could a biodynamic ecosystem be used on a spaceship?

[cameron marical]

could a biodynamic ecosystem be used as/on a spaceship? like, if you had the whole spaceship{except for the engines and others}as a biodynamic ecosystem, water supply recycled to the fullest, food eaten, and reproduced, and basicly have a superminiature earth on/as a spaceship. if so, then we could actually live out of earth, pull some serious star trek. its engines could be something like laser powered, it doesnt really need to get anywhere fast. though it would be better. have generators on board, and at least more than a hundred people, becuase less, than mutations would eventually occur and the intelligent life aboard the ship would die, or become unlike any other human on earth, plus the fact that there going to be taller in space, paler, and probably pretty different than as we are now. its kind of fun to think about, no supplys other than the ones origanlly provided, no touchdowns, just space. i know theres alot more than im saying as problem wise, and requirments, but i think this thing would be too long and people would take a look and decide against reading it.

[CaptainPanic]

Yes.

 

The smaller the ecosystem, the easier it is to unbalance it (what if all 100 people start doing serious exercise? Do you run out of oxygen faster? What if you have 1 bad harvest?)

 

Earth has some pretty serious buffers of almost everything (oxygen, food, water), and even here we run into problems.

 

There have been experiments with this on earth. It was called "biosphere 2" (there probably also was a biosphere 1).

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

 

I think this is an engineering issue, perhaps also biochemical and biological. Not physics. But that's not important.

[swansont]

It could, in principle, be done, but we've never actually done it for an appreciable length of time.

 

 

There have been experiments with this on earth. It was called "biosphere 2" (there probably also was a biosphere 1).

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

 

It was called Biosphere 2 because the earth is Biosphere 1. Biosphere 2 failed in a number of ways — they had to pump in oxygen and they couldn't grow enough food, among other things. It also wasn't a sphere.

[Mokele]

As others have pointed out, it would require a HUGE area/volume - ecosystems are vast things, and small ecosystems are easy to unbalance and destroy

 

However, it also cannot only be one biome. No single biome on earth fulfills all the needs of the organisms in it. Wetlands purify the water while eroding mountains supply the new sediment to keep the wetlands intact. Forests rely on lakes for water, lakes rely on forests for nutrients.

 

It may be simpler to just concentrate on a particular problem (such as waste processing or food growth) and install an artificial system using living organisms for it, rather than trying to create a whole new ecosystem. For instance, rather than trying to grow a functional wetlands to solve waste management, just have a tank full of water hyacinths. Grow crops hydroponically. Generally avoid as much of the complexity as possible.

 

Mokele

[swansont]

As others have pointed out, it would require a HUGE area/volume - ecosystems are vast things, and small ecosystems are easy to unbalance and destroy

 

However, it also cannot only be one biome. No single biome on earth fulfills all the needs of the organisms in it. Wetlands purify the water while eroding mountains supply the new sediment to keep the wetlands intact. Forests rely on lakes for water, lakes rely on forests for nutrients.

 

It may be simpler to just concentrate on a particular problem (such as waste processing or food growth) and install an artificial system using living organisms for it, rather than trying to create a whole new ecosystem. For instance, rather than trying to grow a functional wetlands to solve waste management, just have a tank full of water hyacinths. Grow crops hydroponically. Generally avoid as much of the complexity as possible.

 

Mokele

 

Depends on the goal, though, doesn't it? If you use technology, you have to worry about it wearing out. Nature, overall, is better about recycling and reusing, as long as you have an energy source.

[cameron marical]

ya, and nature does seem to pick only the best, so maybe nature is more efficient than mechanics, even now. but i do see were your getting at, and i agree, kind of. i think that you should kind of have some yin and yang in their, instead of just one set of ups and one set of downs, have ups that cancel out the downs, and vice-versa. as for the hugeness problem, the only thing i can suggest is that we mine stuff off other planets so we dont cripple this one, and even though that might be far off, i think its still of some use to do some tests now on things like how to mix in technology with mini ecosystems{dont want to fry the frogs}.

[npts2020]

And I thought Bruce Dern in "Silent Running" had it figured out. Seriously though, nobody has built a successful artificial biosphere yet. IMO this is due more to funding than technological hurdles but it is not as simple as it seems. Biosphere II was a good start even though it failed to quite provide a sustainable alternate environment, failure can teach more than success. We just need to keep trying, after all the first space ship didn't come anywhere close to landing on the moon.

[Sisyphus]

It may be simpler to just concentrate on a particular problem (such as waste processing or food growth) and install an artificial system using living organisms for it, rather than trying to create a whole new ecosystem. For instance, rather than trying to grow a functional wetlands to solve waste management, just have a tank full of water hyacinths. Grow crops hydroponically. Generally avoid as much of the complexity as possible.

 

That's kind of what I was thinking. Why try to mimic a natural ecosystem? For that matter, why use anything but algae (natural or GE'd for various purposes)? The appeal of a "natural" ecosystem "taking care of itself" is strong, but as others have said, in order for that to be realistic you'd need a huge one, otherwise it would just be too fragile.

[cameron marical]

ya, but this requires more energy to power the machines, and, like what swansont said, you then have to worry about that stuff wearing out. but i think that tech is actually that way to go rather than biodynamic ecosytems, even though it is a little less inventive and different than having a jungle as a spaceship. but i think that there should be algea of course, and some sort of replineshable food source too. and one super recycler that litterally recycles everything, so in a way, you kind of have a mechanicall biodynamic ecosystem.

[swansont]

One of the problems is that there is a huge constraint on the problem: humans. You could probably build a relatively small biosphere that reached a steady-state. But adding in a requirement that it provide for humans means a lot of systems will be deemed as failures.

[Sisyphus]

ya, but this requires more energy to power the machines, and, like what swansont said, you then have to worry about that stuff wearing out. but i think that tech is actually that way to go rather than biodynamic ecosytems, even though it is a little less inventive and different than having a jungle as a spaceship. but i think that there should be algea of course, and some sort of replineshable food source too. and one super recycler that litterally recycles everything, so in a way, you kind of have a mechanicall biodynamic ecosystem.

 

It could still be an ecosystem, just a designed and intentionally simplified one, made up entirely of microorganisms. The humans wouldn't be personally immersed in it, but they could trade biproducts with it. Remember, every ecosystem needs an external energy source. Here on Earth most of them are solar-powered, some are geothermal.

[cameron marical]

i like that idea.