Space Station life support
Nathalie Leys from ESA’s Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative team introduces life-support research.
For exploring our Solar System, it would be ideal if we could take Earth’s ecosystem along with us to provide the environment we need to survive and feel comfortable in the harsh vacuum of space. Obviously, this is impractical but can we scale down our ecosystem to provide for us as we travel?
Sending bacteria to space is just one step in the process of miniaturising waste recycling and food production.
She said that the biomass generated from growing the algae-like bacteria can be a food source as well as an oxygen source for long duration spaceflights. No one ever said that astronauts on deep space missions would be eating T-bone or top sirloin steaks.
Fascinating.
Keep in mind this bio-mass idea would require a surface area larger than the interior of the ISS. So according to everybody. It seem you can 100% recycle your water forever! Which I find hard to believe. And even worse to know that every drop of it came out of all your buddies extremities!
So, future astronauts are going to be eating bacteria poop?