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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the lots-of-MREs dept.

How to make the food and water Mars-bound astronauts will need for their mission:

If we ever intend to send crewed missions to deep-space locations, then we need to come up with solutions for keeping the crews supplied. For astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who regularly receive resupply missions from Earth, this is not an issue. But for missions traveling to destinations like Mars and beyond, self-sufficiency is the name of the game.

This is the idea behind projects like BIOWYSE and TIME SCALE, which are being developed by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Space (CIRiS) in Norway. These two systems are all about providing astronauts with a sustainable and renewable supply of drinking water and plant food. In so doing, they address two of the most important needs of humans performing long-duration missions that will take them far from home.

[...] In short, the ISS relies on costly resupply missions to provide 20% of its water and all of its food. But if and when astronauts establish outposts on the moon and Mars, this may not be an option. While sending supplies to the moon can be done in three days, the need to do so regularly will make the cost of sending food and water prohibitive. Meanwhile, it takes eight months for spacecraft to reach Mars, which is totally impractical.

So it is little wonder that the proposed mission architectures for the moon and Mars include in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), in which astronauts will use local resources to be as self-sufficient as possible. Ice on the lunar and Martian surfaces, a prime example, will be harvested to provide drinking and irrigation water. But missions to deep-space locations will not have this option while they are in transit.

[...] Technologies like these will be crucial when it comes time to establish a human presence on the moon, on Mars, and for the sake of deep-space missions. In the coming years, NASA plans to make the long-awaited return to the moon with Project Artemis, which will be the first step in the creation of what they envision as a program for "sustainable lunar exploration."


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  • (Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday June 04 2020, @11:39AM (1 child)

    by Muad'Dave (1413) on Thursday June 04 2020, @11:39AM (#1003136)

    Now that SpaceX is in the mix, and since they're keen to use liquid methane as a fuel, why not use organisms that can convert methane to animal feed [wikipedia.org]? This one is aerobic, but there are anaerobic versions that wouldn't compete for breathable O2. They're generally known as methanotrophs [wikipedia.org].

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 04 2020, @01:56PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Thursday June 04 2020, @01:56PM (#1003185)

    Quite so. I've suggested those in the past, but I felt this post was getting a bit long-winded already. They also haven't benefited from the amount of R&D that's been put into the hydrogen-eaters, so are likely to be less practical and refined (aka nutritious and tasty) as a near-term solution. Besides, generating hydrogen relatively efficiently from either water or methane is pretty straightforward and efficient, though you do lose the redundancy of being able to turn your fuel stockpile into an emergency food supply even if your infrastructure is crippled.