[HN Gopher] A Primer on Long-Duration Life Support
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A Primer on Long-Duration Life Support
Author : zdw
Score : 54 points
Date : 2026-03-27 01:00 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mceglowski.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mceglowski.substack.com)
| adolph wrote:
| This is a great read and unironically I want to subscribe to the
| substack, which is titled "Mars for the Rest of Us." The author
| is that Ceglowski of Pinboard and occasional space essays at
| idlewords.com, both of which make this self-recommending for me
| at least.
|
| It's a cliche that space exploration creates discoveries that
| improve life back here on Earth. In the topics discussed in this
| essay, water reclamation and waste recycling especially, the
| future solutions developed I think will lead to improvements for
| terrestrial living.
| buildsjets wrote:
| A note on their section on fire extinguishing - just about all
| aerospace fire extinguishing systems use agents with a fluorine
| based chemistry. Putting out a fire dissociates some of the
| agent, and in the presence of humidified air it recombines and
| forms hydroflouric acid, which will eat you from the inside out.
| So your air scrubbers had best do a good job at removing acid
| gasses.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280646417_Acid_gas_...
| XorNot wrote:
| It doesn't really eat you though: HF is so small that the
| problem is it just traverses straight through the skin into
| your blood and causes fluoridosis.
|
| There's been more then a few metallurgy lab deaths because
| someone spilled a substantial amount of HF on themselves and
| didn't realize it.
| emptybits wrote:
| "The limiting factor in urine distillation is actually the high
| level of calcium from disintegrating astronaut bone, a
| nice example of how problems in space find ways to
| compound one another."
|
| Sobering. One of the many long term effects of life away from
| Earth.[1]
|
| With humanity's future probably (?) driving more of us to leave
| the planet, I'm glad these things are being studied. Where
| there's a will, there's a way.
|
| [1] "Long-term space missions' effects on the human organism:
| what we do know and what requires further research"
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10896920
| imglorp wrote:
| They mention a botched drug study but I'm curious why that
| wasn't redone correctly given how many years we've been at
| this. And growing plants for that matter. Hop to it guys, we
| have to get this figured out while we have a station.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| They need to come up with either spinning ships or suits that
| compress you enough to activate the bones (they are
| piezoelectric so they naturally catch calcium ions when under
| stress).
| isoprophlex wrote:
| On water reclamation:
|
| > On the Mir space station, this used to happen organically.
| Collecting water was a grubby job that involved chasing beach-
| ball sized spheres of condensate around the colder parts of the
| spacecraft with trash bags before they could climb into the walls
| and cause mayhem. Crew members spent three to four hours a day on
| this dirty and difficult task.
|
| That sounds, frankly, horrible.
|
| It made me think that the average space module probably smells
| like moist, reheated ass, too.
| malfist wrote:
| Mir famously stank. Though you'd be glad to know without
| gravity your nose doesn't work as well
| oersted wrote:
| Curious that both average inputs and outputs match to exactly
| 5.74 kg. I had intuitively assumed there would be a significant
| difference, but I suppose that even if a lot of energy is
| extracted, the mass difference will be negligible, mc2 and all.
|
| I'm also surprised that the vast majority of the output carbon is
| in the form of CO2 rather than feces.
|
| It's all rather obvious in retrospect, it was just nice to see
| crystallized like this.
| birdsongs wrote:
| > I'm also surprised that the vast majority of the output
| carbon is in the form of CO2 rather than feces.
|
| Not sure if you know, but in the same vein, I was shocked when
| I learned ~50% of the biomass of trees is carbon (right, we
| knew that), but _also_ that the carbon came from CO2 the tree
| respirated. Also makes total sense in hindsight, but still
| think it 's so cool.
|
| The trees literally build their mass from the air and sunlight
| (and yes, obviously also water and trace minerals from the
| roots).
| adolph wrote:
| There is a nice Feynman children's lecture about this [0]
| from the series "Fun to Imagine" [1]
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITpDrdtGAmo
|
| 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0198zc1
| billfor wrote:
| The most interesting thing I learned is that we let people who
| need Zoloft on the ISS. The FAA will disqualify you for that
| unless you jump through hoops.
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