The Moon Society Forum

Since the early days of science fiction, writers have assumed that space agriculture was going to be necessary to maintain a breathable atmosphere. Heinlein's Space Cadet (actually, the Space Cadets' captain) had to construct a makeshift still to condense the CO2 out of the air when his shipboard farm died, and Pournelle postulated big tanks of algae growing in sewage which were eventually processed into flour. I'm not saying that the atmosphere won't be a consideration, but with oxygen so plentiful in the lunar regolith and with abundant sunlight for processing and refining metals, it seems to me that there might be some kind of a paradigm shift. Thinking about the situation, I believe that agriculture on the Moon should be aimed primarily at these objectives:

1. Recycling scarce carbon and nitrogen in the artificial ecosystem to minimize resupply from Earth.
   
2. Supplementing the colonists' diet with fresh food with an eventual goal of making comestibles self-sustaining.
   
   and, lastly:
   
3. Maintaining that breathable atmosphere.

Comments?

yes, we can extract oxygen from regolith and condense CO2 from the air with cooling and pressure. This would supply a back up system in case of a crop failure. At first we will use physio-chemical air and water purification 'cause it's gonna take awhile to form compost and grow plants.