Far beyond the moon: A history of life support systems in the space age [Book Review]

Abstract

Over the past few decades, “sustainability” has become an unavoidable watchword. Appearing everywhere from mass protests to corporate social responsibility initiatives, it signals a growing if begrudging acceptance that humanity’s industrial activities are having grave biogeochemical consequences. To mitigate the worst possible outcomes, 21st century humans will have to unlearn the habit of seeing “wastes,” including fossil energy emissions and petrochemical products, as things that can be dumped and forgotten. A sustainable future for humanity, in this view, is a future without waste. While this shift in attitudes is a relatively recent development, the underlying sensibility is certainly not without antecedents. As David P. D. Munns and Kärin Nickelsen document in their fascinating new book, Far Beyond the Moon: A History of Life Support Systems in the Space Age, American and Soviet scientists and engineers labored from the late 1950s onwards to build technologies capable of keeping human space voyagers alive for open-ended lengths of time by recycling matter within ecologically closed systems.