Permanent, fully regenerative systems for hollowed-asteroid bases — designed to sustain multi-century habitation with near-100% recycling of air, water, nutrients and waste.
Provide a robust, fail-operational life-support ecosystem that turns a hollowed asteroid into a self-sustaining habitat. Once the physical structure exists, this system must support crews that may live for hundreds of years without resupply from Earth.
Life-support modules are installed after the asteroid is safely hollowed and sealed. The thick regolith provides natural radiation shielding, while the internal volume allows large-scale green spaces and centrifugal gravity options. All systems are designed to scale as the base expands.
Requirement: Every hollowed asteroid base and IPLS habitat shall operate a fully closed-loop life-support system achieving ≥99.9 % recycling of air, water, and nutrients with zero Earth resupply after initial seeding.
Rationale: Eliminates dependency on Earth logistics and enables true multi-century self-sufficiency.
Open Questions: None at v0.6
Requirement: The life-support system shall maintain Earth-like atmospheric composition (O₂ 21 %, CO₂ <0.5 %, N₂ balance) using combined biological and physico-chemical revitalisation with redundant CO₂ scrubbing and O₂ generation.
Rationale: Ensures long-term respiratory health and prevents trace-gas accumulation over centuries.
Requirement: All water (potable, hygiene, agricultural) shall be recovered and purified to >99.9 % efficiency from condensate, urine, greywater, and ISRU volatiles using multi-stage filtration, distillation, and UV/ozone sterilisation.
Rationale: Closes the water loop completely and supports food production and hygiene for multi-century crews.
Requirement: Integrated hydroponic/aeroponic, algae, and cultured-protein systems shall produce 100 % of caloric and nutritional needs using recycled nutrients, waste CO₂, and LED lighting powered by PGEDS-v1.
Rationale: Eliminates food resupply mass and provides fresh, psychologically beneficial produce for long-duration crews.
Requirement: All solid, liquid, and gaseous waste shall be processed into recoverable nutrients, water, and gases using biological digesters, pyrolysis, and catalytic converters, closing the nutrient loop.
Rationale: Prevents waste accumulation and supplies raw materials for food production and ISRU.
Requirement: Pressurisation, humidity, and trace-gas (VOCs, particulates) levels shall be actively controlled within tight human-health tolerances using UMP-SEAL-001 hardpoints and redundant sensor arrays.
Rationale: Maintains habitable conditions and prevents long-term health degradation in sealed environments.
Requirement: All life-support modules shall use standardised UMP-ECLSS-001 coupling ports for hot-swappable integration with Universal Modular Platforms across every IPLS asset.
Rationale: Guarantees fleet-wide interoperability and rapid reconfiguration without custom engineering.
Requirement: Life-support systems shall incorporate N+3 redundancy at every critical function with graceful degradation, predictive maintenance via self-diagnostics, and TSP-v1 supersession readiness.
Rationale: Ensures continuous habitability for centuries even during partial system failures or technology upgrades.
Requirement: Life-support systems shall integrate circadian lighting, seasonal simulation, green-space atmospheric exchange, and real-time psychological monitoring tied directly to Recreation, Entertainment, Psychological & Social Systems (3.1.9).
Rationale: Prevents long-term psychological degradation in multi-century sealed habitats by maintaining Earth-like environmental cues and mental-health support.
Requirement: Every life-support installation shall include independent 90-day open-loop emergency reserves (O₂, water, food precursors) with automatic activation and manual operator isolation capability.
Rationale: Provides fail-operational survival margin during major system failures or external events while preserving primary closed-loop operation.
Requirement: Life-support systems shall incorporate a dedicated diagnostic and predictive-maintenance bus with real-time telemetry to the central command layer, enabling proactive repair via robotics or ISRU spares.
Rationale: Supports multi-century reliability with minimal human intervention through continuous health visibility.
Requirement: Full crewed habitation shall only commence after the life-support system has demonstrated 180 days of continuous, fail-operational performance with explicit operator consent and integrated governance review.
Rationale: Protects biological and post-biological crews by ensuring the habitat is verifiably self-sustaining before human presence.