Of that nonexistent technology, I’d be less concerned about orbital construction methods and more concerned about sustainment of a closed-loop ecosystem. The closest anyone’s come to running a human-scale test is Biosphere 2, which didn’t go too well:
I wasn't able to get how it went badly from that article. It seems like there were some management concerns, some factionalization (that didn't turn into anything worse?), and the entire thing looked like a boondoggle, but the major problems seemed to be they got some of the numbers wrong and had to hot-patch it? The takeaway I get from there is that it's theoretically possible, results are promising, but we don't yet have full formulae.
Mainly I was thinking of the second mission, when former crew members vandalized the facility and Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon) was brought in by the owner to get costs under control. Strange story:
These crazy artist renderings allways get me; wooden barns and acres of single row farming??? Real estate in space isn’t going to be Kansas...everything needs to be super-optimized for size and efficiency (think multi stack vertical hydroponic gardens not some space farmer pulling the John Deer out of the shed)
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/trumps-chief-strategist-ran-ma...
That said, I agree that the results showed potential. I’d love to see a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk give this idea another shot.