Presently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research indicates that Closed Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) cannot achieve a payback on a mass basis until after 15 years mission length, based on current technology (Flynn and Borchers)1. There are well-documented reasons to expect that this number (15 years) can be reduced by investigation of specific hardware problems. However, because of NASA’s mission profile based priorities this result may deny CELSS the research funding required to develop the science behind “go to stay” scenarios. This would make a “flags and footprints” based life support system the inevitable NASA research priority. Also, this means that if truly long-term life support (go to stay) is to be competitively developed past the theoretical phase, then organizations like the Mars Society may play a key role. Three areas where this is particularly true are:

- Development of a broad and flexible body of knowledge (database) in the use of appropriate hardware and techniques related to long term life support systems that are likely to be overlooked or receive insufficient funding at NASA. 118

- - Develop a broad interdisciplinary group of knowledgeable and competent researchers on the model of the backyard astronomers involved in Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) research. - Develop an open-ended forum organization (coop or working group) among Mars Society members to act as a working group and information point of contact for independent researchers in CELSS.

There are four specific areas of CELSS related research in which any committed Mars Society member could make real and valuable contributions to the state of the art. These areas are:

- Advanced water treatment technology process validation

- - Composting and digestor technology process validation

- - Applied greenhouse and hydroponic controls and CELSS integration

- - Extremeophile (lichen and microorganism) culture

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This paper is primarily dedicated to the serious examination of and meaningful garage and backyard science opportunities in the above four areas, and ends with an encouragement for Mars Society members that are interested in these areas to come together.

Mars Mission Planning and Engineering