Life Support Equivalent System Mass Trade Calculator (2D)

Space-habitat life-support engineers don't just ask "how much does the hardware weigh" — every liter of pressurized volume, every kilowatt of power and heat rejection, and every hour of crew maintenance time also costs mass somewhere else on the vehicle. NASA trade studies fold all of that into a single number, Equivalent System Mass (ESM), using published equivalency factors for volume, power, cooling and crew time. This 2D simulator plots ESM over a full mission timeline for three real life-support architectures — expendable, ISS-style physicochemical-regenerative, and bioregenerative — on a pannable, zoomable line chart, paired with a live stacked-cost breakdown panel and adjustable crew-size and recycling-efficiency sliders that visibly shift the breakeven day where each regenerative system starts winning against simply carrying more consumables.