Saturday 26 December 2009

Moonbase Beta 0.1.1


This may not look like much but it is a basic shelter put together with stuff that was lying around (had been picked up in the woods, etc. and from leftovers in the loft) and incorporating the fence at the bottom of the garden. It took around twenty minutes to put together. I had the idea over on twitter. My thinking was that OK, so we're not looking after this planet too well so maybe we should consider the Moon. However, having carried out some basic research on starting to build my own rockets (seriously) I figured a. the Moon is quite some way away and b. that I didn't like the idea of using fossil fuel/chemical propellants (surely it only leads to more pollution here back on Earth). I did think about alternatives to the latter like giant solenoids or (more in the realms of science fiction perhaps) solar reflectors/laser propellants (although I am sure some military project is working on this right now).

So, anyhow, I decided a better way to go in the meantime would be to try out an Earthship, something I've kind of experimented with in the past. That time I was attempting to further insulate a standard garden shed with sandwiches of shredded paper but was duly interrupted by other projects and associated misfortunes! However, here we have an improvised shelter which when coupled with the renewables projects (which you can get a good idea of at www.diyngo.org), water capture and filtration (I previously bought a Mountain Rescue hand pump water filter) plus perhaps a few other bells and whistles may lead to a sustainable building of sorts. At least its worth experimenting with and its really good fun to boot. Makes for a great education project for the young people who are the ones who will really be suffering the most if we don't soon sort out the climate mess...

Remember this version is really just a bookmark (a mock-up), a way to get the ball rolling. I'll post further examples of this line of thought here if there's anything substantial to report. For now, go have some fun down the bottom of your garden, assuming you're lucky enough to have one.