In Space, No One Will Do Your Laundry

Materials are important. Well, we?re certainly not going to be sending sheep into space or growing cotton . . . but maybe we are! Nobody knows. Are we going to be growing cotton on Mars, or harvesting spider silk as we pass Jupiter? We?ve got to think about this, and then circle back to the planet to apply those changes here.

One of the major places to start is miniaturization. Right now, if you?re going to manufacture clothing, you need rooms full of equipment. We?ll need to minimize these processes. The second thing we need to get really good at is recycling. Recycling, repurposing, reusing anything and everything, including clothing.

Are the coverings going to become fibers and fabrics as we know them? Maybe not. This very quickly becomes a cultural investigation. What is clothing? Maybe we need to rethink what it means to be covered or clothed. Are we coated somehow, instead of wearing pieces of fabric? That could get really weird, but maybe that?s what needs to happen if the civilization is going to move off the planet. We?ve been harvesting, spinning, weaving, cutting, and sewing for tens of thousands of years. Are we just going to stop? That seems fairly unlikely, but maybe we have to. Maybe it?s time for something else.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/moon-mars/we-must-tackle-our-space-laundry-problem-14985942?src=rss

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