58. Paddy O’Rear - Astronaut in Training.

NASA has a program to develop technology for long duration space flight. This involves living for months in a sealed environment in which everything is recycled. There are several internet sites that describe Paddy’s role (and photograph). A key one¹ describes his work:

An article in the Houston Chronicle² gives a more colorful account.

Life support research requires team to drink the water
By MARK CARREAU Copyright 1996 Houston Chronicle

America's present and future in space met briefly on Friday, as the astronauts on Columbia's marathon shuttle mission compared notes with an equally ambitious team of volunteers confined for a month at NASA's Johnson Space Center to test an advanced life support system.

The seven shuttle astronauts are assisting researchers to overcome the medical obstacles of long tours aboard a space station and lunar outposts. The four ground-based volunteers are helping engineers develop the equipment that will be needed to recycle breathing air and water, including urine, on trips so long that explorers will be unable to carry all of their supplies.

"Your mission kind of puts ours in perspective," Columbia commander Tom Henricks radioed agricultural researcher Doug Ming, the team leader for the three-man, one-woman volunteer group at Johnson.

Columbia's crew passed the halfway point of a mission it hopes will stretch until July 7, establishing a 17-day shuttle record. Mission managers expected to make that decision today.

The volunteers have been recycling water from their showers, laundry and urine as well as their breathing air since they entered their 1,000 square foot test chamber on June 12. They plan to remain until July 12.

"These are exciting times," said Ming, noting that NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid will soon break the U.S. record of 115 days in space as a guest aboard Russia's Mir space station and that assembly of a new U.S.-led international space station is scheduled to begin late next year.

"All of this is pointing to longer and longer missions in space for humans," Ming added.

The space agency is spending about $10 million annually on advanced life support system research, though there is no national commitment to dispatch explorers on the lunar treks first made by America's Apollo astronauts in the late 1960s and early1970s, nor to neighboring asteroids or to Mars.

"When the decision is made to return to the moon or go on to Mars, we are obligated to be prepared," said Don Henninger, NASA's chief scientist for life support systems.

The test involving Ming, a NASA soil scientist; Katy Hurlbert, a NASA aerospace engineer and John Lewis and Pat O'Rear, both Lockheed Martin project engineers, is the second in an increasingly ambitious series of evaluations.

Last August, volunteer Nigel Packham spent two weeks in a small test chamber in which wheat plants purified his breathing air. In January, another quartet of volunteers will attempt to extend the air and water recycling effort to 60 days and next summer to 90 days.

Backed by the National Research Council, Henninger's team of engineers and scientists is already constructing a much larger chamber in which they propose to mount a yearlong test in 2005.

Their goal is to recycle all air, water and solid wastes using mechanical and chemical processes as well as plants. Soybeans, peanuts, sweet potatoes, lettuce and wheat will be selected for their nutritional as well as their cleansing value.

Even if successful, such equipment would have to be miniaturized before it would become attractive for spaceflight. But the NASA effort has made some strides in that direction with a biological bioreactor, a vacuum cleaner-sized device that relies on bacteria to remove organic wastes from urine, laundry and shower water. Researchers are hopeful of testing it aboard the new international space station.

Meanwhile, Ming's team is successfully recycling the 30 gallons of water members produce from urine or use to cleanse themselves and their clothes. The oxygen and nitrogen lost from the nearly airtight chamber each day is about 4 percent.

Urine is processed separately through a more stringent filtration process than is the waste water. All the liquids are run through a similar final purification step that produces a water of higher quality than Houston's tap water. Iodine is added as a inal bacteria killer, giving the recycled water a distinctive aftertaste.

Breathing air is cleansed of deadly carbon dioxide in a three step process. First the carbon dioxide is filtered and accumulated in a container. Then it is combined with hydrogen in a catalytic converter to produce methane gas and water. The methane is vented and the water broken down into new oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for reuse in the process.

"This is like the Hilton," said Ming. "I feel like I'm in a real nice home."

All four occupants have private sleeping quarters, telephones, computers and e-mail.

They have a small library, board games and visiting privileges. They have medical and psychological supervision as well as the constant presence of a small control team just outside the chambers. And they are free to leave if they wish.

"The unique advantage is I have a private office. In the outside world I share my office with four other people," said Hurlbert. "The toughest challenge has been missing my husband and my pet cat."

Note:

1. From: http://pet.jsc/nasa.gov/ehti2/orearph.html - Obtained 9/16/97.

2. From: http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/missions/sts78/chronicle_stories/shuttle29.html

Last Revised: 08/01/2002 13:12:00

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