MMM Classics Year 10: MMM #s 91-100 - Moon Society

MMM #96 - JUN 1996
A Green Security Blanket
How will outpost personnel on the Moon for long
tours of duty, and eventually Lunan settlers intending to live
out the rest of their lives, cope psychologically with the unending
and unrelieved stark and barren moonscapes? Whether
traveling on the surface or looking out a habitat view port, they
will never spot a stitch of chlorophyll green, of plant life, not
even as humble as moss or lichen or slime. We can expect that
they will compensate with an unusual abundance of house
plants - by our standards. See below.
[Continuing a New MMM Series]
The primitive roots of “Lunan” Culture, III
Last month we talked about the deep effects on Lunan
Settler culture of the Lunar Global Desert, the Moon’s mixed
bag of abundant and scarce elements, the lunar regolith as a
type of “Cradle Blanket”, culture-salient differences between
lunar Nearside and Farside, and the effect on culture of the
dominant 29-30 day long dayspan/nightspan cycle through a
distinctively homegrown “moon calendar”
This month we continue our story with culturally
relevant corollaries of the Moon’s airless and sterile environment,
probable rejection of the “spacesuit” as a daily fact of
life, and the premium on habitable pressurized space. The bare
raw facts of lunar life have yet more to tell us about the
outlines of future Lunan culture, and we’ll continue where we
leave off, next month. Read, enjoy, and stay tuned.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot in "Four Quartets"
The Unending Vigilance for
“Mini-biospherians will live just downwind
and downstream of themselves.”
“You can’t just open the window
and let in some outside fresh air.”
“We can’t go if we can’t breathe.”
by Peter Kokh
Relevant Readings from Back Issues of MMM
MMM # 36 JUN ‘90, pp 3-5 “Biospherics”, D. Dunlop
MMM # 51 DEC ‘91, p 3 “Everfresh”; p 4 “Fire Dept.”
MMM # 52 FEB ‘92, p 5 “Dept. of Xity Biosphere”
The sealed window
Most of us hopeful and expectant that humanity will
indeed spread off planet, have a very unrealistic idea of the
difficulties we will have to overcome if we are in fact to be
able to successful engineer and maintain micro- and minibiosphere
environments that work, and work forgivingly, long
term. Here on Earth when the inside air becomes to polluted
from the outgasing of organic and synthetic building materials
and form the chemical household maintenance products upon
which we have become dependent, we have but to open the
window and let in the relatively fresher outside air.
Outdoors, when air quality is bad, we know that
sooner or later the wind will bring us relief. In space and on the
Moon, even on Mars - anywhere in the solar system beyond
Earth’s mothering atmosphere - we will not be able to simply
open the window, and there will be no outside winds. We will
have to deal with the problem, principally by not allowing bad
air situations to arise in the first place.
Outlawed items
Not to burden the air with pollutants that may be hard
for many to handle in closed quarters, aromatic substances in
general may be proscribed in more than subliminal quantities.
Anecdotally, this will mean relying on honest hygiene as
opposed to masking colognes and perfumes. Even in very small
doses, in closed environments where there is no inside-outside
air exchange, consciously detectable fragrances may become
oppressively suffocating to many.
All materials outgas, synthetic materials especially so.
Fortunately on the Moon, there will be little use of such
materials for economic reasons. They can’t be produced form
locally available material stuffs, and importing them, or their
stuffs, will be prohibitively expensive. This will make lunar
habitat space much cleaner than most terrestrial interiors from
the gitgo. But that’s only the start.
Cooking odors, as much as we love them (save for
chitterlings), can also become oppressive when there is no air
exchange with the outdoors. Open boiling and frying may be
verboten. Microwave and pressure cooker food preparation
may be the way to go. If you’re on the ball, you just realized
this means no more “backyard” or patio barbecues. Restaurants
with autonomous closed loop air circulation systems may be
permitted an exemption. The cost of such equipment will be
Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 10 - Republished January 2006 - Page 54