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#41
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(AA Institute) wrote:
[biospheres] Absolutely; all the unneeded items like clothes, expired foods, household waste, etc on the ISS today are periodically despatched via an un-manned Russian 'Progress' freighter, which plunges them into the Earth's atmosphere for harmless burn-up. Not quite all of the rubbish apparently: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/1....ap/index.html Tim -- Do you want your computer to trust a software vendor more than you? http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html |
#42
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"Paul Blay" wrote:
"AA Institute" wrote ... However, managing the waste from a microscopic size crew of just 3 people vs a colony of say 2,000 on the *Celestial Titanic* being envisioned here, is a whole new ball game! A MAGIC formula is needed, or we end up with a "Lord of the Earth Rings" kind of scenario... No more MAGIC than is required for a colony of 2,000 people in the first place. You'd need a *very* big station to be self-sustaining for that many people. Biosphere 2 (which didn't quite work, they had to pump in oxygen after a year or so) was enormous and that was to support fewer than a dozen people. You need to solve the problem of efficiently getting mass out of the Earth's gravity well before you can even think about big fancy space stations or mining operations. Tim -- Do you want your computer to trust a software vendor more than you? http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html |
#43
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"Tim Auton" wrote in message
... "Paul Blay" wrote: No more MAGIC than is required for a colony of 2,000 people in the first place. You'd need a *very* big station to be self-sustaining for that many people. Biosphere 2 (which didn't quite work, they had to pump in oxygen after a year or so) was enormous and that was to support fewer than a dozen people. Only if you want to make it Earth-like - using bio-systems for atmosphere regeneration and food production would be fairly small by comparison. Remember that Biosphere 2 tried to recreate the entire biosphere of Earth and that just isn't necessary. -- Alan Erskine We can get people to the Moon in five years, not the fifteen GWB proposes. Give NASA a real challenge |
#44
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"Tim Auton" wrote ...
"Paul Blay" wrote: "AA Institute" wrote ... However, managing the waste from a microscopic size crew of just 3 people vs a colony of say 2,000 on the *Celestial Titanic* being envisioned here, is a whole new ball game! A MAGIC formula is needed, or we end up with a "Lord of the Earth Rings" kind of scenario... No more MAGIC than is required for a colony of 2,000 people in the first place. You'd need a *very* big station to be self-sustaining for that many people. "managing the waste" "self-sustaining" |
#45
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Greg D. Moore wrote:
"Rhonda Lea Kirk" wrote: I can't believe I'm posting this. You're not the only one. :-) (now knowing far more about Rhonda than I ever wanted to. :-) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to write that post five times just to give as little personal information as possible. What drives me insane about some of you guys is that unless... ....let me put it this way: lo those many years ago, you'd have killfiled Galileo. Science has a long way to go before it fully and accurately describes reality and--as we are shown again and again--all the "proof" in the world can't transform theory into incontrovertible fact. I'm all for being a little skeptical about wild ideas, but history continues to rub our collective noses in the fact that what we accept today as true and correct is going down the tubes tomorrow. rl |
#46
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"Mighty Krell" wrote in message
k.net... "Mike Combs" wrote in message Unless you establish the kind that breaks waste products down into their constituent elements for re-use. Ahh, a MAGIC space station. Not at all. Chemical processes exist to break nearly anything down to, at the very least, small, simple molecules like water, CO2, etc. We don't always use them here on Earth because many of them are energy-intensive, and it's usually cheaper to just dump the waste somewhere and buy new raw materials. But in a space habitat, raw materials would cost a lot more than energy. So there's an economic incentive for breaking down all waste products for re-use. Look into super-critical combustion chambers for just one possible process. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make much sense, but we do like pizza. |
#47
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"Rhonda Lea Kirk" wrote in message
... Greg D. Moore wrote: "Rhonda Lea Kirk" wrote: I can't believe I'm posting this. You're not the only one. :-) (now knowing far more about Rhonda than I ever wanted to. :-) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to write that post five times just to give as little personal information as possible. What colour are your eyes? What drives me insane about some of you guys is that unless... ...let me put it this way: lo those many years ago, you'd have killfiled Galileo. I'm for anyone who upsets the church. [snip] Grim |
#48
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"Tim Auton" wrote in message
... "Paul Blay" wrote: "AA Institute" wrote ... However, managing the waste from a microscopic size crew of just 3 people vs a colony of say 2,000 on the *Celestial Titanic* being envisioned here, is a whole new ball game! A MAGIC formula is needed, or we end up with a "Lord of the Earth Rings" kind of scenario... No more MAGIC than is required for a colony of 2,000 people in the first place. You'd need a *very* big station to be self-sustaining for that many people. Biosphere 2 (which didn't quite work, they had to pump in oxygen after a year or so) was enormous and that was to support fewer than a dozen people. You need to solve the problem of efficiently getting mass out of the Earth's gravity well before you can even think about big fancy space stations or mining operations. There's already a huge amount of mass outside the Earth's gravity well. Most of the universe, in fact. Besides, if you had a microscopic size crew, 2,000 wouldn't take up much more room than 3. Grim |
#49
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"AA Institute" wrote in message
om... Tim Auton wrote in message . .. "Mighty Krell" wrote: [snip] Ahh, a MAGIC space station. You've lived your entire life in one. There has been a lot of research into biospheres. Artificial ones aren't quite perfected but they are certainly possible. That's just bio-waste, of course. Crud left over from mining operations may truly be waste, but I'm sure it could be used as reaction mass and directed into the sun or some other harmless place. Absolutely; all the unneeded items like clothes, expired foods, household waste, etc on the ISS today are periodically despatched via an un-manned Russian 'Progress' freighter, which plunges them into the Earth's atmosphere for harmless burn-up. I hope they have an incinerator licence for that. Who's monitoring the exhaust? Grim |
#50
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"Tim Auton" wrote in message
... Crud left over from mining operations may truly be waste, but I'm sure it could be used as reaction mass and directed into the sun or some other harmless place. Or as radiation shielding, which we'll need if we're in any orbit higher than the magnetosphere. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make much sense, but we do like pizza. |
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