Eino Kenttä

A thing I thought of is carbon. To keep plants growing in a moon base, you'd need carbon. To build any kind of living soil, you'd need a whole bunch more. On Earth we have an (all too) abundant supply in the shape of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. No such thing exists on the moon. It seems (from here) that both carbon and nitrogen only exist in trace quantities on the moon. Of course, the people would breathe out CO2 as long as they had food, but soil building at least would be a major carbon sink. So a carbon source is needed.

Oxygen exists abundantly on the moon, bound up in various minerals. If you could free up some of this oxygen (which is probably possible with an abundant supply of energy) you could set up a high-temperature incinerator operating on pure oxygen, and burn any scraps of plastic-like materials that are beyond other reuse or recycling. This would give a carbon dioxide source for growing things. Even if building soil is not a priority, I guess you could feed the CO2 to algae, and then use them as either food or raw material for making things like bioplastics...

Amy Gardener wrote:
Maybe chickens (delivered as fertilized eggs) could also live in the [recycled plastic and aluminum?] greenhouse tents that Thom suggests. They could eat the mealworms and, eventually, the residents could supplement mealworms with eggs, chicken, and soft feathers, not to mention fertilizers for heating the tents and nourishing the gardens.

I think I've read/heard somewhere (might have been in one of Common Sense Skeptic's "Debunking Starship" videos or in the comment section to the same, or in something similar) that chickens have issues with low gravity. Seems flying is actually tricky for them in weightless conditions, who'd have guessed... But maybe lunar gravity is strong enough that it's not a problem?

I heard about a recent project in France, where they combined a daycare with a nursing home. They reported great results, the kids were calmer around the old people, and the old people got more energy from being around kids. And then it was closed down due to covid... Hope they restarted it.

I think age segregation is deeply unnatural to humans. Conversation and sharing in multi-aged groups is the most basic way to pass knowledge between generations. There seems to be a tendency in today's society to view both children and the elderly as mainly a bit of a bother, and stick them in specialized containment facilities so they don't "get in the way". I doubt this is good for anyone in the long run.

Don't have pictures sadly. I'm not there right now. I'll see if I can find it again in the spring. It didn't have any berries either of the times I saw it, but might be too young.

It seems like the material that makes sparks in lighters is ferrocerium. Those sparks should be extremely hot. Might be useful for lighting thermite in thermite welding?

I found an all-albino lingonberry plant in the forest close to our land. It was still alive one year after I first spotted it. I guess there are two possibilities: Either it's not a whole plant, but a mutated shoot from an otherwise normal plant, or else it's being kept alive by the mycorrhiza...

Good that it worked! For future reference, though: When treating wooden boats with pine tar, it's traditionally mixed with linseed oil and turpentine, to make it more easily absorbed by the wood. One recipe I've seen calls for equal parts of the three ingredients.