Station Trash Compactor & Cargo Packing

Crew & Waste Rate

Crew size 7

Waste per person 2.6 L/day

Compactor ratio 3.0×

Disposal vehicle

Sim speed 1.0 days/s

Cargo Status

0.0% full0 bags

Mass loaded

0.0 kg

Mission day

0.0

Days until cargo full

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How it works

A crew of N generates roughly 2–3 L of dry trash per person per day (food packaging, wipes, filters). A compactor squeezes each bag's volume down by a ratio r without changing its mass — bag mass stays m = ρ·V₀ (ρ ≈ 0.2 kg/L for mixed dry trash), but its packed volume shrinks to:

V_packed = V_raw / r
side_scale = 1 / r^(1/3)   (isotropic shrink of a cuboid bag)

Bags are loaded into the cargo bay with a 3D shelf first-fit heuristic — the standard way real logisticians reason about bin-packing without solving the (NP-hard) optimal case:

for each new bag (w,d,h):
  if x+w > BayWidth:      x=0; z+=rowDepth; rowDepth=0        # next row
  if z+d > BayDepth:      z=0; x=0; y+=layerHeight; layerHeight=0  # next layer
  if y+h > BayHeight:     bay is full, vehicle must depart
  place bag at (x,y,z)
  x += w;  rowDepth = max(rowDepth,d);  layerHeight = max(layerHeight,h)

The days-until-full readout is the remaining bay volume divided by today's compacted daily volume: D = V_remaining / V_day. A higher compaction ratio shrinks every bag, so more of them fit before the vehicle has to undock and burn up on re-entry with the trash aboard — the real disposal method used for ISS Progress and Cygnus vehicles today.

CARGO FULL — READY TO UNDOCK

Compacted waste bag Cargo bay envelope

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