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A human life support system based on environment regeneration by plant photosynthesis has been developed and investigated. The system matter turnover involves humans not as an object to be sustained only, but also as a component whose metabolism provides for reliable and steady operation of the entire system. Experiments that lasted for several months demonstrated feasibility to completely regenerate atmosphere, water and 93% of the plant part of human diet in such a system. Self-sustained operation of the system requires the human to control all processes running within the system. Long-standing (many years) observations of health of a large group of people who took part in experiments revealed no pathological changes proving the adequacy of the system habitat to human requirements.

A continuous densitostat culture of unicellular alga of Chlorella exposed to short-wave UV emission was used to demonstrate the nature of damage and ability of this biological system to self-restore after the removal of exposure. A facility for continuous densitostat cultivation of Chlorella for this kind of research has been described. A flow densitostat culture is a direct analogue of the natural selection. Dependence of damage on the emission dose is S-shaped. Specific growth rate with time after UV exposure is expressed analytically. The mathematical model has shown good agreement with experiment.

Biological and physical-chemical life support systems historically have been developed separately and counter-poised. To sustain long-term life support, the problem is to distribute optimally the functions between biological and physical-chemical processes in an integrated life support system (LSS) conforming to the terms and conditions of a particular mission. The basic constructive process in an integrated LSS is the synthesis of human food based on the photosynthesis of higher plants and further biochemical transformations of the primary biomass. In the foreseeable future this function can be efficiently performed by the biological component of the system only. The complementary side effects produced by photosynthesis are carbon dioxide absorption, emission of oxygen and purification of water and atmosphere.

Different versions of lunar base Biological LSS (BLSS) are optimized, compared and discussed in terms of two criteria: well known criterion of minimal accumulated mass and the criterion of integral reliability which takes into account LSS reliability, LSS mass, the quality of human life, some aspects of lunar base servicing. In the paper different types of BLSS for lunar base are considered: LSS with hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria; LSS with micro-algae; LSS with higher plants. The influence of different power source usage on optimal BLSS structure is also investigated. The parameters of lunar base BLSS based on present level of closure technology are calculated.

To investigate LSS an EXCEL Spreadsheet is designed. The spreadsheet consists of data on two different LSS types: biological and physico-chemical. Biological LSS include those based on hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria, microalgae, higher plants, higher plants and mushrooms, and higher plants with physical/chemical incineration of wastes. Simulations using this spreadsheet, showed that LSS with higher plants realize different structure of LSS (ratio of biological species, their mass, etc.) with different operation time. Thus, the system with higher plants has been found to have three different structures if incineration is used and six structures in opposite case. In the case of a vegetarian diet, 100% closure can be obtained.