Plant Nursery In Space?

While I tend to agree with you when you say that a good biodiversity is
probably enough to provide a "more-or-less stable" environment, the problem
is: I think that humans need a *very* stable environment to live healthily
and comfortably. Moreover, not *any* "very stable environment", but one
occupying a somewhat narrow band of O2 and CO2 concentration in the
atmosphere, humidity, temperature, etc. So, I much doubt that the "more or
less stable" state where a closed ecosystem will converge into will be
comfortable (or even acceptable) for humans standards. Talking about
Biosphere II, I would hardly say that the bionauts lived "comfortably" in
there...

So, since we have plenty of energy and raw materials in space, lets just
forget about using ecosystems to recycle air and water and use machines to
do that. Space habitats don't have to be Earths in miniature, they just have
to be a place were people will like to live.

Lucio Coelho

From: "Al Globus"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 4:57 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Plant Nursery In Space?

(...)
> While this may be true, it's not necessarily the case. Consider
> Biosphere II. They designed this extremely complex system with lots of
> different organisms and it quickly evolved in all kinds of unexpected
> ways -- but it did work. It took over a year to require a resupply of
> oxygen (note that running out proves that they did get good closure).
> Perhaps all that thinking was unnecessary. Maybe you can just throw a
> very wide variety of plants and animals in the system and let it evolve
> to something more-or-less stable, and that will be good enough most of
> the time.
>
> To test this hypothesis I took random clumps of soil, including some
> plants and whatever small organisms happened to be there, out of my
> backyard and sealed them in a couple of 1-2 quart plastic, transparent
> containers. Over a year later, with no care what-so-ever, both contains
> still had living grasses in them. While this hardly constitutes proof,
> it is indicative, along with the Biosphere II experience, that simply
> providing a very wide range of organisms in a closed environment will
> often lead to a fairly sustainable system.
>
> This hypothesis isn't very hard to test ...
(...)