Translator: Catherine Dean Reviewer: Roxana Sanchez
26th of May 2014, at quarter past 11 in the morning.
Here’s what I wore to work.
I’m on a scientific mission on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii
at an altitude of 2,500 metres
and an hour and a half’s drive away from the nearest town.
I’m on a scientific mission
and on that morning,
our main mission,
was to empty our dry toilet.
The bacteria that was supposed to disintegrate our waste
hadn’t developped correctly.
And when this photo was taken, we were getting ready to empty
two months worth of waste produced by three people.
Imagine that this misadventure is happening in space.
Imagine that it’s happening on Mars.
Because we were on Mars.
Or at least, we were simulating a mission on Mars
with all the constraints it implies.
Limited resources, water, and energy.
An obligation to go out in a space suit.
On Mars, the constraints are such
that the astronauts have to live in a closed loop with their environment.
On Earth, we don’t ask these kind of questions.
Besides, until today we always considered that Earth
was an open system
in which we can use the resources indefinitely
and reject our waste indefinitely.
But this era is over.
If we want to face the energy and space constraints
of tomorrow,
we’ll have to do things differently.
Doing things differently, involves many things.
It involves a better understanding
of our ecosystems and terrestrial equilibrums.
A better way of sorting through what is really necessary for our survival
and what is superfluous.
This also means becoming more effective
in the way we recycle our waste.
And also, learning to live together
in a world with limited ressources.
As long as the vast spaces that are oceans, lands, the atmosphere,
are big enough to serve as buffers,
the terrestrial equilbrums will be robust and resilient.
But the way things are going,
we will soon be able to compare our planet to a confined space.
And in a confined space,
the smallest variation can have dire effects
on the equilibrum of our entire system.
For example, the problem that we had with our dry toilets
was due to temperatures that were too low.
Here, a simple variation of a few degrees
almost caused a sanitary disaster
in the confined space that was our dome.
In the same way, for a long time we believed that
plants couldn’t develop correctly in Earth’s orbit
because of the conditions of weightlessness.
Yet plants more or less know how to adapt to weightlessness.
The problem was the lack of ventilation.
The atmosphere was airless and ethylene accumulated.
Ethylene is a hormone produced by plants.
This is what helps fruit ripen.
But in a space station,
which is a confined space,
ethylene accumulates, surpassed a critical threshold
and inhibited the plants’ growth.
So, what do we really need to survive?
Every day, we need 800 grams of oxygen
which corresponds to all the oxygen found in 3,000 litres of air
at sea level.
More or less, the volume of a changing room.
We also need 3.2 kg of water.
This water, we find it in what we drink,
but also in what we eat.
And we need 600 grams of dry matter.
We find this in what we eat,
and it is mostly made of carbon.
For a 1,000 day mission,
with a six person team,
to Mars for example,
this vital minimum still represents 30 tonnes.
30 tonnes, that’s a big truck.
And what about waste?
Because, every day, we also expel
900 grams of carbon dioxide.
We expel 3.6 kg of water.
It’s the water we find in our urine,
but also in our stool, in our sweat and respiration.
And we expel 100 grams of dry matter
that our organism hasn’t consumed.
Regarding the sanitation water,
we need a minimum of 15 litres per day per person.
It’s the water that we need to groom,
to wash our clothes or the dishes.
Just for the comparison, in France today,
the average consumption of water per day per person
is 100 litres.
By the way, a shower for you,
how long does it take?
10 minutes?
15 minutes?
Because for me, when I was on Mars,
I was allowed eight minutes of water …
per week.
(Laughter)
And I managed to use just four.
So, four minutes of water per week,
that means a one minute to one and a half minute shower,
every two or three days.
And that was a luxury,
because the astronauts on the International Space Station,
don’t have a shower.
They use wipes throughout their stay
of five to six months.
And they also recycle their urine.
They don’t have a shower,
but they can boast that they drank the same coffee
every day for six months.
(Laughter)
The four fundamental pillars of survival are:
air renewal,
water recycling,
food production,
and waste treatment.
A main project of the European Space Agency
which I’m lucky enough to be working on,
the MELiSSA project
aims to include these four pillars
in a closed loop entirely based on biological processes.
The aim was to artificially recreate a lake’s ecosystem.
Germs disintegrate the teams’ organic waste.
By organic waste, I’m not only talking about vegetable peelings,
I am talking about feces and urine.
Germs disintegrate this waste,
and as a result we get a kind of compost that is used to feed plants and algae.
And these plants and algae, as you know,
absorb the carbon dioxide in the air
and produce the oxygen that we can breathe.
The big advantage in renewing the air with these plants,
is that is also allows the production of food.
And double advantage, plants also allow water to be recycled.
Because, when they sweat …
Yes, plants sweat too.
They sweat and they produce water vapor,
pure water, so the water is recycled.
Actually, at this precise moment,
in Barcelona,
this MELiSSA loop is being demonstrated.
Rats are breathing oxygen produced by algae
and the algae is using the CO2 exhaled by the rats to grow.
And we have a nice closed loop.
This even exists in Antartica, on the Concordia Research Station.
Antarctica, it’s a very hostile environment,
supplies are very rare.
The water treatment system at Concordia
is entirely based on MELiSSA technologies.
Recycling, caring for our ecosystems, it’s good.
But it’s not enough.
Will we know how to live together when there are ten billion of us on Earth
in a world with limited ressources?
Experiments in confined spaces,
like the one I took part in,
show that we also need to make progress in this area.
For four months,
I noticed that being together 24-7,
tensions started to appear.
But we didn’t have a choice,
we couldn’t get away or change collaborators.
We had to make do till the end of the mission.
We found ways to lighten the atmosphere,
that were based on games and humor.
And in particular, we had one game,
the rover game,
that consisted in hiding a little magnetised rover
like the one you can see behind me.
We would hide it somewhere inside the dome
and the next day,
the person who would find it would not only win points,
but also the privilege of hiding it the next day.
Me, I always lost this game,
I could never find it.
And this lead to many jokes from my teammates,
but it was a great way to bring the team together.
One time, I came back from an outing
and my room was entirely plastered with post-its.
They were everywhere.
On the walls, on the floor, on the desk …
It was incredible!
Put yourselves in my place.
It had been three months, three and a half months,
since a spontaneous event had happened in my life.
And now, my teammates had decided to play a big joke on me.
It was magical that night,
the atmosphere was really great, we all had a laugh.
An important thing that comes out of these simulations,
of these missions in confined spaces,
is that, in these cases,
we can’t put our own personal interests and comfort
before those of the team and the mission.
If we do, we’re bound to fail.
We will never be able to acheive the mission
in good conditions.
In the same way,
we are all here together
on this spaceship we call Earth,
and if some countries continue to consider that Earth
is an open space with unlimited ressources,
without worrying about the rest of the planet,
it’s a guaranteed failure for us all.
End of July 2014,
I emerged from four months of isolation.
When I entered the dome,
it was the end of winter.
I came out in the middle of summer.
One of the things that I possibly missed the most that year,
was spring.
When I emerged,
I took a deep breathe of fresh air.
The sun stroked my skin.
It was the first time in four months.
Later that day, I smelled cut grass.
You know, that characterstic smell
when you’ve just cut the lawn.
I heard birds singing.
And I dived into the ocean.
And then, it hit me,
I was rediscovering all the things
that I’d taken for granted all my life,
that were normal for me,
the seasons,
fresh air,
the heat of the sun,
the oceans,
the surrounding fauna and flora
And what if one day, all these things ceased to exist?
You think it’s the stuff of science fiction?
So was going to the moon in the last century.
No, it’s real.
In the medium-to-long term,
if we don’t change the way we use the planet’s ressources,
all these things that surround us
will disappear.
So, I ask you:
could our houses,
our towns,
learn from these closed loops
and become recycling machines
to enable us all to live on Earth sustainably?
Thank you.
(Applause)
26th of May 2014, at quarter past 11 in the morning.
Here’s what I wore to work.
I’m on a scientific mission on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii
at an altitude of 2,500 metres
and an hour and a half’s drive away from the nearest town.
I’m on a scientific mission
and on that morning,
our main mission,
was to empty our dry toilet.
The bacteria that was supposed to disintegrate our waste
hadn’t developped correctly.
And when this photo was taken, we were getting ready to empty
two months worth of waste produced by three people.
Imagine that this misadventure is happening in space.
Imagine that it’s happening on Mars.
Because we were on Mars.
Or at least, we were simulating a mission on Mars
with all the constraints it implies.
Limited resources, water, and energy.
An obligation to go out in a space suit.
On Mars, the constraints are such
that the astronauts have to live in a closed loop with their environment.
On Earth, we don’t ask these kind of questions.
Besides, until today we always considered that Earth
was an open system
in which we can use the resources indefinitely
and reject our waste indefinitely.
But this era is over.
If we want to face the energy and space constraints
of tomorrow,
we’ll have to do things differently.
Doing things differently, involves many things.
It involves a better understanding
of our ecosystems and terrestrial equilibrums.
A better way of sorting through what is really necessary for our survival
and what is superfluous.
This also means becoming more effective
in the way we recycle our waste.
And also, learning to live together
in a world with limited ressources.
As long as the vast spaces that are oceans, lands, the atmosphere,
are big enough to serve as buffers,
the terrestrial equilbrums will be robust and resilient.
But the way things are going,
we will soon be able to compare our planet to a confined space.
And in a confined space,
the smallest variation can have dire effects
on the equilibrum of our entire system.
For example, the problem that we had with our dry toilets
was due to temperatures that were too low.
Here, a simple variation of a few degrees
almost caused a sanitary disaster
in the confined space that was our dome.
In the same way, for a long time we believed that
plants couldn’t develop correctly in Earth’s orbit
because of the conditions of weightlessness.
Yet plants more or less know how to adapt to weightlessness.
The problem was the lack of ventilation.
The atmosphere was airless and ethylene accumulated.
Ethylene is a hormone produced by plants.
This is what helps fruit ripen.
But in a space station,
which is a confined space,
ethylene accumulates, surpassed a critical threshold
and inhibited the plants’ growth.
So, what do we really need to survive?
Every day, we need 800 grams of oxygen
which corresponds to all the oxygen found in 3,000 litres of air
at sea level.
More or less, the volume of a changing room.
We also need 3.2 kg of water.
This water, we find it in what we drink,
but also in what we eat.
And we need 600 grams of dry matter.
We find this in what we eat,
and it is mostly made of carbon.
For a 1,000 day mission,
with a six person team,
to Mars for example,
this vital minimum still represents 30 tonnes.
30 tonnes, that’s a big truck.
And what about waste?
Because, every day, we also expel
900 grams of carbon dioxide.
We expel 3.6 kg of water.
It’s the water we find in our urine,
but also in our stool, in our sweat and respiration.
And we expel 100 grams of dry matter
that our organism hasn’t consumed.
Regarding the sanitation water,
we need a minimum of 15 litres per day per person.
It’s the water that we need to groom,
to wash our clothes or the dishes.
Just for the comparison, in France today,
the average consumption of water per day per person
is 100 litres.
By the way, a shower for you,
how long does it take?
10 minutes?
15 minutes?
Because for me, when I was on Mars,
I was allowed eight minutes of water …
per week.
(Laughter)
And I managed to use just four.
So, four minutes of water per week,
that means a one minute to one and a half minute shower,
every two or three days.
And that was a luxury,
because the astronauts on the International Space Station,
don’t have a shower.
They use wipes throughout their stay
of five to six months.
And they also recycle their urine.
They don’t have a shower,
but they can boast that they drank the same coffee
every day for six months.
(Laughter)
The four fundamental pillars of survival are:
air renewal,
water recycling,
food production,
and waste treatment.
A main project of the European Space Agency
which I’m lucky enough to be working on,
the MELiSSA project
aims to include these four pillars
in a closed loop entirely based on biological processes.
The aim was to artificially recreate a lake’s ecosystem.
Germs disintegrate the teams’ organic waste.
By organic waste, I’m not only talking about vegetable peelings,
I am talking about feces and urine.
Germs disintegrate this waste,
and as a result we get a kind of compost that is used to feed plants and algae.
And these plants and algae, as you know,
absorb the carbon dioxide in the air
and produce the oxygen that we can breathe.
The big advantage in renewing the air with these plants,
is that is also allows the production of food.
And double advantage, plants also allow water to be recycled.
Because, when they sweat …
Yes, plants sweat too.
They sweat and they produce water vapor,
pure water, so the water is recycled.
Actually, at this precise moment,
in Barcelona,
this MELiSSA loop is being demonstrated.
Rats are breathing oxygen produced by algae
and the algae is using the CO2 exhaled by the rats to grow.
And we have a nice closed loop.
This even exists in Antartica, on the Concordia Research Station.
Antarctica, it’s a very hostile environment,
supplies are very rare.
The water treatment system at Concordia
is entirely based on MELiSSA technologies.
Recycling, caring for our ecosystems, it’s good.
But it’s not enough.
Will we know how to live together when there are ten billion of us on Earth
in a world with limited ressources?
Experiments in confined spaces,
like the one I took part in,
show that we also need to make progress in this area.
For four months,
I noticed that being together 24-7,
tensions started to appear.
But we didn’t have a choice,
we couldn’t get away or change collaborators.
We had to make do till the end of the mission.
We found ways to lighten the atmosphere,
that were based on games and humor.
And in particular, we had one game,
the rover game,
that consisted in hiding a little magnetised rover
like the one you can see behind me.
We would hide it somewhere inside the dome
and the next day,
the person who would find it would not only win points,
but also the privilege of hiding it the next day.
Me, I always lost this game,
I could never find it.
And this lead to many jokes from my teammates,
but it was a great way to bring the team together.
One time, I came back from an outing
and my room was entirely plastered with post-its.
They were everywhere.
On the walls, on the floor, on the desk …
It was incredible!
Put yourselves in my place.
It had been three months, three and a half months,
since a spontaneous event had happened in my life.
And now, my teammates had decided to play a big joke on me.
It was magical that night,
the atmosphere was really great, we all had a laugh.
An important thing that comes out of these simulations,
of these missions in confined spaces,
is that, in these cases,
we can’t put our own personal interests and comfort
before those of the team and the mission.
If we do, we’re bound to fail.
We will never be able to acheive the mission
in good conditions.
In the same way,
we are all here together
on this spaceship we call Earth,
and if some countries continue to consider that Earth
is an open space with unlimited ressources,
without worrying about the rest of the planet,
it’s a guaranteed failure for us all.
End of July 2014,
I emerged from four months of isolation.
When I entered the dome,
it was the end of winter.
I came out in the middle of summer.
One of the things that I possibly missed the most that year,
was spring.
When I emerged,
I took a deep breathe of fresh air.
The sun stroked my skin.
It was the first time in four months.
Later that day, I smelled cut grass.
You know, that characterstic smell
when you’ve just cut the lawn.
I heard birds singing.
And I dived into the ocean.
And then, it hit me,
I was rediscovering all the things
that I’d taken for granted all my life,
that were normal for me,
the seasons,
fresh air,
the heat of the sun,
the oceans,
the surrounding fauna and flora
And what if one day, all these things ceased to exist?
You think it’s the stuff of science fiction?
So was going to the moon in the last century.
No, it’s real.
In the medium-to-long term,
if we don’t change the way we use the planet’s ressources,
all these things that surround us
will disappear.
So, I ask you:
could our houses,
our towns,
learn from these closed loops
and become recycling machines
to enable us all to live on Earth sustainably?
Thank you.
(Applause)
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