Water Walls: Highly Reliable and Massively Redundant Life Support Architecture

The Water Wall concept proposes a system for structural elements that provide, thermal, radiation, water, solids and air treatment functions which are placed at the periphery of inflatable or rigid habitats. It also provides novel and potentially game changing mass reduction and reuse options for radiation protection. The approach would allow water recycling, air treatment, thermal control, and solids residuals treatment and recycling to be removed from the usable habitat volume, and placed in the walls by way of a radiation shielding water wall. It would also provide a mechanism to recover and reuse water treatment (solids) residuals to strengthen the habitat shell and a method of deriving radiation shielding from wastes generated on orbit. Water wall treatment elements would be a much-enlarged version of the commercially available hydration bags. Some water bags may have pervaporation membranes facing outward, which would provide the ability to remove H20, C02 and trace organics from the atmosphere and some would have hydrophobic internal membranes which would provide water, and waste recycling and some power generation.