Life Support Concept in Lunar Base

Lunar base construction study has been conducted under the sponsorship of many Japanese industries to amend the man tended lunar outpost study carried by NASDA.

Permanent lunar base construction is to be constrained by the ability of the usable transportation system carrying the basic modules composing lunar base itself. Based upon the experiences of Antarctic Research Expedition and of designing International Space Station now going on it was assumed the initial permanent lunar base has to be composed of two habitats and one power module for letting possible to alive 8 crews, and has to be expanded by adding three or four modules in every year for improving the easiness of livingness. In early stage of construction, crew members have to live and work using only two habitat modules with getting the electric power from power module, therefore the minimum self support functions except the food and oxygen supplying have to be attached to the habitat modules. One or two years later from beginning the construction the plantation modules have to be added one by one for implementing the food and oxygen supplying functions to whole lunar base. Based upon the consideration above, life support subsystems to be installed in the habitat and plantation modules and the method for integrating all subsystems to accomplish the required life support functions have been discussed.