How does a scuba diver’s oxygen tank last for ~1 hour but an astronaut’s lasts ~6-8 hours when both tanks are around the same size?
In: Technology
You made a false assumption. “Both tanks are around the same size”. A scuba tank is typically made up of air.
I don’t know what an astronauts stuff is made of but a rebreather requires several different components to work.
1. A small bottle of pure O2. These bottles can be very small, like the size of a spair air canister.
2. A bag to maintain positive pressure. This bag would hold the scrubbed exhalation that has already passed through a filter (scrubber) + additional O2 to make up for the loss of O2 your body utilizes on the previous breath of air.
3. A filtration system to scrub out the CO2 from exhalation. This is typically about the size of a lunch box and as far as I’m aware, must be this size because of the chemical processes occurring with the amount of breath exhaled from the average astronaut.
All these components can pack pretty tightly together in something the size of a small backpack.
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