NASA wants fresh ideas for recycling garbage on the moon

[Admin]

With crewed Artemis launches on the horizon, NASA is searching for sustainable solutions for waste management during long-term missions on the moon.

NASA wants fresh ideas for recycling garbage on the moon : Read more

 

[ChrisA]

I will give away my wining solutions...

Idea #1: Don't "recycle". "reuse" is far better. One way to eliminate wate is to package EVERYTHING. Water, food, tools, you name in inside boxes that look like very large Lego blocks. What you do is standaize on the size and shape of ther block. Maybe they are 20 cm long? Then everything you ship to the Moon is shipped in blocks that are even multiples of 20 cm. The boxes can be filled with lunar rocks and sand and then used to build with. You can turn them into retaining walls, houses and whatever you need. So every meal is packed in a short brick and aftr four meals you have a "tall brick". You can make anything from Lego bricks, chairs and tables and even buildings.

Idea #2. If you don't like bricks thren choose one kind of plastic, maybe it is ABS or PETG. Then make EVERYTHING from that one kind of plastic. Then you can melt it down to be made into 3D printer filiment and then you 3D print whatever you need. Later this can be melted again.

Idea #1 is good because no equipmqnt needs to be designed and ther is no processing to be done. But all you get are bricks. #2 lets you make different things. There is no reason you can not do bnoth by making ther brick-shape contains from the stanadrdized plastic.

Idea #3. All electroics is made from stanadrdized modules. All equipment racks are the same size, power supplies are stanadrized and PCBs all have stanadrd connectors and screw mounting holes. All electronics are designed such that parts can be replaced with simple tools like a screwdriver. Because parts are all designed to a minimum number of interface standard then one day an astronant can remove the UHF transmitter fom some unneeded instuments and use it to replace a faulty transmitter in some other device. This takes a lot of thinking on how to minimize the number of "standards" used and a willing ness to transport heavier then they could be cargo to the Moon. Certainly solar panels and batteries could be made with all the same DC power connections but it could go farther then just that. This way there is no e-waste on the Moon and even a net saving over long-enough period of time. Think about using an old space suit cooling part to repair a rover.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

That handles "trash" but not biowaste.

Biowaste still needs some sort of recycling process. As it stands now, I think there are still bags of poop on the Moon from the Apollo landings. There needs to be some way to turn that into fertilizer and use it to produce more food.

While that sounds nasty, similar practices have been implemented in China for hundreds of years, using ponds with algae and fish of several species selected to have an edible species at the top of the pond ecosystem.

With more modern technology, including "lab meat" that produces animal proteins without whole animals, it seems like we should now be able to create a closed-loop ecosystem within some sort of lab "hot house" environment to get vegetable and and animal food for humans using only waste materials and sunlight.

But, that is going to need some serious contamination controls, for both chemical buildups and unwanted bacterial buildups.

 

[ChrisA]

That handles "trash" but not biowaste.

Biowaste still needs some sort of recycling process. As it stands now, I think there are still bags of poop on the Moon from the Apollo landings. There needs to be some way to turn that into fertilizer and use it to produce more food.

While that sounds nasty, similar practices have been implemented in China for hundreds of years, using ponds with algae and fish of several species selected to have an edible species at the top of the pond ecosystem.

With more modern technology, including "lab meat" that produces animal proteins without whole animals, it seems like we should now be able to create a closed-loop ecosystem within some sort of lab "hot house" environment to get vegetable and and animal food for humans using only waste materials and sunlight.

But, that is going to need some serious contamination controls, for both chemical buildups and unwanted bacterial buildups.

If there was enough of it, then it would be worth the effort. But really all they need to do is extreat the water and re-use the water. To compost biowaste you need a a water tank and heat and pressure. All of that is very expensive on the moon and it would require heat and cooling and a lot of electric power. I think you get 90% of the benefit be just extracting and recycling the water.

Also this i all getting ahead of itself. Current plans are to send a few people every couple years or so.

On Earth, wate composting is nearly free. Make a big heat and let it sit and natural process break it down. On the Moon there are no narural process and any bacteria present would be dead real fast. The waste heap would leterally need to be "indoors" which is expensive space.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Yes, any biorecycling would need to be "indoors" on the Moon, Mars, or anyplace else in our solar system that we could potentially set up "permanent" bases.

And, if the products are essential, there would need to be multiple independent streams so that problems with one would not doom the inhabitants of the base before they could correct the problem and resume production.

Regarding what is "worth it", the actual test will be what it costs in the way of transportation from Earth. "Costs" include dollars, time, payload weights, etc.

 

[fj.torres]

If there was enough of it, then it would be worth the effort. But really all they need to do is extreat the water and re-use the water. To compost biowaste you need a a water tank and heat and pressure. All of that is very expensive on the moon and it would require heat and cooling and a lot of electric power. I think you get 90% of the benefit be just extracting and recycling the water.

Also this i all getting ahead of itself. Current plans are to send a few people every couple years or so.

On Earth, wate composting is nearly free. Make a big heat and let it sit and natural process break it down. On the Moon there are no narural process and any bacteria present would be dead real fast. The waste heap would leterally need to be "indoors" which is expensive space.

Actually, heat is cheap on the moon; just use solar mirrors and concentrators. It all depends on how hot they want to go, from enough to dry organics to melt inorganics.

As for how many people will be there, how many does Antarctica host at any given time? Minimum of 1000 to a max of 4000 and an average of 1500. The moon? Maybe 1200.

No reason to expect a smaller number by mid century. Not when one STARSHIP can rotate staff, 100 at a time. (I don't buy Musk's 100 person per ship to mars, but 100 to Luna Station? Easy.) Figure three major bases circa 2050 (US, EU, India at up to 400 staff--with quarterly 6-12 month rotations. (Ala ISS.) No need for many more, even allowing for nationalistic duplication.

Could be bigger if they find comercially useful deposits but I expect those operations to be much smaller on-site. AI-moderated telepresence and robots will do most of that work. Ditto for the farside telescopes.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I tend to agree that recycling biowaste for food production on the Moon might not be less expensive than ferrying the food up there from Earth on Starships. The reusability of the StarShips is a big help in the economics of importing rather than producing on-site.

But, with the intention to "colonize" Mars, where duty cycles necessarily will be longer, supply routes will be much farther, and the day/night cycle much quicker. I expect that biowaste recycling will become the preferred option.

With that in mind, I expect the technology to do it will first be developed on the Moon. It might never be the preferred option on the Moon, but I would not bet against it by the time we are really considering anything semi-permanent on Mars.

 

[fj.torres]

I tend to agree that recycling biowaste for food production on the Moon might not be less expensive than ferrying the food up there from Earth on Starships. The reusability of the StarShips is a big help in the economics of importing rather than producing on-site.

But, with the intention to "colonize" Mars, where duty cycles necessarily will be longer, supply routes will be much farther, and the day/night cycle much quicker. I expect that biowaste recycling will become the preferred option.

With that in mind, I expect the technology to do it will first be developed on the Moon. It might never be the preferred option on the Moon, but I would not bet against it by the time we are really considering anything semi-permanent on Mars.

One of the biggest arguments for a full time lunar base is precisely to develop and test the tech for mars sorties, which will likely be year long or more. Absent a big propulsion breakthough.