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Bioregenerative components for advanced life support (ALS) systems will need to be reliable and stable for long-duration space travel. To examine the stability and resilience of microbial communities that recover nutrients from inedible wheat residues, we maintained 4 bacterial strains in mixed communities for 7 weeks. After 3 weeks of incubation, aeration was stopped for several days. Although the abundance of each isolate declined during the perturbation, all strains persisted throughout the experiments. However, only 80% of functions lost during perturbation were recovered afterward. Thus, persistence of strains in a community did not guarantee the persistence of metabolic functions which those strains could perform. Niche partitioning of the heterogeneous molecules in the wheat residue apparently contributed to stable coexistence of the 4 strains.

The following paper has been prepared to describe the procedures used by the Vought Corporation to fabricate automotive body components in graphite reinforced plastic for the Ford Motor Company Graphite 1979 Ford LTD. This effort was a joint venture by the Milford Fabricating Company - a subsidiary of the Budd Company - and the Vought Corporation. Graphite Fiber Reinforced Plastic, the specified material for the major body components made it necessary to unite proven aerospace methods with current automotive prototype technology to ensure successful completion of the project. Areas to be discussed will be the master tooling aid development, high temperature epoxy molds, and component fabrication.