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Estimates of life-support system mass and power demands were generated using the Life Support Systems Analysis (LiSSA) tool for extra-terrestrial outposts. Parameters varied include the crew size, mission duration, power source, and operating-unit redundancy. Development of promising technologies could reduce launch costs by over $30 million but R&D investment is required. Biological food production technologies are power intensive requiring an order of magnitude more power than physical/chemical air/water regenerative systems. The cost of launching and operating a food production facility is justified by the cost of resupply of food if the mission duration is of the order of several years. A system utilizing food production is, by definition, a highly-recycled and closed-loop system; modeling efforts for such systems should rigorously keep track of all chemical species that have a significant impact on crew survival and processing demands.

A model has been developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to quantitatively compare and select life support systems and technology options. The model consists of a modular, top-down hierarchical breakdown of the life support system into subsystems, and further breakdown of subsystems into functional elements representing individual processing technologies. A series of papers titled “Human Life Support During Interplanetary Travel and Domicile” was planned to describe the technique and results. Parts I,II, III, and IV have been presented at previous ICES conferences. This paper includes the technology trades for a Mars mission, using solid waste treatment technologies to recover water from selected liquid and solid waste streams. Technologies include freeze drying, thermal drying, wet oxidation, combustion, and supercritical-water oxidation.