Mars only 115 years away! - Now all I need are some longevity drugs.

soph · 2003-04-03 15:51:54

Oh, BTW, Bill, I've always maintained that anarchy would be best suited for an economical / technological plateau, so I can agree with what you said.

Yeah, according to grandiose theories. You can say whatever you want, real economics will have to be applied on Mars.

I've refuted anarchy's "obvious advantages." Anarchy is a load of economic...poop.

I have to agree with clark.

RobertDyck · 2003-04-03 16:03:24

even the availablity of limitless physical resources does not eliminate competition over status. How many of us have more than enough wealth to live comfortable lives yet remain jealous of others who have more?

True, I have a little house with a single detached garage and no mortgage. It only has 1 bedroom, 1 office, 1 bathroom, 1 kitchen, 1 living room, and a basement large enough for the furnace, water heater, and a full size washer and drier, and you can turn around. I also had a car that was paid for, but it needed to be replaced so I now have a nice vehicle I am leasing. I also have a nice computer (K7 Athalon Thunderbird, 256MB RAM, 40MB IDE hard drive with spin rate as fast as a SCSI drive, 17" colour monitor, 3D video card with 64MB video memory), and a cable modem. My back yard may be small but it is enough for an additional gravel parking spot, small vegetable garden, one full-size apple tree, and 2 grape vines (home made wine). I have a 25" TV with Koss bookshelf speakers, 2 VCR's (VHS and Beta), and a leather couch. I also have subscriptions to Science, The Journal of Propulsion and Power, and Aerospace America. You would think this is enough for one man. However, I am missing one very important aspect to life: a woman.

Competition and accumulation of things is about impressing the opposite sex. A lot of that display is to prove you can provide for a family. As long as there is competition for a mate there will always be competition over status and jealousy. I'm currently chasing a beautiful 25-year-old (young enough to have children), who is currently realizing she hates her job but the job she would like pays minimum wage. She is realizing she can't afford to live on her own. But she doesn't want to move in with me, she wants to continue to chase after younger men (plural). Yes, I offered, but she knows I want her to marry me and she doesn't. So how do I impress her? As long as this sort of thing continues there will always be competition over status.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-03 16:08:04

clark,

Our societal structure is a function of who we are as a species.

Okay, agreed, but they are not a whole part of who we are. I would even argue that they are much less a part.

What about our experiences or desires make us 'human'? What is the integral piece of human experience that seperates us from chimps?

Oh, well, I dunno, intelligence, perhaps, maybe even religion. It could be many things. Just tasks we like to do. Driving is an enjoyable human experience for me. I don't see driving ending after the revolution, do you?

Our desires are in large part the result of our societal structures and our politcal ideologies (well, just ideologies), so wouldn't changing these change our desires, thus making us less 'human' as we know it?

A large part? Our societal and economc structure only controls how much access we have to fufilling our desires. In a poor country, I'm less likely to be able to fullfill a desire which consumes a lot of resources (like, say, flying a plane). In a rich country, I am more able to fullfill that desire.

I think we have to differentiate what we're talking about here. I'm talking about, for the most part, the standard of living. The standard of living, yes, does allow one to have more freedoms, most certainly, but to say that an equalled standard of living is the same as equal ablities and equal capacity to fullfill desire for everyone is somewhat of a farce.

Not everyone can fly a Federation Space Plane. Everyone can have a nice warm bath, and live in a comfortable house, but not everyone can drive a car (uh oh! I may wind up not being able to drive if I move to a big city where cars are inefficient). Everyone would have electricity and other things those with a Western lifestyle take for granted, but not everyone will be able to be a biochemist (there are only so many biochemistry labs).

Just because our standard of living is infinite, does not mean our capacity to desire is infinite. In fact, it could be the exact opposite, since we'd probably have to spend more resources maintaining our standard of living, and those resources would have to come from somewhere. Plastic that could've went to building a space plane, instead goes to a third world person in a country who deseprately needs a house.

We could never fullfill everyones desires, clark, unless we lived in some virtual universe or whatever. But we can increase the standard of living for everyone on the planet, that would fullfill a lot of peoples basic desires, then maybe they could go off and formulate other things they'd like to do.

Does this make sense, or were you going to argue something different?

Bill,

In Hawaii, living off the land meant climbing a tree for coconuts or hunting feral pigs or fishing in a sea that had so many fish you could walk from island to island on their backs.

I'm almost certian Hawaiians mastered agriculture before they even arrived in Hawaii. They were ship builders, right? It seems only logical. I don't know about this, though, but I can look it up when I get done here. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have some level of agriculture, though...

When humanity arrived on Earth, plentiful game, fish, clean water pre-existed in abundance and early humans just soaked up the surplus.

Bill! I'm almost ashamed of your way of thinking! Yes, humans have raped the planet of her natural resources, but this is more due to hording, and not consumption / waste. When we cut a tree down and build a house, that carbon which existed in that tree stays in the house. When we hunt and kill a fish, and we expell that waste back into the environement, it become part of a fish again, eventually. To think, when a house burns down, the resources within it are merely being returned to mother nature!

The only way humans have made it this far is with agriculture. ?Unnatural? control of resources. If it wasn't for agriculture, we would have never been able to have very large populations. Agriculture is, indeed, mans way of ?recycling mother nature.? We plant food, it gets rain water, and grows, we eat it, and flush our waste out into whereever. Sure, that waste tends to wind up in places where it's not recycled well (waste in a septic tank isn't going to get as recycled as a pile of dog poop, it doesn't have much access to the environment), but it does eventually become recycled (septic tanks can only hold so much, so they have to be pumped eventually, and the waste is put in rivers or whereever).

I have been going through my hydroponic booklet, but I can't find the exact formula for grain (I was trying to impress you, but I failed, and my time is running out). It would be interesting, though, to show you how simple it is to recycle resources in a self contained system. We know it can be done, the Earth is such a system, we just need some technological help.

soph, whatever you say.

Bill White · 2003-04-03 16:12:13

Competition and accumulation of things is about impressing the opposite sex. A lot of that display is to prove you can provide for a family. As long as there is competition for a mate there will always be competition over status and jealousy.

Spot on, Robert, spot on.

OK, Josh, for anarchy to work we need infinite resources, immortality and the prohibition of children. Except for these points, anarchy is a great system.

As for "shame" - the sooner we realize that our species has been living off the fat provided by Nature these last 10,000 years the sooner we realize we now need to be more responsible in the future. Because we are running out of bio-surplus.

To underestimate of the challenges of closed loop ecology is also a very dangerous thing, IMHO, because it de-values the preciousness and uniqueness of our planet.

Josh - no one has even come close to doing what you propose. Bio-Sphere II, near Tucson, failed after massive investment. Did we learn from it, yes we did and I strongly support such research.

But building a Bio-Sphere III capable of supporting 10 or 100 or 1000 humans perpetually is far, far beyond our capability. I am saying we need to change our ways and we cannot afford to "break" planet Earth because our technology is inadequate to fix it. Maybe someday, but not soon.

Therefore, the first Mars settlement will need continual inflows of resources from Earth. That is all I am saying.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-03 16:17:08

Robert does have a good point, but one can impress the opposite sex without accumlation, and I think this is more a result of an instinctual consumerist adaptation than it is written in stone. The opposite sex is impressed enough as it is in third world countries, anyway, and those people are dang poor, and unable to accumlate much!

?Infinite? resources are a prerequisite, though, I've always maintained that. This is why I've been trying to tone down the anarchy talk (who is to say that such a plataeu is written in stone?), but it just keeps being brought up.

Bill White · 2003-04-03 16:50:56

We could never fullfill everyones desires, clark, unless we lived in some virtual universe or whatever. But we can increase the standard of living for everyone on the planet, that would fullfill a lot of peoples basic desires, then maybe they could go off and formulate other things they'd like to do.

This seems very much like the objective sought by Amartya Sen yet he proposes to pursue that goal via greater development, more trade and greater interdependence, which is the opposite direction from subsistence agriculture and anarchy.

Bill White · 2003-04-03 17:24:46

For those who are brave of heart and emotionally grounded, I can suggest a painful but hysterically funny book - Why People Marry.

It illustrates a saying I recently saw.

For those who feel, life is a tragedy, For those who think, life is a comedy.

For the record, I freely acknowledge that for every women looking for a "rich" fellow there are two men looking for a date who is such a "knock out" that his buddies will say "Wow!" Vanity afflicts us all without regard to race, sex, national origin or sexual orientation. Its an equal opportunity moral failing.

Palomar · 2003-04-03 21:04:29

For the record, I freely acknowledge that for every women looking for a "rich" fellow there are two men looking for a date who is such a "knock out" that his buddies will say "Wow!" Vanity afflicts us all without regard to race, sex, national origin or sexual orientation. Its an equal opportunity moral failing.

*Yep...that usually (if it leads to marriage) turns into an equal opportunity knock-down, drag-out fight in divorce court. I could provide a laundry list (initials only) of physicians I've worked for and their nurse/doctor/or mere "trophy" wives who end up in acrimonious, ugly divorces and nasty custody fights.

Marriage and vanity don't mix.

And look at all the messy, bitter Hollywood divorces; both parties can be gorgeous, successful and loaded -- and, generally speaking, they don't last 2 years as a couple.

Marry for love or don't marry at all. Also, don't plan for the wedding and honeymoon -- plan for where you want to be with that person 10 years down the road.

I'd better stop before I start to sound like "Dear Abby." :laugh:

--Cindy

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-03 22:09:21

[...] the sooner we realize that our species has been living off the fat provided by Nature these last 10,000 years the sooner we realize we now need to be more responsible in the future.

Totally agreed, but a good portion of humanities resources don't come at the sake of Nature. All those fields of corn aren't hurting the ecosystem. What hurts the ecosystem is taking without returning, or in some cases, returning without taking. Buildup in the system in either direction. The key to returning balance to the ecosystem is recycling.

If you cut down some trees, you must plant new ones (a common practice now). Humans have been doing this kind of thing for quite a long time; agriculture is working with the ecosystem, not against it. Yes, agriculture can be bad, but so can too much of anything.

[...] we are running out of bio-surplus.

Hmm, what does that mean? Earth produces an estimated 164 billion tons of biomass every year. Indeed, some of the funny pro-global warming people have even pointed out, that as of late, biomass production has increased (more CO2, faster growth). We're not running out of bio-surplus.

Sure, we're killing off lots of animals, and destroying certain local ecosystems, but we have plenty of resources, and we will for a very long time. It would be a huge undertaking for humanity to cut down every plant in the world, and then, what would we do with it all?

Not to say that we're not knocking the ecosystem out of equilibrium, because we certainly are, and we have been for awhile, but Nature tends to adapt pretty well to us. And all of the stuff that keeps us alive doesn't necessarily have to be harmful to Nature.

To underestimate of the challenges of closed loop ecology is also a very dangerous thing, IMHO, because it de-values the preciousness and uniqueness of our planet.

Hmm, that just depends. One can't honestly compare the ecology of a closed loop hab system to Earth beyond the basic similarities (natural recycling, etc). And that's all I've really maintained. A colony would have the bare necessities to keep the ecosystem running. With technology, this is easy to do.

Plants which grow in soil require all sorts of nutrients which are provided by animals and bacteria living in the soil (remember how hard it was for Sax to synthasize soil? I believe KSR had it right), and often times, for most crops, rotation is necessary since over time plants drain the soil of certain chemicals. Plants which grow in a hydroponic tray do not require these small animals or silly crop roatation, they just require nitrogen fixing bacteria and the proper formula. A mostly chemical process. What we've done here, is substitued the Terran ecosystem with simple technology (a hydroponic tray and hydroponic formulas are very simple once you understand them!).

[...] no one has even come close to doing what you propose.

Has anyone even tried what I've proposed?

1) Hydroponic garden.
1a) N-fixing bacteria culture lab.
1b) Seedling lab area.
1c) Formula lab which is tied closely to the reclaimation facility.
1d) Area to store surplus food.
2) Waste and regolith reclaimation.
2a) Fresh water.
2b) Basic chemicals derived from the waste and regolith.
2c) Power generators (assuming we have enough waste).
3) Solar power.

There ya go, a relatively cyclic system. Pretty easy to build, and probably pretty cheap, too. I know quite a bit about hydroponics, and I could build a very large garden for under a few thousand dollars. Sure, you have the danger of the garden failing, but you have the danger of any supplies being lost in any space adventure. The risks are always there.

Bio-Sphere II, near Tucson, failed after massive investment.

Bio-Sphere II was meant to be an Earth-like system (to put it bluntly). Why the plants and animals and bugs and dogs and cats (I'm exaggerating, of course, there were no dogs or cats as far as I know)?!? It's all unnecessary, and ultimately, proves to be a huge resource strain. One of the early BS2 problems was too much bacteria producing CO2 which totally messed up the atmosphere. Whoa, we wouldn't have that problem, we have very controlled bacteria.

Looking at a picture of BS2, I'm shocked at the design. Why not low long greenhouses? Why did it have to be so high? Don't they know that light is used most efficiently over large areas? Reading some of the design, I can't help but laugh. It was intended to be a speculative Martian biosphere, but the resource considerations were hilarious! 17k cubic meters of soil? What were they thinking? How could we possibly ship 17k cubic meters of soil to Mars? Soil isn't a that reliable of a chemical medium for plants, for any kind of reliablity, we'd need either hydroponics or aeroponics.

May I please ask what a Martian needs of a rainforest on Mars?

MarsGuy2012 · 2003-04-04 00:17:19

Here here Josh!
And, thank you for staying on topic (sort of).

One of the neatest things about Mars is that it is a clean slate. We will be able to cut things back to the bare minimum and maximize efficiency.

I am somewhat of a monotheistic, naturalistic, peace luv'n, tree hugg'n (ouch splinter), neo-hippie, so I do suspect that everything in the environment helps the human race as a whole. Yes, even mosquitos have a purpose - albeit unknown to me. So, I see the idea behind Biosphere 2. Also, people generally like a little bit of asthetics.

But, as for the first settlements, they can get by on the bare minimum for a few years. It'll put hair on their chests...arrrgh!

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-04 02:31:04

Ryan, sorry that topics tend to go off on a tangent sometimes, especially in this case.

I honestly would like to see the Mars Society work on Biosphere III. Of course, it would have just as much technology as it has organics, but it would still qualify. Biospheres don't need all this fancy organic stuff. I would argue that 80% (and this is a very rough estimate, just by thinking about how big the non-esssential areas of BS2 are, and the water conspumtoin of the rainforest areas- in other words, my guess comes straight out my butt)... I would guess that 80% or thereabouts of BS2's resources was wasted on non-essential stuff.

The key to a good biosphere is not to throw as much as you can at it (to give the BS2 guys credit, they did try to make sure things were compatable, but it still wound up just being an expensive garden). What you do is design it with the least ammount of complexity in mind.

Other things that come to mind are scalablity. And ease of use. I was reading about BS2 and apparently one of the researchers had accidently cut her hand with a wheat sicle. Whoa, there, nelly. Why not have a miniture combine? Surely the millions of dollars they threw at BS2 they could do something like this? I can already imagine a tray mounted combine for certain hydroponic crops. It could be solar powered, or it could be so primitive as to be run by manpower (two people could push it along the trays). I'm digressing, but I think BS2 was designed to be as ?natural? as possible. They didn't want lots of technology incorporated into the design. But Mars is not going to be ?natural.? Like my mother says, there's nothing ?natural? about man flying.

There's nothing ?natural? about man living on a planet many millions of miles away.

We will probably cut things back to the bare miminum, even when we have ample surpluses. Like I said before, we are probably not going to be eating fresh roasted turkey on Thanksgiving day. The reason is that we can't risk screwing up our surpluses, and in all likelihood, we'd be on the verge most of the time of doing so. Perhaps a one month or two month supply extra at any given time. Scaling the gardens would help a lot, though. This is why scaliblity is important. BS2 couldn't scale if we wanted it to. It's just too dang clumsy. I think Zubrin had the right idea with his inflatable ISS module, and I think that the Mars Society should seriously work on inflatable greenhouse modules which could scale quite well. They could interconnect so that you could build one ?large? greenhouse with a few dozen of them.

Aren't they working on that? Or weren't they at one point? Guess I'll have to check the MS site in the morning, because I thought I recalled something along those lines... it may have been something I asked Adrian, though...

Oh, and BTW, mosquitos suck. I hope they're not brought along to ?stablize? the biosphere. With all that water in the hydroponic garden, they'd have a lovely breeding ground. And since we wouldn't have any insecticide, we could be totally screwed.

BTW, Cindy, that was a touching story. And... very well said. I know exactly how you feel. Ahh... ::muses;:

dicktice · 2003-04-04 07:44:13

Josh: I'm with you...think...simulate on Earth...rethink...
improve and simulate in orbit...rethink...finalize in orbit...then go for broke!

Bill White · 2003-04-04 08:00:59

I agree with this

But, as for the first settlements, they can get by on the bare minimum for a few years. It'll put hair on their chests...arrrgh!

and the sentiment behind this

I honestly would like to see the Mars Society work on Biosphere III. Of course, it would have just as much technology as it has organics, but it would still qualify. Biospheres don't need all this fancy organic stuff. I would argue that 80% (and this is a very rough estimate, just by thinking about how big the non-esssential areas of BS2 are, and the water conspumtoin of the rainforest areas- in other words, my guess comes straight out my butt)... I would guess that 80% or thereabouts of BS2's resources was wasted on non-essential stuff.

Except I do believe people are looking into this second idea and are finding its much, more difficult that they expected and I am less impressed by the desire to re-invent the wheel. Biology works already.

But, if humanity is going to spend $150 billion to $250 billion or more to deposit a handful of settlers on Mars, having a logistical tail, an established supply line to assure the continual delivery of needed supplies while the closed loop ecology research continues seems essential.

What can the first Mars settlers offer in trade to their Terran patrons to offset the $200 billion initial investment and the need to fund continuing re-supply?

Answer this question persuasively and settlement will happen sooner rather than later.

clark · 2003-04-04 10:57:09

Weel, it seems I have missed my window...

So, let me jump on what i see:

The key to a good biosphere is not to throw as much as you can at it (to give the BS2 guys credit, they did try to make sure things were compatable, but it still wound up just being an expensive garden). What you do is design it with the least ammount of complexity in mind.

There are two points to consider: one, it is senseless to integrate terraforming efforts or experiements with neccessary and critical food production. Hydroponics for the food ensures maximum control, and maximum yield for effort. No one should muck around with the food supply to prove a pet theory about CO2 absorption rates.

Two, a greenhouse is not a park. People like plants. People like animals. This is our natural environment. If a park fails, we can build another one- it could take 10 years, but we will all be fed, and be there together to rebuild the park.

The problem with the biospheres is that they are too small, and we don't know enough about eco-system feedback loops.
So what's the solution? I say the solution is in computers.

How big was the first computer Josh?
How big are they now?

We didn't try to build the smallest computer first- we just tried to make a working computer, and it became the size neccessary for it to work.

So here we have this planet, a large self-regulating eco-system. We can study this. We have been, and we continue to learn. The next step is to create small self-sustainging eco-systems, then build larger integrated eco-systems.

The Biospheres tried to integrate the eco-systems from the get go- that is where the unneeded complexity is. That is what will have to be adjusted.

As for behavioral influence on mate selection... the whole concept of marrying for love is a product of societies ability to provide opportunity for people not to choose a mate out of neccessity. It's also interesting that arranged marraiges are jsut as successful as personal choice marriages.

And wealth as a function of mate selection is predicated on the internal hierarchy of the culture- it is a mistake to make a comparison between 1st world peiople and 3rd world people as each society has a different measure for what they deem "wealthy".

Some places, the fatter you are, the more desirable a mate you are. Resolve that with America.

What can the first Mars settlers offer in trade to their Terran patrons to offset the $200 billion initial investment and the need to fund continuing re-supply?

High paying engineering jobs building the rockets to ship all of the stuff to and back to Mars. This will improve the standard of living of first world nations as their populations shift to these new opportunites. Manufacturing and other jobs will then trickle down to third world countries.

However, you don't want to know what happens after that.

Some good points all around.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-04 14:22:40

Bill,

I do believe people are looking into this second idea and are finding its much, more difficult that they expected and I am less impressed by the desire to re-invent the wheel. Biology works already.

Can you show me where they are doing this? I would be delighted to learn of research intended to make a self-sustaining system which didn't incorporate higher level or diverse biologies. I don't even have to look at the papers to know why BS2 failed (even though I did), and I know that any attempts to create a biosphere similar to BS2 will always fail. Nature is like a really complex game of life, species grow and die at seemingly random intervals. The larger and more complex the system, the more species it contains, and the harder it is to insure that the system remains stable. I'd love to hear Adrian's take on BS2.

BS2 had wonderful crops. I believe some of them were actually record breaking for any crops in Arizona. We're good at agriculture. We're not good, however, at sustaining a dang rainforest in the middle of a huge glass dome, in the middle of a desert. And we were arogant (or stupid) to think that we could. I wish I had the kind of money BS2 had to drop on a huge rainforest garden. Only I'd drop it on more realistic goals.

You said that we'd be reinventing the wheel, and I cannot see, for the life of me, how this is so. Hydroponic sciences have been around for over 75 years (though I think the art itself goes back far earlier than that). And general agriculture has been going on for as long as there was civilization, even before civilization (2000+ years, probably twice that).

Biology works already, certainly, but even some of the smallest completely organic systems require quite a few supporting organisms, and if one dies off, the whole system fails or works less efficiently. That's why we need to substitute these organisms with technology. You can certainly find examples of animals which exist in their own closed ecosystem, though. And I pointed this out to clark before, surprise, we've actually been down this road before. I've forgotten what example I gave him, but I believe it was the brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake living off of plankton or some other organism which could survive the saltiness.

BTW, when I say ?closed system,? I almost always mean chemically, not thermodynamically.

What can the first Mars settlers offer in trade to their Terran patrons to offset the $200 billion initial investment and the need to fund continuing re-supply?

Nothing. Absolutely-friggin-nothing. The first Mars settlers (assuming it happens KSR's way) will be welfare cases. The only thing they could offer is their own research and technology and all that foldera, but we have to be realistic here, no one mans work is worth $200 billion (please don't cite Bill Gates, his worth is accumlated, and these settlers don't even have expansion capacity since they're still relying on Earth).

And then, I wouldn't call these ?first settlers? settlers at all. We don't call the scientists who live in Antarctica settlers, do we? They're a ?science expedition? or whatever.

clark,

The problem with the biospheres is that they are too small, and we don't know enough about eco-system feedback loops.

This seems to contridict the sense you were exhibiting only a paragraph above this. The problem with biospheres is that they're unworkable without some technological intervention. Biospheres (at least in the case of BS2) are designed mostly on faith, when you think about it. ?Mother nature will tend to itself in this enclosed habatit.? What they should've done was left it alone, completely, for 10 years or so, to see what the result would be. But they needed to make money.

The larger a [completely organic] biosphere gets, the less control over it we have, and in that case, what's the point at all? I know we're talking [organically] self sustaining, here, but if something fails, and we have no control over it, we're screwed, yes? A biosphere should merely be an agriculture system which sustains the primary inhabitants, not a pretty garden which exists independent of any other ecosystems. In the future, I can see the appeal of a garden-like biosphere, but right now we have to solve how we're going to survive in a vaccume.

So what's the solution? I say the solution is in computers.

Your point is taken, but I totally disagree. The solution was to think smart from the beginning. There should be no element that we have no control over. None. If we're going to play god, we have to be willing to actually do the things a god would do. We have to be willing to mix plant formulas down to the molocule (yes, hydroponics require this level of mixing, but don't let this scare you, it's still rather trivial).

Throwing a bunch of plants in a system, and hoping you're going to discover the magical way that they all live together is like children playing in a sandbox, especially when we already have the knowledge to do it differently.

It's like using a big slow computer when you have already have a small super computer in your lap.

The Biospheres tried to integrate the eco-systems from the get go- that is where the unneeded complexity is. That is what will have to be adjusted.

Nope, it will have to be done away with completely. Because it simply won't work. Show me how a multi-tiered highly organic ecosystem can sustain itself in a biosphere which leaves no room for random fluctuations and maybe I'll change my mind.

The primary design factor, if we're talking about space biospheres, has everything to do with the materials you use. I'm thinking a mostly plastic biosphere. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be to build BS2 in space.

Oh, and I don't think we should get in to a debate about marriage or attraction or whatever. I tend to agree with Cindy that no one variable is the root cause for attraction. People ascribing to one variable are merely trying to push off their ideology.

clark · 2003-04-04 15:46:12

The larger a [completely organic] biosphere gets, the less control over it we have, and in that case, what's the point at all?

The larger a biosphere, the better able it is to reachieve equilibrium for the entire system when something is out of flux.

That's why thousands of years of human manipulation of the environment on Earth has had little overall impact on the majority of the earths eco-system. That's why we want large integrated eco-systems- we have to manage less becuase it has the built in capability to adjust to minor disturbances in the system- it is able to flexibly cope.

A small integrated eco-system doesn't have the same margin of error. We need a larger margin of error though becuase we are still learning how everything works *together*.

Now, my point is that an emphasis in independant ecologies is what we need to focus on. The ability to maintain a closed ecology- what is the bare minimum. Once we have gretaer skill in producing a self-regulating ecology, it gives us a "control" when we start to link eco-systems. Then we start to understand the feedback loops that exsist- we see where the interdependancies exsist- and where liky faults in the system are going to occur.

A biosphere should merely be an agriculture system which sustains the primary inhabitants, not a pretty garden which exists independent of any other ecosystems.

Yeah, I'm sure it *should*, but let's be realistic, okay? We need food to live, right? Do we need the parks?

Grow the food industrialy, it makes more sense.

The biosphere is the experiment, the biosphere is the garden- it is a luxary

soph · 2003-04-04 15:49:14

If we use a nuclear reactor to begin with, power to extract the water shouldn't really be a problem, considering the large amount of water now estimated to be close to the surface.

This would save money in the short term, which allows quicker establishment of bases on Mars. The quicker we can develop it, the more funding the bases can get. Then we can develop large scale ecosystems.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-04 23:09:23

clark,

That's why we want large integrated eco-systems- we have to manage less becuase it has the built in capability to adjust to minor disturbances in the system- it is able to flexibly cope.

A lot of the system (assuming a completely organic biosphere) isn't even being used by us. It's existing for itself. Earth's ecosystem doesn't exist for us, clark. We're nothing. Everything that is useful to us, is, in large part, controlled and managed by us. Sure, with regular agriculture, we can't exactly control the grow down to the molecule (like we can with hydroponics), but we can (and do) certainly fiddle here and there with the soil and stuff. The whole point of crop rotation is to fiddle with the soil.

So, looking at BS2, do we use a rainforest for much? Nope. We don't need 80% or more of the stuff a wholly organic biosphere uses. Heck, some of the plants and animals in such a biosphere are probably harmful to us (when was the last time someone ate something in a rainforest and dropped over dead?).

And, let's be realistic here, do our argriculture projects even rely on the outside ecosystem (assuming water, and light are taken care of)? For the most part, they don't. Agriculture relies on us doing proper soil science, planting the proper seasonal crop. Agriculture is us controlling nature, not the other way around, like I basically said before. We could plant stuff in the desert if we wanted to (hey, that's what we did with BS2).

I would like to touch on the inital thing you said, though. Fluctuations in a completely controlled system would be non-issues. Fluctuations occur in nature because there are disturbences in the system and the system cannot compesenate before they occur, but since everything would be planned and controlled in our biosphere hybrid, most (if not all) situations would be easy to cope with. Unless we knew everything about how every individual organism reacted for every given situation, we can't predict how things will pan out.

A small integrated eco-system doesn't have the same margin of error. We need a larger margin of error though becuase we are still learning how everything works *together*.

C'mon, clark. Work with me here, man. What kind of disturbences occur in vegetative systems? I can think of maybe two or three things. Water quality, air quality, and light quality, oh, and nutritional quality (probably the most important part).

In a small integrated system which uses some technology rather than pure organics, we can control every single input. Light quality, air quality, and so on. In a system which is purely organic, it has to maintain itself, and if one system fails in whatever way, we are completely hopeless to fix it. Not to mention most of it isn't useful to us.

Which actually leads us to an interesting point. BS2 probably could've worked without all the crap extended systems. You don't need hydroponics for a good closed system which can sustain itself, you can beef up soil if you want. The only reason hydroponics is mentioned here is because the cost to ship soil is prohibitive. The point, though, of all this, is if you want a biosphere capable of supporting humans, make it simple, base it around agriculture, and use technology where ever it beats out the other options. If you do this, you can't lose.

Now, my point is that an emphasis in independant ecologies is what we need to focus on. The ability to maintain a closed ecology- what is the bare minimum.

I totally agree. But if you think current biosphere research is the right way to approach it (which you do seem to think), you're going about it all wrong. Humans and technology close the ecological loop. The fact that the ecosystem exists for them (a biosphere would exist for humans- like I said earlier, Earth doesn't exist for us, it's the opposite), would pretty much preclude allowing other organisms to share the resources. They only way you're in, is if you're the most efficient way to achieve the ultimate goal. Making it so that people can survive in a vaccume.

Yeah, I'm sure it *should*, but let's be realistic, okay? We need food to live, right? Do we need the parks?

Okay, I think I see where the problem arises. You think when I talk of biospheres that I'm speaking, explicitly of organic biospheres. No, not at all. On the first page of this thread, yeah, I did shrug off ?biospheres? but it didn't even dawn on me that a technologically supported ecosystem would qualify as a biosphere.

So, I have never been talking of parks (though, hey, Martians will find the biosphere to be similar to a park, most certainly), I have always been speaking of an agricultural system. And indeed, I've even maintained that an agricultural system is the only kind that would be useful.

Grow the food industrialy, it makes more sense.

Where? On Earth? :;):

No, seriously, that's what I'm talking about here. A biosphere which supports a lot of humans requires agriculture, period. Lots of it. Humans don't require a rainforest, or a desert inside a big glass dome which was built without resource considerations. ?Oh, we'll just throw X ammount of soil in a pile and claim that it makes for the perfect space biosphere.?

Any biospheric research into building rainforests in a dome is quite shortsighted and stupid. It will never work. At least not on any realistic scale. It might work if you, say, have a dome a few miles across or whatever, but to what ends? What have we achieved?

The biosphere is the experiment, the biosphere is the garden- it is a luxary

Biospheres are the only way we're going to get off this rock. Biosphers are a necessity. The only problem, is that we haven't built 'em right.

soph, probably, but where is the Mars society going to get a nuclear reactor? We could theoretically use biomass to power the whole hab, but that would require a lot of biomass, I'm afraid.

One thing at a time, though. We can figure out our power source once we've figured out how the reclaimation systems work themselves. Assuming we do build Biosphere III, we will probably be getting electricity from a grid or whatever. Our electrical requirements would be small, though, given that, say, we're probably not going to be using it for reclamation as much as you'd think, most of this is a job for the organics.

soph · 2003-04-05 08:23:43

Ask Zubrin-he is the biggest proponent of nuclear reactors for Mars.

But a full size nuclear reactor can be brought along with the initial flights.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-05 14:50:29

Grrr, we're talking conceptual soph. I know that Zubrin likes nuclear reactors, that's why I said ?probably.? The Mars Society has no irrational fear of nuclear power (I can't think of any space oraganization that is, to be honest- that's why I find the ?pro-nuclear space? crowd kind of funny, they're preaching to people who aren't listening).

But... MDRS is powered on a deasil generator... it's not powered by a nuclear reactor or solar panels. Those things are too expensive for a concept design.

I don't care if we can take a nuclear reactor on the inital flight. I'm just saying that Biosphere III, created by the Mars Society, would give us both publicity (I can see it on the news now, ?Biosphere III, attempting to do what the Biospheres before it failed to do!? ?Biosphere III, created as a state of the art simulation of what the space environment is like!?), and it would give us technoloy that we could resell (I'm not sure if a non-profit can resell things, but hey, it's worth a shot). Those guys in Antarctica could use a biosphere, I'm sure. It'd save them thousands if not millions a year in shipping costs for food. If they took our hab designs, they could expand their base considerably, without the cost rising significantly.

RobertDyck · 2003-04-05 17:22:54

I think life support is best provided by a much simpler system than a biosphere, and a series of different systems that each backup the other.
1) A greenhouse can provide food, but should not be relied upon for oxygen. Gas balance is too precarious for a small biosphere such as an enclosed Mars base. Terry Kok has found that a composting toilet with several nested screens can convert human waste into liquid form suitable to fertilize a garden or greenhouse.
2) An isolated chloroplast device can recycle CO2 and water into oxygen and carbohydrate. Fermentation tanks can add protein, vitamin B complex, and small amounts of other nutrients such as lipids and fatty acids. The chloroplast device and fermentation tanks provide a biotech backup for air and food production. Water filtration can recycle water for drinking water and to supply the chloroplast device. Solid human waste can be incinerated to extract water if the greenhouse becomes non-functional. Of course, effluent from the dehumidifier would feed into the water filtration system.
3) A water electrolysis system and CO2 scrubber can provide electrical/mechanical backup for oxygen production. CO2 would have to be stored for later feed into a re-activated chloroplast device or greenhouse.
4) Someone on this board mentioned electrolysis with a zeolite catalyst to convert CO2 directly into oxygen. That would produce carbon as waste. Carbon must be recycled as food, and the best way to do that is burn it back into CO2 to feed either to a greenhouse or chloroplast machine. However, this can be used as another backup if water supply becomes too short to feed an electrolysis system.
5) Oxygen storage tanks and extra chemical sorbent CO2 scrubbers. Re-usable sorbent is heated to drive off the CO2, which can be stored for later use. Non-reusable sorbent is much lighter weight, but you would need a lot for an extended mission such as 2 year mission to Mars. Lithium hydroxide can be used as an emergency backup.
6) CO2 can be extracted and purified from Mars atmosphere to feed to the above mentioned recycling systems. Permafrost can be hacked out of the ground, melted and filtered to provide clean water. This means the total quantity of expendables in the system can be increased from local Mars resources. Strictly speaking, this means it is not an entirely closed system.

Notice the greenhouse mentioned is designed to provide food only. Condensed water from greenhouse walls tastes better than filtered recycled water, so it can also help recycle water. The plants should all be food crops, but the greenhouse must include microbes to breakdown the liquid fertilizer (composted human waste) into a form the plants can assimilate. The greenhouse must also provide a means to break down non-edible parts of the food crop: stalks, leaves, husks, and kitchen waste. That means a garden composter. The greenhouse can provide oxygen as well, but the composters and other microbe systems will consume oxygen. The greenhouse can operate on native Martian light, so it will reduce the power required for oxygen production and water filtration by other means, but the greenhouse cannot be relied upon alone.

RobertDyck · 2003-04-05 17:53:32

Getting back to boot-strapping the mission, we need to find something that can earn money. The chloroplast device can provide carbohydrate and oxygen directly from water, electricity, and CO2 extracted from the air with a reusable sorbent. Oxygen can be released into the air, which will not produce more than a good size house plant; or most not more than residents consume by breathing. An automated fermentation system can add protein, vitamin B, etc. to the carbohydrate, making it a flavoured food suitable as a substitute for mashed potatoes. The by-product of fermentation is alcohol. Alcohol distilled from fermentation of starchy food is vodka, if distilled to 40% alcohol. Would consumers want a device that can produce mashed potato substitute and vodka from electricity and a little water? Could this be produced economically enough to be sold as a low-cost in-house food production machine? Could we make money from selling these?

RobertDyck · 2003-04-05 18:23:00

is just everyone on this forum VEGETARIAN ?!

Growing food specifically as fodder is inefficient. The fodder itself is much, much more food than the meat provided by the farm animals. It is much more efficient to grow food for humans and leave out any farm animals. However, you do have a good point about plant waste being used as fodder rather than compost. The trick is to find a crop and farm animal combination that ONLY uses waste to feed the animals. This may affect taste. For example, I am told that beef raised in a field has a wild taste, if the cattle are fed dry hay the wild taste is stronger. Weeds like heather can also affect the flavour of the meat. This is why cattle are fed grain and corn for 2 weeks in a feed lot before slaughter. Mars colonists would have to get used to the "wild" flavour; feeding farm animals grain and/or corn would be an extravagance they could not afford. I have tasted venison from deer killed in the fall when most plants are dry. The flavour is strong and more "wild". I prefer the strong flavour. The mild flavour of venison grown on green, succulent plants is too mild for my taste; not different enough from beef. That same "wild" flavour would come through in rabbit or chicken grown on stalks and garden waste alone. Could the colonists handle it?

Furthermore, meat grown on waste alone would still be relatively little. Colonists would still have a very high vegetable content in their diet compared to North American eating habits. Caring for farm animals can also consume much time. Colonists might have that time, but I don't think the initial Mars mission would.

dicktice · 2003-04-06 08:13:56

I find the thought of slaughting animals raised specifically for that purpose, in a Mars habitat, very distastful--below what a spacefaring species would be expected to do, surely?
Hypocrite that I am, raising chickens to lay the occasional extra eggs for my breakfast omelet, would seem to be okay--even for meat occasionally, since the surplus cocks, and non-laying hens, would have to be disposed of (humanely, of course) anyway. Besides, fowls aren't mammals, but only latterday dinosaurs. (They had their chance and blew it, right?)
Anyway, range chickens should be pleasant to have around, scratching and fertilizing the new soil, taking care of themselves and their broods. The cocks' crowing in the morning would remind one of life back on Earth...adding a modicum of excitement too, by attacking from the rear when you least expect it....

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