Self-restoration of biocomponents as a mean to enhance Biological Life Support Systems reliability.
One of the key problems of long-term space missions is limited service life of units. The only exceptions are biological components of biological Life Support Systems--higher plants or microorganisms. These components are capable of self-restoration: after complete disintegration, they can appear again from seeds or spores. The estimate of failure intensity of BLSS regeneration component includes: a number of self-sustained sections of the regeneration component; permissible boost (how many times can productivity of a component be increased); time required to repair (restore) a component; the crew existence time, when all LSS regeneration components fail; failure rate of one section of a regeneration component. Evaluations show that for hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria and micro-algae very high reliability is achieved even for one or two sections. In the case of higher plants (due to low rate of self-restoration) bio-regenerative module has to be divided into 10 self-sustained sections operating simultaneously. These measures can decrease the probability of catastrophe by a factor of 10(6).
Bartsev
S I
SI
Institute of Biophysics SB RAS, Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
Okhonin
V A
VA
D018504:Ecological Systems, Closed; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008021:Life Support Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D011336:Probability; D012449:Safety; D013026:Space Flight / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013598:Systems Theory