Thrivability Solutions Network - Solving Global Pollution, Poverty and their Consequences

Proud supporter of:

European Space Agency's Spacehouse concept

Challenge

Now, take moment and imagine if we combined the best features of the European Space Agency's Spacehouse pictured right, with the Dymaxion House, with the SPACE house concept. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first thrival civilization. The need and demand for the solutions offered by the SPACE house will grow exponentially as the world becomes increasingly overpopulated. Everyone, from individuals to mega corporations, to national governments and everyone in between, are invited to design, build and distribute your very own SPACE Houses, making them as affordable as possible.

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Thrivability Solutions Network
Solving Global Pollution, Poverty and their Consequences

The AEON Housing Standard - The All-In-One Solution to Global Overpopulation, Pandemics, Pollution, Poverty, their associated Conflicts and all 17 Global Goals

Voted Idea of the Year 2017 - IdeaExplore.net

16 of the 17 Global Goals would not be needed if only one million humans lived on Earth. Any solutions found now or in the near future will only be temporary as long as overpopulation is not addressed. The only humane way to depopulate the Earth to thrivable numbers for both us and the planet, is space colonization. To do this in an ecologically, morally and ethically responsible way, we need fix our worst problems first. Fixing them on a small, scalable template makes the most sense. The smallest basic unit of society is the family. The Automatable Ecosystem of Necessities (AEON) Housing Standard concept empowers a family to safely and easily self-produce all essential products and services required for them to thrive within an eco-friendly habitat, by reducing the domed city and its interrelated systems down to a simpler and more manageable scale. One or more AEON Greenhouses (see below) cover an eco-friendly house and its sunside yard. The greenhouse plants benefit from house's thermal mass for stable temperatures and its daily pollution production, purified into their food and water; thus ideal year-round growing conditions. The family, in turn, can reliably regenerate abundant eco-friendly energy, food, air, water, medicine, etc. A compost multi-reactor, that combines former single purpose composting technologies, could process 100% of house and garden compostable waste like paper, kitchen, garden and human waste to produce:

- Heat which can be combined with a heat pump for all year-round HVAC needs for the combined structure;

- Clean hydrogen for the remaining energy needs of the combined structure and the vehicles;

- Flash graphene - one of the lightest, strongest, thinnest, best heat- and electricity- conducting materials ever discovered!

Once mastered, AEON House production can be fully-automated to easily and inexpensively upgrade existing neighbourhoods and build new, ecologically-responsible and far less expensive towns and cities. How? The house integrates municipal housing infrastructure systems like; clean power production, pollution control, food production, water works and sewage treatment; making the external and costly versions unnecessary and obsolete. Applied globally, this easy access to healthy basic necessities reduces the worst forms of: Stress, illness, poverty, pollution, etc. The guarantee of easy access to thrival necessities for everyone, is by far, the most effective deterrent to crimes, wars and most other forms of conflicts. The humongous amounts of time, energy and resources formerly allocated to fighting these problems could be refocused on the remaining issues, especially overpopulation. The self-reliance of this closable ecosystem also facilitates thorough self-isolation needed during viral pandemics.Imagine replacing costly Band-Aid solutions like welfare cheques and Guaranteed Basic Income with automatically, self-produced Guaranteed Basic Necessities. Building the prototype, as a first step, is within easy reach of our current economical and technological capabilities:

The AEON Housing Standard proposal is currently a mix of proven technologies and techniques which only need to be combined in a new way:

Greenhouse

Engineers and other relevant specialists need to combine the inexpensive Flash Graphene production process using most of our landfill trash (compost, paper, plastics, rubbers, etc.):
(This process also generates significant amounts of hydrogen, among its expelled gases);

with plant-based graphene aerogel to create transparent, durable, lightweight, conductive, portable and well-insulated greenhouses and planters for all climates and weather. The lightweight of an aerographene aeroponics greenhouse could replace the roofs of conventional houses without reinforcements needed;
with plasma arc gasification waste treatment plants, calibrated for flash graphene and clean hydrogen mass-production;
with a portable shelter, like the Dymaxion House;
with a passive solar greenhouse, like the Ceres Greenhouse Solutions High Yield Passive Solar Kit;
with shipping container farms.

Automation

Engineers and other relevant specialists need to combinefarming robots, that can do all the work needed for planting, watering and weeding a wide variety of plants, with the versatility and precision of the arms and hands of a robot kitchen for pruning, harvesting, transporting, preparing and possibly cooking. The FarmBot web app allows you to "Graphically design your farm by dragging and dropping plants into the map. The game-like interface is learned in just a few minutes so you’ll have the whole growing season planned in no time." It includes useful details about each plant, provided by OpenFarm.

Food Production

Intensive gardening methods like BioIntensive, hydroponics, aeroponics, etc. are used to grow nutrient-dense plants, so as to abundantly feed a family, with nutritionally complete meals, in the smallest space possible.

Nutritional yeast can be grown to produce abundant vitamin B12 and other hard-to-find nutrients in plant-based foods.

Clean Meat systems could be included and tailored to keep all of the nutrition and flavor, but none of the carcinogens and other bad elements; thus eliminating slaughterhouses and their moral and ethical baggage.

Water Recycling

Engineers and other relevant specialists need to combine natural wastewater treatment solutions, including algae;

with Hydraloop with the US Water Recyler on the International Space station; with graphene water filters should provide us with very safe and clean water.

Production of Remaining Necessities

A second EON Greenhouse module could be used to grow different types of algae to help clean water and to produce more hydrogen and clean air. The second module could also be used to grow multi-use plants to supply other basic necessities like; medicine, construction materials, clothing, soaps, cleaning products, etc.

Clean Energy Production

Compost Reactor
Engineers and other relevant specialists need to combine the Home Biogas System (including the Biotoilet);
with a Compost to Hydrogen System for clean energy production;
with a Compost Heat Recovery System (CHRS), like AgriLabTech's, for heat production;

with a Compost to Graphene System for very strong and versatile construction material.

Auxiliary Clean Energy Production

Flexible and transparent graphene solar cells can transform the entire building's surfaces (including the planters) into a clean energy generator, coupled with wind turbines to generate extra clean energy for storage:

Clean Energy Storage

Organic Microbial Batteries can take advantage of the billions of microbes involved in composting and store extra electricity generated by the wind and solar power generation systems. The composting process can be tweaked to produce ammonia and methanol, to be used as Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) to load and unload hydrogen: to transport it safely and easily.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells can also store extra hydrogen produced.

Automation of Mass Production

Engineers and other relevant specialists need to adapt/develop 3D construction printers;

to use with inexpensive graphene mass-production from almost any carbon source, like Flash Graphene;

to print materials like the plant-based graphene aerogel mentioned above;

to create all, or most, of the components above, quickly and inexpensively.

Circular Economy

The EON Greenhouse is an excellent foundation upon which to build a robust circular economy. How? Most packaging waste for all products is made up of paper and plastic. Most paper is already compostable. Plastic composting bags and other compostable plastics are coming out on the market. Compostable plastic alternatives, like notpla.com and avanieco.com, could also be considered. If companies could be persuaded (perhaps with new laws) to make all packaging waste, for everything we buy, use only 100% compostable materials which degrade completely in the modernized Jean Pain composting system, then this system could:

eliminate pollution
generate virtually limitless humus and fertilizer to regrow our forests and
generate virtually limitless eco-friendly energy for additional things like; car(s), boat(s), etc. for a family.

Adaptability

EON Greenhouses can be stand-alone or attached to the roofs and/or sun-side walls of conventional homes. If there is a shortage of any one element, like energy for example, then another greenhouse module is simply added to achieve a general state of equilibrium. Developing hot-swapable, plug & play food and energy production modules, would add more precision to this state of equilibrium (and the ability to quickly adapt to unforeseen circumstances). An external tree module can be replaced with a wind turbine module and vice versa. A solar panel module can be replaced with a garden planter module and vice versa. Both electrical and irrigation lines can be strategically placed in, on and around the greenhouse to guarantee an ample supply of plants and/or energy, regardless of the season.

Mission: Desired Future History

The mission is to perfect the AEON House and to inspire reusable space rocket organizations to modify the bodies of jumbo jets to AEON standards with stronger, lighter and radiation-proof graphene and graphene composites to become modules of a Stanford Torus space station. The modules are placed atop reusable space rockets. The rockets release them in Earth’s orbit and return to the surface for more. The modules are then assembled in space into several Stanford Tori which interconnect to become a huge O’Neill Cylinder space colony. Thousands of these cylinders alleviate the overpopulation pressure on Earth and generate endless, rewarding and meaningful careers for everyone.

The purpose of the Thrivability Solutions Network is to create and perfect a single solution which fulfills all seventeen of the United Nations’ Global Goals for Sustainable Development for one family, the basic unit of any society. Then we can fully automate its mass production so that every family can have it for as Free as possible, globally:

No Poverty: Guaranteed Basic Necessities empower family members to reliably thrive; individually and collectively.
Zero Hunger: A primarily plant-based diet has been proven to boost health and well-being.
Good Health and Well-Being: In addition to the plant-based diet, the included, free membership to the INSTEAD Academy (described below) facilitates personalized, strengths-based: exercises + sports + career paths.
Quality Education: AEON House families get free membership to the Individual Natural Strengths & Talents Exploration, Application and Development - the INSTEAD Academy.
Gender Equality: Equal access to all benefits is provided to both genders.
Clean Water & Sanitation: Algae + ISS water recycler + aerographene filter for water and plant-based antibacterial soaps and detergents for sanitization.
Affordable & Clean Energy: Abundant heat and clean hydrogen extracted from the family’s daily compost production. Photovoltaic aerographene can supply any additional clean energy needs.
Decent Work & Economic Growth: Since all necessities are reliably self-produced by the houses, the economy becomes luxuries-only; thus, a middle-class lifestyle for poorest. A shift to a space colonization economy guarantees economic growth forever.
Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure: Since the Global Goals will be solved, we can focus on remaining global problems, while opening ourselves to the challenges and opportunities of space colonization.
Reduced Inequalities: The only inequalities that will remain will be for luxuries.
Sustainable Cities & Communities: The Houses’ integrated municipal infrastructures and zero pollution city upgrading and construction easier, cheaper and eco-friendly.
Responsible Consumption & Production: both are in the eco-friendly hands of the people and their cobots.
Climate Action: Each house eliminates most forms of the worst pollution, including the transportation sector.
Life Below Water: Switching humanity to a primarily plant-based diet is welcome news for life below water.
Life on Land: Massive tracts of former farmland can be reforested.
Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions: Guaranteed Necessities will significantly reduce acts of desperation, crime, war, poverty, eco-degradation, etc.
Partnership for the Goals: Let’s join together to make the AEON Housing Standard a reality!

The house eliminates as many preventable problems as possible. It creates opportunities for responsible human expansion, through the mastery of Closed Ecosystems (CEs) and through the systematic self-discovery of individuals' natural strengths and talents (see Education). Keeping the status quo, where preventable global poverty, pollution and their consequences are allowed to exist, only holds humanity back, hurts us. Creating a thrival civilization, will not only teach us how to heal our ecosystem and our civilization's worst problems, but will also provide us with the insights, tools and techniques needed for mastering the construction of CEs and Terraforming: Technologies that are necessary to open up the vast riches of space to humanity. If we can master how to thrive in harmony with the closable ecosystems of SPACE Houses, then thriving in harmony with Earth's much larger and natural closed ecosystem will become very easy. The end goal is to develop portable, all-inclusive, and self-sufficient human habitats of all shapes and sizes where humans can responsibly thrive, here on Earth or, that we can pack up and bring with us to use off-planet.

Vision

This climate crisis is showing us that temporary, short-term solutions are no longer enough. All environmental solutions are rendered temporary as long as our growing overpopulation problem is not addressed. Environmental solutions that worked when the global population was only 7 billion will no longer be sufficient when that number has risen to 10 billion or beyond. We need permanent, forever solutions. The only humane solution to overpopulation, where we do not painfully limit ourselves, is for humanity to spread throughout our solar system, in a responsible manner. This will necessitate designing anti-pollution, closed ecosystems where we can happily live, work and play our entire lives, in abundance. Closed ecosystems, like those that will be needed for domed cities on Mars and other planets, or space colonies which orbit those planets, will be designed to recycle 100% of the waste produced inside them. We need to start adapting the lifecycles for all of our current products, policies and practices to meet closed ecosystem standards, right now, for a bright future. The self-production of necessities, made possible by the AEON Housing Standard, is a logical step in that direction.

Humans, like the rest of the natural world, don't want to merely survive or be sustained, we need to grow, to flourish, to thrive! We can build a civilization designed to ensure that our planet and our species will thrive together well into a future free of overpopulation pollution and poverty.

"Fundamentally thrivability is visionary - it is about co-evolving a future we want rather than avoiding a future that terrifies us. It is about acting with enthusiasm toward an opportunity rather than away from catastrophe. It is about becoming a good ancestor."
http://www.appropedia.org/Thrivability