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Notes -
Biosphere 2 is not a good model for a planetary colony, which would undoubtedly make use of planetary resources to supply themselves and dispose of waste likewise.
That's probably true, but I think it is a reasonable model for a long-term space station or asteroid colony, which has long seemed to me more appealing than planets, especially in the short term. The bottom of a gravity well seems like one of the least economically useful niches, unless you really can't find enough raw materials on moons and asteroids, or unless you have a serious proposal for terraforming.
More to the point: if you want to build a space colony, starting iteratively on closed-loop environs (assume spin gravity, which I've been told is practical for station designs not much larger than the ISS) seems a low cost, relatively low-risk research effort we could be doing more of today.
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Interesting comment -- so you think a BS3 could be made to work if 'import of any resource somewhat easily available on Mars' and 'throw whatever you want out the airlock' were allowed?
Yes, I would think so. You could replenish oxygen and reject CO2, which was the main difficulty as I recall. Maintaining a closed environment is not that hard if you can add and remove gasses, just look at nuclear subs.
"Replenish oxygen" is non-trivial on Mars/Luna though, no? (and decidedly so for any space-based hab)
These take on bottled O2 at port AFAIK? This is not a thing that's available in space.
Replenishing O2 from Mars air is something we did in a demo experiment (MOXIE) 3 years ago. On Luna it gets a bit more expensive; although oxygen is everywhere in the soil you'd need a lot of power to bake it out.
Other volatiles can also be found in Mars air but are even tougher on the moon. Mining dirty ice (icy dirt?) from a south pole crater does not sound like a fun way to replenish nitrogen.
Nuclear subs make O2 by electrolysis of sea water easily enough, but I think the CO2 removal (via chemical separation and dumping) must be harder, since they leave the ambient levels fairly high, and actually obtaining the O2 from the CO2 must be harder still or they'd be doing that for simplicity instead. Getting O2 from CO2 is easy enough with hydrogen and energy, but that leaves you with methane too - great if you want rocket fuel on Mars but just as much of a PITA to dump as CO2 if you're trying to be stealthy under the ocean.
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Replenishing oxygen on Mars shouldn't be the hardest problem there. Perchlorates (abundant in the Martian soil) can be heated to release oxygen, and as long as you've got sufficient power you can split the CO2 in the atmosphere.
A lot harder on Luna; regolith consists of reduced minerals and there isn't any significant atmosphere of any kind.
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