Self-Sufficient Lunar Habitat Designed

An anonymous reader writes "Cosmos Magazine reports on a design for a lunar habitat that is 90 to 95 percent self-sufficient. The proposed habitat uses a closed-loop life support system that recycles and regenerates air, water, and food, reducing the need for costly supply trips. The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources. About 11 astronauts could live and work in the habitat for 2 to 3 years. The project would also help the environment on Earth with recycling and other sustainable practices." The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon.

Comments

Re:In 20 or 30 years...

[Applekid]

Fine! I'm going to make my own moon habitat. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the whole moon habitat.

the north pole

[User 956]

The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources.

Yes, and by "useful resources", they mean moon-elves.

Because it's There

[ivormi]

You have to learn to walk before you can run. The moon presents a place where we can learn to create a self-sufficient habitat in a real situation. Before we try and establish ourselves on Mars or even interstellar, we need to prove we can live in space by camping in our own backyard, so to speak.

And if we do manage to get He3 fusion as a practical energy source, we can at least mine for that as a resource ;-)

Re:Because it's There

[peragrin]

So why don't they set this up in the antartic, or death valley? prove that a closed air tight system can be viable and go from there? Biolab? or what ever was too much in a small space, they should try a simplier version of that.

Once it is working good, then go for the moon. by that point you will have found the way to make it small enough to fit on a rocket anyways.

Re:Because it's There

[ivormi]

I don't think anyone's suggesting that the moon is the first step. I would expect that the 20-30 years of funding and research would absolutely include proving the concept on Earth first. Still, the moon becomes a logical stepping stone to interplanetary colonization and terraforming.

To sum:
1) Small closed habitat on earth
2) Test habitat on Moon
3) ???
4) Profit!

Where ??? becomes:
a) Colonize Mars
b) Open Lunar Real Estate Office
c) Mine for He3
d) Perform industrial espionage of the Google lunar offices

Re:Because it's There

[mOdQuArK!]

Aside from being able to get some raw materials from the surface of the Moon, it's actually more of a pain to put a colony on the Moon than it would be to build a space colony.

Even though its weaker than Earth's, you've still got that damn gravity well to climb down into & out of, you can't even change the "gravity" like you could in a space station, and you have to deal with all that damn dust which mucks up your machinery & gets into your lungs.

We'd learn a LOT more about living in space by building a fairly self-sufficient space colony, and have quite a few more options of where to put the colony & control over the living environment.

I think the point is pretty moot, though - I don't see either public or private sector with the will to expend the resources necessary to get such an ambitious project put together.

Frankly, short of a potential all-life-ending scare like an asteroid or massive plague, the bulk of humanity seems to have lost any motivation to expand out into space, and are more-or-less content to fight each other for resources until there won't be enough resources left to expand out into space on a large scale.

Re:Because it's There

[AJWM]

It's been done. I just skimmed TFA briefly, but did see an explicit reference to Bios-3, a (Soviet) Russian closed-loop habitat at a research center in Krasnoyarsk (Siberia). Unlike the later Biosphere 2 (the greenhouse-like one in Arizona you're probably thinking of) this was much smaller, indoors (lighting for the plants was artificial -- and the whole thing had an external water cooling system to remove excess heat) and focussed mainly on recycling air and water. They did grow some of their own food (algae and wheat, yum), but also had regular food inputs from outside. Partly this last was due to Russian regulations governing experiments involving humans, by law they were required to be supplied with a regular ration of meat.

Anyway, the experiments were successful within the design parameters. (I had a chance to visit the facility a few months after Krasnoyarsk was opened to westerners, I still have a sample of the wheat grown within it.)

Biosphere 2 was more ambitious, aiming for 100% closed and no artificial lighting for the plants, for a two-year duration. They didn't make it, due to some surprises in the atmospheric chemistry (and things like interaction with the still-setting concrete), and the thing was way more than would be set up on the Moon anytime soon anyway. Bios-3 was much closer to a Lunar habitat prototype, and proved to be workable. (Yes, there'd still be some supply issues -- it will be a long time before anywhere off-Earth is totally self-sufficient, you need huge buffers and/or very good monitoring to make up for random events in the ecosystem. (Being biological, there are always random events.)

Re:Why?

[PieSquared]

For Science! No, but really. The moon is a great place for a few things - like a telescope. You can make a huge one that is always hidden from earth's interference. Also, if you have a place to stay anyway, long-term low gravity experiments. We know you get screwed up in microgravity, we know you do fine in full gravity. But what about a little gravity? We don't really know.

Also, geology. Study the moon itself. In preparation, perhaps, for later mining.

Also, so that you/your country wins.

Re:Why?

[Cerberus7]

To get away from Earth. Some say humanity, in its current form, is doomed to destroy itself. Being on another astronomical body would afford some protection from that, should we Earth-bound folks finally kick the bucket.

Some folks also crave being on the frontier, where everything is new. It's risky, but our species has made quite a living off of that particular trait.

Just wait

[benhocking]

After a while, all of the geeks will live on the moon, and they'll take their servers with them. Then, you will be the one with the huge latency!

Russians Used Lunar Day / Night Cycles

[StCredZero]

I read somewhere that the Russians did experiments with growing plants with 2 weeks of sunlight followed by 2 weeks of relative darkness at low temperature. (Not lunar nighttime temperature, but above freezing.) It seems that there are plants can acclimatize to such conditions. (In particular, peas.) They remain dormant and are able to survive for the 2 weeks when the temperature is lowered less light is available, then continue growing. Using specially tuned LEDs, we could provide the interim power for the 2 weeks "economically." (Relatively speaking. NASA contractors would probably charge million$!)

Here's some folks in New Zealand doing experiments that simulate lunar agriculture. There are many papers related to lunar agriculture as well.

this article misses several points:

[cmowire]

1) NASA "ought" to be researching stuff like this... because they are going to need it in 20 years or so. But projects like this have been getting de-funded to pay for the Orion capsule (which, I might add, is in trouble -- it's too heavy and they are trying to make it lighter by removing redundancy and capabilities instead of trying to do things like remove a crew member or switching the first stage away from a 5-segment SRB)
2) This is fairly easy to test on earth. Except for the whole question about how well algae will reproduce in lunar gravity. The ISS was supposed to research these kinds of problems but the module that would have done this research is not going up.
3) "90-95%" self-sufficient is probably a pointless task to try and do all at once. It's probably far simpler to just add extra sufficiency over time so that you don't get nasty biosphere-two-ish surprises.

Re:this article misses several points:

[scottbell]

Disclosure: I work at NASA.
To be fair, we are researching self sufficient lunar habitats. I probably see an average of 6 papers a year on the topic at the ICES or COSPAR conferences. The real trick is making a compelling case that regenerative life support saves you ESM (Equivalent System Mass). Everything at NASA is reduced to the mass of the system, and thus how expensive it is to launch. Harry Jones, Alan Drysdale, and other big wig life support analysts aren't convinced complicated regenerative systems, especially crops, will actually make for a cheaper lunar or orbital system. The farther you are away from earth, however, the more sense it makes. One could make the argument that we should test crops on the moon for eventual deployment on Mars, but it would be a very expensive experiment.

Gravity well

[Reality Master 101]

Settling in a gravity well is just stupid. I understand the romance of "living on another world", but just the health difficulties are incredibly hard to solve, along with Lunar nights (I know they want the north pole). The practical difficulties are insane. Will plants grow well in 1/6th gravity? Who knows?

If you want settle off-planet, the reasonable course is to build a big spinning space station. Yes, the engineering is difficult, but nowhere near the problems of building on the moon, and you can build it closer to earth. You get perpetual, consistent sunlight for power, artificial gravity. You can do zero gravity experiments by setting up labs at the hub, which you can't do on the moon. And doing an emergency escape capsule would be way easier than having to launch off the moon.

Why NASA is still talking about going to the moon is beyond me. We should be doing missions to near-earth asteroids to see if the materials would be useful for building large space stations, and experimenting with robotically producing I-Beams.

Re:Gravity well

[david.given]

Settling in a gravity well is just stupid... If you want settle off-planet, the reasonable course is to build a big spinning space station.

Actually...

The moon is a really good place to settle. There is a gravity well; but it's such a small one that you get the convenience without the penalty. It's nice having things fall down; it makes all kinds of useful resources --- rock, ice, metal --- easily accessible, and you don't have to worry about stuff drifting off. Not to mention that all the production techniques we know about involve gravity at some point. It's also nice having such a ludicrously small gravity well that you can get into orbit with something the size of an Apollo lander rather than a Saturn V. It's an excellent compromise.

It's also really nice being three days travel away from home. In the event of an emergency, it's entirely feasible to sprint home directly from the lunar surface. You can't do that from an asteroid, where you've travelled for months just to get there.

You're right in that asteroids are excellent places for robotic mining... unfortunately, we don't know how to do that yet. The state of the art just isn't there. Given that we still don't have the technology to travel anywhere in other than a minimum-energy transfer orbit taken months, and that mission planners have to plot crazy momentum-stealing flybys of practically every inner planet in order to minimise delta-V, launching experimental robot refineries from the surface of the Earth just isn't going to happen. Wait another twenty years and build 'em on the Moon instead. You'll have the knowledge, the personnel, the materials, and you won't have to lift them out of Earth's huge gravity well.

Re:Why?

[blhack]

Because its there. Because we have to look at it every night, and because there are people out there saying that we can't.

so fuck off.

Lunar Agriculture Link

[StCredZero]

Here's a link on Lunar Agriculture

http://www.moonminer.com/Lunar_Food_Supply.html

An interesting proposal is to use sulfur lamps, which provide the needed frequencies for plants and are even more efficient than fluorescents. The 2 week lunar night can be bridged by many plants by lowering the temperature and providing a low level of artificial light for 16 hours in 24. (At about the level of an overcast day on Earth.)

Also, algae can be gown in the 2 week period when light is available, then used to feed animals (esp. fish).

Anything which is '20-30 years away' ...

[N3WBI3]

... is pretty worthless; in 30 years our tech will have, hopefully, seriously evolved. In 30 years the earths political systems and power balance could be totally different. If you cant do it in ten years change your focus to something else. I think this is a great idea but giving something this much time is the ultimate form of procrastination. There is *no* reason they cant have this well in the works in a decade. If the money is not there well then put it on the shelve and come up with something people will pay to research.

Oblig.

[cthulu_mt]

TANSTAAFL*

They're Sending Supermodels.

[CheeseburgerBrown]

They don't need food, and they hardly breathe.

Perfect timing

[Chuckstar]

"The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon."

That's perfect timing. That's exactly when fusion reactors should be available to power the thing.

Re:So the human problem has been resolved ?

[Penguinisto]

Eh?

The longest continuous space trip by a crew (with no gravity... none) was 438 days... that's just over 1.2 years. Another single Cosmonaut managed one day beyond that.

Sure, the three guys who pulled it off were pretty much stuck in a convalescence home for nearly a year before they could walk again, and had to exercise their asses off every day they were up there, but point is that they did manage.

With 0.16 G , one would think you could stretch that out a bit to at least a year-and-a-half (perhaps more) before it got as bad as it did for the current record holders, no? This isn't even counting medical remedies and techniques that weren't available in earlier long-duration spaceflight tests.

/P