The Earth is our most incredible spaceship, and we can learn from the technologies and approaches used in space habitats to live more sustainably on our planet. This blog explores how closed-loop systems, resource management, and space-derived technologies like solar panels and vertical farming can be applied to reduce our environmental impact and build a more resilient future.
What We Can Learn from Space Habitats on Sustainable Living
Now imagine living in a condition where your survival depends on that you stay within your bounds, make no more food supply and energy as you take; generate enough clean water and air to breathe; produce waste to a minimum point reducing not recycle everything possible and keep away from sapling substances on environment around you. This is somewhat like what astronauts must contend with on the International Space Station and more so in basecamps of a higher order, as on the Moon or within Mars.
Yet it is also how we have to live on Earth if we are to save our environment, one of the subjects of this year’s World Space Week, Oct. 4-10. On one hand, a space station — or the lunar base which may one day follow — is very much a closed-loop system… because it has to be. You burn through it too fast and the astronauts will run out of air to breathe, food, water or the energy that can be equally life-or-death to astronauts in the void.
Closed Loop Thinking Of The Planet
One place that has a fully closed loop is the Earth, but even it imports very little in terms of photons or matter. The planet has a finite carrying capacity, the so-called “limits to growth” that were popularized by the Club of Rome in their seminal 1973 report. They warned that the Earth wasrunning out of room, that we were using more energy than could be replaced, eating more food than could be grown anew, pumping freshwater from ancient aquifers and adding carbon dioxide to an atmo-sphere already too thick to let heat escape.
Asteroid mining is the ultimate test about sustainably living off planet and can instruct us how to live better on Earth. In order to persist as a closed-loop system, a space habitat has to serve many purposes: i.e. grow resources, recycle said resources, be independent and adaptive. Nor can they be translated directly to our management of the Earth’s resources and how we care for our global environment.
Technologies Derived from Space for a Sustainable Future
There is an interesting and interconnected relationship between technologies that are created for space applications, but are equally effective in making our lives on Earth better by virtue of living more sustainably. Solar panels, for example, were initially invented to power spacecraft and later improved for terrestrial applications; today they produce 5.5% of the world’s electricity with zero emissions.
Vertical farming systems is yet another technology employed to cultivate crops on the International Space Station. The closed loop systems, recycling water and using patented LED lighting have now almost finished being retrofitted to enable food production in urban areas on Earth without it taking huge amounts of land or producing high carbon emissions for transport or traditional farming techniques.
Also, the water recycling and carbon dioxide scrubbing technology developed for space habitats are being studied for cleaning such scarce resource and combating climate change on our green planet. Applying the lessons and technologies of space exploration to better our planet for the future ahead.
