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BlueberryTyrant t1_j8j0rtk wrote

Reply to comment by DoktoroKiu in Would an arcology be conceivably possible? by peregrinkm

You would need extremely advanced sensors tracking everything. You would also need to automate responses to each misbalance. It COULD be doable, but with so many moving parts, opportunities for failure are all everyone. The code running it all has to be perfectly stable, and a tech team needs to be on hand constantly. You also will still need ecologists on hand to provide an expert human’s eye on the system to catch deviations that the gear can’t.

We just aren’t there yet.

Frankly, unless we can achieve faster than light travel, this has to be developed to survive microgravity anyways, as an ecosphere is our only feasible way to keep people fed and watered and oxygenated and waste manages for years at a time. So you have to not only solve this, but you have to solve this for microgravity as well.

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SoylentRox t1_j8j4b4y wrote

Hardly. The bigger the system the larger your buffers can be. You are talking about trying to keep people alive in a hab the size of ISS and with I guess just a few hours worth of surplus oxygen.

A multi kilometer long hab with isolated grow machines (so toxins etc can't cause them all to fail) and months worth of food water and oxygen stored in tanks, and redundant power, and redundant manufacturing, and a few other hand nearby within a reasonable travel distance with enough population cap to house refugees... would be much more stable.

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