Life-Support Backup Switchover Simulator

Spacecraft life support keeps critical functions like CO2 scrubbing alive through redundant hardware — but redundancy is not instantaneous. When the primary unit fails, three things happen in sequence: the fault must be detected, the backup unit must spin up to operating capacity, and only then does scrubbing resume — at whatever capacity the backup actually has. This simulator strips the switchover down to its bare mechanics: a live CO2 trace shows exactly how much the cabin atmosphere drifts during the detection delay and spin-up window, and how a degraded backup leaves CO2 permanently elevated instead of ever fully recovering. Trigger a failure, then tune detection delay, spin-up time and backup capacity to see which parameter matters most for keeping the spike survivable.