Initial design of laboratories for sustainable habitation

• A Facility of Laboratories for Sustainable Habitation has been designed.
• Providing possible technologies to reach a closed-loop habitation environment.
• Modules have been laid out to fulfil the domains including all material fluxes.
• Within the user-centred design human factors were fully integrated.
• The laboratory complex has been also developed from an architectural point-of-view.

An effective and self-sustainable artificial habitat design is essential for human spaceflight and expansion of mankind into orbit or towards other celestial bodies. There are two approaches that need to be implemented in future sustainable habitats: the use of re-cycling technologies in order to gain experience in closed-loop processes and the primary production of resource materials using In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) principles. Various products will be provided and, where applicable, recycled in such a system taking into account basic human factors requirements such as crew work load capacity, safety and well-being, namely:
• higher plants (e.g. vegetables, fruits, crops),
• animal husbandry (e.g. fishery, insects),
• fuel gases (e.g. hydrogen, oxygen),
• building materials (e.g. structural and insulation materials),
• consumables (e.g. clothes),
• base maintenance services (e.g. water or waste recycling) and power supply.Although the theory of closed-loop habitats has been the subject of many research campaigns, the practical implementation and realisation within a real habitat still needs to be established.The paper deals with the interdisciplinary DLR study of a terrestrial Facility of Laboratories for Sustainable Habitation (FLaSH). The first habitat design workshop has been held in DLR's Concurrent Engineering Facility (CEF) of the Institute of Space Systems. The study objectives such as a scenario set-up of selected habitat modules or input–output relationships were fulfilled with the support of experts from the domains of air, water, waste, greenhouse, animal, food processing, human factors, living, sickbay, ISRU, workshop, design and configuration.