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I haven’t heard of any experiments in closed ecosystems running currently on Earth. Am I missing something or are the Mars colonizers planning to figure it all out as they go?
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Forget colonizing space, try colonizing part of the Sahara desert. Get everything you need, then seal yourselves in a bubble completely separate from the rest of the ecosystem. Even on earth, with many of the terrestrial connection factors till intact, you will fail.
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The OP is the usual derp attacking space simply because billionaires are interested in it. The actual supposed scientific argument is a mix of mystic Gaia woo and bad epistemology (“there is no evidence it can be done” is... not a thing)
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Experiments in self-contained isolated mini-ecosystems on earth are only marginally useful and unreasonably hard to set up. Iirc biosphere 2 failed because they forgot to account for the CO2 emissions of cooling concrete or something.
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The experience of LEO space stations and moon landings are enough to show its not impossible. There’s nothing magical about earth. I suspect the minimum size of a self-sustaining ecosystem at today’s tech level, with no resupply after a few initial years, would be village-sized.
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Almost all the criticism is tedious, misdirected anti-capitalist political sentiment. Like Vito Corleone in The Godfather having the Hollywood producer’s favorite racehorse killed to male “an offer he cannot refuse.”
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