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Reliability is a primary concern for designers and operators of life support systems. Measuring the reliability of advanced life support systems that use biological processes for regeneration presents a unique challenge to reliability engineers. The challenge lies in trying to define the reliability of a biological component (e.g., a green plant) and combine that with the reliability of physical components (e.g., a pump) to obtain a total system reliability. This paper presents issues to consider while trying to determine and to predict the reliability of such systems. The physiological response of a plant to its environment can be compared to the response of a physical component to its operating environment, and a measure of reliability can be determined. Furthermore, the physiological response of a plant can be estimated for most environmental conditions, and this estimation is necessary for the prediction of total system reliability.

The Biomass Production System (BPS) is one of seven life support systems which make up the advanced life support system planned for the Bioregenerative Planetary Life Support Systems Test Complex (BIO-Plex), a large-scale human-rated test facility under development at NASA Johnson Space Center. The chief goal of the BPS is to support food crop production from propagation and seeding to the harvest and storage of raw agricultural products. The BPS will utilize two Biomass Production Chambers (BPC1 & BPC2) that will be internally outfitted with systems to grow plants, optimized for yield per unit of area and volume. In the preliminary design described here, BPC1 will have 82 m2 of area for crop growth, yielding a volume to area ratio of 2.3 m3 m−2. This paper provides a description of preliminary designs, with focus on BPC1.