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ISRU system concept for autonomous extraction of Martian soil water.The NASA
This is the second part of a three part series on the Martian infrastructure. You can read the first part about Martian communication infrastructure here.
You are an astronaut who engages in your first mission on Mars, an unwelcoming planet where human beings are poorly adapted. The atmosphere is greater than 95% carbon dioxide (CO2) and the average temperature is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet despite this hostile environment, you and your teammates have brought relatively few supplies. Bring enough food for the entire three-year mission was too expensive. Even considering it dramatically inferior start up costs offered by private companies like SpaceX, it could still Cost $ 144 million or more to send three years of food to Mars for a crew of four (assuming SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can reach a launch cost of $ 3,000 and an astronaut consumes one ton of food per land year ). Instead, you are equipped with a variety of in situ resource utilization technologies (ISRUs) that will enable you to convert compounds into useful materials and advanced recycling systems that will help prevent waste.
Here on Earth, humans have never been concerned about waste. The World Bank estimates that the cities of the world will produce nearly 2.5 billion tons of solid waste each year by 2025. Yet, on Mars, where resources are scarce, we will be forced to treat apparently useless materials and by-products as valuable products. Fortunately, NASA has already perfected many important recycling and recycling technologies on the International Space Station (ISS). The goal is to create a closed-loop system in which the outputs of a process can be used as inputs to another process in perpetuity.
On the ISS, for example, oxygen is produced by electrolysis, a process that uses the electricity generated by the station's solar panels to create oxygen and hydrogen from the water. This process alone is great for creating breathable air, but it introduces two inefficiencies: it produces excess hydrogen and consumes water – a resource just as valuable as the oxygen it used to produce. In recent decades, NASA has used fuel cells that power its space shuttles to produce water. The excess hydrogen as well as the CO2 exhaled by the astronauts were then evacuated in space. At the end of the shuttle program, however, NASA acknowledged that it needed another way to generate H2O. Today, the ISS uses Sabatier's reaction to close the loop. The station's Sabatier system exploits the excess hydrogen produced by electrolysis and CO2 expired by astronauts to create water that is then purified for consumption. Unfortunately, the Sabatier reaction produces methane, which is broken down into space.
Similar processes will be invaluable on Mars, where carbon dioxide and freezing are plentiful. perhaps liquid, water to be used as raw material. NASA's Mars Oxygen ISRU (MOXIE) experiment, scheduled for launch on March 2020, will demonstrate, for example, the use of electrolysis to create oxygen from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere. Martian water can also be collected and purified for consumption, hygiene, agriculture or used to produce oxygen thanks to the Sabatier reaction, which in turn would produce methane in use for fuel or rocket booster. Alternatively, the water could be Split in its constituent elements to create liquid hydrogen fuel and oxidizing agents Power a lot of space vehicles today.
Although the red planet may possibly boast a sophisticated infrastructure to penetrate and extract the Martian regolith – the layer of various mineral deposits that cover the surface – resource-efficient systems such as those mentioned above will be essential until what Car, as pointed out the main technologist of NASA for the support of the new generation life, Molly Anderson, the construction and the maintenance of such systems will be extremely difficult, we do not want that our first explorers depend entirely on the prospection of resources.
Recycling systems will also play an important role in ensuring that we do not falsify the Martian environment with our waste. Unlike the largely controlled ecosystem of the ISS, Martian operations will likely introduce new waste streams and new risks of cross-contamination. For example, Martian dust will surely spread in human habitats during EVA or extravehicular activities, thus increasing the importance of ventilation and sanitation and creating additional sources of gaseous and liquid wastes. . Mars is uninviting. He does not need our help to do it anymore. "There is water on Mars, but I still think we will recycle the wastewater," says Anderson. "There is no infrastructure to recycle wastewater on Mars. [On Earth] We use water and then return our sewage to the soil or water courses. We do not want to do that on Mars. Our microbiome accompanies us.
Despite the abundance of Martian resources such as CO2 and water, smart management of resources and waste is important for efficiency and environmental sustainability. We ultimately want to make Mars more livable and more welcoming – a cause that is not there by adopting the same blasé approach to sustainability and recycling that we have historically seen on Earth.
Eventually, the infrastructure of Martian resources will have to evolve. "There will have to be a surface transportation network to get things in between the acquisition of resources and their processing and use," notes Anderson. In the meantime, it is our responsibility to consider resource collection and distribution systems that are as modular and non-invasive as possible. If we take the opportunity to make human life a multi-planetary plan, we will also take seriously the need to take care of the other planets we are aiming for. Earth's infrastructure may be too dependent on the pathway to rethink entirely, but Mars is a pristine area, a chance to build outposts and settlements that are models of sustainability and efficiency.
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ISRU system concept for autonomous extraction of Martian soil water.The NASA
This is the second part of a three part series on the Martian infrastructure. You can read the first part about Martian communication infrastructure here.
You are an astronaut who engages in your first mission on Mars, an unwelcoming planet where human beings are poorly adapted. The atmosphere is greater than 95% carbon dioxide (CO2) and the average temperature is -81 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet despite this hostile environment, you and your teammates have brought relatively few supplies. Bring enough food for the entire three-year mission was too expensive. Even considering it dramatically inferior start up costs offered by private companies like SpaceX, it could still Cost $ 144 million or more to send three years of food to Mars for a crew of four (assuming SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can reach a launch cost of $ 3,000 and an astronaut consumes one ton of food per land year ). Instead, you are equipped with a variety of in situ resource utilization technologies (ISRUs) that will enable you to convert compounds into useful materials and advanced recycling systems that will help prevent waste.
Here on Earth, humans have never been concerned about waste. The World Bank estimates that the cities of the world will produce nearly 2.5 billion tons of solid waste each year by 2025. Yet, on Mars, where resources are scarce, we will be forced to treat apparently useless materials and by-products as valuable products. Fortunately, NASA has already perfected many important recycling and recycling technologies on the International Space Station (ISS). The goal is to create a closed-loop system in which the outputs of a process can be used as inputs to another process in perpetuity.
On the ISS, for example, oxygen is produced by electrolysis, a process that uses the electricity generated by the station's solar panels to create oxygen and hydrogen from the water. This process alone is great for creating breathable air, but it introduces two inefficiencies: it produces excess hydrogen and consumes water – a resource just as valuable as the oxygen it used to produce. In recent decades, NASA has used fuel cells that power its space shuttles to produce water. The excess hydrogen as well as the CO2 exhaled by the astronauts were then evacuated in space. At the end of the shuttle program, however, NASA acknowledged that it needed another way to generate H2O. Today, the ISS uses Sabatier's reaction to close the loop. The station's Sabatier system exploits the excess hydrogen produced by electrolysis and CO2 expired by astronauts to create water that is then purified for consumption. Unfortunately, the Sabatier reaction produces methane, which is broken down into space.
Similar processes will be invaluable on Mars, where carbon dioxide and freezing are plentiful. perhaps liquid, water to be used as raw material. NASA's Mars Oxygen ISRU (MOXIE) experiment, scheduled for launch on March 2020, will demonstrate, for example, the use of electrolysis to create oxygen from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere. Martian water can also be collected and purified for consumption, hygiene, agriculture or used to produce oxygen thanks to the Sabatier reaction, which in turn would produce methane in use for fuel or rocket booster. Alternatively, the water could be Split in its constituent elements to create liquid hydrogen fuel and oxidizing agents Power a lot of space vehicles today.
Although the red planet may possibly boast a sophisticated infrastructure to penetrate and extract the Martian regolith – the layer of various mineral deposits that cover the surface – resource-efficient systems such as those mentioned above will be essential until what Car, as pointed out the main technologist of NASA for the support of the new generation life, Molly Anderson, the construction and the maintenance of such systems will be extremely difficult, we do not want that our first explorers depend entirely on the prospection of resources.
Recycling systems will also play an important role in ensuring that we do not falsify the Martian environment with our waste. Unlike the largely controlled ecosystem of the ISS, Martian operations will likely introduce new waste streams and new risks of cross-contamination. For example, Martian dust will surely spread in human habitats during EVA or extravehicular activities, thus increasing the importance of ventilation and sanitation and creating additional sources of gaseous and liquid wastes. . Mars is uninviting. He does not need our help to do it anymore. "There is water on Mars, but I still think we will recycle the wastewater," says Anderson. "There is no infrastructure to recycle wastewater on Mars. [On Earth] We use water and then return our sewage to the soil or water courses. We do not want to do that on Mars. Our microbiome accompanies us.
Despite the abundance of Martian resources such as CO2 and water, smart management of resources and waste is important for efficiency and environmental sustainability. We ultimately want to make Mars more livable and more welcoming – a cause that is not there by adopting the same blasé approach to sustainability and recycling that we have historically seen on Earth.
Eventually, the infrastructure of Martian resources will have to evolve. "There will have to be a surface transportation network to get things in between the acquisition of resources and their processing and use," notes Anderson. In the meantime, it is our responsibility to consider resource collection and distribution systems that are as modular and non-invasive as possible. If we take the opportunity to make human life a multi-planetary plan, we will also take seriously the need to take care of the other planets we are aiming for. Earth's infrastructure may be too dependent on the pathway to rethink entirely, but Mars is a pristine area, a chance to build outposts and settlements that are models of sustainability and efficiency.
