'The Alga-tron and the Aqua-Hamster: Engineering Models of Closed Sanitation Infrastructures to Live In Space.'

• In Event: Infrastructure, Worlding and Knowledge

Abstract

ABSTRACT:

In 2016, NASA announced the “poop challenge,” just the most recent attempt to understand the problem of plumbing and sanitation infrastructure in space; a rich, long, and varied history that seemingly tried everything from alga-trons to aqua-hamsters. In both the Russian and American space programs, the overarching aim was to create closed-loop, ecological habitats for space stations, trips to Mars, and even generational journeys to other stars. In this talk, I shall show how it was engineers often contracted from aerospace, not ecologists, that discovered major insights into the working of whole living environments through closing the food-waste loops of humans and alage. Notably, in those early space habitat experiments one major discovery was that self-sustaining ecosystem must incorporate humans themselves as a functional component alongside an array of other living things. A generation later back on Earth humanity realized it had entered the Anthropocene, a period where human lives and societies are increasingly fundamentally altering the very climate and geology of Earth. It was the engineers and life scientists of the space programs who made the otherwise invisible infrastructure of sanitation not only visible but a necessary part of the space age and now teh Anthropocene.

Author

• David Munns, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY