I've always been fascinated with the technology that enables humans to breathe in hostile environments.

As a Navy Diver, I was quite familiar with a few oxygen generation systems for underwater ops - especially the "bubbleless" rigs used for stealth missions.

The "Rebreather" -

"A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. Oxygen is added to replenish the amount metabolised by the user."

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebreathe)

(image by American Special Ops)

But what about sustainable oxygen technology for colonizing other planets?

Take Mars, for instance.

Mars has only 0.2% oxygen vs. 21% on Earth. Needless to say, rebreathers could not sustain human life on Mars.

Humans would need a viable oxygen generating system that produces enough oxygen for at least a small community of FAST ("First Arrival, Scientists and Technicians) personnel.

[Like that acronym - "FAST"? Just made that up now, on-the-fly. Lol!]

Back on topic: "Breathing on Mars?"

Enter "MOXIE" -

"The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is a technology demonstration on the NASA Mars 2020 rover Perseverance investigating the production of oxygen on Mars.

On April 20, 2021, MOXIE produced oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere by using solid oxide electrolysis.

This was the first experimental extraction of a natural resource from another planet for human use.

The technology may be scaled up for use in a human mission to the planet to provide breathable oxygen, oxidizer, and propellant; water may also be produced by combining the produced oxygen with hydrogen."

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Oxygen_ISRU_Experiment)

(image by MOXIE)

TBH, when I came across a MOXIE video on YouTube, I immediately thought, "This is Uber-Cool!"

What do you think?

Submitted FYI.

May you and yours be well and loving life today.

In Lak'ech, JaiChai

(JaiChai 13 JAN 2022. Simultaneous multi-site submissions posted. All rights reserved.)