// Mission Briefing
We're mapping
what happens
to humans
in space.
The food, the air, the psychology, the bones turning to dust. Twelve systems that all have to work or the crew doesn't make it. This is the model, and you can run it yourself.
// Scenario Engine
Pick a mission. See what breaks.
The engine runs the math across all twelve systems and tells you where the pressure lands first.
ISS Mission
4 crew · 21 days · Proven hardware
Mars Transit
25 crew · 180 days · Deep space
Colony Seed
150 crew · 1 year · Full colony
// The Premise
Rockets are getting faster.
The people inside them are still human.
Oxygen, calories, psychology, bone density, social collapse. Twelve systems that all connect to each other, and every one of them decides whether a crew makes it home. We model all twelve.
// What We're Tracking
Twelve systems.
When one fails, it affects the other eleven.
(Sometimes catastrophically.)
Pick any system to see the model, the data, and the questions that still need answers.
Food Ceiling
100 people for 180 days need 43 million calories. Try fitting that on a ship.
Air Constraint
Oxygen doesn't negotiate. One scrubber failure and the clock starts immediately.
Water Equation
75 tons with zero recycling. 1.5 tons at 98%. That difference is the entire mission.
Human Fracture
Factions start forming around Day 90. Nobody has tested what happens at Day 300.
Body Under Pressure
Your bones lose 1–2% per month. Two hours of exercise per day slows it down. It keeps going.
Awakening Protocol
The crew arrives alive. They're nowhere near mission-ready. Day 30 is the cliff.
Anti-Decay System
Three to four hours per person per day, just to keep the body from falling apart.
The 150 Human Test
Regular people. The soap, the waste, the arguments. We have zero data on this.
Continuity of Life
Every protocol says pregnancy in space is off-limits. So how does a colony keep going?
Decision Layer
Sleep-deprived, confined, stressed humans still have to make life-or-death calls.
Skill Map
One person knows how to fix the O₂ recycler. They break an arm. Now what?
Cascade Effect
A 3% drop in week one snowballs into a critical failure by month four.
// Explore the Reality
Real missions. Real crew. Real data.
Six astronauts who spent the longest time in space. Eleven incidents that nearly killed crews. One hypothetical day aboard a 50-person Mars transit.
The Survivors
Polyakov spent 437 days on Mir and walked from the capsule on his own two feet. Scott Kelly came back with about 7% of gene expression changes still different from pre-flight levels six months later. Their stories are the closest thing we have to a preview of Mars.
The Failure Museum
Apollo 1. Soyuz 11. Challenger. Columbia. The Mir fire. Eleven incidents. Twenty-five names. Every safety protocol on the ISS today traces back to one of these.
A Day in the Life
Mission Day 127. Fifty people, headed for Mars, 213 days left. One day, hour by hour. The exercise nobody wants to do, the 2,400-calorie breakfast, the grandfather who just died, the chess tournament that refuses to end.
The Scale
225 days of transit. A 22-minute delay every time you call home. 116 tons of supplies to keep everyone alive. That's about 23 elephants worth of stuff, packed into a ship.
The Genetics Problem
How many people does it take to start a colony that lasts a thousand years? The most-cited number is 160. We walk through the math, the population pyramid, and what happens genetically when your entire species starts from a tiny group.
The First Hard Limits
Orion: 4 crew, 21 days, 1,100 lb of life support. Starship: 100 crew, 180 days, 116 tons. The moment you add more people, keeping them alive starts to weigh more than the mission itself.
// Interactive
The math gets interesting
when you're the one running it.
Pick a scenario, make a few calls as commander, and find out whether the crew makes it home.
The Scenario Engine
Pick a crew size from 4 to 150. Set a duration from 21 days to a full year. Adjust recycling, exercise compliance, and privacy. The engine recalculates across all twelve systems in real time and shows you exactly where the pressure hits, what fails first, and what you'd need to change.
11
Inputs
5
Presets
∞
Scenarios
Cascade Simulator
One system breaks. Watch the rest react in real time. See how a single broken filter pulls down food, mood, and oxygen in under 72 hours.
Mission Generator
Tell it where you're going and how many people you're bringing. It builds the full mission profile and shows you what it would actually take to keep everyone alive.
Could You Survive?
8 crises. You make the call. See if you'd keep everyone alive.
What Breaks First?
5 missions. Guess which system gives out first. Earn the streak.
The Reality Check
Your household's daily needs, scaled up to a 150-person colony.
Fact or Fiction
15 statements about space. Some are real. Some sound real. Can you tell?
// For The Builders
Twelve unsolved problems.
Maybe one of them is
yours to solve.
Can humans reproduce in partial gravity? How do you treat a mental health crisis when there's no way to leave? Can life support actually recycle past 95%? These are real questions somebody has to answer before the first colony launches. If you're a researcher, engineer, or student looking for a problem worth your career, start here.
See the Open Problems5 of 12 shown
// About This Project
An independent research initiative.
One goal: build a working model of how humans survive long-duration spaceflight. Right now, every number comes from NASA publications, peer-reviewed research, and public data. As we secure funding, we'll develop original modeling and proprietary datasets to push the framework further than published research alone can take it.
Read the full story
Pick a scenario.
Or just start exploring.
Every page on this site started as a question
we couldn't find a straight answer to anywhere.