Benford on Space Exploration

gid-goo writes "Gregory Benford looks at what we should do in the aftermath of the Columbia accident. Is the shuttle, or the International Space Station for that matter, useful? Or just payola to aerospace interests and a means for keeping Russian rocket scientists employed?" Benford's comments about the necessity of a closed biosphere and of some way for astronauts to stop muscle and bone loss are far more insightful than the usual discussions about where our space exploration priorities should lie.

Comments

Last time I checked.

[Chris_Stankowitz]

From the article:

"the [current space] station recycles only urine... it is camping in space, not truly living there".

Last time I checked, my crap got recycled in the great outdoors.

Re:Last time I checked.

[dbrutus]

Where does the crap go? Why don't they just put it in a big crap sack and offer it as a prize to the first practical solution to the problem of space farming. Stick it outside, it's not like it will smell up the joint. As time goes on, it would be an increasing prize.

Let's face it at $10k/kg lift costs, a ton (metric) of already orbiting feces has a value of $10,000,000. Assuming 1.5kg of crap produced daily (3 man crews, sounds sensible) we're talking about $15k down the spout per day the ISS is occupied (double that during changeovers when there are six people on board). A metric ton would be accumulated every year and nine months give or take.

Heck, throw the competition wide open to other uses. How thick a layer of crap is required to make a good meteor shield? If the space elevator needs a counterweight, would several tons of crap suffice to shorten the amount of cable necessary? How about military uses? stick a JAM guidance pack on it and drop it on Kim Jong Il. Not only would it provide a fatality but it would make any former dictator so dispatched the object of endless jokes.

Am I joking? In some parts, yes. But the idea of storing very expensive material (including the most expensive crap there is) in some sort of storage space and running contests for creative use of the stuff would certainly create an increased level of interest. You could do it as a green contest, as a guy thing (it's the world's equivalent of those jars and cans every guy has in the garage to store washers and other random stuff he might have a use for in the future), or a farmer thing (we're back to feces fertilizer) but everything there is horribly expensive. Let's get our money's worth.