Sustaining Life in Space--a New Approach.

W ITH PROGRESS in space technology, prolonged space travel and temporary habitation of extraterrestrial bodies seems inevitable. For short-term missions the provision of food and breathable air can best be met by an expendable system-that is, a life support system which provides basic needs entirely out of stored products. Missions covering extended periods of time, however, due to payload limitations, will require reutilization of waste products. At present, it seems" extremely unlikely that man's diet can be synthesized from raw waste products by other than biological means. Biosynthesis, therefore, is an important aspect of space exploration. Two of the major problems of biological regeneration are the weight required for such an integrated system and the power input needed to maintain it. This paper discusses a closed ecological system,