Life Support Maintenance Scheduler

Maintenance Schedule

Maintenance interval 14 d

Degradation rate 0.06 /d

Crew-hours per visit 2.5 h

Simulation speed 4 d/s

Avg. component health

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Elapsed time

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Cumulative crew-hours

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Near-failure events

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How it works

Each life-support component wears continuously between service visits — this is not a random-failure model. Health decays smoothly from the moment it was last serviced, following an exponential curve, and a scheduled maintenance visit resets it straight back to 100%. The only question this simulator asks is: how often should the crew service each component, given that servicing costs crew-hours that could go elsewhere?

health(t) = 100 · e^(−rate · Δt)
Δt = time since last maintenance
on schedule tick → health = 100, crew_hours += cost

Maintenance interval — days between scheduled service visits. Longer intervals save crew time but let health sink further before each reset.
Degradation rate — how fast a component wears once it's due; a higher rate makes the same interval far riskier.
Crew-hours per visit — the time cost paid every time a component is serviced; shown accumulating so you can see the total operating cost of a given schedule.
Near-failure events — counted whenever health dips below the 25% danger line before the next scheduled reset, i.e. maintenance was deferred too long relative to the wear rate.

Real-world relevance: this is the classic preventive-maintenance tradeoff on crewed spacecraft — CO2 scrubbers, water recyclers and O2 generators all degrade with continuous use, and mission planners must balance servicing frequency against limited crew time, not react to sudden random breakdowns.

O2 Generator CO2 Scrubber Water Recycler Air Filter Danger line (25%)