Of course this vision presumes some level of off-world construction capability, but nothing like what's necessary for O'Neill's 'islands.' It has about the same level of difficulty as building a 'company town' in space, but here the equity is held by the homeowners, not by an external agency/company. That's all. --In any case, these posts are not about space development per se; they're about how a process called frame innovation can be used to shift the narrative of even the most entrenched popular beliefs. It's just that the example being used this time, is space settlement.
Unfortunately a lush parklike assortment of trees, grass and bushes will probably fail for the same reasons that Biosphere 2 failed. We unconsciously think of ecosystems like a densely packed greenhouse, but in fact life on Earth is a thin green film when you count in the depth of soil, oceans and the atmosphere. The actual ratio of biomass to inert mass is very low. This means that imbalances in biomatter don't overwhelm the ecosystem except locally and temporarily; a forest fire doesn't appreciably deplete the atmosphere of oxygen or raise the carbon dioxide concentration to lethal levels. The high ratio of inert matter to biomatter serves as a buffer.
By contrast, a densely packed closed system is more like a fish aquarium or a small pond: one algae bloom can convert half the available oxygen into CO2, killing everything in that ecosystem. The more densely packed a biohabitat is, the more dependent on artificial stabilization it will be. Particularly problematic are those trees that humans love so dearly: they're soul-nurturing, but a mature tree does next to nothing to scrub the atmosphere of CO2 because plants only show a net uptake of CO2 when they're gaining mass- converting CO2 into sugars which are then polymerized into cellulose. And once a plant dies and either rots or is eaten, it begins turning back into CO2. In the case of uncontrolled fires, quite rapidly. A brush fire in a space habitat would make the 2023 Canadian wildfires look like a mild annoyance by comparison
We know from terrestrial examples of islands that the stability of an ecosystem is strongly dependent on its absolute size, even given air and fresh water as externals. Too tiny an island and megafauna (such as humans) will either exhaust the available resources and starve or else not be able to maintain a viable population size. To support thousands of colonists in a high-density habitat the Stanford Torus proposal relied on growing crops in heavily artificial conditions and industrial processing of human and animal waste, and was still probably the smallest proposed design that would not require artificial atmosphere regulation such as CO2 scrubbers. Absent machinery, a Stanford Torus would probably only be able to support an extended family and their wheat fields. Mini-habitats like the ones proposed in these articles would not be passively stable for anything more than a thin population of moss and insects.
Now if what you're proposing is a completely artificially stabilized habitat, that's more practical. But in that case your single-family has to own a large investment in the machinery that makes life possible, with the plants and animals sharing the habitat living essentially in an arboretum.
Of course these are too small to be self-sustaining ecosystems! I describe an artificially stabilized habitat in my third post, the "deep dive" discussion. Since I'm also proposing neighbourhoods and even cities where the "sphere next door" is literally five minutes away and travel to it is free, there is ample opportunity both for invasive species to spread, and to borrow/trade bio-resources with your neighbours. In practice, many ecosystem services would be provided by algae or tailored bacterial fermentation stacks; by the time we build something like this, precision fermentation will be more advanced than it is now and could be used to supply missing components or absorb otherwise unmanageable wastes. I'm not ruling out that a complete system built that way could be self-sustaining, but I do assume that the basic metaphor we start with is that of the garden. It will need tending.
I may be struggling with this vision because it's your first post. Reflecting, especially on your (to me, very bold) assertion that resources are "effectively infinite", I realize this kind of development only could be happening after a major build-out of resource-extraction, processing, manufacturing.
Daniel Suarez "Delta-V" and "Critical Mass" are about the start of that, but I don't think your construction plans can be possible until Suarez' possible third book, where mere tons of metals and volatiles turn into factories and constructors. I think "Critical Mass" had a highly automated plant in L2 that just ate regolith and spat out solar cells, somehow. A great start, but you need plants that spit out a whole lot of other products.
THEN we talk space condos and space Single-Family-Detached?
Thanks so much for this deep dive. I had gotten to the first or second step of the issues you raise with corporate towns in space when I read Erika Nesvold's Off-Earth this summer but had no idea that so much of the technology for an alternative already existed. I appreciate your deeply grounded approach to the future, both in this work and in Stealing Worlds.
Aw, gee whiz, as they used to say. Thanks, it really means a lot to me and I want to use the comments from you guys to help steer the direction of this newsletter. This helps.
Having moved from a single-family house to a condo, to retire, I have some sensitivity to issues of collective versus individual living. But you can never get around the cost-effects of collectivism, be it bus vs car, bulk-carrier vs yacht, 747 vs Cessna. And, definitely, condo versus Single-Family Detached. Congratulations on proposing the most-detached SFD ever!
Collectivism is way cheaper, I can't think of a technology where it isn't true.
The cost applies to capital, but also to operating. Both in cost, and stress: the Big Space Condo has full-time maintenance staff, and backups when they're sick. Space Mom, Dad, Buddy & Sis have to be Heinlein Omnicompetents, like the Rolling Stones. (The 1950s space family, not the world's craggiest band.)
Separate, but nearby: a Space Townhouse. Everybody has separate space, but neighbours very nearby. Just the one centimetre of vacuum between bubbles provides perfect acoustic privacy! In space, nobody can your screaming matches.
Whatever the duelling offerings, the space collectivists will have a cheaper offer. Your space SFDs will be for the truly rich, by comparison.
Thanks so much for the compelling observations! I completely agree with you--if what's important is efficiency. In that case, we cram the most people into the least space, using the smallest amount of materials. The thing about space resources, though, is that they're effectively infinite. Moving to space gives a chance to reset our minimal expectations, based on metrics other than how things are priced back on Earth. When you can literally build land, how does the value of land change? That's where the opportunity lies, here.
But, point taken regarding collective life; we all need neighbourhoods and communities. That is what the third and last article in this series will be about: how to go from a single-family unit to a thriving community using this design.
Of course this vision presumes some level of off-world construction capability, but nothing like what's necessary for O'Neill's 'islands.' It has about the same level of difficulty as building a 'company town' in space, but here the equity is held by the homeowners, not by an external agency/company. That's all. --In any case, these posts are not about space development per se; they're about how a process called frame innovation can be used to shift the narrative of even the most entrenched popular beliefs. It's just that the example being used this time, is space settlement.
Unfortunately a lush parklike assortment of trees, grass and bushes will probably fail for the same reasons that Biosphere 2 failed. We unconsciously think of ecosystems like a densely packed greenhouse, but in fact life on Earth is a thin green film when you count in the depth of soil, oceans and the atmosphere. The actual ratio of biomass to inert mass is very low. This means that imbalances in biomatter don't overwhelm the ecosystem except locally and temporarily; a forest fire doesn't appreciably deplete the atmosphere of oxygen or raise the carbon dioxide concentration to lethal levels. The high ratio of inert matter to biomatter serves as a buffer.
By contrast, a densely packed closed system is more like a fish aquarium or a small pond: one algae bloom can convert half the available oxygen into CO2, killing everything in that ecosystem. The more densely packed a biohabitat is, the more dependent on artificial stabilization it will be. Particularly problematic are those trees that humans love so dearly: they're soul-nurturing, but a mature tree does next to nothing to scrub the atmosphere of CO2 because plants only show a net uptake of CO2 when they're gaining mass- converting CO2 into sugars which are then polymerized into cellulose. And once a plant dies and either rots or is eaten, it begins turning back into CO2. In the case of uncontrolled fires, quite rapidly. A brush fire in a space habitat would make the 2023 Canadian wildfires look like a mild annoyance by comparison
We know from terrestrial examples of islands that the stability of an ecosystem is strongly dependent on its absolute size, even given air and fresh water as externals. Too tiny an island and megafauna (such as humans) will either exhaust the available resources and starve or else not be able to maintain a viable population size. To support thousands of colonists in a high-density habitat the Stanford Torus proposal relied on growing crops in heavily artificial conditions and industrial processing of human and animal waste, and was still probably the smallest proposed design that would not require artificial atmosphere regulation such as CO2 scrubbers. Absent machinery, a Stanford Torus would probably only be able to support an extended family and their wheat fields. Mini-habitats like the ones proposed in these articles would not be passively stable for anything more than a thin population of moss and insects.
Now if what you're proposing is a completely artificially stabilized habitat, that's more practical. But in that case your single-family has to own a large investment in the machinery that makes life possible, with the plants and animals sharing the habitat living essentially in an arboretum.
Of course these are too small to be self-sustaining ecosystems! I describe an artificially stabilized habitat in my third post, the "deep dive" discussion. Since I'm also proposing neighbourhoods and even cities where the "sphere next door" is literally five minutes away and travel to it is free, there is ample opportunity both for invasive species to spread, and to borrow/trade bio-resources with your neighbours. In practice, many ecosystem services would be provided by algae or tailored bacterial fermentation stacks; by the time we build something like this, precision fermentation will be more advanced than it is now and could be used to supply missing components or absorb otherwise unmanageable wastes. I'm not ruling out that a complete system built that way could be self-sustaining, but I do assume that the basic metaphor we start with is that of the garden. It will need tending.
I may be struggling with this vision because it's your first post. Reflecting, especially on your (to me, very bold) assertion that resources are "effectively infinite", I realize this kind of development only could be happening after a major build-out of resource-extraction, processing, manufacturing.
Daniel Suarez "Delta-V" and "Critical Mass" are about the start of that, but I don't think your construction plans can be possible until Suarez' possible third book, where mere tons of metals and volatiles turn into factories and constructors. I think "Critical Mass" had a highly automated plant in L2 that just ate regolith and spat out solar cells, somehow. A great start, but you need plants that spit out a whole lot of other products.
THEN we talk space condos and space Single-Family-Detached?
Thanks so much for this deep dive. I had gotten to the first or second step of the issues you raise with corporate towns in space when I read Erika Nesvold's Off-Earth this summer but had no idea that so much of the technology for an alternative already existed. I appreciate your deeply grounded approach to the future, both in this work and in Stealing Worlds.
Aw, gee whiz, as they used to say. Thanks, it really means a lot to me and I want to use the comments from you guys to help steer the direction of this newsletter. This helps.
Having moved from a single-family house to a condo, to retire, I have some sensitivity to issues of collective versus individual living. But you can never get around the cost-effects of collectivism, be it bus vs car, bulk-carrier vs yacht, 747 vs Cessna. And, definitely, condo versus Single-Family Detached. Congratulations on proposing the most-detached SFD ever!
Collectivism is way cheaper, I can't think of a technology where it isn't true.
The cost applies to capital, but also to operating. Both in cost, and stress: the Big Space Condo has full-time maintenance staff, and backups when they're sick. Space Mom, Dad, Buddy & Sis have to be Heinlein Omnicompetents, like the Rolling Stones. (The 1950s space family, not the world's craggiest band.)
Before the Space SFD is possible, the Space Condo seems likely to come first, perhaps a few dozen of your bubbles, looking like this: http://pngimg.com/uploads/pearl/pearl_PNG28.png
Separate, but nearby: a Space Townhouse. Everybody has separate space, but neighbours very nearby. Just the one centimetre of vacuum between bubbles provides perfect acoustic privacy! In space, nobody can your screaming matches.
Whatever the duelling offerings, the space collectivists will have a cheaper offer. Your space SFDs will be for the truly rich, by comparison.
Thanks so much for the compelling observations! I completely agree with you--if what's important is efficiency. In that case, we cram the most people into the least space, using the smallest amount of materials. The thing about space resources, though, is that they're effectively infinite. Moving to space gives a chance to reset our minimal expectations, based on metrics other than how things are priced back on Earth. When you can literally build land, how does the value of land change? That's where the opportunity lies, here.
But, point taken regarding collective life; we all need neighbourhoods and communities. That is what the third and last article in this series will be about: how to go from a single-family unit to a thriving community using this design.