(John Carmack) wrote:
While NASA certainly COULD spend billions doing that research, there
is not much reason for it. Unlike, say, HLLV testing, life support
isn't "mega engineering". Any university could put together a program
to work on long term life support for under a million dollars. It
might take a decade to work everything out to a high level of
confidence because of the potentially multi-year test cycle time, but
it isn't fundamentally expensive stuff.

Completely closed loop life support will take much longer to prove
out, but having some consumption rate even for a multi-year voyage is
reasonable.

It's not particularly glamorous, but this area is defnitely one that
could use some work. It may be applicable to human settlements in
harsh / water challenged environments. One thing about Mars is that
one doesn't need to be completely closed cycle when you get there,
although you will still want to be very efficient in some areas.

The nuclear submarine community has some interesting wisdom in some
of these technologies, as does the CELSS and ECLS research communities.

It would be another interesting area for a prize-based challenge.
How long can a manned / non-trivial closed-cycle environment go
before it breaks down?

- Cris Fitch
San Diego, CA
"The bionauts got really sick of eating bananas."