Wall-E is a movie by Pixar that shows humans living in a spaceship for 700 years, due to Earth being covered in garbage.
On the goofs page of this film on the Internet Movie Data Base website, it lists this goof:
"For the ship to have survived 700+ years in space, everything would have to be recycled (including the passengers). Dumping huge amounts of trash out in space would eventually deplete the ship of materials needed to maintain operations."
I don't get that.
Clearly, no one can live to be 700 years old, so their succeeding generations would take over from them.
But what happens to the previous passenger's bodies, would they be eaten by their successors?
On the goofs page of this film on the Internet Movie Data Base website, it lists this goof:
"For the ship to have survived 700+ years in space, everything would have to be recycled (including the passengers). Dumping huge amounts of trash out in space would eventually deplete the ship of materials needed to maintain operations."
I don't get that.
Clearly, no one can live to be 700 years old, so their succeeding generations would take over from them.
But what happens to the previous passenger's bodies, would they be eaten by their successors?
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They don't have to be eaten directly, though that would be more effiecent, but they would need to be recycled, and I think that is what they meant: everything would have to be recycled (including the dead). But many people are happier with euphimism, and only a few of us find them annoying enough to make a point of it.
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everything would have to be recycled (including the passengers) -- means when they die their bodies get recycled.... no one would be gnawing on a human leg bone.... but they might get turned into hamburger.... most likely they would just become fertilizer for the crops, however, since people are squeamish that way. The ship would NEVER dump ANY garbage outside. They would have to recycle EVERY single atom and molecule.
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It's a movie, don't over think it.
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Straight to the point:
The "bottleneck" element for humans is phosphorus. Of all elements available in nature (relative to how much of each is needed in the body), phosphorus is the most difficult to find in nature.
Once you are in a closed system with no more outside supply, you will eventually run out of something, unless you recycle everything. There are many ways to retrieve elements that are used up: oxygen is turned into CO2 in the lungs, but CO2 can be used for plants where the plant keeps the C and gives back the O2
Phosphorus is the bottleneck. The only way that you will not quickly run out of phosphorus is to recycle the bodies. You cannot get rid of them, you cannot freeze them and keep them for later, and so on. You MUST recycle the bodies (regardless of how) otherwise you run out of phosphorus and, therefore, of future humans.
Pee contains water and phosphorus (and other things as well) so that even pee MUST be recycled.
In the very long run, if you dump anything out in space as garbage, then whatever elements are in the garbage are lost to the community on the ship. Even if all you dump are old nickel forks, then eventually you will run out of nickel. In a spaceship in orbit around Earth (without possibility of landing or of resupply ships coming up), nothing will come from the outside.
You start with a finite number of atoms of each element and that is what you have... forever (or until you can land somewhere).
The "bottleneck" element for humans is phosphorus. Of all elements available in nature (relative to how much of each is needed in the body), phosphorus is the most difficult to find in nature.
Once you are in a closed system with no more outside supply, you will eventually run out of something, unless you recycle everything. There are many ways to retrieve elements that are used up: oxygen is turned into CO2 in the lungs, but CO2 can be used for plants where the plant keeps the C and gives back the O2
Phosphorus is the bottleneck. The only way that you will not quickly run out of phosphorus is to recycle the bodies. You cannot get rid of them, you cannot freeze them and keep them for later, and so on. You MUST recycle the bodies (regardless of how) otherwise you run out of phosphorus and, therefore, of future humans.
Pee contains water and phosphorus (and other things as well) so that even pee MUST be recycled.
In the very long run, if you dump anything out in space as garbage, then whatever elements are in the garbage are lost to the community on the ship. Even if all you dump are old nickel forks, then eventually you will run out of nickel. In a spaceship in orbit around Earth (without possibility of landing or of resupply ships coming up), nothing will come from the outside.
You start with a finite number of atoms of each element and that is what you have... forever (or until you can land somewhere).