Atmospherics I - Capture and Power Infrastructure

Reclaiming waste gases to support the transition from survival to stability.

DEPRECATED GUIDE

This atmospherics guide is outdated and no longer recommended. It was written for the previous terrain system and contains suboptimal build strategies that have since been refined.

Updated Guide Available: Atmospherics I: Waste Capture and Critical Power Redundancy

The new guide incorporates lessons learned from multiple builds, addresses the recent major game updates, and provides more reliable construction methods for current gameplay.

This page is preserved for reference only.

Pre-Requisites

• Established a scalable power system (see Power)

• A basic understanding of electrical networks and plumbing.

• Familiarity with building and managing base infrastructure.

Objectives

• Capture recoverable waste gases in support of base life support systems.

• Increase water supply.

Constraints

• Waste recovery system should accept gases from multiple hot (furnace), cold (ice crusher), or neutral (base atmosphere) sources.

• It cannot impose upstream limits on the amount of gas that can be released from any source system.

• Gas loss cannot exceed the amount needed for circulation.

• Must have protections in place to make it resistant to pipe failure.

Capture Workflow Overview

To build a sustainable base, gases must be reclaimed—not wasted. The Exhaust Capture Line (ECL) collects those gases before they are lost to the vacuum. It starts simple, scales easily, and becomes the backbone of life support and farming infrastructure.

For a high-level overview of the full gas recovery system—including how exhaust capture, conditioning, and storage work together—see Atmospheric Recovery on the Moon, particularly the section: System Overview

What Gets Captured?

The ECL pulls from:

• Furnaces — high-pressure gas mixture often heated at > 900 K

• Ice Crushers — mixed outputs of Oxygen, Nitrogen, Volatiles, Nitrous Oxide, at around (15 °C) 288 K

• Suit Waste Tanks — small amounts of Carbon Dioxide exhaled by the Stationeer.

• Room Exhaust — gases purged by pressure control systems or manual venting.

Each source connects to a single intake manifold, which sends gas toward processing.

Why Now?

Life support systems require oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide in specific quantities and temperatures:

• One Stationeer converts O₂ ⟶ CO₂ at a rate of ~1.728 moles/minute, enough for 12 plants

• Plants convert CO₂ ⟶ O₂ at a rate of ~.144 moles/minute

• Farming scalability fails quickly without additional CO₂ sources because respiration alone can’t sustain large crops.

Furnaces generate usable CO₂, along with dangerous byproducts and extreme heat. Without a way to capture and condition that output, the base must vent and rebuild its atmosphere from scratch—wasting power, resources, and time.

Why Use the ECL?

• Reduces resource loss by collecting usable gas

• Buffers gas intake until a conditioning system is available.

• Prevents overpressure by routing exhaust through controlled outlets.

• Enables expansion of food production and environmental control.

For long-term survival, ECL comes before farming and atmospheric tuning.

Materials and Components

Some components in this build are fabricated or installed ahead of their actual use. These are tagged as:

🟩Build Forward — Staged in this phase for use in a later one, to reduce future fabrication and installation guide.

Fabricated Components

Autolathe:
- ~100 Cable Coil
- ~90 Iron Wall
- ~40 Pipe
- 10 Steel Frame
- 6 Glass Sheet
- 6 Steel Sheet
- 1 Iron Sheet

> 🟩 Staged for Atmospherics II:
> - ~30 Iron Wall  (Install Now - TEC/PGL)
> - 7 Steel Frame (Install Now - TEC + power grid)
> - 3 Glass Sheet (Install Now - power grid/solar panels)
> - 3 Steel Sheet (Install Now - power grid expansion)

Electronics Printer:
- ~50 Cable Coil (Heavy)
- 6 Solar Panel
- 4 Transformer Small
- 2 Area Power Controller
- 2 Battery Cell (Large)

> 🟩 Staged for Atmospherics II:
> - ~25 Cable Coil (Heavy)  (Install Now - power grid)
> - 3 Solar Panel           (Install Now - power grid)
> - 1 Transformer           (Install Now - ARU-MON)
> - 1 Transformer
> - 1 Area Power Controller (Install Now - MON-BKP)
> - 1 Battery Cell (Large)  (Install Now - MON-BKP)

Hydraulic Pipe Bender:
- ~20 Liquid Pipe
- 6 Pipe Meter
- 4 Passive Vent
- 3 Liquid Drain
- 1 Ice Crusher
- 1 Liquid Pipe Meter
- 1 Pipe Valve
- 1 Pressure Regulator
- 1 Tank

> 🟩 Staged for Atmospherics II:
> - 5 Pipe Meter
> - 3 Passive Vent
> - 2 Liquid Drain

Tool Manufactory:
- 1 Spray Paint (Black)
- 1 Spray Paint (Blue)
- 1 Spray Paint (Green)
- 1 Spray Paint (Grey)
- 1 Spray Paint (Orange)
- 1 Spray Paint (Red)
- 1 Spray Paint (White)

> 🟩 Staged for Atmospherics II:
> - 1 Spray Paint (Blue)  (Install Now - ARU-MON Transformer)
> - 1 Spray Paint (Green)
> - 1 Spray Paint (White)

Total Ingots

Raw Ores (Stack Rounded per Fabricator)

This chart format is standardized across the series. See the full legend in Atmospheric Recovery on the Moon, Appendix A11. Bill of Materials.

Ores:

- Coal    -  3 stacks
- Copper  -  6 stacks
- Gold    -  3 stacks
- Iron    - 17 stacks
- Lead    -  1 stack
- Silicon -  1 stack

Ingots:

- Copper →
  - Copper: 1/4/1/0
- Gold →
  - Gold: 0/2/1/0
- Iron →
  - Iron: 3/1/2/1
- Silicon →
  - Silicon: 1/0/0/0
- Solder →
  - Iron: 0/1/0/0
  - Lead: 0/1/0/0
- Steel →
  - Coal: 1/1/1/0
  - Iron: 3/3/3/0

Layout

Power Grid Extension

Extend the existing power platform to incorporate additional solar panels and increase overall capacity.

Atmospheric Recovery Unit (ARU) Footprint

The ARU layout defines the exhaust capture zone and anticipates downstream modules for gas conditioning, containment, and circulation. To maintain system integrity and serviceability, consider the following spatial planning guidelines:

• Separate floors for electrical infrastructure and gas plumbing.

• Provide direct vertical access between control units and APCs.

• Reserve lateral space for future storage tanks and modular expansion.

• Design for vertical zoning: dedicate separate floors or levels to plumbing and electrical to minimize interference and simplify maintenance.

The geometry shown throughout is illustrative and adaptable. Layout should be modified to suit terrain, base footprint, and operational constraints, while preserving a modular separation and upgrade paths.

Pipe Network

Exhaust Capture Line — Gas Routing: Pipe layout for the initial exhaust capture zone.

Place and connect atmospheric components, including the furnace, ice crusher, waste tank and back-pressure regulator. Build the pipeline to connect all components together.

• The furnace pipe is separated by a one-way valve, to prevent back-gases from the waste line.

• Attach the drain and pipe meter somewhere along the pipeline.

• Turn ON both the back-pressure regulator and the ice crusher. Set the back-pressure regulator setting to 80% max pressure capacity (48,636 kPa).

Plumb the ice crusher’s liquid pipe connection to the base’s water supply.

This will be the Exhaust Capture Line.

Power Infrastructure and Domain Initialization

This build establishes the foundational power domains for the Atmospheric Recovery Unit (ARU). While streamlined for fast deployment, this initial layout introduces formal power segmentation that will be extended in subsequent modules.

Exhaust Capture Line — Power Network Topology: Logical diagram depicting the power distribution network supporting the exhaust capture system.

For clarity and maintainability, four labeled power domains are staged:

The ARU-MON network is physically placed and powered in this phase, but no devices are connected to it. It will be activated in Atmospherics II to support logic chip programming for environmental control. Monitoring systems are not included in this phase but may be added in future modules or extended independently by the Stationeer.

Placement and Configuration

🟩 Includes Build Forward components staged for Atmospherics II

Place and connect the following power components:

• 1x Transformer (ARU) — grey housing, grey cables

• 1x Transformer (ARU-CRT) — red housing, red cables

• 1x Transformer (ARU-MON) — blue housing, blue cables (staged)

• 1x Area Power Controller (CRT-BKP) — orange housing, red cables

• 1x Area Power Controller (MON-BKP) — orange housing, blue cables

• 2x Battery Cell (Large) — insert into each APC for backup capacity.

Transformer Settings:

• ARU (grey): 5,000 W

• ARU-CRT (red): 154 W

• 🟩 ARU-MON (blue): 210 W (pre-set; unused in this phase)

Wiring and Routing

• Connect black heavy cables from the solar grid to ARU, CRT-BKP, and MON-BKP network junction inputs

• Connect grey cables from the ARU output to the ARU-CRT and ARU-MON transformer inputs

• Connect red cables to outputs of ARU-CRT and CRT-BKP.¹

• 🟩Connect blue cables to outputs of ARU-MON and MON-BKP.

• Connect the ARU output (grey) to the ice crusher

• Connect the ARU-CRT output (red) to the back-pressure regulator

Startup Procedure

Normal Operation

Turn on the ARU and ARU-CRT transformers. Confirm that the back-pressure regulator and ice crusher are receiving power.

Failover Validation

Turn on CRT-BKP and turn off the ARU transformer. Verify that both the ARU-CRT transformer and ice crusher are unpowered and the back-pressure remains powered via the backup line.

Restore Power

Turn the ARU transformer back on.

The system is now fully operational.

Operational Checklist

• Back-pressure regulator is powered.

• Ice crusher is powered.

• There is pressure on the gas line.

• There is water on the liquid line.

• Backup can take over when triggered.

Next Steps

With the Exhaust Capture Line in place, the base now has foundational infrastructure for gas reclamation, overpressure mitigation, and thermal buffering.

The next phase, Atmospherics II - Conditioning and Storage, introduces the systems required to convert captured exhaust into usable atmospheric resources. This includes:

• Filtration and Separation

  Installing parallel filtration units to isolate oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen while removing contaminants.

• Thermal Regulation

  Applying pipe heaters, radiators and temperature controls to normalize intake gas temperatures before routing.

• Staging and Routing

  Storing conditioned gases for distribution to life support, farming, and other downstream industrial uses.

For context on how these stages integrate, see Atmospheric Recovery on the Moon, which details the full system pipeline and energy cost model.

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Content developed in collaboration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, used for drafting, editing, and technical validation.

1. The red (CRT) and blue (MON) network color conventions are planned for use across other systems to represent critical operations and monitoring/logic diagnostics, respectively. These colors serve as role-based designators and may be adopted in future subsystems where applicable.