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Questions from the 2004 closure period:


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Sixth Week Questions

Have you tried to get the Mars Society to help you out with funding?
They'd seem to be the natural candidate...
No, I haven't.  Thought about it; probably need to do something along those lines if we are going to operate all winter next year...the monthly costs are rather staggering when we turn on all the lights ($3,500 per month just for the power for the lights).

Agreed, though I'm not sure about the actual percentages.  We had a
discussion here a while back about CELSS systems.  I thought current
efficiency levels were above 80% or so.
Again, it depends a lot on where you want your standard of living.  I'm 100% in here, but (like you mentioned) it isn't the type of diet that most would be willing to put up with.

> > To my knowledge, Ray has been doing this for 12 years.
> ISECCo formed in 1988, but I've been working on certain aspects of
> this technology for a lot longer than that.  I built my first
> greenhouse in 1976...
I had read of all that but "to my personal knowledge" is all I can
guarantee.
*grin*

However I will match 1 to 2 any other contribution from anyone else > on this list. I will give you $0.50 for each $1.00 they donate.  
I want to see if anyone here is just more than talk.
[There were no replies to this so I said: ]  Looks like they aren't :(

So how 'bout it folks?  Are you serious?  Or are you just thinkers and talkers, with no do-ers out there?  Mars Base Zero is developing THE technology that will be the most when it comes time to set up your farm on the moon...if you aren't up to giving until it hurts, give a little and help us develop this key technology.  [blatant ad]

But thanks anyhow John!!!

BTW: I ask one of my volunteers who lives about an hour south of you to help you out last spring. I hope he did. The name was Carl.
No, alas.  This might be a good time for me to mention Workfest '05: we plan to hold this in May 2005.  The last full week of May, plus a bit.  I expect next spring we will run it from May 21 to May 31.  If anyone is interested let me know...might be a good time to visit Alaska at the same time!

>>I know, but I'm not sure *why*. 
I think they spend a fair amount of time keeping up the various
"biospheres", and that was perhaps not distinguished from real life
support work.  However, I don't know the real answer.  Maybe I should
ask Mark Nelson.
That would certainly make sense.  They certainly had a lot more area to care for than I do!

Walford?  Was he the guy in Biosphere 2?  Their diet was rather
impractical, and resulted in loss of weight of every member of the crew.
Yes, he was.  He is a fan of calorie restriction as a means of extending lifespan, among other things.  So he was pretty happy to have them so calorie restricted so he could study the effects (which matched calorie restriction in animals, I might add).

>>Now you have me worried, especially since my energy
>> level has suddenly (in the last 4 days) gotten very
>> low.  Wonder about getting a blood check when I come
>> out; been thinking of doing it anyhow, but I'm not sure
>> the money is there *sigh*.
Maybe have a hit of junk food and see if it makes a difference.
I don't have any...

>> Any ideas on how I am going to get salt in the diet
>> without messing up the soil (this means the salt has to
>> origionate from the soil)?  Some kind of plant that
>> extracts salt, perhaps...
That has been a question for many years.  Most people in the NASA
community seem to think that the crew will eat lots of salt, especially
in space where there seems to be a demand for spicier foods, and that
you have to deal with the urine that results.  The problem is in
separating sodium and potassium, which when you take into account the
hydration of the ions have very similar mobilities.  However, if we can
separate uranium 235 and 238, yould think we could separate socium and
potassium.  Differential crystallization might work, too.
Why is there a demand for spicier foods, do you know?

It turns out that eating salt didn't improve my health very well; so I tackled the next possiblity: solanine posioning from eating so many potatoes.  What I did was start peeling all my potatoes (most of the solanine is in the skins, and there is some present in small amounts even in potatoes that aren't green [green ones are loaded]).  I also was a lot more vigorous about rejecting green ones, or if just a small spot of green trimming vigorously.  In addition, for a couple of days, I boiled all my potatoes in a surplus of water, which helps remove solanine.  Within a day I was feeling back to normal.

Beets are one of the better food crops for taking up salt (presumably in
the leaves, but I don't remember that detail).  That might help.
However, I have never seen a scenario as to how you would do that.
Maybe run the urine stream past the beets first, and get the salt by
eating beets, then pass the desalted urine on to the more sensitive
plants. 
This might be an interesting experiment to try...

> >> Are you do any medical monitoring?  I would
> >> suggest, at least, a physical and CBC before
> >> and after going in Mars Base Zero.  I'm not
> >> bringing this up because of any short-term
> >> health concerns, but it would be a good way
> >> to objectively measure any problems.
Me: I would love to...but we lack the money (our
total donations last year were less than $1,000
--and we are spending every penny on seeds,
power, heat, licensing [corporate biannual
report, etc] and phone/internet.)
> A CBC runs around $50.  If you can get someone to donate another
> $100 for two of them, all you'll have to do is have your blood drawn > before and after.
If you donate the money I'd be happy to do it... :)  Our bank account is going to be VERY flat after I get out (had to put 300 gallons of heating oil in the tank that we were hoping we could get away without...*sigh*.  Not to mention electricity, phone, etc.

> >> In practice, some of the nutrients you might
> >> be missing could be supplemented.  I'd think
> >> people living on Mars for any length of time
> >> would have a supply of nutrients to supplement
> >> their diet.  E.g., it's probably a lot easier to get
> >> vitamin C and citrus bioflavoinds from pills
> >> than from growing citrus fruits.
> > Actually I'm getting plenty of most vitamins; for
> > example during week 4 my average dailiy intake
> > for vitamin C was nearly 5 times the RDA (479%,
> > to be exact).
> That's good, though much less than I'd take.:)
I don't have any choice: it is in the food I eat.  This data does not reflect the multi-vitamine I'm taking.

> > But there are a few things I'm short on: Vitamin
> > B-12 0% RDA;
> That's problem, but it's easy to supplement with B-12.
True.

> > vitamin E 21% RDA [this would be OK if my
> > sunflowers had ripened]; Riboflavin 42% RDA;
> > selenium 21% RDA; sodium 27% RDA; zinc
> > 37% RDA.  Some of these would be a simple
> > matter of starting with enough in the soil: they
> > are passively picked up by plants and how
> > much you get is, to a large extend, dependent
> > on how much is in the soil (ie fertilize it early,
> > and don't worry about it): selenium and zinc
> > specifically.
> Yeah, that can be a problem, but, again, both can be supplemented.
> This'll have to be something that anyone trying to live long-term
> off Earth will seriously have to think about.
Right.  Though small colonies could bring in suppliments--and large ones probably would be able to have the resources so it wouldn't be needed.

> >>  (Well, in the short run.  After all, the pills
> >> have to come from somewhere.  A year's
> >> supply for one person would not take up too
> >> much mass, but permanent habitation would
> >> mean constantly supplying settlers with the
> >> stuff.)
> > I am taking a multi-viatamin.
> That's good, though a single pill multi-vitamin probably doesn't
> have a lot in it.  However, it'll probably work and being that
> you're on a caloric restriction diet now you probably will be in
> pretty good overall health.
Yep: feel great.

> > With a larger colony you'd end up with enough
> > range of produce that pills wouldn't be needed
> > --but I expect they'll be critical for any colony
> > less than 100 people.
> I disagree.  Unless you have bioengineered crops, supplementation is
> always a good idea.
Probably...but not required.

> The RDA is not a good guideline for proper
> nutrition
I don't know if I'd agree entirely with this.  Although the RDA is based on the minimum daily amount of what is needed to keep healthy; more may be better.  But you can also get too much of a good thing.  Go overboard on iron and you'll be sorry!!

> and you'll find it hard to get megadoses of certain
> nutrients from normal plants without also increasing blood sugar way
> above optimal levels.  (Oranges, e.g., are a good source of Vitamin
> C, but they're also high in sugar.  Having one orange a day isn't so
> bad, but you won't get that much C from it, but if you're looking
> for megadose levels of C, then you'll have to eat a bag of oranges a
> day and that'll raise your blood sugar -- not to mention you'll need
> a lot of space to grow all that.)  However, you're probably right
> that there'll be less overall need for it in a large settlement.
Did you know that vitamin C damages DNA?

I'm not sure megadoses are a good idea.  Some believe vitamin C probably won't do much harm, though I've read studies that show that if you are going to take large doses then you need to take it hourly, because your body gets adjusted to rapidly clearing it that if you, say, took one large dose daily in the morning by mid afternoon your body is actually *short* of vitamin C because it was all cleared.

> I'd also want people in an actual settlement to be at or close to
> optimal health because the risk of some disease or condition
> overtaking the settlement is much higher and the cost of dealing
> with it if it would probably be a lot higher, depending on when it
> was recognized as such.
This is desirabe no matter where you are!

> (A few months ago, we discussed infectious
> diseases spreading in a settlement.)  Better to keep everyone tuned
> up.  (Of course, a lot of factors can be controlled for in a
> settlement.  They're probably be little or no junk food and
> environmental toxins might be easier to deal
> with...  Or maybe not.  After all, any closed system -- if that's
> what people opt for (I don't; I prefer open systems) -- will have a
> problem of toxins building up.)
Very true. 

The problem with an open system is the amount you have to import.  If your system is 25% closed, that means you'll have to import 12 pounds of food, air and water daily for every inhabitant.  If your colony is 100 people, that is 1,200 pounds a day, or ~half a million a year.  If launch costs are $1,000/pound it'll be mighty expensive--about $5 million per person per year.

> >> BTW, good luck!  How many more days do
> >> you have to go?
I started running out of things a few days ago.  Of course once you run out of one thing, you lean on others harder.  It is really beginning to snowball.  The key thing though is potatoes: I am down to 3 plants.  I usually dig 2 plants per day...

> > 4 days ago I picked the last cabbage (though
> > I have about half of it left).  Yesterday I picked
> > the last large beet, and the last onion (I think--
> > I'm going to root around and see if I can find
> > some that I missed--they tend to be hard to
> > spot sometimes because the stalks died and
> > some of them got removed when I weeded.)
> > Looks like I'll be out of carrots tomorrow.  The
> > big thing is potatoes: I am very nearly out of
> > those--just a few days left.  I won't see 40 days
> > total...
> Aside from monitoring the base and emailing us, what's the rest of
> your day like?
My diary is at:
https://isecco.org/projects/celss/marsbase/2004/diary.html

Everything done in the way of harvesting/washing/weighing/cutting/ cooking/eating/etc takes an average of ~4 hours a day.  On top of that I do some maintenance, and upgrade.  I probably spent about 2 hours a day working on the web site (updating files, entering data, etc).  I own apartment buildings and have ads running, so I answer the phone quite a bit (my wife does the shows).  I also do a lot of reading.  And, on some days, I spend a fair amount of time dealing with the press (3 newspaper articles, one web article and TV news). (Note:see 9/29 in my diary for a better breakdown).

At a consumption of 3.5 pounds per day I was probably getting too much
solanine.  

I understand that some people are more sensitive than others, also.
That is what I hear...wonder if I'm one of the more or the less sensitive?  Wonder what the test is to determine if you
have solanine poisoning?  All questions I probably won't have time to research--at least not this year.
I have had intermittent problems with the furnace for a
couple of weeks now.  
I found the points were burned, so I bent them a little closer
together, and it has been running fine ever since.

Was this not covered in the maintenance instructions?
No; this is something that is pretty common, but not something that you'd normally find out--unless
you mess with a lot of furnaces like I do.  Normally your furnace repair guy just replaces the points
as needed, and you never hear about it.  I probably should have checked this sooner, but I did
too good a job convincing myself the problem was the fuel supply it distracted me from a more critical view.

> I have been plowing the squares;
What equipment do you use?
Shovel...doesn't take too long; about half an hour to do a whole square.  I have to be careful not to dig too
deep though, because I don't want to be digging up the sand that lines each square.

Regarding sterlization of urine, feces, wash water, even  your soil, does your latitude prevent enough heat build up for you to use a solar oven to do this?
Not in the summer, but in the winter it certainly does.  Any time after, say, August 10th.  So that isn't really a viable option for us...




Fifth Week Questions

What was the point of staying holed up for a month and eating 3
pounds of potatoes a day?
I'm going to answer this in something of a round-about way, because this is a critical question.  It takes around 15 pounds of food air and water to support a person in space (depending partly on who you ask).  If you wanted, say, a colony on the moon of 10 people that means 150 pounds per day would have to be imported.  Current launch cost to the surface of the moon is about $70,000 per pound (again, depending on who you ask).  So to support your 10 people it would cost ~$10 million dollars per day.  Rounding up slightly, that works out to nearly 4 billion dollars per year.  Just to provide food, air and water for a 10 year outpost would cost $40 billion. 

Now suppose you had developed CELSS (closed ecological life support systems, what I am living in) technology to the point where you could provide 90% of the food, air and water.  Assuming you need 100 square meters of growing area, with a ceiling height of 1.5 meters, for each person you will need 150 cubic per person.  Using Skylab as an example, from the info I have on it (not sure if it is reliable, but for demonstration purposes it'll do fine) it enclosed 361 cubic meters with a weight of around 150,000 pounds.  So for each 150,000 pounds you put on the moon, you could support two person indefinitely.  Multiply by 5 to get the example above and you wind up with a cost of nearly $50 billion.  So, at the end of 10 years you can either spend 40 billion, then another 40 billion for the next 10 years--or you can spend 50 billion and not have to worry about food air and water ever again.  Of course expanding the base with local materials becomes a lot easier if you can just enclose some volume and start growing food, rather than having to increase your supplies each time you want to add people. 

In Theory.  Whether it will work in fact is another matter entirely, and that is what we are working to prove (or disprove).  So we've planted Mars Base Zero with the things we think would be applicable, and I'm trying to live off them.


 Are you aware that the starch in the
potatoes converts directly to glucose and is capable of shocking
your pancreas into induced stage 2 diabetes?
No, I hadn't heard this.  Though I'm not sure how applicable it is to a diet like mine; do you know?  I am eating strict vegan diet, with basically 0 fat. 

How did the Irish get around this problem?  They ate up to 10 pounds of potatoes a day...

Lawrence is absolutely right.  If you eat 3 pounds of potatoes a day,
you're probably putting on some fat from the insulin sensitivity
you're cultivating as well as fostering type 2 diabetes.  If you HAVE
to eat potatoes, try yams or sweet potatoes, they're lower on the
glycemic index, and so don't mess with your insulin quite as much. 
Even then, I'd personally rather not be eating potatoes everyday, as
much as I like them myself.  It's just not healthy.
No, I'm loosing weight on a steady basis. 

If I don't eat potatoes, I don't get many calories.  94% of the calories I ate last week came from potatoes (1,777 kcal of the daily average 1,885 eaten).

And I can't grow yams or sweet potatoes; our environment isn't conductive to it and even if I could they aren't nearly as productive as potatoes.  ie if I used them as a main source of calories I'd be starving.

 They (the Irish) didn't get around the problem. A high incidence of
diabetes killed many of them before the great Potato Famine killed
a bunch more. Of course they made a kind of vodka too that did not
help the situation.
Interesting.  Still have the problem of what to eat if I don't eat potatoes; they are by FAR the most efficient crop you can grow.

A recirculating hydroponics garden then would
provide food and breathable air. Solar panels installed on the
surface would provide electrical power for 14 days out of every 28
and supply the energy to break down rock to liberate hydrogen and
oxygen to be used as rocket fuel and to provide extra water and
breathing oxygen. 
We studied hydroponics for several years and came to the conclusion they aren't feasible for a CELSS.  There is too much waste carbon produced, and if you burn it you end up sequestering nutrients.  Also, if you don't grow potatoes (eg if you grow wheat) you'll need around a lot more area: a 12'x12' plot with optimum potato growth will yield 31 kilograms/90 days [~30,000 kcal], or about 2 weeks worth of food every 90 days [see: https://isecco.org/papers/mb0product2002.html
  If you plant that same area in wheat you will get around 10 pounds of wheat in that same 90 days, or about 5 days worth of food. [One Circle by David Duhon, pg 126] So to support 1 person for the area necessary doubles if you grow wheat instead of potatoes.  That is what we are doing with Mars Base Zero: ironing out the possibilities and the problems that you might encounter with a closed ecosystem.

FYI You'll need fantasic amounts of power to keep your hydroponics running.  This means if you are using solar you'll need some huge batteries.

[...]The colony of 1,000 people should become self supporting in two years, not 10. 
1,000 people at 150 square meters/person = 150,000 square meters.  That is a pretty big structure...and if you don't have the structure to support them with CELSS technology you will need to import 15,000 pounds of food, air and water every day.  Therefore CELSS technology is critical.  And if you want to maximize the number of people for any given enclosed area (so you'll have an adequate work force) you are going to have to feed them potatoes, because that is what is the most productive.  Which is what we are finding out with Mars Base Zero.  Food production on earth is so far from us conceptually we don't tend to think about it, but for space it is going to be THE critical technology for colonization.  Without it a) our colonies will be no bigger than we can afford to keep perpetually supplied [and if you look at how expensive it is to support antarctic stations you'll quickly realize just how expensive it is--and that is no where near as difficult a place to reach as the moon] b) our colonies will not be able to expand very much or very fast.  A lot of people talk like hydroponics are easy to set up and run, but there is very little HARD data on using them to support a CELSS.  NASA, Russia and Biosphere II all have some limited data, but nothing like what you'd want if you were headed to build one on the moon.  Most gardening systems, which are quite a bit simpler than a CELSS, need lots of time to really figure out what is the best to plant, how to plant it, etc [and if varies widely depending on soil, light, moisture, humidity, temperature]...usually taking 3-5 years IF you have a head start by talking to people in your area.  It would be better to have a lot of this ironed out in advance so you know what to build when you get to the moon...hence Mars Base Zero.

...chickens, rabbits, etc would become huge yielding much more meat.  
Vegetables grown in the lunar soil with organic hydroponics
techniques would grow to giant sizes yielding even more food. 
  But how do you know this?  That is what we are working to discover.  I might point out we are one of the very few organizations around that are actually doing science, as opposed to just talking about it...I can tell you right now that if you maintain a population of chickens, for every 5 chickens you are going to reduce by 1 the number of people you can support because the chickens compete with people for food.  Though chickens are likely to be needed to provide eggs and a very limited amount of fresh meat...

This is doable with present technology and resources. It is just
a matter of enlisting private industry around the planet to
take part and spread out the initial outlay of money to many
contributors.
How do you know it is doable?  [I'm playing devil's advocate here]  No one has successfully stayed in a CELSS long enough to really say you can use the technology or not.  CELSS technology is NOT off the shelf right now.  In fact, I would say we have a long ways to go before I'd want to use it on the moon.  Which is why we are pursing the technology; we have rockets and hardware, but we don't have CELSS.  And without CELSS technology you cann't successfully colonize space.

I bet you're losing weight like crazy eating ~1200 kcal/day.
My weight loss has been kind of strange.  The first two weeks I only lost a couple of pounds; less than expected.  The next two weeks I lost like crazy; 6+ pounds.  Since then my weight has been bouncing around a lot, but it doesn't look like I've lost more than another pound.

 If you can keep some more records of  your diet please do, this is interesting data.
Yes, I log absolutely everything I can think of.  I assume you've seen the eaten pages?  (linked from
https://isecco.org/projects/celss/marsbase/2004/04_index.html
if you haven't).  I also enter the data into a diet program to track my nutrients...

I'd heard of the Mars Society's related ventures, but
would it be fair to say that they focus on EVA
simulation rather than concentrating on the life
support systems like you do?
Approximately, though they have worked some with greenhouses growing lettuce, perhaps other things?

 (And you aren't actually
one and the same as the Mars Society's effort, right?)
No, we're not affiliated.  We actually broke ground on Mars Base Zero several years before Robert Zubrin wrote The Case for Mars, which is what kicked off the Mars Society, from what I understand.

From: Mars Base Zero
> > The primary goal is not to find out if we can
> > support a person, but to find out how big we need to
> > build Nauvik in order to support a person using our
> > crop techniques.
How close are you to this goal?
In terms of having a number I'd be willing to sink half a million into building Nauvik, pretty uncertain.  We have run Mars Base Zero closed on two occasions; in 2002 for a week, and this time for 5 weeks (I'm not going to make it much into the 6th week; just about out of food).  The first time we could have supported a person if a) 100% of the area was planted in potatoes and b) our yield stayed that high.  This time we aren't doing quite as well--yield is down, probably due to the extreme weather we had up here last summer.

Put another way, how
close are you to having a high-confidence estimate of
how much greenhouse space per person will be needed?
To be safe I think we will need a minimum of 5 years of year-round operations.  Not even sure we'll manage to get this much experience with Mars Base Zero, but I think with a few more years of operation (especially if we can get some year-round operation) we'll be confident enough to finalize the Nauvik design.

Or if you already have this estimate, what's your
estimate?
If someone came to me today and said 'we need one that will definitely work' I would have to say 3,500 square feet.  For example, right now: a) I don't have a completely balanced diet b) I am not eating as much as I should (~1450 kcal/day) & c) it took three months to grow what I'm eating in 5+ weeks.  However there are several counter arguements: 1.  Mars Base Zero is not yet fully functional; we are still a construction site.  2.  This was a bad summer; 2 years ago when we did this for a week our productivity was 30% higher.  3.  When we operate continuously we will be able to double crop some stuff (eg when the cauliflower has three weeks before it is to be picked, plant wheat under it).  So we really have a ways to go before I could give a  better answer...

And finally - why can't NASA's life support
experiments be as data-rich and publically accessible
as what you're doing?
No idea...?

This would seem exactly in line
with their mission, but of course they probably aren't
willing to fund a study like yours.  (Though you have
asked them, right?)
Oh, yes.  Several times...

I recall hearing tales from agriculture of old, where
intensive planting depleted the nutrients in soil
such that the yield was less in later years.  Have you
accounted for that?
Intensive agriculture without replenishing the soil will burn it out in just a few years.  But we recycle all our wastes, in effect fertilizing the soil that way.  We expect to have problems with nitrogen, for it leaves the soil pretty easily.  We'll probably have to incorporate peas or beans to counteract this.

The Chinese (among others) use night soil on they crops.  Good way to spread disease, but great for the crops!  This is essentually what we are doing, though we sterilize it before we put in on the garden to avoid the disease problem.

FYI: we are currently using fertilizer because we haven't gotten far enough along to have the compost recycled back through the garden.

If not, then you may wish to look into the solution
that people eventually came up with: crop rotation.
Typically, people do winter crops one year, then
summer crops the next, then let the field lay fallow.
I'm not an expert in this (I'd advise googling around
to find more educated words than mine), but it looks
as if you're doing mostly winter crops.  Now, granted,
you apparently let MB0's fields lay fallow last year,
so this should have reset them.
We try to rotate crops, but we are so heavy into potatoes that it is difficult.  Everything else is rotated regularly...

> > >Or if you already have this estimate, what's your
> > >estimate?
> > Ray: If someone came to me today and said 'we need one
> > that will definitely work I would have to say 3,500 square feet.
That you can put a number on it, is itself an
excellent result. :)  Of course, finding ways to
support people with less is always good, but at least
we now have an upper bound on what would be needed.
And as we gain more experience I expect we'll be able to lower than number, probably significantly.

I was only able to do a cursory glance at your site,
but is a second Mars Base Zero planned?
Not specifically, but there is a follow-on project called Nauvik, which will be a totally sealed dome or sphere, burried underground.  It will mimic the kind of environment you'd find on the moon...One of the big questions we are hoping Mars Base Zero will answer is how big to make Nauvik.  Our origional design shows a 40' diameter dome.  So far Mars Base Zero data indicates this would be enough space...

> > > Or if you already have this estimate, what's your [size] estimate?
> > Ray: I would have to say 3,500 square feet.  For
Does that figure appear high to you?
I certainly hope so.  But the answer depends a lot on how high you want your standard of living--you CAN live on 1,500 kcalories a day, eat almost nothing but potatoes, but it isn't much fun.  It would be a lot better if you could grow some other crops that produce oils and stuff like wheat which is so versitile.  I'm pretty sure if you went all the way down the scale of living that Mars Base Zero, at ~800 square feet, is big enough.  But I think a more comefortable lifestyle (and a few more than 1,500 kcal!) will be called for.

Have you done hydroponics
Origionally we thought hydroponics was the way to go.  But when you do hydroponics you end up with a lot of vegetation left over, and it is a problem extracting the nutrients from it.  The best way is to compost it and use the "tea" to water your plants.  But then what do you do with the left-overs?  Eventually I'd like to experiment with a mixed system, 1/4 hydroponics that you water with compost tea, and 3/4 garden where you put the left over compost.

or fish farming?
Yes, a limited amount.  When we had the Basement Biosphere set up we had a 4'x8'x2' fish tank that we raised tilapia in.  We weren't too impressed, though we didn't run it long enough to experiment and see if the tilapia could eat farm byproducts instead of fish food.

I would think from either you would get a more complete diet.
Hydroponics won't make much difference in the overall nutrition...but fish certainly would.  The diet program I have says I have eaten 0 vitamin B-6 since I moved in.  It lies a little bit, for you actually get a certain amount of B-6 from soil organisms that are in the dirt you wind up eating with dirt crops like potatoes or carrots.  But something like that is very hard to track.  Whereas you get a fair amount from fish.

Are you do any medical monitoring?  I would suggest, at least, a
physical and CBC before and after going in Mars Base Zero.  I'm not
bringing this up because of any short-term health concerns, but it would
be a good way to objectively measure any problems.
I would love to...but we lack the money (our total donations last year were less than $1,000--and we are spending every penny on seeds, power, heat, licensing [corporate biannual report, etc] and phone/internet.)

In practice, some of the nutrients you might be missing could be
supplemented.  I'd think people living on Mars for any length of time
would have a supply of nutrients to supplement their diet.  E.g., it's
probably a lot easier to get vitamin C and citrus bioflavoinds from
pills than from growing citrus fruits.
Actually I'm getting plenty of most vitamins; for example during week 4 my average dailiy intake for vitamin C was nearly 5 times the RDA (479%, to be exact).  But there are a few things I'm short on:  Vitamin B-12 0% RDA; vitamin E 21% RDA [this would be OK if my sunflowers had ripened]; Riboflavin 42% RDA; selenium 21% RDA; sodium 27% RDA; zinc 37% RDA.  Some of these would be a simple matter of starting with enough in the soil: they are passively picked up by plants and how much you get is, to a large extend, dependent on how much is in the soil (ie fertilize it early, and don't worry about it): selenium and zinc specifically.

 (Well, in the short run.  After
all, the pills have to come from somewhere.  A year's supply for one
person would not take up too much mass, but permanent habitation would
mean constantly supplying settlers with the stuff.)
I am taking a multi-viatamin.  With a larger colony you'd end up with enough range of produce that pills wouldn't be needed--but I expect they'll be critical for any colony less than 100 people.  Though you do have to be careful with vitamin pills is not to poison the environment with them, since all your waste products get (literally) plowed back in.

BTW, good luck!  How many more days do you have to go?
4 days ago I picked the last cabbage (though I have about half of it left).  Yesterday I picked the last large beet, and the last onion (I think--I'm going to root around and see if I can find some that I missed--they tend to be hard to spot sometimes because the stalks died and some of them got removed when I weeded.)  Looks like I'll be out of carrots tomorrow.  The big thing is potatoes: I am very nearly out of those--just a few days left.  I won't see 40 days total...
> > If someone came to me today and said
> > 'we need one that will definitely work' I
> > would have to say 3,500 square feet.
That sets an upper limit which I'm sure can be lowered.
I'm hoping, once Mars Base Zero is fully operational, we'll be able to squeeze enough calories out to support a person...but I expect it will be tight.

> > For example, right now: a) I don't have
> > a completely balanced diet
That can be a problem, though without medical testing, it's hard to say
how far off balance it is.  People do vary, too, in their dietary
needs...
Right.  But supplimentation is possible, and we'll be working on the diet to improve the balance.

Do you mean you're now getting ~1450? 
Yes; 1,450 is how many kilocalories I averaged in the first week.  It tends to go up and down weekly though; for example last week I ate nearly 1,900/day.
That puts you in caloric
restriction territory, which is actually healthy provided you have
proper nutrition.  However, on space missions, includings ones to Mars,
I wonder if it might not better to fatten people up a little.
Yep.  I'm a big fan of Roy Walford's High/Low diet (unsuccessful, I might add--except in here!)  But it does leave you pretty low on energy, which wouldn't be good if you were, say, trying to do geology in a space suit on the moon.

Well, a little fine tuning is needed there.  I know the goal in this
type of experiment -- I haven't read your page yet -- is usually to
prove total self-sufficiency.
That would be really nice--but (see below) if you want 100% you'll need to lower your standard of living.  As I have done--it would be a lot nicer if I had bread, for example.  And butter to go with it...

However, even partial self-sufficiency
would be good.  If, e.g., a Mars mission can grow 90% of its foods, then
it only needs to get 10% from somewhere else -- presumably the Mother
World.:)
I'm sure in a real scenario you'd import things that make life so much easier and better, but don't have too much weight penalty.  Things like butter, sugar, powdered milk, etc.  Getting to 75% of your food from a CELSS would be pretty easy.  It is the last 25% that you either take a hit on your standard of living or you need huge areas to produce.
 
> > However there are several counter arguements: 1.  Mars Base Zero is not
> > yet fully functional; we are still a construction site.
When will that happen?
I hope within 2-3 years, but it depends so much on money and volunteers that it is really difficult to predict.  If things continue as in the past, our progress will continue to be terribly slow, but steady.  We have two major obsticles right now: it will cost as much as $5,000 to install power (we could do it ourselves for a lot less, but than would require more volunteers than we currently have).  Second is, even if we have power, if we want to operate all winter next year we'll need $3,500/month to turn on all the lights...More realistically I think 5 years before we are totally operational; then it will depend on how much money we have as to whether we can operate continuously for 2-3 years (which would be the ideal).

Beware cauliflower's odor!:)
*grin*  I have a HUGE one.  It is as big as this broccoli, which makes my 4" leatherman looks small...

> > It is true that hydroponics does not make
> > much difference in the end product.
Is it more or less efficient than dirt farming?
*If* you have the same level of fertilization, it is the same.  But with hydroponics you can adjust for exactly the right nutrients so, almost always, it is more efficient.  As John says:
> > However, the liquid is easier to analyze
> > to see its component parts and it is
> > easier to add necessary components.
> > What you put in is what you get out.
That's true.  It'd be much easier to spot problems.  Would there be a
drawback to this too?  Would it be easier for pathogens to spread?
NASA had a pathogen infect one of their hydroponics tanks, and it spread within hours to their entire facility...One big advantage to a soil based system is that the ecosystem is in balance, so even though there are pathogens they are kept in check by competition with non-pathogens...

However, the liquid is easier to analyze to see its component parts and it is
easier to add necessary components. What you put in is what you get out.
I agree.  This allows you to keep the nutrition at the optimum level.  Which tends to make it more efficient than soil.

> > Is hydroponics more or less efficient than dirt farming for space applications?
It depends partly on how you look at it, and where you are going.  If you are in a weightless environment, a dirt based system would be extremely difficult to maintain; you'd almost surely end up with hydroponics.  If you are on a planetary surface (or moon), then hydroponics quickly becomes more cumbersome and expensive.  Some folks I was talking to at NASA in the early 1990's were pretty concerned that the hydroponics systems they were working on were way to heavy to launch--they require tons of water, among other things [I found it interesting that they thought a hydroponics system would weigh a lot more than a soil based system...I'd like to see their numbers].

Whereas all I'd need on the moon are the basic structure you'll need for hydroponics (lights, enclosure that will stay between 60° and 85°, initial fertilizer , water and seeds).  Thus a soil based system has a big advantage over hydroponics, where you need plumbing, pumps, injectors,,,etc...also with hydroponics you'll have to bring in fertilizer on a regular basis...  Other than initial start-up stuff like lights I could build the entire soil-based ecosystem from local materials on the moon. 

If you are looking at their usefulness in an off planet space habitat again
hydroponics would be the preferred system. Hydroponics can use the product of
biodigestion easier than can solid growing mediums.
But what do you do with the compost after the biodigestion is done?  Plant stuff in it.  Suddenly you are back in a soil based system...!

If you are looking at a planet based system, dirt or regoth can be a much
better system because it is always available, easier to work with and does not
have to be tended as much.
And it is already there *grin*.

To my knowledge, Ray has been doing this for 12 years.
ISECCo formed in 1988, but I've been working on certain aspects of this technology for a lot longer than that.  I built my first greenhouse in 1976...

To see his long term dedication to this effort is hearting. If you have any
means to help him continue this work do so.
Thanks for the suggestion, John.  I would urge everyone to pledge $2 per day for every day I end up staying inside (which, alas, won't be very much longer).  I've had a number of people pledge this, so it has been fairly successful--though not up to operating costs yet.

In an actual Martian base, would it not be possible to
supplement the soil with nutrients made via some
synthetic process?
Basic nutrients are usually elements, so they are either there or they aren't.  The major exception to that is nitrogen.  Most nitrogen fertilizer is made here on earth, and I expect it will also be a key for extra-terrestrial closed ecosystems.  Even some natural ecosystems actually gain a significant portion of their nitrogen from a non-biological process: lightning.

But [slightly over-simplified] in general either the elements are there or they aren't.


Fourth Week Questions

It seems that your diet is very protein deficient? As legumes, brown rice,
etc.. are commonly eaten in combination to provide complete complement of
essential amino acids, and even then it can be difficult, especially if you
had a rigorous routine during the day, which would up your requirements.
No, actually my diet is quite sufficient in protein in a general way.  I
was rather surprised that this was the case, with primarily potatoes to
eat.  But when I run the analysis it comes out fine (average daily intake
in %RDA, except potatoes which is in grams and calories which is in kcal):
Week    Tyr  Lys  Phe  Leu  Val  Met  Cys  Try  Thr  Iso  Potatoes  Calories
One     118  267  145  198  212  164  133  273  246  184   1,253     1,470
Two     144  326  178  243  259  199  162  332  299  225   1,540     1,778
Three   106  240  130  179  190  147  118  244  221  166   1,125     1,311

So, as you can see, my protein consumption is fine...

Vegetarian diets are necessarily deficient in B-12, requiring
supplementation, so no suprises there. Mineral content of soil is very
important for mineral content in plants - have you had the soil tested? If
so, what type of tests have been done?
No, this is something we'd really like to do, especially for zinc and selenium
which are two minerals my diet is far short of--according to the program--but
for these minerals the amount eaten is more dependent on the amount in the soil
than any other factor.  This is because they are usually passively transmitted
by plants: they don't need much, if any.


BTW, I've thought for a long time that dietary supplementation for long
duration travels will not only be a necessity, but useful as well for bulk
(or lack of) purposes. Besides, supplementation has occured for centuries on
sea voyages - hence limeys, krauts and so on.
Very true.  Though one problem with supplimentation in a closed ecosystem is that the minerals will
find their way into the soil, making it too salty (not NaCl, other kinds of salts).  This isn't a problem in
short or mid duration ecosystems (5-10 years) but could be a problem in long duration (15+ years).

Is it pressurized?
No, Mars Base Zero is not pressurized.  We aren't looking at the atmosphere right now; we are pretty open as a matter of a fact--it actually gets drafty in here if the wind blows very hard.

Where is the biosphere?
It is up Goldhill Road, about 4 miles from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

If you're going offshore [sailing] for long you should have
time to write :-) Sounds like fun.
That is what I thought.  I was planning on reworking the entire ISECCo web site while sailing from Seattle, up the inside passage, across the gulf to Kodiak and on to Hawaii last summer.  How many files did I do?  Two.  So I don't hold out much hope of getting articles written next summer...*sigh*

This is good, but it is important to also track what
would be operational hours - how you would do it if
you were really on Mars.  On the one hand, it would
be good to know everything about the crop.  OTOH,
crew time is likely to be at a premium, and if we
spend too much time collecting data we won't get 
anything else (like looking for life on Mars) done.

Crew time for each task, and the details of what is
included, could be one of the more valuable sets of
data you could gather.
I am right now at the end of the second run of two days where I write down every little thing I do.  There is an example in the diary for 9/29/04 at:
https://isecco.org/projects/celss/marsbase/2004/diary.html
It has a little breakdown of the categories below the listing.
  I am shooting for a total of a week, at random intervals, so I'll probably do another day of logging tomorrow.  This will give a pretty good idea of what is involved.  We also have time data from planting last spring, and garden care over the summer.  So we've got the data...now all we need is someone to write the article (I've a pretty good list of articles to write and not enough time to do even half of them).  I agree that it is a critical factor in deciding if you even want to do a CELSS in space; if the crew spends all their time taking care of it then there is little point in even going to the effort because there won't be any time left over...
  I wouldn't expect this kind of data logging on a real mission...I'm just doing it to show that it really doesn't take TOO much time to maintain a CELSS, and also I want to be able to show that the diet isn't TOO bad...

> Do you know of any journals that might be interested?
ICES and COSPAR would probably both be interested.
  What does ICES stand for?  I tried to look it up on google, but came up with way too many hits!
  I looked up COSPAR and it looks like it is something they might be interested in...

Have you considered the salt in urine?  Urine is an
excellent source of nitrogen, of course, but it also
contains a lot of sodium, which is toxic to plants.
I am very curious about this.  What happens if you don't eat much salt?  Is the sodium due to the high levels of sale we use these day?  Or do you just tend to shed salt?  If so, where does it come from, especially if you aren't eating any?  My sodium intake average for each week is (values in mg; percent is of *maximum* RDA):
Week
 Sodium
 Percent
One
 231.03
 48
Two
 258.61
 52
Three
 207.21
 41
Anyhow, my feeling is that I'm not shedding any more salt than I'm consuming (I was careful to wait 3 days before starting to use urine for fertilizer for this reason).  Since *all* of what I'm consuming comes from the soil to start with I don't think I will end up with salty soil from fertilizing it with urine.  [hmmm: another article possibility?  Though to do this one I'd need to take soil salinity measurements for several years...]

Do you have any air filters?  In the KSC BPC they
started out with HEPA filters, but then tried without
and did not have a problem, but they also did not
have people living inside.  What is the dust?
No, I don't have any air filters, other than the soil-based filter I set up on the feces sterilizer (not using it any more, since I've gone to sterilizing after composting).  I'm not entirely sure what the dust is that is causing my cough.  I suspect it may be some kind of mold or breakdown product from rotting potato vines (they are rotting because they froze and died...I picked a bunch of them and it seemed to help...also watering the dirt helped, so it may be a combination of factos).  Though it may just be soil dust; the heater blows out across the top of the greenhouse, and circulates down at the far end and tends to dry the soil there pretty bad.  I have detected a very thin layer of dust on water left standing for more than a week, so I know there is some in the air.

At KSC they found that some crops like potatoes like
rather cool roots.  There might be a problem at 70
deg.
Potatoes won't set tubers at temperatures above 68 degrees.  I found that out about 10 years ago in the Basement Biosphere when I tried them there.  But our soil temperature is pretty cold so I don't anticipate any problem there, as long as we don't add too much heat!  Even with 70 degree inside temperature I doubt we'll get our soil temperature up above 65 (summer soil temperatures here don't exceed 50, usually!)  Though we do have heat loops so we can heat the soil in 1.5 squares (B and the S half of D, if you were wondering!) so we can boost the temperature a bit to help some plants...and those are the areas right next to the plastic, where there tends to be a cold draft...adding a little heat is likely to be necessary in the winter, though I don't expect to grow potatoes there when we are heating the beds.

I actually have two projects that I am "noodling".
Project one:  exhibits showing elements of CELSS technology.
I have several ideas here, depending on how you wanted to put things together, how much space, money, etc was available:
1.  Compost pile
2.  Earthworm box
3.  Fish (Tilapia, carp, catfish?)
4.  If there were sufficient money I wouldn't mind setting up a link between here and there, so when we were operational people could talk to us from there.  This might be kinda expensive though, so it would take a heafty grant.  We are only intermittently operational though, so this wouldn't be something that would be going on all the time (2004 closure time is only going to be a little over a month.  2005 will--I hope--be 2-3 months.)
5.  A mouse CELSS something like:
http://chapters.marssociety.org/or/cemss/
6.  Growing things.  Hydroponics might be a good way to go for this, though we use soil.  That way people could see all parts of the plant (though you have to be careful to keep the roots in the dark, you could probably rig up some kind of way to look at them.)

Our 45 year old flat roof in Seattle has major leaks.  (imagine
that in Seattle...)  It is always difficult to raise money to fix a
facilities issue.   People tend to give money for more innovative and
interesting projects.  Perhaps we could fix the roof while making a
water/solar collector?
Hmmm, any idea if the roof would support a 'last story'?  Put a complete CELSS up there...?!!
  I just had may sailboat (http://sail2ak.com) rebuilt there in Seattle, so I can imagine...!

Do you have a list of people who might be interested in either funding
or building something like this at PSC?  Do you know of a location where
I could find plans and ideas of similar projects?
No, I'm afraid I have no idea...[if I did I'd be hitting them up for ISECCo *grin*]

 Project two:  teaching CELSS
This is a project with which I am more directly involved.  I am looking
to develop a Mars fantasy camp.  This would be a week long summer camp
aiming for middle school age kids.  I did something similar this year
which ended in a rover mission looking for water.  We did an adaptation
of it for an NSTA article "Astrobiology in the Classroom"
(http//www.pacsci.org/origins )
How much space would you have?  Would the camp be a full time sort of thing, or would the kids come and go?  How technical would you want it to be?

What are some of the basic elements in a CELSS design?
Here are a couple dozen things off the top of my head:
1.  The area required.  That is what we are trying to determine with Mars Base Zero. 
2.  Lights vs sunlight.  Our ultimate goal is a completely closed CELSS that uses all artificial lighting to simulate one burried on the moon.  That way we'll be able to track air, nutrients, etc.
3.  Nutrient (air, water, mineral, organics, etc) flow through the various subsystems.
4.  What kinds of plants to grow.  For example, here potatoes are good (highly productive--meaning lots of calories per square foot) and wheat is bad (not very many calories per square foot).  This can vary a lot on where you have your facility and what kind of operational environment you have.
5.  How to handle your organic waste.  This is why we chose to go with a soil-based system: we want to compost our organic matter, and if you have
6.  Heating and cooling systems.  During the summer we run this with no covering on the south side. See:
https://isecco.org/photos/mb0/0904d/15.jpg
and in the winter we have it all closed up and use an oil fired furnace that provides hot water to keep the inside warm.
7.  Mechanical systems: structure, electrical, water,
8.  Household systems: stove, microwave?, 'fridge, phone, internet, video [which we don't have], sleeping & working arrangements, table, storage, desk, counter space [I'm just banging these out as I think of them!],  kitchen space, drinking water supply, mmm, can't think of anything more.
9.  Humidity control systems.  This is something that is not needed in Mars Base Zero because we are so open to the outside air.  But massive dehumidifiers will be needed for real sealed operation.
10.  Aquaculture systems, if needed.
11.  Poultry systems, if they are to be included.
12.  Enrichment system to enrich CO2 to encourage plant growth (note: this could be in the form of a compost pile that you increase the heat on to produce more CO2, or decrease the heat on to slow down production).
13.  Monitoring systems: CO2, O2, water vapor, light levels, etc.
14.  Control systems: plant lights, CO2 enrichment, heat, watering, etc.
15.  In a completely sealed ecosystem, either you need a very strong structure, or you will need to have some way to prevent it from imploding or exploding as the air pressure changes.  Biosphere II has expansion 'tanks' that allow the air volume to change as pressure goes up and down.  Nauvik (our cumulitive project) is going to be burried underground and very strong so we won't have to worry about air pressure variations see:
https://isecco.org/projects/celss/nauvik/nauvik.html
16.  Food preparation systems.  For example, a way to grind wheat, or de-hull rice. 
17.  Pollination systems: how are you going to pollinate your crops?
18.  If you are using hydroponics you'll need those systems, if you are using soil you'll need some way to plow (we use a shovel).
19.  Airlock.  How are you going to get in and out?
20.  Entertainment systems.  I'm happy with a computer and books, but others may not be.
21.  Sleeping.  We use a futon, which folds up into a sofa.  This allows us to conserve quite a bit of space.
22.  Human solid waste: how do you deal with it?  Ideally you want the nutrients in it to end up plant food.
23.  Urine: how do you deal with it?  Ideally you want the nutrients in it to end up plant food.  [Did you know that you pee out more solids than is contained in your feces?  Kind of weird...{I think it may be getting too late at night...}]
24.  Maintenance and gardening tools.  I brought in quite a few tools, and had a bunch of stuff in here to start with: I haven't had to ask for any tools since I came in.  Thinking ahead on this sort of thing is pretty critical if you really want to stay sealed: you have to be able to fix everything that breaks!
   
You might take a look at the book we wrote to begin our project.  It is a little dated, but you may still find some ideas:
https://isecco.org/papers/outline.html

Do you know of
any games already developed with this theme?  (I seem to recall a
computer game where they decide how many pounds of equipment to take and
then attempt to build a colony with what they bring.)
No, about the closest I know of is just a little program NASA has, but I couldn't find it...if I come across it again I'll email you the page.  But all it did is tell you how much area you needed to support a certain number of people...

Any other bright ideas that spring to mind?
Not right offhand.  But I'll see if I can think of some

I feel rather ignorant on
this topic and am not sure even of what the best questions to ask would
be.  Perhaps you could tell me what a typical day inside a CELSS would
be like?
I am right now at the end of the second run of two days where I write down every little thing I do.  There is an example in the diary for 9/29/04 at:
https://isecco.org/projects/celss/marsbase/2004/diary.html

My overall goal with this camp is to inspire imagination, curiousity and
awareness of the natural word.  I would like them to understand that we
already do live in a CELSS.
I'll put this to my wife and other members too, and see if any one else has any ideas

Okay, where exactly is Mars Base Zero located in Alaska?
We are in Fairbanks, just a little north of the University.

What is you primary power supply?
Oh, excellent question. But I have a bad answer: we get it from the
power company.

Do you have a backup?
No; we don't have anything running in here that is critical enough to
go to the expense of a backup.

Is it already snowing there, and if so, what kind of heating?
Yes, it snowed some weeks ago, and it was snowing again this morning.
I have a oil fired furnace than heats hot water which is plumbed into
the greenhouse.

cooling system have you got?
During the summer, when you need cooling, we keep the plastic off the
south side, so we are completely open to the air. So no cooling required.

How are you powering your computer? Solar? Wind?
No, alas: just off regular power.

Your veggies are grown in square foot raised garden beds?
Yes, though the beds are 12'x12' so they aren't quite as good as if
they were smaller (less heat gets to the middle of the bed).

How are they irrigated?
We water them either with a hose or by hand.

What is the enclosure structure made of? Lexan?
The north half of the structure is made of wood; there is a photo at:
https://isecco.org/photos/mb0/trussonwall19.jpg
The south side is currently a single sheet of visqueen (plastic)
right now.

What's the story?
The story is I've been eating 3.5 pounds of potatoes every day for
nearly a month... *grin*

 Don't you feel to go out and kill a moose ..... (Potato Moose meat soup )
Potato moose soup is really excellent. A moose walked by the other
day, and it was sure tempting *grin*

612 sq ft of planted area, is that enough to keep a person alive on
Mars, with its reduced solar intensity?
We aren't even very sure it is enough to keep us alive *here*!!

We assume that if you built one of these on Mars, you would suppliment
with artificial lighting as needed to provide sufficient plant lighting.

Why can't we use similar technology to keep people well fed on Earth?
Too expensive...though a lot of what we have is applicable, and could
help people here; the real thing that causes hunger these days is poor
distribution (whether due to economic, political or war), not a lack
of food. Also a lot of what we are doing wouldn't work in the poor
countries of the world like in Africa: the soil temperature is too
warm for our primary crop (potatoes, which need a soil temperature no
more than 68 degrees F (20 C)).

If theoretically 612 sq ft is all that is needed, it should be
possible to simulate a hermitically sealed habitat of say 15000 sq ft
on earth and see if 10 people can live happily inside for say three
years, recycling everything?? Such a simulation will give great
cofidence to move on to the next step of space exploration - whatever
that may be.

It certainly would. Unfortunately it would also be really expensive.
I have been doing some calculations for building Nauvik (our next
project after Mars Base Zero) and came up with some pretty grim numbers:

If we assume a sphere of 20' radius (ie 40 tall), with ceiling heights
at 5', 8', 8', 8', 6', & 5 foot there will be 4,450 square feet of
floor area. So if you figure ~1,500 square feet per person that would
be 3 people.. Now, the bad news: I estimate it would cost a minimum
of $500,000 to build, and much more likely a million. The bad news
doesn't end there though; I come up with a monthly electric bill of
$27,000!! (Note: about half of this is cooling, and the other half is
lighting--Nauvik is going to be a completely burried dome relying on
totally artificial lighting...

Third week questions


Are you spending full time locked up?
Yes.  My wife tied a ribbon across the door at 2 pm on September 18th, 2004.  I haven't been out since.

How many tomatoes do you have left, how big are they and how do you usually eat them?
I started out with four plants.  On the 9/4/04 frost they were all damaged so badly the plants died over the next two weeks.  The frost did not hurt the tomatoes, and around the end of the first week I counted them to find I had 109 left.  Plant four, which had the fewest, now has only 2 tomatoes left.  Plant one, which I've eaten the most heavily from, still has a fair number (15?), about 1/4 of which are ripe or nearly ripe.  The other two plants have a fair number.  So as long as the ripening tomatoes keep up with consumption I have plenty to last me for several more weeks--probably longer than I'll be in here.

The tomatoes are mostly between 1.5 and 2.5 inches in diameter.  I eat a total of 27 tomatoes in 3 weeks, or about 1.25 per day.  About half of these I ate raw, the rest were added to soup, and once to sauce.

What do you do with your free time?
I spend a lot of time reading and working or playing on the computer.

Do you have a TV?
No.

Where are you going to write it up?
My problem is too much data, and not enough time to get it organized into articles (once I come out I expect to be working 60 hours a week until I leave for the summer to go sailing around Hawaii).  But I hope to develop a poster or three, and have them shown at conferences.  I also hope to write up an article or so for Habitation (International Journal for Human Support Research).  If you have suggestions of other places to publish I'd appreciate them!

First, from my heart, let me thank you for being a "guinea pig" like Bucky Fuller (who used to call himself, "Guinea Pig B"). You can take great pride in trying to live to your ideals.
Thanks, kudos are always appreciated!  Thanks for the link; I'll check it out!

My own interests often relate to self-replicating infrastructure, so
The idea behind the name Mars Base Zero is that the life inside it could be transported to a similar structure on Mars and provide a similar sort of yield.  Of course a lot of experimentation would be needed if you wanted to use Martian soil to make sure it would work ok for the plants--and for you!  There are several other differences, but we don't feel it would be hard to overcome them: temperature; your structure would (of course) have to be pressurized; gravity; lower light (though our winter light is a lot less than that found at the equator on Mars, so our winter operation--which we haven't accomplished yet--will be similar).  So, given we could use Martian source materials, and the other limitations listed, you could build as many of these facilities on Mars as you had the power for.

Or in general, what sorts of things can you eaily make in Mars Base Zero?
The only thing we are looking at is food, which is (so far) rather limited.  But it is a start!

Also, what sort of time constants are there in Mars Base Zero for independence? That is, how long can you supply (or recycle) your own water, air, power, food, replacement parts, etc. in you current configuration?
Right now the only thing we are looking at is food production.  Theoretically if you have grown all your food you've produced all your oxygen.  So if we didn't have water or power we'd be shut down really fast. 

Food is a different matter.  It looks like I'll manage about 6 weeks inside.  This is slightly lower productivity that the last time, perhaps due to the extreme summer we had (major smoke--visibilities less than 200 feet occasionally, and usually less than a mile or so--due to forest fires all summer), though I haven't really sat down to do the analysis yet.  But if we manage 6 weeks to eat the food we grew over the summer (12 weeks) then it'll be 1:2, or growing half the food needed to support a person.

Do you have any simulations of the system?
No; we thought about doing this, but our programmer/webmaster has been too busy...

Do you have detailed parts lists and construction plans and 3D models which are computerized for analysis?
No; nor do we consider the structure to be important since it is not translatable to space.  What is important for us are the crops: what provides the most calories per square foot; how you can plant to maximize yield; how you can intercrop things; what you need to do to make the diet palitable...things like that.

Also, on  a social basis, do you feel isolated?
Good question.  No, not really.  I do get about 4-5 visits (through the plastic) a week from various members and my wife (my wife would probably be over here every day but she is 7 months pregnant and it is something of a drive from our house to get here).  But I have a telephone, and I grew up in the Alaskan bush where our nearest neighbor was a mile away...and I've been out in the woods for 6 weeks without seeing anyone...and I sailed to Hawaii this last summer, which was a lot more isolated than the bush (though it didn't really feel that way).

Do you have a support community around you?
Yes; our members are very good and show up as needed.  The land that Mars Base Zero is located on belongs to some of our members who are very supportive.  Also the Fairbanks community at large has exhibited a fair amount of interest (newspaper article, primarily).

Do you (presumably) have access to the internet and does using the internet feel any different using it being in there (more important, meaningless, etc.?)
Yes, via dialup line.

No different that I can tell.

Is it too soon to tell if you could you do this for years (in a space craft to Mars)? (I guess some of that is person specific -- some people are more gregarious than others).
I could easily do this for years.  Especially if my wife and kids were along!!  [Frankie--my wife--is keen on space too, she said if I go to the moon she wants to come too!]

In general, do you think access to the internet makes long duration space flight more feasible intellectually and socially? (Not a question I considered much before your post).
Yes, I think it does.  It allows you to pursue relationships much easier...I have a lot of friends whom I've met, but don't keep up with except via the internet.  I think I could get all my "needed" social interaction on the internet.  Indeed, I think about 75% of my interaction with non-family people/friends is via the internet [when not locked up in here!]

(gardening can take a lot of work, as it did for the Biosphere II people)
Actually I'm not spending too much time caring for the garden.  I logged 100% of my time for two days, and over the 2 days I only spent a little over 2.5 hours/day on it (including biosphere care [eg composting]; data logging; harvesting; and maintenance).  Though if I were replanting things it would take a bit more time, though probably only an extra hour per day.

Were you a vegetarian before you went in
No, though I only eat meat about 3 times a week.

and did you do any special nutritional training or research for your stay?
I have been studying nutrition for this project for quite a few years.  To follow my nutrition I've been logging all the foods eaten into a program which tells me what my nutritional balance is.  We are working on a paper on the subject; I'll email our members with where & when it is published...

Do you see any immediately Earth-useful spinoffs in your  research?
Yes: in the Alaskan bush there is a great deal of problem dealing with sewage; some of the methods we develop to deal with it may be applicable.  Gardeners in general may benefit by our planting techniques, which are an extension of the sort of idea presented in Square Food Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew.

How did you get started in the project?
When we started in 1988 we wanted to tackle a project we had a good chance of accomplishing.  Also I've been a keen on self-support (whether in the Ak bush or in space) for many years.  So we decided to build a biosphere....

 Some suggestions/question for human waste management:  have you considered a composting toilet?
Yes, we have.  But the problem is the output is not sterile, so you'd have to sterilize it.  Also the odor would still be a problem, I think: those are vented outside.

On an incinerator toilet
The problem with these is the loss of nutrients.  Also I understand the vent puts out some nasty fumes on occasion--not something I'd want vented into the air I was breathing!

I have changed back to my origional system, which is composting solids before sterilization, so it doesn't smell.  Urine is still a minor problem, but I can put up with the smell of sterilizing that.

Both types expect some venting, so I'm not sutre how that would work out in your suystem, although soil filtering like you are doing sounds like a good idea (you can also use water perhaps?)
I imagine water would work, if you could come up with a pump strong enough to move the air fast enough...

I've known two people personally who did R&D on sewage processing (though not now) -- Stella Andrassy who had a tennis court sized system that used solar energy for drying, and Dr. (Edwin) "Ted" Battley who used a bio-reactor with bacteria to break things down. Ted is a great guy and you might email him with what you are doing and ask for advice if you need it on sterilization or other issues.   
I'll check this out...though the problem with both these ideas is a lack of sterility.  I've looked at bio-reactors, and it would be feasible if you sterilized the water before you re-used it.  Unfortunately we don't have the time or money or space for such a system.  Perhaps in the next facility (Nauvik, which will be a fully sealed structure, and a fair amount larger)?

In China they call this "night soil" (transported at night and not discussed) and it is the secret to how they have maintained soil fertility for 40 centuris of farming
Have you read One Circle?  They go into this concept pretty heavily.  They do have a lot of problems with spreading disease this way though.

I believe the term night soil origionated in Europe during the middle ages, when the same concept was used.

Have you looked at the "Ark" concept like from John Todd and New Alchemy (or Solviva Greenhouse, etc?) -- essentially homes that produce all their own food.
Yes, we checked into John Todd quite a few years ago.  Even went to New England to see him...

Anyway, I really like the funky convergenge of space settlement and 1960s/1970s back to the land / self-reliance /ecological technology!
*grin*  Strange, isn't it?

By the way, you've probably heard of Richard Crew and the "See-1" project from the living universe foundation?
Yes, I was following that, but like you say they seem to be having problems...hope they manage to pull it together.

It sounds like you're eating potatos faster than they can be grown.  The relevance of your experience?

Yes, I am...the purpose of Mars Base Zero is to find out just how much
area is needed to support a person, using our crop techniques. Thus
it is not too important whether growth keeps up with consumption; just
how much growth and how much consumption. Though during productive
years we may have enough crop area to keep up with consumption; we'll
have to see after we get the entire facility finished! (We've a ways
to go on that one...)

Where is your protein coming from?
I am getting almost all of my protein from potatoes.  To be specific:
Potatoes 90% of the protein.  Cabbage 4%...and 1.5% each from beets, turnips, tomatos and carrots.

Do you use any type of vitamin or other nutrient supplementation?
Excellent question!  I've been wondering when someone was going to ask me that.  During week 2 my nutrition from my food was 0% for vitamin B-12 (though I may have accidental ingestion of up to 100% RDA from the microbes in the dirt on potatoes, carrots, etc) and less than 36% for vitamin E, calcium, selenium and zinc.  Some say that calcium isn't a problem on a vegetarian diet; the amount of selenium and zinc you get is based more on the soil the plants are grown in so that might not be a problem either.  But it still concerns me, so YES, I am taking a multi-vitamin.

Where is the water coming from?
We are wide open where water is concerned.  I'm not even tracking how much I put on the garden.  I do track pretty closely how much I used domestically though people are going to have a hard time believing my numbers (13 gallons for 22 days, including drinking, dishes, brushing teeth, two baths, etc).  The domestic water is from a spring in town: just today my wife brought me some more water (first time I've had a refill since I moved in).  The garden water and furnace water I get once a week (usually) from a hose run over to the neighbor's which I use to fill a couple 30 gallon buckets, not to mention soaking the garden real well.  Using the hose is something of a pain, because we can't leave it outside or it would freeze.  So I pull it back into the arctic entry, and when I need to be refilled I poke it out the (missing) doorknob hole and someone takes it and hooks it up for me.  Then when I'm done they unhook me and I draw it back in again.  Domestic water is poured through a pipe that leads under the plastic.  (I should get a photo of these!)

For how long can you sustain yourself - an educated guess would be fine. I have always been very curious about this type of venture.
Best guess at the moment is another 12-18 days.  I'm at day 22 now, so a maximum of 40 days.  This is about 20 days less than we'd need to break even with production (see question above for more discussion).



Second week questions


Have you lost any more weight?
Last Saturday I weighed 195 pounds.  Today I weigh 194.5 so I would say if I've lost any it is not significant.

I wonder how many square meters it takes to grow enough canola for the oil to turn them into french fries. Ketchup might get a little tough to make, as it requires vinegar [from what, apples, grapes], which must take a few square meters all by itself.
Too many probably, I think it would be a matter of not eating for a few days if you wanted to have canola oil! I have made a sauce from tomatoes that isn't TOO bad, though ketchup would certainly be MUCH better. Also need sugar to make ketchup though; and sugar poses more area problems.

Of course on in a real extra-terrestrial CELSS things like oils and sugars that are not needed in large quantities would probably be imported. Over time that would give you extra carbon and other nutrients, and these could be used to offset losses (for example, every time you go outside you'll loose air) or perhaps for expansion.

BTW, I seem to recall that Gerard O'Neil estimated feeding some 70-80 people per acre of growing space.
Using my growing methods I'd probably be able to support 55 people per acre (1 per 800 square feet), so this isn't too far off from O'Neil's estimates. Depending on where you look in the literature you'll find figures as low as 150 square feet, but that is based on intense lights and hydroponics of the most productive plant possible; not a very desireable diet.

Although I also seem to recall that others, in earth-based purposes used similar estimates for feeding humanity using hydroponic systems, though I don't recall how O'Neil arrived at his number, whether he used the hydroponic guestimates or not. From the pictures, I expect that Collins could get by with less space by choosing different containers and how they are ordered on the growing space array.
Our crop beds are laid out in 12' x 12' squares, 3 squares wide and 2 squares deep. 4 of these are filled with dirt and intensely planted (one of these doesn't even have any paths--we access it via a moveable board until the crop gets too tall (by which time the crops drowns out the weeds).   One square is about 1/3 planted, 1/3 storage (water, tools, etc) and 1/3 work area. The last square is basically unused (well, it is serving as a collection point for construction stuff). This last square is where we'll put the fish (we have a 4' by 8' fish tank), compost pile (already started), and hopefully a few more plants--things to add enjoyment to the diet, rather than just sustenance! Also we'll need the extra space to improve nutrition; some of the things we need to grow for nutritional purposes don't generate many calories.

The only things that didn't have a closed canopy this year are either because they didn't grow for one reason or another, or their growth was sub-optimum.

The two squares that are not filled with dirt remain primarily work squares; this is still a construction project.  The last time we planted we only had three squares of dirt available, so we are making progress.

BTW: have you considered filling in your plant patterns geometrically (again, I'm inferring from the few available pictures)?
Our potatoes are planted in staggered rows, as close together as the mature plant can tolerate.  Most other things are planted the same way.  Our goal is a completely closed canopy about a month before harvest (depending on crop).  So far we've been pretty successful with this.  When we get into more than one planting I'd like to try planting, say, wheat a week before I harvest the, say, swiss chard.  That way it will already have sprouted and be ready for light when I remove the old crop.  Perhaps next year we can try this...

Now I'm just asking, and certainly not complaining, but why didn't you use hydroponics and artificial lighting?
We have 40 x 1,000 watt lights.  Our power supply is currently not much more than an extension cord (150 feet of 10-2 running 240 volts, if you want to be specific), not big enough to support the lights...we need a power pole ($2,500)..and it costs over $100 a day to run all the lights...if you'll send us the money, we'll turn them on *grin*. 

Hydroponics is another story: when we first started that is the way we wanted to go.  So we played with it some; got some great yields, and a pile of organic matter.  Hmm, what to do with it?  So we composted it, made compost tea and used the tea for the hydroponics.  Now, what do we do with the left over compost?  Might as well grow a few plants in it.  Now we are right back to a soil-based method.  So we decided to just leave out the hydroponics part of it...

What about flourescent lights?
Flourescent lights are actually not as efficient as some of the commercial greenhouse lights you can get (though my information is a little dated; not sure how they compare to the new flourescent bulbs).

Then too, there is the CO2-O2 issue that your open garden raises, are you tracking the gases too?
Our structure is currently so open that there is no opportunity to track any gasses.  In the winter of '99-00, when my wife and I stayed in here to get the kinks ironed out in the heating and a few other non-biological systems, we did have it tight enough to track CO2.  We even experimented with raising the level from normal to 1,100 ppm using our propane stove.  When we return to having a structure that tight we'll start tracking that kind of data again.

BTW, have you considered carp to eat up your excess veggie matter?
We have considered a number of different fish, and even tried Tilapia (an African cyclid, often used there for fish farming).  The problem encountered with Tilapia is they compete with humans for food.  Carp or catfish might be a better choice; also there is a kind of South American fish (whose name escapes me at the moment) that is a strict detritovore that would be good--anything that will eat the leftovers after I'm done picking through them *grin*.

How much food do you eat every day?
 I am averaging around 3.5 pounds of food a day.  The high was 5 pounds, the low 2 pounds...

Are you getting tired of potatoes?
When I get tired of potatoes I don't eat them...since they are my primary source of kcalories, this means I get hungry.  When I'm hungry potatoes start sounding good again, and I resume eating them.

What are you eating besides potatoes?
Carrots, tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, beets, turnips, cabbage, swiss chard and onions are my main crops.

What do you have that you are growing and eating for essential amino acids?
During the first week I ate an average of 1253 grams of potatoes a day.  When
you eat that many potatoes, you automatically end up with 100% of your RDA in
all the critical amino acids.  More, actually; the low is 111% for tyrosine, and
the high is 251% for tryptophan.  That is *just* from the potatoes, though when
you include all the other things I eat it doesn't add much to the total.

What about wheat?
We did grow some wheat, but we only got about a cup--and in the same area I could have gotten 10-15 pounds of potatoes, so growing wheat is really not very space efficient.

How well are your crops holding up?
I've been eating through my cabbage the fastest: I've harvested 2 of the 5 heads.  I've been real careful to stretch the onions; I've harvested maybe 1/4 of them, and maybe 1/3 of the carrots.  Of the 76 potato plants, I've harvested 30.  Potatoes are the big thing: when they run out I'm done, though the data here is a little misleading since I'm harvesting the square with the lower productivity first.  There are also a few things that I haven't been able to harvest yet because they aren't ripe, for example the sunflower and the strawberries.  Really hoping for both of those, not that there are enough to enhance the diet much, but the variety will be really nice.

How do you cook?
I have a microwave (that happens to be old and tired--missing some elements), which cooks potatoes if you have enough patience.  But I mainly cook on a propane stove (which we have, in the past, used to suppliment CO2 in the greenhouse).  I also have an electric heat plate as a backup, in case I run out of propane and no one can make it over to hook up a new tank for me!

Are you staying warm enough?
The facility still has some cold spots.  Also at night the plastic lets out a lot of heat.  But I spend most of my time up in the loft, where it is quite warm.  During the day I keep it in the mid 70's, so the plants are kept at around 65 degrees (the air stratifies real bad in here).  At night 10-15 degrees colder.

How many members does ISECCo have?
We have about 250 members, of whom 20 or so are active (ie do more than just get the free stuff).

How much did it cost to build Mars Base Zero?
Around $30,000--if you include the $11,000 in lights that we bought!

What do you do with your time?
Two days during the last week I wrote down every activity that I did.  Here is the breakdown:
On What
 Hours
 Percent
    Biosphere care 1.03 2%
    Data logging 0.92 2%
    Eating/cooking 2.95 6%
    Exercise 1.12 2%
    Harvesting 1.12 2%
    Maintenance 2.32 5%
    Other 0.57 1%
    Personal 0.78 2%
    Play 8.23 17%
    Sleep 15.50 32%
    Study 8.15 17%
    Web 3.35 7%
    Work 1.97 4%
Total
 48
 100%

The purpose in tracking this is to prove or refute the following hypothesis: If you have a closed ecological life support system in space or on the moon, the astronauts will spend all their time caring for it, and none for the reason they are there.

I plan to track time a couple more times, to solidify the data.

Has there been much media attention?
This last week there have been two articles written, one in Universe Today titled Eat Like a Martian in Alaska by Fraser Cain.  The second  was in the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer titled Resident of 'Mars Base Zero' isolates himself in greenhouse by Dermot Cole.

First week questions

Have you lost any weight?
I've lost a little bit of weight in the last week, but not too much (about a pound).

Do you grow any grains? That was the only thing I was surprised not to see on your list of foods.
  We did grow some wheat and some spelt.  It didn't grow very well.  Even if it had, grains have a very low productivity compared to potatoes.  Next summer I'd like to try barley and oats to see if we can get a little better productivity out of it.  I think we are going to end up with about a cup of wheat...in the same area if we'd had potatoes we would have gotten around 10-15 pounds of potatoes!  Hard to compete with that.

Chicken or fish would be nice for variety, but it seems like beans would probably be a more efficient source of protein.
I am thinking that we'll try chickens again next summer.  They have a problem in that we will have to import about 90% of their food--either that or the entire biosphere will be needed to support them!  In the past when we've had chickens it seems that 4 or 5 chickens will eat as much as a