May 16, 2012

Moon Bliss

I would appreciate your help. The education and research group I work with released our first iPad app, the free BLiSS Sim, yesterday and I'd like as many people as possible to download it and review it in the next few days. Apparently, early reviews and downloads for a new app causes Apple to position it in a better location, making it easier to stumble upon. BLiSS Sim is a Bioregenerative Life Support System simulation, a game-like activity for exploring how crops can produced oxygen, water and food for a lunar base. It is based on experiments that NASA conducted from the 70s through the 90s when there were still dreams to return to the Moon. BLiSS Sim is a short game that places the player in change of the plant growth chambers at a lunar base. A series of challenges with different levels requires you to discover the oxygen, water, and food outputs of four crops, lettuce, potatoes, soy beans and wheat, and also the optimum growth periods and illumination requirements for each. After you figure out the needed inputs and resulting outputs you have to judiciously select the right mixture of crops to support a crew of four. Of course, with only those four ingredients the diet may encourage walking outside the airlock without a helmet, but you will gain a feeling for the complexity for actually supporting a crew for long duration missions, whether at a base in Tycho or on a two year mission to Mars. I hope you will give BLiSS Sim a test drive. Chuck Wood

Related Links
BLiSS Sim at the iTunes Store
BLiSS Sim wiki
BLiSS Sim blog

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