Doctor Memory

Comment Threads

• brucecohenpdx commented on Trick Question
  ISTM that everything we've been saying here in this set of threads about what it takes to send a colony to the stars points to the need for massive scale. We need large communities to ensure all the needed skills are available and that none are lost over time; we need large structures to provide radiation shielding, protection from space junk, and gravity from spin; and we need large biomes to buffer against fluctuations in atmospheric gasses and to make the logistics of managing the various chemicals of the biomass practical. In terms of the tropes of hard SF, we've...
• Charlie Stross commented on Trick Question
  On Earth, the cycle's so huge that even big farms don't really perturb the local carbon cycle (nitrogen and phosphorus yes, carbon and oxygen, no). In a small biosphere, any crop is going to appreciably change elemental balances. However, a space colony has a huge advantage no terrestrial closed-cycle biosphere has got: a free cold trap! Run your atmosphere through a heat exchanger on the shadowed exterior of the colony and you can condense out CO2 while returning the N2/O2 mix to circulation (via a countercurrent exchanger to warm it back up, of course). This means you can stockpile CO2...
• danieldwilliam commented on Trick Question
  I’d picked Scotland deliberately because of the crinkliness. I should have been more explicit about my desire for inefficiency. Mainly because of some of the agricultural, psychological and sociological issues implied by “Kowloon, plus high intensity agriculture”. High intensity agriculture would worry me. On a generation ship I’d be worried about any system that required both high quality human intervention and complex machinery to be working well all the time. I’m also concerned about what happens to the waste. The amount of food (and other stuff) you can take out of the system is affected by both the inputs you...
• Moderator Alan commented on Trick Question
  An absolute minimum is compliance with the Reinheitsgebot Your solution wouldn't satisfy that condition....
• Moderator Alan commented on Trick Question
  I could also open up your brain and directly stimulate the relevant nerve centres. But that too would be sidestepping the point of the question, which was how create an ecology. (I am assuming that the same magic level of science that allows us to produce a single yeast able to produce all the interesting flavour chemicals in a Munchen brew would also allow us to do the direct neurostimulation required.)...