Self Sustaining Space Habitats... What Does It Take?

[Spacescifi]

It's a worthwhile question to answered... at least for space scifi.

If you can work out what is needed to be a self sustaining space station than you can surely work out the same issue on a spacd vessel.

The whole 5 year Star Trek mission?

Near impossible without a self sustaining ecosystem on the ship.

Questions and my answers: What does it take? Growing plants but in space. Astronauts be vegetarian likely, as meat will be hard to come by. Water and a way to recycle it.

And waste managenment. That's actually the biggest problem of any closed system. On Earth we have both weather and lifeforms that clean waste. In space on a spacestation it would take resources to simukate weather, and a multitude of life forms to consume waste won't happen unless brought in. The other option is robot cleaners... which would need maintenance periodically.

Tethered spun habitat modules are the cheapest way to generate 1g, so that is a viable and cheap but necessary option. With that you do not need massive size, just really long tethers that you can reel in or out.

 

That's all I have.

What are your questions/answers?

Edited April 22, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Shpaget]

Define self-sustaining.

Not even Earth is self-sustaining, since it heavily depends on continuous and quite enormous energy input from the Sun.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Shpaget

[linuxgurugamer]

I'd personally define it as:

• Full Atmospheric recycling
• Full waste product recycling
• Outside energy acceptable (ie:  Sunlight, etc)
• Food independence

Quite a hard level, I think a more acceptable definition would allow a certain level of outside inputs.  Actually, I think defining it as not needing any outside inputs for a specific number of years may also be a good one

[Spacescifi]

12 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Define self-sustaining.

Not even Earth is self-sustaining, since it heavily depends on continuous and quite enormous energy input from the Sun.

 

I mean you do not have to leave elsewhere to get food, water, or clothing, and can survive for months at the least, years at the max without resupply.

[Nuke]

construction materials, a power plant of sorts, raw resources, a reason to exist, and a lot of collective will. 

we probably need to get over our fear of gmos as those are likely the key to developing a crop that is well adjusted to growing in space or on a centrifuge, disease resistant, effective co2 scrubbers, and with a high crop yield and very compatible with hydroponics. you may very well be eating foods that don't exist yet. bioreactors might handle decomposition of waste into useful nutrients for farming. the food cycle would need to be as closed a system as possible. the fewer consumables the better. on earth we use a lot of open ended processes because the environment is big enough where it can handle it (for the most part, were still probing the limits of how much abuse it can take). its not necessary to completely recycle sewage as simply treating it so its safe enough to dump where the environment can handle most of the break down processes. but in space a barrel of poop might be precious material and open cycles are a good way to run out of things.  

you will need to produce something of value that can be traded. maybe you are sitting on some metal rich asteroids or have a moon with a lot of hydrocarbons, even just being a breadbasket colony. you may not have everything you need to survive but you can trade what you have for what you need.  the second law of thermodynamics is what it is and you will need to replenish essential consumables as stockpiles can only go so far. finding a body with a lot of resource diversity might mean you can make or recycle everything you need. this is where a good power supply comes in handy as it greatly increases the number of industrial processes you have access to.

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Define self-sustaining.

Not even Earth is self-sustaining, since it heavily depends on continuous and quite enormous energy input from the Sun.

True, however think we can say earth is self sustaining as it only need sunlight. 

However making an Mars colony who can survive forever without contact with earth  will be idiotic hard. Making stuff like space suits is very hard with the huge supply chain needed for this. 
It might be easier in the future because of you get better production methods but you are building an Von Neumann machine.
Give us 300 years and we talk about this,

[Spacescifi]

14 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

True, however think we can say earth is self sustaining as it only need sunlight. 

However making an Mars colony who can survive forever without contact with earth  will be idiotic hard. Making stuff like space suits is very hard with the huge supply chain needed for this. 
It might be easier in the future because of you get better production methods but you are building an Von Neumann machine.
Give us 300 years and we talk about this,

 

Von Neumann machines I personally think are overrated.

I have seen some (I am not referring to you personally) claim Von Neumann machines can build stuff that we typically use industrial machines and humans to build.

In other words, the claim is that enough Von Neumann machines can act like 3-D printers.

Yet just like all machines, they need power and a way to handle waste heat.

Small nanobots, correct me if I am wrong, are what some think of when Von Neumann machines are mentioned no?

Given such small size, I do not see them pulling off any constructive feats.

In fact one way that could in fact make stuff with small nanostuff would not be nanobots... but biobots.

Living reproducing organisms under the command of man.

Something like that could at least act and look like a flying swarm in the air, so long it had food to eat and predators did not eat them all up.

Which is difficult to stop when that small.

I have seen birds dive bomb bugs out of the blue.

 

EDIT: Biological reproduction is easier and a proven method. Manipulating creatures with technology to act like bots is something we do not have that I am aware of, but it is plausible for me for scifi.

Machines making machines with AI though is a lot harder.

Nevermind the fact that many planets do not have all tge resources required to build needed machinery for the machines to be most efficient.

Take the moon for example.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

32 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Von Neumann machines I personally think are overrated.

I have seen some (I am not referring to you personally) claim Von Neumann machines can build stuff that we typically use industrial machines and humans to build.

In other words, the claim is that enough Von Neumann machines can act like 3-D printers.

Yet just like all machines, they need power and a way to handle waste heat.

Small nanobots, correct me if I am wrong, are what some think of when Von Neumann machines are mentioned no?

Given such small size, I do not see them pulling off any constructive feats.

In fact one way that could in fact make stuff with small nanostuff would not be nanobots... but biobots.

Living reproducing organisms under the command of man.

Something like that could at least act and look like a flying swarm in the air, so long it had food to eat and predators did not eat them all up.

Which is difficult to stop when that small.

I have seen birds dive bomb bugs out of the blue.

I agree with you and yes it would be very much like biology. 

However I was mostly talking about making an colony able to survive independent and make copies of it self. On earth this is very easy, all life do it. 
In space its hard as you need to make all the technology you need to survive, and the technology to make these parts and the technology to make that and so on. 
Is it doable, yes but its hard on the interstellar travel level.

[Spacescifi]

50 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

I agree with you and yes it would be very much like biology. 

However I was mostly talking about making an colony able to survive independent and make copies of it self. On earth this is very easy, all life do it. 
In space its hard as you need to make all the technology you need to survive, and the technology to make these parts and the technology to make that and so on. 
Is it doable, yes but its hard on the interstellar travel level.

 

Technically doable but the issue is both maintenance and expiration dates.

Machines are great, but just about any animal has them beat in both performance AND cognitive ability.

Dogs and cats are both smart enough to fake injuries they have had before if they know it means people will reward them with treats.

Machines? We have to spell everything out. Anything else the machine is like ??????!!!.

Not only that, but living things repair themselves so long they have fuel and are not too badly injured or too old.

Machine parts must be replaced. Wish they heale but they don't.

You can break a bone and walk again later on the same leg after casting it.

So when the machine breaks who fixes it?

It's like the age old question... who watches the watchers?

In this case of machines being the watchers it is far more critical since when they fall asleep, who will fix them?

More machines? Which also need someone to fix them?

 

Self-healing is a superpower we take for granted, but it really shows itself here.

 

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

So when the machine breaks who fixes it?

A broken machines fixing machine.