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The reliability of biological life support systems, critical for long-duration human space missions, has been questioned. We propose that properly engineered biological components are inherently reliable, and support this view with data from nine years of operation of the CELSS Breadboard Facility (CBF) at Kennedy Space Center. Reliability problems in a bioregenerative life support system will generally be caused by support system failures, they will generally not be catastrophic, and the crew will have ample time to respond. Thus, biological system reliability can be good, and the impact of low component reliability would generally be to increase system cost rather than to risk mission failure.

Plant lighting will be a significant fraction of the overall costs of a bioregenerative life support system on the Moon. Equivalent mass (EM) for lighting can exceed 35% of the system total with all-electrical lighting. In this paper, variation of cost factors related to lighting is addressed for various options including fluorescent, high-pressure sodium, LED, and microwave lamps. An attempt is also made to quantify the cost of using sunlight, considering collectors, optical fibers, and diffusers. The results show that use of sunlight is important in reducing cost for a lunar base because of the difficulty of heat rejection with electrical lighting during the lunar day.

Integrating physicochemical and biological technologies into a regenerative life support system is a complex technical challenge. NASA recognizes that the depth and breadth of the challenge warrants a comprehensive investigation. NASA is implementing several ground-based projects to look at different systems integration issues. The combined efforts of these activities will enable NASA to develop regenerative life support systems for human exploration of the solar system in the 21st century. This paper provides an overview of NASA's overall approach to ground testing of integrated regenerative life support systems.

The most important CELSS engineering parameters are, in order of decreasing importance, manpower, mass, and energy (1). The plant component is a significant contributor to total system equivalent mass. In this report, a generic plant component is described and the relative equivalent mass and productivity are derived for a number of instances taken from the KSC CELSS Breadboard Project data and the literature. Typical specific productivities (edible biomass produced over 10 years divided by system equivalent mass) for closed systems are of the order of 0.2.