Search Results

Early development of wastewater and brine processing equipment must rely upon ersatz formulations because authentic urine and hygiene water are variable in composition, difficult to acquire in quantity, and have limited storage life. Previous wastewater ersatz formulations (e.g. Verostko et al, 2004) were designed for chemical fidelity, to match the elemental ratios and VOC profile of defined blends of wastewater components. This paper presents an alternative spreadsheet approach to brine and wastewater ersatz formulation by combining “building block” recipes in user-selected ratios and accounting for compositional shifts upon evaporation.

Food processing will have a significant effect on both system performance and crew habitability on long-duration human space missions. To maximize habitability, the food processing system must be able to utilize available food items for producing a palatable and diverse menu, while minimizing equipment, consumables mass, and manpower requirements. The authors' goal was to minimize the equivalent mass cost (as defined in earlier work) of the food processing system under constraints of nutritional adequacy, variety and hedonic acceptability. In a companion paper, we have developed a concept for organized analysis of food processing at a Lunar or planetary station. In this paper, we propose a way to optimize the cost-effectiveness of this concept for a Lunar base. A four-man ten-year Lunar base was assumed for performing this analysis, based on previous work by Drysdale on regenerative life support systems.

Three distinct food system paradigms have been envisioned for long-term space missions. The Skylab, Mir and ISS food systems were based on single-serving prepackaged foods, ready to rehydrate and heat. Bioregenerative food systems, derived from crops grown and processed at the planetary station, have been studied at JSC and KSC. The US Antarctic Program’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Base uses the third paradigm: bulk packaged food ingredients delivered once a year and used to prepare meals on the station. The packaged food ingredients are supplemented with limited amounts of fresh foods received occasionally during the Antarctic summer, trace amounts of herb and salad crops from the hydroponic garden, and some prepackaged ready to eat foods, so the Pole system is actually a hybrid system; however, it is worth studying as a bulk packaged food system because of the preponderance of bulk packaged food ingredients used.