>Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation.
Can we trust them to enough? If they have a medical emergency (which is quite probable, old people are in risk of all kinds of trouble, even before the harsh environment of spaceships), will the whole mission fail?
We generally have selected the most vigorous military personnel to participate in these types of missions, using old volunteers would be quite a change.
I agree. And how all of our meager steps towards trying to learn the pre-requisites of sustainable colonies (eg. closed cycle ecology) have failed miserably. For example Biosphere program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 ).
And the only working ecological system we can study is being destroyed by humanity and capital on record pace.
Biosphere 2 had the problem, not least, that it didn't have enough of an atmosphere to buffer swings of CO2 concentration between day and night. It's like "what did they think would happen?"
I think it is more that you need a specific endpoint and a real business plan. Like how could Biosphere 2 have really made money?
A closed loop ecology for, say, survival on Mars, is an interesting question that somebody might need an answer to but there is no reason why it needs to look like the Earth with oceans and all and it might lean heavily on bacteria that live in vats or 24 hour illuminated agriculture or something.
Meanwhile it is not so clear that from a scientific point of view that some experiment in a greenhouse can give conclusive answers about the ecology of the Earth where so much is going on.
The energy balance just does not work with current agricultural paradigm. For example, plowing is really energy intensive and electric tractors just can't carry the required amount of batteries. Too heavy tractors compact the earth and sink in bad weather conditions.
For electrification to really proceed in ag, we need a revolution in the paradigm, something that removes most of the energy heavy processes.
JCB came to the conclusion there was no future in EV tractors and earth movers and went all-in on hydrogen ICE instead. We will shortly see if they were correct.
Sadly it will also burn other stuff around. If it would only eat itself, I would watch with glee. But when it eats the life-sphere and our lifesupport before, I feel less gleeful
Not end to end encrypted? I'd wager most email traffic is encrypted while in transit, but of course that depends on the service providers. And it does sit unencrypted when stored.
>Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation.
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