#38: Wetlands in Space!!! Mars Society and ECLSS

#38: Wetlands in Space!!! Mars Society, ECLSS, and BioMining Mars

Doug:  We talked to you awhile ago and you were going to be giving a presentation at the Altoona Public Library.  Just to give a re-cap, what exactly is EcoIslands LLC? What is it you guys do?

Colin:  So we build Wetlands in a Box and it cleans up coal mining impacts from mine drainage and strip mines.  And we are also working into some cannabis grows, water recycling systems. And starting to work our way into the Department of Defense as well as things like Nasa and space exploration.  (See NASA and ECLSS)

Doug:  And that’s what we wanted to talk about here.  You just got back from a conference in Los Angeles.  What was this about and what was the conference?

Colin: So it was the 22nd annual international Mars Society Conference.  And it’s just what it sounds like, a bunch of people who love the idea of going to Mars.

Lots of big groups, a couple of presenters from NASA were there. Apparently Elon presented just a couple of years ago.

Doug: Elon Musk from SpaceX.

Colin: Yup, Elon from SpaceX, Tesla, the Boring Company, those roof (electric) shingle things.  I’m kinda like, Elon man, pick one and stick with it sometime.  So the Mars Society had a lot of talks on how to get there.  Why go to Mars instead of the moon. They had a big debate on which is better and why, which costs more, and basically comes down to the resources.  Mars has more resources even though the moon is only four days away, whereas Mars is a two year round trip.

Doug:  But they had Matt Damon.

Colin:  But they do have Matt Damon, yeah.  Matt Damon.

Doug:  So it comes down to this.  What does a company in Altoona have to do with a trip to the Moon or Mars.

Colin:  Well, everything we do in our lives, whether it’s manufacturing [growing] food, home living, requires water.  And if you can reduce the costs of treating water then you impact every single other piece of an economy.

Whether it’s the home economy, a coal fired power plant, a petrochemical plant, a hospital, Northfolk Southern over here, everything uses water.

And anything that you can do to reduce those costs then gives you a leg up. But more specifically, since we acid mine drainage, you’re dealing with iron and manganese, youre dealing with rare earth metals, cadmium, lithium, aluminum.  Pretty much all of the extractions that people think about in mining can also be done, essentially, with a wetland in a box. And its done by nature, by the microbes in that box that is then able to separate the materials. So for instance, we’ve got a system up here by Asheville that [has] what’s called low pH iron oxidation.  And researchers down at [the] West Virginia Water Research Institute under Doctor Paul Ziemkiewicz have found that rare earth elements, and anybody that has a cell phone in their pockets…

Keep listening or visit EcoIslands.Com to learn more about how wetland distillation can reshape civilization on Earth, Mars and Beyond.  Cheers! Colin