Self-Sufficient Lunar Habitat Designed 284
An anonymous reader writes "Cosmos Magazine reports on a design for a lunar habitat that is 90 to 95 percent self-sufficient. The proposed habitat uses a closed-loop life support system that recycles and regenerates air, water, and food, reducing the need for costly supply trips. The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources. About 11 astronauts could live and work in the habitat for 2 to 3 years. The project would also help the environment on Earth with recycling and other sustainable practices." The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon.
Why? (Score:1, Interesting)
So the human problem has been resolved ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Going there, like Laika, is a one way ticket : no way back.
Because it's There (Score:5, Interesting)
And if we do manage to get He3 fusion as a practical energy source, we can at least mine for that as a resource
Re:Because it's There (Score:5, Interesting)
Once it is working good, then go for the moon. by that point you will have found the way to make it small enough to fit on a rocket anyways.
this article misses several points: (Score:5, Interesting)
2) This is fairly easy to test on earth. Except for the whole question about how well algae will reproduce in lunar gravity. The ISS was supposed to research these kinds of problems but the module that would have done this research is not going up.
3) "90-95%" self-sufficient is probably a pointless task to try and do all at once. It's probably far simpler to just add extra sufficiency over time so that you don't get nasty biosphere-two-ish surprises.
Re:Because it's There (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though its weaker than Earth's, you've still got that damn gravity well to climb down into & out of, you can't even change the "gravity" like you could in a space station, and you have to deal with all that damn dust which mucks up your machinery & gets into your lungs.
We'd learn a LOT more about living in space by building a fairly self-sufficient space colony, and have quite a few more options of where to put the colony & control over the living environment.
I think the point is pretty moot, though - I don't see either public or private sector with the will to expend the resources necessary to get such an ambitious project put together.
Frankly, short of a potential all-life-ending scare like an asteroid or massive plague, the bulk of humanity seems to have lost any motivation to expand out into space, and are more-or-less content to fight each other for resources until there won't be enough resources left to expand out into space on a large scale.
Re:Because it's There (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, cellular mitosis doesn't work well in freefall. It may or may not work better at lunar gravity.
Biosphere 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, now the serious part: biosphere 2 probably wouldn't have been the joke that it was on the talk shows if the stated goal of the program was to find out just how sustainable it could be with then state of the art engineering and technology, rather than completely seal it for 2 years and see what happens.
As it turns out, it wasn't 100% sustainable, and they did have to "cheat" which caused endless laughs. Serious science did come out of it, but who remembers any? One thing I remember that was interesting, and in retrospect should have been obvious, was that then ants they brought aboard for typical ant ecological duties _could_not_be_controlled. Duh. Everywhere but where they were supposed to be, getting into everything but what they were supposed to be doing. (When I was in California this summer, I encountered ants small enough to invade (unsealed) jars of peanut butter with the lids screwed down). Another thing was the inefficiency of their oxygen cycle. I think that was the ultimate reason they popped the hatches.
They would have been better off had they sealed up, did a progress report every 1 or two months, and replaced/modified any technology or systems that were not performing as well as planned. And brought the orkin man in.
Even so, I am assuming that these people learned from biosphere 2, and that their 95% sustainability has some basis in fact. But will it be 95% sustainable on the moon? It will be a disaster if you get there, set it up and find out it is only 60% sustainable, and the materials you hoped to mine on the moon are not as easily obtainable as you hoped.
No doubt any such venture should have a lifeboat in orbit and an ascending vehicle.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've often proposed that you need to send up a couple drills (think mines or Chunnel) and send them to a crater. Drill into the sides of the crater, laying down an epoxy against the walls as you drill.
Once primary drilling is done, you can place a pressure door on each tunnel, charge to 10 ATM and release a fine mist of polymer. It will find any cracks and seal them, then when you are operating at 1 ATM the 10X margin you have is adequate. The tunnels can be laid out radially from the crater center and a hub can be located in the middle.
-nB
Re:So the human problem has been resolved ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The longest continuous space trip by a crew (with no gravity... none) was 438 days [hypertextbook.com]... that's just over 1.2 years. Another single Cosmonaut managed one day beyond that.
Sure, the three guys who pulled it off were pretty much stuck in a convalescence home for nearly a year before they could walk again, and had to exercise their asses off every day they were up there, but point is that they did manage.
With 0.16 G , one would think you could stretch that out a bit to at least a year-and-a-half (perhaps more) before it got as bad as it did for the current record holders, no? This isn't even counting medical remedies and techniques that weren't available in earlier long-duration spaceflight tests.
oceans to be colonized first (Score:4, Interesting)
Space is more abundant on Earth than the resources necessary to sustain life. We need: food, water, energy, and air. None of these things are on the moon. We can set up production facilities for these things, but for all the expense, the oceans would be the first candidate. Since the oceans cover 3/4 of Earth's surface and we haven't even begun to colonize them, there's plenty of area available before the moon becomes economically attractive.
Overpopulation isn't about needing more space to build houses. It's a problem of over-taxing the life-sustaining resources nature provides.
Seth
Re:Gravity well (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually...
The moon is a really good place to settle. There is a gravity well; but it's such a small one that you get the convenience without the penalty. It's nice having things fall down; it makes all kinds of useful resources --- rock, ice, metal --- easily accessible, and you don't have to worry about stuff drifting off. Not to mention that all the production techniques we know about involve gravity at some point. It's also nice having such a ludicrously small gravity well that you can get into orbit with something the size of an Apollo lander rather than a Saturn V. It's an excellent compromise.
It's also really nice being three days travel away from home. In the event of an emergency, it's entirely feasible to sprint home directly from the lunar surface. You can't do that from an asteroid, where you've travelled for months just to get there.
You're right in that asteroids are excellent places for robotic mining... unfortunately, we don't know how to do that yet. The state of the art just isn't there. Given that we still don't have the technology to travel anywhere in other than a minimum-energy transfer orbit taken months, and that mission planners have to plot crazy momentum-stealing flybys of practically every inner planet in order to minimise delta-V, launching experimental robot refineries from the surface of the Earth just isn't going to happen. Wait another twenty years and build 'em on the Moon instead. You'll have the knowledge, the personnel, the materials, and you won't have to lift them out of Earth's huge gravity well.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
1. A telescope would have much better visibility, and with a base next to it maintenance would be faster and cheaper.
2. A launchpad for space exploration. It's much easier to blast off a rocket from the moon than it would be from Earth. With 1/6 the gravity, a moon rocket would have to have far less thrust to get itself into space and could use Earth's gravity for acceleration. The parts could be manufactured on the moon or on Earth and shipped to the moon via the regular shipping that has been established. Even if it has to be shipped, it would still be a smaller, cheaper rocket.
3. Adaptation to other worlds. If we ever accomplish superluminal transport, we may come in contact with other planets or other forms of life that live in different conditions. If we know how to sustain ourselves off Earth, we can likely sustain ourselves in other locations such as the moon of Titan or worlds beyond the solar system.
4. Wireless networking. We might have to learn how to blanket the universe (or at least our region) with billions of miles of wireless networking at high bandwidth. I'm serious. If we have multiple colonies on multiple planets and space stations, wireless networking on that scale would make communication easier, even if the latency is limited by the speed of light.
5. Future sustainability on Earth. If the climate on Earth ever goes down the tubes, what we learn on the moon may help us survive on Earth, in the case of runaway global warming, an ice age, asteroid impact or nuclear war.
6. Weapons research. We could test weapons away from forms of life it could harm. This one has its own ethical implications, but I leave that to philosophers.
7. Energy research. The energy sources required to power such a base could lead to more efficient energy at home, such as improved solar energy sources.
8. Recycling. The extreme recycling needed for a space station or moon base could be commercialized and used to conserve Earth resources.
The possibilities are endless.
Robots can't dig THAT well. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not Mars and why 30 years? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cool...I guess (Score:4, Interesting)
Biosphere II wasn't so much of a failure as it was a 'no test'. Despite the gleaming claims they made about being a closed enviroment, only lip service was paid towards it in the actual design and construction. Far more money was spent on hewing to enviromental mantras and meeting the philosophic/aesthetic goals of the project than on even quasi serious engineering. (CIP: The 'lungs' had to be added, at great cost, fairly late in the construction because it didn't occur to any of the enviromental gurus that a closed building of that size would have significant pressure changes as the temperatures changed.)
Like Sydney Opera House, Biosphere II was designed by an artist - and then the design was handed over to engineers to make work. As a result, much time and money was spent ensuring the 'rainforest' had rain, the 'ocean pool' had tides, and that the high humidity levels required inside by enviromentalists didn't corrode the whole structure into junk.
On top of that - they leapt/extrapolated too far from their mockup and existing engineering. (By a couple of orders of magnitude.) Then they leapt right into the full bore lock-in without doing any significant commissioning and baseline testing.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Because it's There (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Because it's There (Score:3, Interesting)
Gravity is actually a err... mixed curse.
I suspect that for processes that don't require microgravity, it's much easier to work on the moon. I agree on the dust, although that's only an issue if you habitually leave your habitat, which either you have no reason to do, or have a reason that is more valuable than the cost of dealing with the dusty.
I don't buy the species survival argument for space colonization. Humans are a weed species. We, with rudimentary technology and only locally available materials, have succefullly colonized habitats from the Congo to the Arctic. No conceivable environmental change would render the planet uninhabitable by individuals of the human species.
What can happen is that the Earth becomes unable to support billions of people in our society as it is now. The extinction scenarios really amount to population collapse and cultural extinction.
Re:Lunar Agriculture Link (Score:2, Interesting)
If you check here [space.com], you'll see that due to where they are (north pole of moon on a crater rim) they have almost constant access to sunlight.
If I'm on the north pole of any tidally locked body [wikipedia.org], and (this is crucial) the normal of the plane of orbit of that body is perpendicular to the sun... then the north and south poles of that body will have almost constant access.
Here's how. If the north pole has none of the rest of the body to shade it, then from the point of view of the observer, the sun will always be halfway on the horizon. In other words, the sun will be half-hidden all of the time, sitting on the horizon and "going around" the body. So if I build a building on the north pole, then the upper floors will see the whole sun. If we add some reflective screens that will rotate and point at the sun, then we've got an increase in how much sunlight will hit our target (garden, photoelectric, or whatever).
Also keep in mind - there's no atmosphere to weaken the amount of sunlight. So even if the sun seems to be on the horizon, the light per square meter (measured with a normal pointing straight at the sun) will be considerably stronger. Instead of a satellite with lots of solar cells, consider a solar concentraing cell [spectrolab.com] (those referred to in the link are already in space) inside an airspace connected to the base. Whatever sunlight isn't converted to electricity is converted to heat. All you have to do is pump cool water past the cell to keep it cool enough, and you can then capture the heat from the water.
So it's an environment with plenty of energy available (once tapped), lots of rock-based nutrients for plants, and a slow speed for landing (relative ground speed for landing is at a minimum at the poles). A perfect place to start hollowing out the inside of the moon for an even more secure moon base. Here's hoping they put one at each pole.