I'm still thinking about Space. This piece will be a little more hand-wavy than the last two and not cite a lot of sources.
Garbage is a human concept. Nature doesn't have that concept. The wastes of one species are essential, life-giving inputs for another.
It's an elegant design. Nothing goes to waste.
Some book or article -- possibly a book about emergence, possibly even a book titled Emergence -- had a memorable line about how medieval culture began fostering big cities to the effect that "we shat our way there."
As noted previously, regolith can hold water and this can play a role in sustaining life in ecosystems in arid climates, but more importantly regolith is an essential component for making soil. You add organic matter to regolith and now you have soil.
Where do you get organic matter on the moon to add to the existing probably large quantities of regolith? If humans live there, they will need to poop and pee. That's organic matter and it has to go SOMEWHERE.
We would be fools to invent a dump site and go "EWWWW. Pipe it down there."
No, what needs to happen is it gets sterilized -- because human waste contains potentially infectious microbes that are dangerous to humans -- and added to regolith and then we add some kind of "starter" microbial something to it to foster healthy soil. (This will be something that needs to be researched beforehand: How do we make soil on the Moon from regolith, human waste and ?????.)
We may not want to use this for agriculture per se but human monoculture isn't a good way to establish a biosphere anyway. Monoculture is an extractive practice and we will need plants on the Moon not just for food but for making oxygen, fostering some level of humidity, supporting a local atmosphere (even if only confined to a cave), processing the carbon dioxide humans breathe out, etc.
But there you go: Regolith plus colonists going to the bathroom equals essential components for making soil on the moon, soil that can sustain life for plants that can help make a breathable atmosphere, among other things.
A critical part of colonizing the moon effectively will be planning waste management in a way that isn't as retarded as what we do here on Earth. Our STUPID waste management practices is a large part of WHY we have environmental issues.
We will need to SHIP food to the Moon initially to feed the first colonists and probably will continue to ship food up there to add dietary variety, etc, after the establishment of agriculture (which is likely to be limited to a few staples for some years) AND we will need to PLAN on how we will RE-USE any packaging.
It needs to be compostable or re-usable in some fashion. If it's plastic, it needs to be designed from the start to be a resource for fabrication of parts via extrusion processes (and/or the container needs to be re-usable AS IS for some KNOWN expected something -- storage, cooking, whatever).
We cannot afford to view it as waste that will simply be thrown out after one use. It needs to be explicitly viewed as a valuable input of critical resources to a currently barren world and planned in accordance with that view.
Our extractive monoculture farming practices here on Earth have fostered a reduction in the nutritive value of produce over the last several decades. This likely is causing a lot of "mystery" health problems that boil down to poor nutrition. We need to FIX this on Earth and NOT replicate this stupidity on the Moon.
So solving for "How to colonize the Moon" can go hand-in-hand with solving for "How to stop cutting our own throats here on Earth." AND if you want to ACTUALLY go to Mars, this needs to be SORTED "locally" on the Moon FIRST and then AUTOMATED (or remote controlled) to some degree for Mars. Ideally, you want SOME establishment of soils and plants and such on Mars BEFORE humans set foot on it.
Again: Regolith + Water CAN help sustain plants. Plants are organic matter, so if you can get something to grow and then DIE on Mars, regolith + organic matter + microbes (to help break down the organic matter) is the start of (or formula for) soil.
There are several pieces posted to r/UrbanForestery about soil, though I was specifically looking for this post that grew out of me reading a thread on Twitter started by a college professor who was trying to put together a new college course about soil. Knowledge of soils is not just important to agriculture, it's important in construction, environmental work, community planning, etc.
That basic understanding of natural processes and how they foster life itself will be even more critical to the process of building a civilization literally from the ground up -- starting with creating soil -- to begin establishing viable off-world human developments.
Garbage is a human concept. Nature doesn't have that concept. The wastes of one species are essential, life-giving inputs for another.
It's an elegant design. Nothing goes to waste.
Some book or article -- possibly a book about emergence, possibly even a book titled Emergence -- had a memorable line about how medieval culture began fostering big cities to the effect that "we shat our way there."
As noted previously, regolith can hold water and this can play a role in sustaining life in ecosystems in arid climates, but more importantly regolith is an essential component for making soil. You add organic matter to regolith and now you have soil.
Where do you get organic matter on the moon to add to the existing probably large quantities of regolith? If humans live there, they will need to poop and pee. That's organic matter and it has to go SOMEWHERE.
We would be fools to invent a dump site and go "EWWWW. Pipe it down there."
No, what needs to happen is it gets sterilized -- because human waste contains potentially infectious microbes that are dangerous to humans -- and added to regolith and then we add some kind of "starter" microbial something to it to foster healthy soil. (This will be something that needs to be researched beforehand: How do we make soil on the Moon from regolith, human waste and ?????.)
We may not want to use this for agriculture per se but human monoculture isn't a good way to establish a biosphere anyway. Monoculture is an extractive practice and we will need plants on the Moon not just for food but for making oxygen, fostering some level of humidity, supporting a local atmosphere (even if only confined to a cave), processing the carbon dioxide humans breathe out, etc.
But there you go: Regolith plus colonists going to the bathroom equals essential components for making soil on the moon, soil that can sustain life for plants that can help make a breathable atmosphere, among other things.
A critical part of colonizing the moon effectively will be planning waste management in a way that isn't as retarded as what we do here on Earth. Our STUPID waste management practices is a large part of WHY we have environmental issues.
We will need to SHIP food to the Moon initially to feed the first colonists and probably will continue to ship food up there to add dietary variety, etc, after the establishment of agriculture (which is likely to be limited to a few staples for some years) AND we will need to PLAN on how we will RE-USE any packaging.
It needs to be compostable or re-usable in some fashion. If it's plastic, it needs to be designed from the start to be a resource for fabrication of parts via extrusion processes (and/or the container needs to be re-usable AS IS for some KNOWN expected something -- storage, cooking, whatever).
We cannot afford to view it as waste that will simply be thrown out after one use. It needs to be explicitly viewed as a valuable input of critical resources to a currently barren world and planned in accordance with that view.
Our extractive monoculture farming practices here on Earth have fostered a reduction in the nutritive value of produce over the last several decades. This likely is causing a lot of "mystery" health problems that boil down to poor nutrition. We need to FIX this on Earth and NOT replicate this stupidity on the Moon.
So solving for "How to colonize the Moon" can go hand-in-hand with solving for "How to stop cutting our own throats here on Earth." AND if you want to ACTUALLY go to Mars, this needs to be SORTED "locally" on the Moon FIRST and then AUTOMATED (or remote controlled) to some degree for Mars. Ideally, you want SOME establishment of soils and plants and such on Mars BEFORE humans set foot on it.
Again: Regolith + Water CAN help sustain plants. Plants are organic matter, so if you can get something to grow and then DIE on Mars, regolith + organic matter + microbes (to help break down the organic matter) is the start of (or formula for) soil.
There are several pieces posted to r/UrbanForestery about soil, though I was specifically looking for this post that grew out of me reading a thread on Twitter started by a college professor who was trying to put together a new college course about soil. Knowledge of soils is not just important to agriculture, it's important in construction, environmental work, community planning, etc.
I wanted a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management as a foundation for a Master's in Urban Planning. I currently run r/UrbanForestry for the same reason:There is LOTS of room for improvement for how we do this dance of creating civilization here on Earth. In the past, a lot of community development was done by people who lived closer to the land and without trying, had essential knowledge of organic processes and it's possible that one of the reasons modern society is such a mess is because that is no longer the case.
I don't think it makes sense to see human settlements as separate from nature. I think of nature as the fabric within which such configurations occur.
That basic understanding of natural processes and how they foster life itself will be even more critical to the process of building a civilization literally from the ground up -- starting with creating soil -- to begin establishing viable off-world human developments.