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| The descendant of my new house... |
I'm afraid that posting in the merry month of July will be a bit light (like June wasn't!) but there is a very good reason for this. We're moving! My lovely family and I will by the end of the week be the proud owners of our first home. We must be moved out out of our current residence by the end of the month, as it's new owner wants to get settled before the fall. I have no problem with this; the idea of moving into a home we own outright is so exciting that it almost overrides the stress of moving itself. Sure, the new place is just a 1993, 16x80 single-wide, but it will be ours. The difference, for those of you who don't own homes, is profound. For one thing, the aquaponics experiments that I had to cut short due to my illness can finally continue, and I may even start working on some solar power experiments.
But that's another story. My main priority, other than moving, for the rest of the month is to get the latest Ship of the Black Desert finished and in the can before the computer must be packed up. I'll post updates on the project, but that will probably be it. In August, I hope to be able to do more speculation on zero-gravity martial arts and other speculative projects while moving forward on the core book.
Anyway, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got to pack...
Ah, home ownership. The repairs. The chores. The etc. All sarcasm of one homeowner to another, you were probably well aware of all of that when you signed up for it. Good luck with the grand adventure.
ReplyDeleteNow, aquaponics - how does that differ from hydroponics?
Aquaponics is the combination of hydroponics and aquaculture. Long story short, the dirty water from the fish is filtered through the hydroponic beds and the nutrients feeds the plants. It's closed to a closed-loop system. The trick is to add algae tanks to the system, using some of the fish waste for food, in order to produce food for the fish themselves. The system will still have losses, but it's possible, with the addition of human sewage, to add enough nitrogen-rich waste back into the system to sustain the algae.
ReplyDeleteThis would mean that people would eat the veggies from the hydroponics, their waste would feed the algae, the algae would feed the fish, and the fish waste would feed the veggies. By balancing the fish consumption to the absolute minimum needed to sustain a healthy fish stock, the system may be sustainable in a closed-loop. Most aquaponic systems have fish as an end product, not as an essential part of the support system, and I think that's where they fail. By biting the bullet and making the diet almost completely vegetarian, I think it's possible for the algae-fish-veggie-human loop to become sustainable. This, of course, would solve the long-term life support problems of not only space travel, but of planet-based agriculture.
Once set up, the system requires very little maintenance. This means that decentralized, sustainable agriculture could be practiced by by individual family groups. With our current dependence on centralized, oil-hungry agriculture, this kind of system may be more valuable than we think...
Closed ecological life-support system, for the win.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Michael Savage on this (THE MILLENIAL PROJECT). The goal is to have all wastes be feed-stocks into the next process in the chain.
Ray, can you shoot me some basic links that you used to do research on it? My wife heard about this and I didn't know a) what it was called and b) where to start.
ReplyDeleteBesides, tilapia is yummy...
Notta problem! Start with these two; they're perfect for low-to-no budgets and you can find out if it's right for you:
ReplyDeletehttp://affnan-aquaponics.blogspot.com/
http://affnan-aquaponics.blogspot.com/p/affnans-aquaponics-index-page.html
Thanks! Now to read them tomorrow.
ReplyDelete