Author Topic: "Colony module" for ISS?  (Read 16594 times)

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #20 on: 06/04/2012 12:57 pm »
Most people who have commented on this, are trying to be positive. ...

And in that vein, why not attempt a Biosphpere 3 in an Antarctic desert?  Include the com time delay; don't worry about the gravity for the moment; concentrate on the closed cycle aspect.

I am casually interested in crowd funding models where the barrier of entry is at the granularity of one dollar...

Me too, but if you need $100B, that's 1B people at $100 a pop.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Watchdog

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #21 on: 06/05/2012 06:20 pm »
If the huge mass of Biosphere 2 was not sufficient to support the life of three persons how can ISS or even a small module? As far as I understood from the lessions of Biosphere 2 the CO2-binding capacity of the green plants could not avoid an increase in CO2 levels (maybe because plants "like" higher CO2-levels)  and the productivity of the ecosystem was not even sufficient to produce the necessary amount of vegetarian food, not to speak from chicken and fish. Certainly, new calculations and a novel concept may overcome these issues. The selection of different organisms and a modified arrangement may even help to reduce the size of the complex significantly. Estimated costs: 5 B. US$ (including 10 years of operation and science)

Offline QuantumG

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #22 on: 06/05/2012 11:19 pm »
Yeah, I continue to be surprised that people still think an ecosystem is a good way to support humans. It's not even a good way to do it here on Earth! Gerard O'Neill had it right: dedicated farming modules which are engineered for high crop yields proximate to dedicated living modules that are engineered for human comfort and growth. Simple chemical systems with predicable operation and failure modes are what you want for something as critical as life support. Biology does not provide that.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Tass

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #23 on: 06/06/2012 08:06 am »
Indeed. You can produce the food and convert CO2 to oxygen at the same time, using biology. But there is no reason not to have the fine tuning of conditions and life support done by technology.

It annoys me that people think that just because biosphere two failed that a self sufficient colony on a small scale is necessarily impossible. They shot over the goal.

I'd like to see a "biosphere" three, with active life support, buffer tanks of oxygen and CO2, not with a big unruly biosphere, but with controlled farming, which was in the long term sustainable. It would probably be a good idea to have living quarters and farming atmospheres separate. Using solar power and chemistry, CO2 could be sequestered from the living quarters and maybe kept at a higher level in the farming areas to facilitate plant growth. That sort of thing.

We can do life support on a space station with and influx of food, water and oxygen etc. We should be able to do it with only energy input.   

Offline rklaehn

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #24 on: 06/06/2012 08:41 am »
Yeah, I continue to be surprised that people still think an ecosystem is a good way to support humans. It's not even a good way to do it here on Earth! Gerard O'Neill had it right: dedicated farming modules which are engineered for high crop yields proximate to dedicated living modules that are engineered for human comfort and growth. Simple chemical systems with predicable operation and failure modes are what you want for something as critical as life support. Biology does not provide that.

I would go a step further. Do the energy-intensive step of turning CO2 and H2O into hydrocarbons in a chemical reactor (electrolysis + sabatier), and just use biological processes to build more complex hydrocarbons from chemically produced small chain hydrocarbons like CH4 or CH3OH.

There are various bacteria that take their energy from small chain hydrocarbons or hydrogen. So there is no need to use the extremely inefficient photosynthesis for the most energy intensive step. Just feed chemically generated CH4 into a bioreactor with methanotrope bacteria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph. Then feed the resulting bacterial sludge to mushrooms or animals.

Interestingly higher plants are able to use chemical energy to grow. It's what happens in the first days when the plant grows out of the chemical energy stored in the seedcorn without doing photosynthesis. So it should be possible to genetically engineer plants to grow without photosynthesis.

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #25 on: 06/06/2012 10:40 am »
The biosphere we live includes not just the inputs of solar energy and the interactions of organisms, there are macro-scale processes going on: geochemical cycling, movement of air masses, lightning strikes etc. etc. To design an ecosystem you're going to have to work from the ground up. That will be a challenge for truly large (hundreds of people) space colonies.

Simply growing food and absorbing CO2 in a closed loop environment should be easier, especially when you can control the variables and add and remove components as you see fit.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #26 on: 06/06/2012 02:14 pm »
Yeah, I continue to be surprised that people still think an ecosystem is a good way to support humans. It's not even a good way to do it here on Earth! ... Biology does not provide that.

Virtual nonsense.  A billion years of continuous evolution would disagree.

We should be able to do it with only energy input.

That's what the Sun does here on Earth.

CLSS needs to be learned empirically.  If costs allow, I would skip Biosphere on Earth, and implement BioRing in LEO.  900m diameter, one rpm, one gee, intermediate rings at Moon gee and Mars gee.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Tass

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #27 on: 06/06/2012 06:16 pm »
We should be able to do it with only energy input.

That's what the Sun does here on Earth.

Obviously. Thats why people have tried recreating a biosphere.

We need to be able to do it on a small scale. Using biology augmented and controlled by technology will be much easier than shooting for self-regulating biology.

Offline Watchdog

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #28 on: 06/08/2012 11:40 am »
Before a Colony Module can be developed the main goals have to be identified:

1. the number of humans it shall support
2. the extent of self-sustainability (50%?)
3. the time period it shall sustain the crew (3 years?)
4. the supposed energy consumption and the required solar/electrical power
5. the waste management and possible matarials flow between ISS and the module
6. artificial gravity at least for plant growth

I seriously doubt that all these goals can be optimized with a single module. Rather it would be a new complex of various modules specifically designed for this kind of experiments.

I agree that the combination of biology, chemistry and technology may help to minimize the size and to maximize the results, but a single 20 MT module could never carry the entire equipment for such an endeavour.

ISS has not even a washing machine to clean the cloths of the crew. The crew produces so much waste that they have to get rid of it by every frighter returning from the station. An 50% enclosed system has not only to recycle water and CO2 but also to deliver considerable food.

Human beeings do not want to eat artificial protein and some algae mush for three years. They need high quality vegetables, fruits and diverse protein sources. If you want to grow plants (even genetically modified for dwarfism and reduced gravity) some kind of artificial gravity will be necessary.

By flushing the air of the living quarters through a solution of calcium hydroxide the CO2 could be removed from the air and bound. The resulting calcium carbonate could easily be collected by centrifugation and be transfered to the plant growth compartment. There, the calcium carbonate would be heated to release the CO2 into the atmosphere and produce calcium oxide which is transfered back to the living quarter and desolved in the container with the calcium hydroxide solution to restore its concentration. This would be a perfect cycle supporting plant growth.

Water recycling from urine and air humidity is demonstrated every day at ISS, but the quality of the filtered water is not good enough for drinking, rather it is used for O2-production. Since also plants need water to produce O2 there has to be a water input into the system (for drinking and plant growth). I cannot see a chemical or technical process combining excrement removal and biomass production providing the same efficiency compared to plants. A greenhouse is therefore inevitable for the crews quality of live.
« Last Edit: 06/08/2012 11:45 am by Watchdog »

Offline hop

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #29 on: 06/10/2012 06:02 am »
Human beeings do not want to eat artificial protein and some algae mush for three years.
Humans will put up with a lot of bad food if necessary to accomplish something they really want.
Quote
They need high quality vegetables, fruits and diverse protein sources.
Want =/= need.
Quote
If you want to grow plants (even genetically modified for dwarfism and reduced gravity) some kind of artificial gravity will be necessary.
Incorrect. Plants have been grown to maturity in micro gravity as far back as Mir at least. Scaling this up to useful harvest would be challenging, but gravity does not appear to be an absolute requirement.
Quote
Water recycling from urine and air humidity is demonstrated every day at ISS, but the quality of the filtered water is not good enough for drinking, rather it is used for O2-production.
Incorrect. The US segment currently generates drinking water from urine. Mir systems were also reportedly capable of producing drinking water, although they mostly used it for O2 generation.

Offline Watchdog

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #30 on: 06/10/2012 10:31 pm »
"Humans will put up with a lot of bad food if necessary to accomplish something they really want."

Do you really think that "bad food" will help astronauts to cope with extended periods of weightlessness, isolation, physical and emotional stress, irradiation and other factors of HSF? They are not only supposed to survive the trip, they are expected to do lots of scientific and technical work.

"Want =/= need."

Yes, they also need to eat the best diet possible under these circumstances. Their immune system needs to be top, their physical and psychological parameters need to match best health conditions. They need e.g. vitamins and secondary plant metabolits in synergistic combination from natural sources to strenghten their body against most of the observed medical problems of long-duration flights.

"Incorrect. Plants have been grown to maturity in micro gravity as far back as Mir at least. Scaling this up to useful harvest would be challenging, but gravity does not appear to be an absolute requirement."

As far as I know there have been no systematic repeated experiments using a whole set of important plant species from seed to seed, not to speak from a comprehensive greenhouse of considerable size under "production conditions". Geotropism is a genetic trait of almost all plant species. Maybe some tricks work in some species, but the data is insufficient.

"Incorrect. The US segment currently generates drinking water from urine. Mir systems were also reportedly capable of producing drinking water, although they mostly used it for O2 generation."

Thank you for this information, it was new to me. But how many percent of the used drinking water is produced by the filter equipment? I guess less than 10 percent, right? If at least 80 percent could be recycled I would consider that as a big success. However, this technology seems to be working.
« Last Edit: 06/10/2012 10:39 pm by Watchdog »

Offline slavvy

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #31 on: 09/27/2016 11:48 am »
I know this is an old topic but this fits here.

During the ESA citizen debate I came across people involved in this project

http://eden-iss.net/

Ground Demonstration of Plant Cultivation Technologies for Safe Food Production in Space

EDEN ISS will develop an advanced nutrient delivery system, a high performance LED lighting system, a bio-detection and decontamination system and food quality and safety procedures and technologies.
A mobile container-sized greenhouse test facility will be built to demonstrate and validate different key technologies and procedures necessary for safe food production within a (semi-) closed system.
...
In October 2017, the complete facility will be shipped to the German Neumayer III station in Antarctica....It is foreseen that the container-sized greenhouse of the EDEN ISS project will provide year-round fresh food supplementation for the Neumayer Station III crew.

Offline Katana

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #32 on: 09/28/2016 10:51 pm »
About animal pens, flying feces aside: we get so accustomed to eating meat (or eggs, for that matter) that we don't fully realise what it costs to obtain it. In a closed-loop environment, to breed animals, you first have to grow plants to feed them. The amount of resources necessary to obtain animal protein is much, much larger than for an equivalent amount of plant protein (of which pulses, i.e. beans and especially soy beans, are an excellent source).

The first space colonists, at least, will be vegan. Then, when they really get tired of eating tofu, they will go for animals that are used to living in a three-dimensional, bare-bones, contained environment for which automated life support, including waste treatment, is well understood: fish.

By this stage, we will probably be able to grow animal muscle tissue in vitro, or create animal protein substitutes with genetically engineered plants or algae. Animals have entrails (that must be eaten - ugh) and hides, teeth bones and so on that must also be processed. Plus they stink. With fish, there's less of this, plus they can live in the water you use for radiation shielding. And you get a nice aquarium as a bonus.
Small shrimps (~1cm) are even easier to raise with micro algae from a sealed bioreactor, similar with ecosystem bottle or aquarium. Waste from living shrimp are directly recycled, and cooking shrimp for food produces zero byproducts.

The whole system could be made pump-fed to harvest shrimps from the bioreactor, even with filtered shrimp-rich and algae-rich pumps to keep shrimps in feeding chamber away from the bioreactor. Thin tube (HDPE plastic, 100PSI resistant) containing flowing algae solution could be coiled outside the spacecraft.

Micro algae reproduce fast (<24HR to double with proper lighting). High density and efficiency of micro algae bioreactor could compensate the energy and protein loss of feeding shrimps, resulting a total protein productivity better than planting tofu.

Vegetables are indeed inefficient. Most of energy are converted to fiber instead of nutrition.
« Last Edit: 09/28/2016 11:09 pm by Katana »

Offline mikelepage

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Re: "Colony module" for ISS?
« Reply #33 on: 09/29/2016 10:40 am »
Yeah, I continue to be surprised that people still think an ecosystem is a good way to support humans. It's not even a good way to do it here on Earth! Gerard O'Neill had it right: dedicated farming modules which are engineered for high crop yields proximate to dedicated living modules that are engineered for human comfort and growth. Simple chemical systems with predicable operation and failure modes are what you want for something as critical as life support. Biology does not provide that.

Um, mate.  It's the only proven way to support humans (or any form of life for that matter).  ISS, submarines, and any other craft where humans reside temporarily are still supported by the ecosystem.  Human agriculture is supported/buffered by the ecosystem.  You don't extend human civilisation into space without extending the ecosystem that supports us, into space.

We should optimise the mass/space requirements as best as we can of course, but even where you can do everything mechanically, it will only be in craft meant for temporary habitation.  Space settlements will be ecosystems.

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