Keeping your habitat on the track

I see, Dr. Omni.

What many people don't realize is that garbage, if made of recyclable
materials, may be very valuable to space colonists, especially if the costs
of obtaining more of whatever is still around $10,000/KG.

Cheers,

Tom

From: "Dr. Omni"
To:
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 9:16 AM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Keeping your habitat on the track

> From: "Tom Tucker (Olympia)"
> To:
> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 4:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Keeping your habitat on the track
>
> [snikt]
> > Perhaps we can only achieve 99 or 95%, I don't know since I have yet to
> see
> > a well researched study on this topic.
>
> Most likely. No recycling is perfect. The "100%" that I used in my
previous
> message was just a manner of speaking.
>
> [snikt]
> > What concerns do you have for recycling - any particular product or
> > compound?
> >
> I just think that recycling should not be dogmatically applied to
everything
> when you live in a lifeless environment. On Earth, we simply have no place
> to drop our garbage without eliminating completely the possibility of
> ecological problems, and therefore recycling usually is the best option.
> (Although even this concept is sometimes contested. I remember some
studies
> showing that simply burying garbage is cheaper - even considering
> environmental costs - than recycling, for most types of trash.) In space,
> however, you have a vast range of possibilities of getting rid of your
trash
> without using recycling and at the same time without causing *any* damage
to
> the internal biosphere of your habitat. For example: you can simply dump
> everything that cannot be recycled (or that has a recycling process that
is