Have no fear! Nanotechnology is the answer! Here's a sample from NASA:
Quote:
Waste Recycling
An advanced nanotechnology might be able to build filters that dynamically modify themselves to attract the contaminant molecules detected by the air and water quality sensors. Once attached to the filter, the filter could in principle move the offending molecules to a molecular laboratory for modifications to useful or at least inert products. A swarm might implement such an active filter if it was able to dynamically manufacture proteins that could bind contaminant molecules. The protein and bound contaminant might then be manipulated by the swarm for transportation.
With a sufficiently advanced nanotechnology it might even be possible to directly generate food by non-biological means. Then agriculture waste in a self-sufficient space colony could be converted directly to useful nutrition. Making this food attractive will be a major challenge.
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We could even put these "swarms" in people's minds! Make them behave all nice-like.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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