> Am 03.05.2016 um 21:11 schrieb Onno Meyer <[email protected]>: > > Johannes replied to me: >> I think full live support with food production is unrealistic at TL7 and >> overly optimistic at TL8. > > The real question will be the efficiency. Vehicles makes it all-or-nothing, > but could a TL7 system reach 90% recycling rate? Could there be 99% at TL8?
What do you mean with „recycling“ here? If your artificial eco system is large enough and has enough time, it can decompose any bio mass and return the components into the next life cycle. Of course, there are some of the intermediate products that could be potentially hazardous (Methane, for example), either for the eco system itself, or for the vehicle containing it. But that’s what I mean with self-regulating on one hand, and complexity that has to be managed on the other side. We have not even fully understood our naturally existing eco system here on earth and all its subtle dependencies, so how can we believe that we can built our own? Although Michael Crichton probably exaggarated a bit on his book Jurassic Park, in particular with his glorification of chaos theory, but with our current, still limited knowledge about the underlying cybernetic model(s) of longterm working eco systems, chaos theory is still the only working description model for it. Unfortunately, this does not work well to predict what have to be done next, only to explain why it failed in the end. > >> […] > > With soil, you need worms to ventilate it. With hydroponics, you can do > without them in this role. Perhaps some worms in the dung heaps, but that's > another compartment. Soil needs to be ventilated for optimum results. This can be done by worms or manually … Open tanks with fluids do have some other, special risks in a moving vehicle, that are not necessarily related to our current problem. As said above, an eco system is a (for us and currently) not controllable beast. Eleminating factors (e.g. worms) from the equation should make it more controllable, by simplification, until we end up with a large fungus as one single species in our „garden eco system“. But now we have to ask whether this is enough to feed the other species in our vehicle: the humans and all the bacteria that are required to keep them alive. We are a bit in Schrödinger’s situation regarding his cat, but the influence is more significant than just looking. So *perhaps* we are able to build a simplified, self-contained eco system, but could this be used to keep the crew of a star ship alive without killing itself? > >> […] > > I'm envisioning a scenario roughly like this: > > A space mission is going to take several decades of flight time, subjective > time, plus a lengthy stay at the destination to make it all worthwhile. > Building a generation ship was considered and rejected for various reasons. > Instead, the ship uses cryonic capsules. > > At the destination, the ship computers (no true AIs) will prep the life > support; this is sufficient for a small fraction of the crew. They mine > asteroids to build a habitat. The key components like the computers are part > of the payload while crude stuff like walls or pipes is manufactured out of > local raw materials. As the habitat is expanded, more and more crew come out > of cryosleep. After some years the crew refits their ship for the return > trip. Either all of them go home or a flight crew returns the ship while most > become colonists. This might be decided only after arrival, when the > suitability of the destination is evaluated. > > Problems: > - Is the total life support going to run "idle" for several decades, or is it > going to be restarted from a total shutdown? Both are difficult. > - Is it possible to predict what trace materials for the biosphere can be > found and what needs to be carried along? Spectrographic analysis of the > destination? > - How many "imported key components" does it take to build a station with > life support and a shipyard? From the view of game master, the described scenario is fascinating. But from a real life position, your plan has too much balls in the air (too much, not too many …), and only very few may be dropped before no one will survive. Regarding you concrete questions: you should do both, run the total life support idle for the time of the trip, and to be prepared to restart it from a total shutdown, even for several times. As you said, both is difficult, so having a plan B is advised. I would say it is impossible to reliably predict the *trace* materials that are available in the destination from a lightyears distance, due to their nature of being just *traces*. The measuring error over such a long distance would be in the same range as the share of the traces itself. And the question regarding the key components can be answered in various ways. So you need to answer how deep your manufacturing tree will be … can you build the tools to build tools to build tools to build tools to build something? So is it enough to put silicium crystals on board and build the integrated circuits that you need at your destination? Or do you have to store a decent supply of all electronics? Same with other materials - can you make plastics, or can you just give existing plastic a new form? Can you just refine the fuel for your engines, or can you build a refinery? From scratch, or only from pre-fabricated parts? -- Thomas Thrien Allemagne Geo 51° 28' 12" N 7° 32' 17" E -- Thomas Thrien Obermarkstraße 3 Berghofer Mark 44267 Dortmund Allemagne Tel. +49 231 7285456 Mobil +49 171 5289503 email [email protected] Geo 51° 28' 12" N 7° 32' 17" E PGP Fingerprint 170F 6E4D E99D 05DB 14B9 412B BE79 D4B4 D982 1B17 Es heißt, der Klügere gibt nach. Doch wenn die Klügeren immer nachgeben, dann passiert nur noch, was die Dummen wollen … Of course it has a meaning when a black cat crosses your way from left to right … It means, that the cat, coming from your left, wants to go somewhere right from you … You do not need to be a carpenter to see that the table rocks. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
