't you? When a system is in it's
boundaries we say it is in balance. You can see that when the system gets out of balance
the controls bring it back into balance. You also might have noticed the system
always aims for ideal population numbers but never can hit them.
Now in my example I left out a few factors such as other food sources and preditors
as well as other plants and animals but natures system basically works the way
I described above but it is very complex and unpredictable! The biosphere experiments
failed because the system the wanted to model was too complex and they don't understand
what all the variables are. I suspect you would need an island III sytle colony to
have a "wild" ecology as opposed to a psuedo-wild ecology with machines helping out.
I hope that answers your question or leads you to the answer.
Thank you for reading this!
Darkstar