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The Last Egg

brr.fyi

21–30 of 204 posts

Re: The Last Egg

#21

And people think we're gonna colonize mars. We can't even colonize the south pole, a much more hospitable environment.

I'd argue that we absolutely could colonize the south pole if people were as excited about it as we are about colonizing Mars. I think it's less that we "can't" and more that governments don't really care about it as much.

Re: The Last Egg

#22

And people think we're gonna colonize mars. We can't even colonize the south pole, a much more hospitable environment.

It's instructive that none of the solutions proposed for growing fresh food on Mars have been tried at either McMurdo (which is a huge and lavishly outfitted research base) or the South Pole.

This is part of what I think of as the Martian fallacy, the idea that stuff that's hard to do on Earth somehow becomes easier on Mars.

Re: The Last Egg

#23
post #6
post #3

I wonder how much trouble keeping chickens in the greenhouse would be. I feel like some partially agua culture setup that’s closed loop and consumes the compost could work well, but is probably too expensive in terms of heated square footage to make sense.

I'd be concerned about the health risks. Poultry can spread a few nasty bacterial diseases to humans, and in a closed and isolated environment like this contagion is surely something to be strenuously avoided.

Sure but these chickens would be isolated from the outside world, like a lab setting, so how would they come in contact with something that could harm humans?

Re: The Last Egg

#26
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be concerned about the health risks. Poultry can spread a few nasty bacterial diseases to humans, and in a closed and isolated environment like this contagion is surely something to be strenuously avoided.

Sure but these chickens would be isolated from the outside world, like a lab setting, so how would they come in contact with something that could harm humans?

Oh, like raised from the egg kind of situation?

I think there still an issue of cross contamination with things that don't grow on humans or objects, but love chickens in the air or incidental dusts.

Re: The Last Egg

#27
post #20

And people think we're gonna colonize mars. We can't even colonize the south pole, a much more hospitable environment.

The south pole IS colonized. There is literally a colony there since 1956

A colony implies sustained long-term habitation by the same people; that's not true for the South Pole station, which is a research facility where people rotate out.

As far as I know, the only country to try colonizing Antarctica proper has been Argentina, with a small number of families settling at Esperanza Base (at the north end of the Antarctic Penninsula) and a big fuss made about the first kids born on the Antarctic mainland.

Chile maintains a little civilian settlement called Villa Las Estrellas on an offshore Antarctic island with similar motives as the Argentines. Everyone else just ignores this embarrassing rivalry.

Re: The Last Egg

#28
post #20

And people think we're gonna colonize mars. We can't even colonize the south pole, a much more hospitable environment.

The south pole IS colonized. There is literally a colony there since 1956

I interpret the OP's use of the term "colonize" to mean "permanently relocate to"

Re: The Last Egg

#29
There was a Googler who spent some time at the South Pole station and gave a talk about it. I won't name him here, but maybe he's reading this?

What I recall was him walking around and over the actual Pole and trying to get his GPS to register 90.0 degrees. It wouldn't go beyond 89.999.

Re: The Last Egg

#30
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be concerned about the health risks. Poultry can spread a few nasty bacterial diseases to humans, and in a closed and isolated environment like this contagion is surely something to be strenuously avoided.

Sure but these chickens would be isolated from the outside world, like a lab setting, so how would they come in contact with something that could harm humans?

classic paper from 1973: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3862013 "An Outbreak of Common Colds at an Antarctic Base after Seventeen Weeks of Complete Isolation"

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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