Frugality [669]

>Construct a chamber, start your first lot, then feed all of the
>compost from your construction workers into the chamber and grow
>more soil. Do this for the 10-20 years that it takes to build your
>Habitat and keep expanding the chamber.
>
>Presto. Open the hatches to the new Habitat and transfer over all of
>that rich, fertile soil.

Tango:

I'm glad folks are thinking about this problem.

The organic gardening writers describe composting in glowing, Gaia-laced
terms: "a natural process," "nature's preferred way," "completing the
cycle." What is not clear are things like gas exchange, the interaction
with nearby plants, etc. In other words we don't know just how well the
process would work in your sealed chamber.

Effective composting is an aerobic process. The organisms that do the job
most efficiently must have oxygen, otherwise the anaerobes take over and
your compost pile starts to smell like a latrine, and the end result doesn't
have near the nutritive value for plants. That's why you have to get out
there and turn your compost every month or so.

Now "night soil" (pure human waste) has some advantages for fertilizing
plants, but it's not the same as compost. Compost is mostly broken down
plant materials, with a proportion of animal waste, food waste, soil, and
the microbes and worms to cause the necessary changes. A plentiful supply
of oxygen will be necessary to get the proper chemicals at the end of the
process, and there may be other things involved too. That's why it's a sort
of chicken-or-egg problem with bringing soil up to an orbital colony.

There is an excellent book entirely on the internet about composting. I
just wish I could remember the title URL or author. But it and other
reference books describe the process as it is understood today. I was
hoping that somebody at some university has at least experimented with the
process in isolation. What will be needed is some kind of list of necessary
inputs, so we'll know better what has to be in that stinky chamber in space.

Brad

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