A CO2 scrubber on Destiny, part of the ship's life support system.
- "This is a spaceship, which means that our life support resources are finite."
- ―Colonel Steven Caldwell[src]
Life support is system found on spaceships that allows for breathable air to be purified and circulated across the ship.
In 2006, the Daedalus was used in an effort to evacuate the Taranians from their planet pending the explosion of a super volcano. However, despite the large size of the Daedalus, four trips were required to ferry the population between Taranis and Lantea given the limits of the ship's life support system. (SGA: "Inferno") Later that year, during a battle with two Wraith Hive ships, the Daedalus sustained weapons damage that took out life support and left the back-up systems unresponsive, necessitating the evacuation of the Daedalus' crew until the system could be repaired. (SGA: "No Man's Land")
In 2009, upon the arrival of the Destiny expedition, it was discovered that Destiny's life support system was failing due to the ship's extremely advanced age of over fifty million years. The ship's CO2 scrubbers had long since failed and the compound inside them that they used to sequester CO2 from the air supply had expired, leaving behind only a smoldering alkaline residue. In a bid to address the issue, Dr. Nicholas Rush said he input their problem into Destiny's computer, and apparently Destiny responded to the crew's need when it dropped out of FTL within range of a planet with the requisite lime deposits needed to create a new sequestration mixture. After scouring the planet for several hours, Lt. Matthew Scott was able to recover enough raw lime to fill multiple scrubbers and begin circulating breathable air again just before Destiny's crew began to suffer severe effects from hypercapnia (CO2 poisoning). (SGU: "Air, Part 1", "Air, Part 2", "Air, Part 3")
Several months later, the lime mixture was nearing the end of it's lifespan. Fortunately, Destiny visited Novus, the former home of the crew's descendants from an alternate timeline. Within an underground bunker, the crew discovered cases of an unknown compound that resembled synthetic foam. Upon returning to Destiny, Rush inserted the material into the scrubbers and noted that the highly advanced compound would last for years. (SGU: "Epilogue")