Om

It's an interesting thought NikolaiI, but ecosystems are delicate things, affected by atmosphere, gravity amongst other things. Don't they do experiments with baby chickens on the space station? I think they found that the lack of gravity had a significant affect on development, so I suppose until such time that they've figured out how to establish an artificial gravity the possibility of putting together a full ecosystem is slim. Of course the development of artificial gravity could have mind blowing possibilities!

I've been there for years Nik. There are several obstacles to overcome, but the reality of it is that the best way to sustain long term colonisation of space is through the route that you mention. I'm past that stage and looking at mineral rights and mining in space. Working on a weird mining sci fi story about different tectonics on one particular planet, but it has an internal ecosystem on the moving mining platform. Oh well, how would you go about this ecosystem, if you could make it?

The one I'm thinking? Just have a bunch of stuff you'd compost, like eggs, banana peels, stuff organic, and then take some flies with you, they grow like crazy in it, and then have things that sustain themselves off the flies, and have the whole thing in view of the sun and powered by it, the plants getting their sunlight from it, etc..