Fig. 2: Breakdown of environmental control and life support systems into components by type of system and composition thereof.
From: Microbial biomanufacturing for space-exploration—what to take and when to make
The make-up of the inventory and hence the operational expenses are dependent on the mission-design scenario. Panel (a) provides an overview of parameters for five exemplar space-travel scenarios: ‘I’ and ‘II’ correspond to single sorties (N) to the Moon and Mars, respectively, using standard surface operation duration40, while ‘III’ and ‘IV’ correspond to multi-sortie campaigns with the same 5400 days of total surface operation as in ‘V’. Based on these parameters and equivalency factors for Volume (Veq), Power (Peq), Cooling (Ceq), Crew-Time (CTeq), and Location (Leq) the ESM can be calculated for each scenario (as per Eq. 1 in section 2 of the SI)97. Panels (b–e) visualize the inventory breakdown by the expense-type contributing to the total ESM (b), type of system-component classified by associated resource (c), and composition of the inventory item (d and e): the bar-charts in panels (b–d) show the breakdown in ESM units (on the left, in mass [kg]), and the fractional breakdown of each scenario (on the right, unit-less), while in panel (e) the absolute (left, in mass [kg]) and fractional (right, unit-less) inventory breakdown in terms of material composition is visualized. An alternative representation of the data presented in (d and e) is given in Fig. S1c. ESM equivalent systems mass—for more information see BOX 1.
