An advantage of growing linen over cotton is that flaxseed is directly edible without processing to remove gossypol toxins. Flaxseed oil also polymerizes under UV light or heat. Mars medical staff could wear locally-produced oilcloth PPE.
]]>However, the filters are consumables, and require tight process controls. Difficult and tedious to make in small batches on Mars, and expensive to ship from Earth.
Mars would likely use distillation - less energy efficient, but more economical given their constraints.
A harder problem might be where Mars is going to rapidly get large amounts of basic substances like pharmaceutical-grade sodium chloride, sodium lactate, potassium chloride, and calcium chloride, after burning through existing stockpiles.
The entire crop of fruits from the pinkhouses would be crushed and mixed with sauerkraut starter, then fermented to create lactic acid. An overworked lab technician would attempt to filter and neutralize it into a suitable ingredient for Ringer's Solution.
Robots would need to be retasked to scrape up promising regolith with LIGHT elements, rather than gold and platinum. Rec areas would be filled with pails of dirt leaching their minerals into water.
Engineers would be frantically trying to remember their first-year chemistry classes while running around doing bucket chemistry, with sometimes-helpful advice from Earth. Of course, none of the reactions would work the same as in class, with larger volumes and lower pressures.
Power supplies would be cannibalized from other equipment to do electrolysis (with occasional venting of noxious gases when it drifts out of calibration).
The med staff would complain about their IV solutions being purple and smelling like berries, and patients might suffer from hives and other adverse reactions, but it'd be better than nothing. Hopefully.
]]>Today: "You spent 15 minutes less than two meters away from someone who tested positive."
Future: "Your bare left index finger touched keys #7 and 9 on airlock control pad A4364573, thirty-eight minutes after someone touched those keys who later tested positive. You then touched surfaces in washroom B345567, left without cleaning your hands, and then went directly to your sleep pod. Cleaning robots have flame-broiled the keypad and washroom. You and the eight subsequent users of the washroom are now quarantined. Have a nice Sol."
]]>"Six of 12 men wintering at an isolated Antarctic base sequentially developed symptoms and signs of a common cold after 17 weeks of complete isolation."
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