Oxygen not Included is an open-ended game. Some players enjoy creating super efficient machines while others enjoy establishing a super ranch of critters. Regardless of your style, the game can go horribly wrong. It’s a great game to pass the time in your spare time, but it can be quite frustrating when things go awry. Here are some tips to make the most of your limited resources:

Creating a self-sufficient colony

Part two of Creating a Self-Sufficient Colony with Regolith Oxygen Not Included focuses on the mid-game. We’ll discuss basic food sources, including Mealwood, and alternative resources. We’ll also talk about the Hatch Ranch and Water Treatment Loop, which can be useful for hatching Smooth Hatches and handling Polluted Water.

Regolith simulants contain potential deficiencies of all macro and micro-nutrients. Most of these nutrients are produced as byproducts of the decomposition of organic components. So, without exogenous inputs, regolith-based substrates cannot support sustainable ISRU for crop production. As a result, they may be unsuitable for self-sustaining colony habitats.

Extracting oxygen from lunar regolith

The moon is an untapped resource with a high proportion of oxygen, but it’s bound up in a variety of minerals and glass. Extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith will require a process that separates the oxygen from the minerals. To create the plant, a European startup, Space Applications Services, is building three experimental reactors under contract to the European Space Agency to test the technology. The mission is aimed at demonstrating the viability of this technology, and will be part of an in situ resource utilization demonstration mission to the moon in 2025.

A prototype plant has been built by the European Space Agency to test its method of extracting oxygen from lunar resources. The team includes representatives from AVS, Metalysis, The Open University, and Redwire Space Europe. This project was selected because of its unique combination of design, functionality, and cost. If successful, extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith could revolutionize lunar exploration and provide a new fuel source for deep space missions.

Limitations

There are several limitations of regolith oxygen. For one thing, regoliths do not include oxygen, which would limit their usefulness as a growing medium. In addition, regoliths do not contain organic matter, which is essential for plant growth. Further, they do not include other key macronutrients, such as N, P, and S, which plants need to grow. Furthermore, regoliths do not contain enough water to support plant growth.

Moreover, the composition of base regolith does not differ from the volatile-rich regions. Thus, it is difficult to predict the gas content of the extracted metals. It is imperative, therefore, to conduct experiments to assess the performance of different technologies. For example, the proposed solar concentrator must be able to move to follow the sun. Moreover, the solar concentrator must be able to direct concentrated sunlight to multiple spots or a single spot. This method requires several assumptions to be made, including initial pressure of five psia, and the time needed to evacuate the volume.

Flaws in current methods

The present method involves doping simulants with water, exposure to cryogenic temperatures, and measurement in vacuum. For testing purposes, a 1m tall, 28cm-diameter bin with liquid nitrogen cooling loops was developed. The bed reached 140K at vacuum, and post-test sampling was performed to assess desiccation from exposure to vacuum. In addition, depth-dependent moisture data were collected from frozen soil samples. The use of drill hardware was also tested in the vacuum chamber.

The use of simulants is critical for human exploration of the Moon. They simulate the lunar surface environment in order to test hardware that will interface with lunar missions. It is essential that the regolith simulant reproduce the lunar surface environment as closely as possible. Developed in a joint collaboration between NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Glenn Research Center, these simulants mimic the lunar regolith in terms of particle size, shape, mineralogy, and density.