Now I read that after flights to the moon since 1972, not a single person has risen above 1000 km above the Earth. Not one, although 45 years have passed! All astronautics, let me remind you, is only 60 years old! And most of this time, people are marking time in a patch around the Earth!
It is a pity that I personally did not manage to catch that emotional upsurge in the development of astronautics and space exploration in those years, and I hardly have time to catch something like that in the near future. Here the ISS is thought to be flooded or not. The most breakthrough and real project of the near future is “100500” satellites around the Earth.
However, it is surprising to read how in such a situation some fanatical people come up with something, design and dream of distant space.
What does it actually take to fly out of low Earth orbit?
This is what Alexander Shaenko is talking about: If we talk about a very distant future, not just about flights to the Moon or Mars, for which the approximately existing technological level is enough, then we need:
- New, more capacious and lighter energy sources, from more advanced chemical ones at the first stage, to nuclear, thermonuclear and annihilation ones at the subsequent ones.
- New engines and methods of movement, both when going into space from celestial bodies, and for moving in a vacuum. New energy sources will be used to power jet engines, electromagnetic accelerators and sources of directional radiation for creating thrust in solar, laser, magnetic and other types of sails.
- New types of materials that can work in the harsh conditions of space, suitable for efficient processing into products that can be produced from local raw materials.
Promotional video:
- Highly efficient life support systems, first of all, closed biological ones, thanks to which a full-fledged, unlimited human life in space conditions will be possible.
- Improvement of modern design and production technologies so that the development of newly created complex projects is carried out by a small team in a short time, and the practical implementation of projects is carried out using highly automated, possibly self-developing production facilities at the expense of local resources. This will make it possible to implement programs for the development of the solar system not at the expense of a small number of cumbersome enterprises located on Earth and relying only on ground resources, but at the expense of small, highly motivated teams that quickly respond to changes, using local raw materials at their disposal for work.
Most of this list looks overwhelming for a team of 10 people working in their spare time. Most of the list, but not all:)
I thought that biological life support systems (BSZHO) is the direction that can be started to develop without superlabs and multi-billion dollar investments. They need plants, greenhouses, something simpler than accelerators for studying antimatter:)
And so the guys began to create the First photobioreactor during a break in the work on the "Mayak", when they passed all the tests and had to wait for the launch. The lull lasted from December 2016 until about the end of April 2017. During this time, they were able to create this.
Exterior view of the first prototype photobioreactor.
Diagram of the first prototype photobioreactor device.
Main characteristics of the first prototype
The volume of the medium with chlorella is 2.5 liters.
Mains consumption - 65 W.
Sources of radiation - LEDs with radiation wavelengths of 440-460 nm, blue, and 650-660 nm, red.
Control - Arduino Mega.
Nutrient medium - Tamiya
Here you can read and see in more detail.
But the team does not stop there.
Second prototype
What are they planning to implement in the second prototype?
“To select the diode emission spectrum more suitable for chlorella in order to increase the productivity of its cultivation from one spent Watt. For this, we plan to carry out a series of reactor launches with narrow-band radiation sources and select those that give the fastest growth of chlorella.
Increase the intensity of radiation so that the cells of the microalgae receive more energy and grow faster. We even consider lasers as such a source.
Control all parameters of the nutrient medium - temperature, acidity, gas composition at the entrance to the reactor and at the exit.
Build a system for automatic cleaning of the reactor cavities. It takes a very long time to disassemble it to wash it:))"
More details about what we are planning to do are written in the technical assignment for the second prototype.
By implementing these steps, we hope to get closer to the IBMP results. There is a lot of interesting work ahead, which in the most literal sense will be able to bring flights beyond the limits of low-earth orbit closer!
They have opened a fundraiser for boomstarter for a project to create a key element of a biological life-support system - a photobioreactor for intensive cultivation of microalgae, and after its creation Alexander Shaenko will personally test it on himself - he will breathe oxygen produced by microalgae.
In the future, on the basis of the created installation, they plan to build a space life support system and test it in orbital flight. The first flight tests will be carried out on a small spacecraft of the Cubesat class with heterotrophic aerobic microorganisms as passengers.
Here is a private astronautics …