Digest Number 713

On Monday 29 September 2003 16:49, Al Globus wrote:
(...)
> Actually, I suspect that the 'excessively' varied environment had
> something to do with its success. Here's a somewhat simplified version
> of the algorithm:
>
> 1. Put lots of different plants and animals you like in your habitat.
> 2. See what lives.
> 3. Use that.
(...)

By the way, aren't there far less ambitious closed/semi-closed ecosystem
experiments with far better results? I remember seeing a Discovery
channel-type documentary where there was such an experiment with results good
enough to be used "in a trip to Mars" (what else? :-). They used something
like a refrigerator with edible plants growing on hydroponics shelves with
artificial light. Supposedly "refrigerator" could produce food and air in a
timescale compatible with Mars trips (a couple of years, I guess). Does
anyone knows what I'm talking about? I'm really not in the mood to do an
Internet search...

Of course such an experiment would receive *far* less publicity than Biosphere
2. Better to show a giant glass dome than an overlit refrigerator stuffed
with vegetables. But I liked this experiment because it looked more like my
vision of "hive" habitats, where *every* process that can be done using
machinery and energy (including water and air recycling) will be done that
way, and living stuff will be used just for food production (an activity with
no industrial/mechanical substitutes). Keep the number of variables in your
system small, and use controls as much deterministic as possible on those
variables to keep them stable. AFAIK, Biosphere II was the opposite of that
idea, something in the line of "we will let this overcomplex system fluctuate
wildly until (hopefully) it reaches some sort of equilibrium"....

Lucio Coelho