Habitat renovation (Patreon)

 Until now I have attempted, with new habs, to rely on washers with rubber gaskets to seal hull penetrating bolts connecting ballast pods to the habitat shell. This turns out to only sort of work. If pressure is lost, water ingress occurs.

So I yanked both habs out of the water, tore them down and rebuilt them, this time with the generous application of silicone sealant in between the bolts and the washers, between the hab shell and the ballast pods, basically everywhere water could possibly enter. It's curing now.   It is absolutely worth the time and effort to tear everything apart and rebuild it to solve a small problem rather than ignoring it and having it become a large problem later.

After the leak which prompted all this, I am taking less than zero risk and un-cutting all corners. I've learned so much already that it makes all prior designs obsolete.   Perhaps the biggest innovation is the elimination of silica litter as a substrate. It performed passive dehumidification and desiccated waste, but also the granules were getting caught in the gate valve mechanism, damaging the seal over time. That's not tenable.

Now there's litter only inside the enclosed litterbox. There is no granular substrate material, instead the modules have removable, hand-washable coroplast floors. Like the coroplast layer between the header pad and the bottom of the habitat shell, this represents an added layer of insulation as the floor is suspended up off the bottom by the heater.

This means there's empty space/air in between the removable floor and the bottom of the habitat shell, which should mean great insulation from the frigid outside water. Only the heater is touching the floor, so it should have a radiant heat effect, warmest in the center. The hamsters can adjust their own temperature by their distance from the center, but will be comfortable anywhere.

The water bottle, food dispenser and litter box are all concentrated together into the same one module. This is also an important change. It means only that single module needs to be surfaced monthly for waste removal and food/water replenishment. The other module can remain permanently submerged.

This is practice for the eventual mega hab colony, which will by necessity be permanently submerged with only one small module being ferried to and from the surface monthly for waste removal, and food/water replenishment. This is much like how the ISS remains in orbit all the time, and only a small capsule actually goes to the ISS from Earth to replenish its food, water, and other essentials as needed.

While I was working on the two aquarium hab modules I also took apart Megahab. I will be applying the same techniques I've devised to fix problems with the aquarium modules, to improve Megahab as well. The aquarium modules have long served as a testbed for innovations that can then be directly applied to the Megahab project.

Megahab needs to be as foolproof as possible. It will not be in an aquarium nearby. It will be in an outdoor body of water. There won't be any possibility of a quick and easy rescue, so every issue that might arise needs to be identified with the aquarium test habitats and solved before Megahab gets wet.