In a message dated 11/6/00 12:35:27 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Here's the hitch about people living in space stations. OK, we have
the technology for a closed ecosystem in space. Well, wouldn't it be
much much much cheaper to create the same closed biosphere ON EARTH?
We could set them up in the Sahara, the American West, Siberia, the
Australian outback, the Gobi Desert, Canada, Greenland, Antarctica, the
Oceans...
Actually we don't have the technology for a closed ecosystem. Biosphere was a
horrible failure. It could not maintain itself. I think the key problem with
trying to build an environment in near earrth space is that there is nothing
to build it with. Space is empty. So we have import all materials from the
moon or earth which requires huge outlays of cash and energy. We can get
energy from the sun but we need mass, stuff, to make things and we need to be
able to create and control an environment. Our own environment grew
organically over billions of years. We have no idea of how to make a
self-sustaining environment from scratch even if we could get the materials
where we want them.
