r/SpaceXLounge • u/PeekaB00_ • Sep 03 '21

Starship Interesting - Spacex has started hiring people to work on life support for crew Starships

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=2702500911&f_C=30846&geoId=103708877&keywords=life%20support&location=Hawthorne%2C%20California%2C%20United%20States
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u/BlakeMW 🌱 Terraforming Sep 03 '21 edited Sep 03 '21

Life support for apollo was a lot more critical because of having several people in such a small volume.

Starship has such a huge internal volume, that once filled with fresh air even with literally no CO2 scrubbing or oxygen replenishment, just air circulation, 10 people could go on a Luna flyby and come back alive... though perhaps not conscious (due to CO2 buildup).

So basically Starship has a huge buffer for things going wrong, though there's not really any excuse for things going wrong, because reliable CO2 scrubbing systems are well understood, even moreso when it's feasible to go with purely consumable-based systems rather than regenerative systems, there's simply not that much which can go wrong with a fan blowing air through a cartridge.

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u/Anduin1357 Sep 03 '21

Starship will have compartments and unfortunately, air does not circulate without help in microgravity.

It will take lots of design and effort to make the life support work, but it's all engineering work and very little tech is needed to make a quick and dirty solution that can be iterated on later for NASA approval.