Plant Nursery In Space?

From: "victoriatangoman"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [spacesettlers] Plant Nursery In Space?

(...)
But does your vision of "life-support system" encompass more than
just oxygen generation?

Sure. I would say that a machine-based life support can provide:

- Oxygen generation.
- CO2 scrubbing.
- Water recycling.
- Nitrates generation (for agriculture).

Mechanically pollinate every plant that is needed to feed a
population of hundreds of thousands of people. No.

Plants would be pollinated by bees, which in turn are fed by flowers... I
think that there *are* closed greenhouses on Earth with beehives inside, or
am I wrong?

Mechanically feed
every fish, dust mite, bird, etc. No.

You have to build a food chain for that, but the beginning of *every* food
chain is composed by energy (sunlight, warmth, or chemical "fuels", like in
sulfur-based ecosystems) and raw materials (oxygen, CO2, nitrates). You
don't have to rely on the biosphere to provide neither of them through
recycling.

Do you see the question I'm
posing? Can a mechanical approach really and completely replicate a
functioning biosphere for a small nation. For the ISS, sure. For a
habitat, I'd definitely need some convincing because the complexity
boggles my mind.

I've never advocated that machines can substitute everything that
bio-organisms do. On the other hand, I think that a "complete" biosphere,
i.e., a biosphere as complex as that of a wildlife patch of land on Earth,
is unnecessary. We just have to reproduce agriculture and livestock to feed
people.

(...)
Lucio Coelho