> From: akshatishere
> could you help me out with calculating the total energy required per
> person for 1 day for a space settlement.

Ah, I believe the answer to that is "twice the length to its middle."
Does the person have a microwave for example? AC? AI-drive private holodeck?

> Also the required per person
> area inculding all human factors.

This is also highly variable, depending largely on available technology, and
lifestyle and diatery choices. Did you have a more specific question in
mind?

John

Dear Friends,

I just spoke with an individual who has been modeling these scenarios for NASA for many years. The 'highly varialbe' commment is well taken, however, the power consumption figure that has been modeled for your question is:

1 kilowatt per person constant - or - 1KW/person/day

Obviously, there are many factors, all unknown, but this number is considered reasonable by those who design these systems.

Dennis Chamberland
http://DennisChamberland.com
http://QuantumEditions.com
http://MarsWars.com

ANTIcarrot wrote:
> From: akshatishere
> could you help me out with calculating the total energy required per
> person for 1 day for a space settlement.

Ah, I believe the answer to that is "twice the length to its middle."
Does the person have a microwave for example? AC? AI-drive private holodeck?

> Also the required per person
> area inculding all human factors.

This is also highly variable, depending largely on available technology, and
lifestyle and diatery choices. Did you have a more specific question in
mind?

John

On my last reply, I failed to discuss the space standards you inquired about.

As far as I can determine no one has gone that far yet to model real requirements for space settlements. However, NASA Standard 3000 does discuss this question for current crew spaces. You may have to convert cubic spaces to get a reasonable floor space requirement. It can be found in nauseating detail at this link:

http://msis.jsc.nasa.gov/

If you are a true space settlement junkie, you can actually copy it, study it and memorize it. Have fun!

Dennis Chamberland
http://DennisChamberland.com
http://QuantumEditions.com
http://MarsWars.com

ANTIcarrot wrote:
> From: akshatishere
> could you help me out with calculating the total energy required per
> person for 1 day for a space settlement.

Ah, I believe the answer to that is "twice the length to its middle."
Does the person have a microwave for example? AC? AI-drive private holodeck?

> Also the required per person
> area inculding all human factors.

This is also highly variable, depending largely on available technology, and
lifestyle and diatery choices. Did you have a more specific question in
mind?

John

1 kW/d ?

Isn't that kind of low ?

Brett.

Dennis Chamberland wrote:

Well, Brett, it's all black magic and guessing.

But consider this - power is mass and mass is $, so they design for minimal power.

For example, the Apollo Lunar Lander (the closest thing humanity has ever built and used as a planetary habitat - apologies all around to the IAU). It kept two men alive for several days and had a total capacity of 17KW / 800AH - and it operated ALL systems in addition to the LSS. That amounts to roughly 2.5KW per person per day - BUT - that also accounted for reserve capacity (of which there was at least 2:1) - so that the 1KW/day rule was thus reliably modeled.

As you increase crew numbers, watt-systems/person/day drop as overall system efficiency increases (to a point). And, space systems are ALWAYS energy misers, unlike terresterial systems we are more accustomed to. If we had to plant our homes on the Moon we would run our of energy in a single day.

The real truth is kind of like money. The more energy they have available, the more they will use, guaranteed. But 1KW/person/day seems to be the bottom line budget.

Just a few thoughts, for what they're worth.

Dennis Chamberland

b wrote:
1 kW/d ?

Isn't that kind of low ?

Brett.

Dennis Chamberland wrote:

My refrigerator is 115V AC, 6.5 A... that's 529 Watts
just for my fridge. Then there is the energy required
to grow my food, recycle my air and water, cooking...
I think 1kW is probably on the low side (ie basic
survival with previously prepared food).

If the Biosphere experiment is ever repeated, it
should be done in a windowless building, so that the
total energy consumption can be metered.

Ed

--- b wrote:

I don't have the expertise to figure out how much a person NEEDS, but
I can google and find out how much the average person today USES.

http://www.spaceagepub.com/pdfs/Powell_1.pdf
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc111203.html

Both of the above give the US average as 10 KW per day. Good
engineering could bring that down (and my fellow Americans are
notorious energy hogs) but the realities of living in space could
drive it up. So I guess we have to decide whether or not (and WHY) we
believe that good engineering and a change of habits can balance out
the extra expences of living in space.

We could use the 10 KW per person figure as an idea of what needs to
be provided ON TOP OF whatever it takes to recycle air and water and
run automated farming machines.

We certianly could take this approach - as long as we are packing nuke reactors (which we will be, by the way).

And, we could also get real and understand that space settlement will always be vastly different than anything we are used to and currently understand as "normal". Our refrigerators and current power useage will certianly offer no clues as to what we actually need in space and/or how much less we can get by with and still do the same job.

For instance, air conditioning and water heating are typically the largest energy consumers in the modern terrestrial home. Yet - 85-90 percent of this energy is wasted for various reasons and inefficiencies. This data alone voids out any terrestrial comparison to a space settlement.

Dennis Chamberland

Xenophile wrote:
I don't have the expertise to figure out how much a person NEEDS, but
I can google and find out how much the average person today USES.

http://www.spaceagepub.com/pdfs/Powell_1.pdf
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc111203.html

Both of the above give the US average as 10 KW per day. Good
engineering could bring that down (and my fellow Americans are
notorious energy hogs) but the realities of living in space could
drive it up. So I guess we have to decide whether or not (and WHY) we
believe that good engineering and a change of habits can balance out
the extra expences of living in space.

We could use the 10 KW per person figure as an idea of what needs to
be provided ON TOP OF whatever it takes to recycle air and water and
run automated farming machines.

--- In spacesettlers, Dennis Chamberland wrote:

> We certianly could take this approach - as long as we are packing
> nuke reactors (which we will be, by the way).

Well, for ten thousand people at 10 KW each this comes out to a
whopping 100 MW. The 1976 _Space Settlements - A Design study_ claims
that 50 MW would be enough, but that the industrial facilities will
need a 200 MW power station of their own. Together this is 250 MW, or
0.25 GW. Not sure how they got these numbers, though.

Powersats are generally said to produce (someday) 5 GW to 50 GW. So
even one powersat would be enough for twenty to two hundred Stanford
Torus Island One habitats (inclusive of industrial facilities).

Similar per-person numbers would probably be about right for the nicer
space hotels, while a "construction shack" or "barracks" or other such
spartan facility would be a lot less.