Integration and optimization of subsystems
Our primary goal is to compile mission parameters and constraints, devise the technoeconomic models necessary to drive the design and integration of divisional subsystems, and run testing and performance metric comparisons in collaboration with the other three divisions.
The CUBES Design-Build-Test-Learn cycle will involve integrating and optimizing subsystems (namely, the various media generation processes and product manufacture in appropriately engineered organisms) to meet Mars performance specifications.
Analysis
Our initial goal is to compile a technoeconomic analysis that lays out the necessary fuel, building materials, food and pharmaceutical quantities for a Mars mission and that also accounts for product quantities to ensure downstream biomanufacturing process functionality (e.g., how much biopolymer is required to produce an ACR of a certain size that is still manufacturable by the 3D-printer and that will then exponentially increase biopolymer yield if that bioreactor is used by more biopolymer-producing microbes).