Space Project

The evacuation of Earth won’t be done in one spacecraft but in millions of them, that will be
connected with each other and that will be subdivided according to their functions in the space
community: there will be spaceships as hospitals, machinery, water reservoirs, and so on. The
main survival difficulties in this possibly endless trip will be the lack of water, food, breathable
oxygen and energy supplies.
The water supply issue will be fought with the NASA’s new high-tech machine that recycles
the human water waste, the ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support Systems), is
basically a system to capture the carbon dioxide exhaled and urine to turn them into breathable
oxygen and drinkable water, the ECLSS condenses the humidity directly from the air and uses
electrolysis – passing an electric current through water – to produce breathable oxygen (OGS:
"Oxygen Generation System"), the urine is recycled through a purification process called
vapour compression distillation: the urine is boiled until the water turns into steam. The steam -
mainly water vapour cleaned except for some traces of ammonia and other gases - rises to a
distillation chamber, leaving behind a grey soup of impurities and salts that is discarded and the
steam is cooled and condensed into liquid. The steam distillate is then mixed with humidity
condensed and the water is once again purified to become drinkable water.
The ECLSS can recover 100% of humidity in the air and 85% of the water in urine, resulting
in a total recovery efficiency of around 93%.This system for recovery of water, weighing about
a ton and a half, will produce about two litres of water per hour, according to these numbers
(that hopefully will be improved) there will be required some thousands of machines combined
with the water that we will take from Earth in reservoir ships, to do the job, “hydrate the world
crew”.
The food supply issue will be solved with the creation of cattle breeding spaceships and
greenhouse spaceships too feed the crew, and the cattle, with vegetables and fruit and it will
also provide raw, the cattle will be mainly poultry, sheep and veal, because they provide other
food supplies like eggs, wool and milk, among others. To avoid complications with the cattle
the ships were it will be carried will be equipped with artificial gravity simulators. The
greenhouses will grow many kinds of plants specially vegetables, fruit-trees and cereals,
because they are nutritive and very photosynthetic. The photosynthesis will be the primary
source of oxygen, saving the OGS to a crisis situation (in this mission is crucial to have always
a B plan).
 The energy supply issue is perhaps the worst of our concerns because this mission will have
astronomical energetic costs, nowadays the human being seems to be connected to the plug,
everyday we use electrical power it’s so common in our society that we hardly noticed we’re
using it, this will be a problem because in the spaceships the crew won’t have access to so
much electrical power as they did on Earth, we will try to face it with different hobbies and
with our own renewable energy sources, the coating of the spaceships in solar panels will
provide a good energy supply, along with bicycles in every able crew’s member room that will
be used to produce electrical power whenever they want to, the heat from the engines will also
be exploited, one of the most important concepts to implement is that pretty much everything
that can be exploited to our benefit will be exploited and re-used to its maximum in this space
trip.
The daily energy consumption depends on too many variables to be calculated, even
estimation is hard to do, so we hope our supplies can cover it and give us some room to
manoeuvre.
At last there is the cultural and historical heritage issue that might not be a survival need but
it is part of ourselves and leaving it behind would be like cutting a leg off. Every nation’s
representative will be responsible for gathering all the information about their culture and
history in digital media in order to save precious room. There will also be a biological heritage
that will be formed by a specimen of each species of animal and plant known by Man, like a
futuristic version of Noah’s ark, it will be needed a great effort but I think that we owe them
that, by the pain we caused them.
The crew must be healthy for the mission’s success so before entering the spaceships every
crew member will be vaccinated and medically evaluated. We will also take every medicines
and vaccines known in order to prevent future illnesses that can lead to this mission’s failure.
We will have to build a new society and it will probably be a good time to create a language
or adopt English as the mother tongue for Mankind.
I know it will not be easy but if we unit ourselves and put aside our differences we can do it,
together we will do it.

Janeiro de 2009
Escola Secundária de Tondela
André Coimbra de Sousa – 10º.B nº.6