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Settlement of islands and continents on Earth had the benefit of an adequate life support system that had far fewer catastrophic failure modes than anything we'

Settlement of islands and continents on Earth had the benefit of an adequate life support system that had far fewer catastrophic failure modes than anything we've come up with right now. > If the oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the Hab beaches, I'll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen. I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I'm fucked. It has to be sustainable enough to survive without relatively immediate access to Earth's resources. The moon is only a few days away in an emergency. Mars is months away. The ISS works because it gets fairly constant supplies from Earth. It is vastly from self-sustaining.

avmich 5y ago
> The ISS works because it gets fairly constant supplies from Earth. It is vastly from self-sustaining. Right. Analogies only go so far. > Settlement of islands and continents on Earth had the benefit of an adequate life support system that had far fewer catastrophic failure modes than anything we've come up with right now. Looks like we agree that "it was never done before" is exaggeration. > If the oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the Hab beaches, I'll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen. I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I'm fucked. True, but. If asteroid meets the Earth, if supervolcanoes will misbehave, if particularly nasty virus will get to humans etc. we're toast. The thing is, all those things don't happen often - even ISS works for decades, with relatively minor glitches. So - if oxygenator breaks down, as Neil Armstrong would say, we'll fix it. If water reclaimer breaks down, we'll invent a dehumidifier. If the external wall will develop a break, the inner one will serve until the outer one is fixed. We may die - but we also may prosper.

avmich 5y ago

> The ISS works because it gets fairly constant supplies from Earth. It is vastly from self-sustaining. Right. Analogies only go so far. > Settlement of islands and continents on Earth had the benefit of an adequate life support system that had far fewer catastrophic failure modes than anything we've come up with right now. Looks like we agree that "it was never done before" is exaggeration. > If the oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the Hab beaches, I'll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen. I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I'm fucked. True, but. If asteroid meets the Earth, if supervolcanoes will misbehave, if particularly nasty virus will get to humans etc. we're toast. The thing is, all those things don't happen often - even ISS works for decades, with relatively minor glitches. So - if oxygenator breaks down, as Neil Armstrong would say, we'll fix it. If water reclaimer breaks down, we'll invent a dehumidifier. If the external wall will develop a break, the inner one will serve until the outer one is fixed. We may die - but we also may prosper.