Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

4/17/2009

Green Grass in Space

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Fiction,Fun,Garden of Unearthly Delights,Life, the Universe, and Everything,News and Current Events,Things to Read — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:02 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Gibbous

This is not new.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that there is nothing new under the sun, there are some ideas that have been around for a long time that are just now seeing the light of day. The idea I’m thinking about today is regenerative life-support systems for long-term space exploration. The idea is simple, really. You just create a tiny, self-sustaining ecosystem on a spacecraft and send it on its way toward Mars or Jupiter or wherever you’re interested in going. The astronauts tend the garden which provides them with both fresh produce and breathable air. Of course, actually implementing this system is much more challenging than it seems on the surface. Discover takes a little closer look at the problem in a recent article on their blog.

You can read a short-story about this, or at least with this as a theme, in the New Yorker on-line called Lostronaut. It’s good and it inspired the Discover blog posting. Also, it’s science-fiction published in the New Yorker, so it’s worth reading.


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