New Mars Forums

It's 2 weeks since the budget was tabled; however still no vote. The leader of the NDP party still has refused to say how he will ask members of his caucus to vote. Last week Parliament took vacation due to Passover. US Congress took that week off too but the Senste sat in emergency meeting to vote on foreign aid bills from the House. Canada didn't have an emergency. Parliament resumed Monday.

The Prime Minister criticized the Leader of the Conservatives for visiting protesters who object to the carbon tax. The PM accused all protesters of being white supremacists/nationalists, and accused the Conservative leader of being spineless for consorting with them. The Conservative leader was trying to debate the policy of decriminalizing hard drugs. The Conservative leader pointed out the number of times the PM dressed in blackface and called him wacko. The speaker of the house is required to be impartial under Canadian rules, but the speaker kicked the Conservative leader out for the remainder of the day. But the speaker didn't reprimand the PM. When the leader of the Conservatives was required to leave the House, the entire Conservative caucus left the house for a few hours. The speaker is now under being asked to resign for blatant bias. Well, members of the media and former members of Parliament including a former deputy leader of the Conservatives and former leader of the NDP. Calls for the speaker to resign have not come to the floor of the House... yet.

Urine processing:
Water will be extracted by semipermeable membrane. Most water will be extracted by equipment in the cabin or pressure compartment, but more water will be left in urine than on ISS. Concentrated urine will be transported by tube to central life support. There an electrolysis tank will use a semipermeable membrane to extract sodium and potassium. This will produce sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide in the water on the other side of the membrane. This is a standard brine membrane cell. Chlorine gas will bubble off the positive electrode in the urine. Hydrogen gas off the negative electrode in the water. The lye solution will go to a second electrolysis tank with a membrane that will pass sodium but not potassium. This separates sodium hydroxide from potassium hydroxide. We can use them to make soap.

Chlorine gas will go through a semipermeable membrane to remove bad smells. Don't want it smelling of urine. The filter will be back-flushed periodically with water to remove the urine, allowing to flush back into the urine side of the electrolysis tank.

There are other uses. Another tank will bubble chlorine gas and hydrogen gas under pressure through sodium hydroxide solution. This will bind sodium with chlorine to form salt, and hydrogen with hydroxide to form water. The result will be neutral pH salt water. That can be boiled dry at moderate heat in reduced pressure to form table salt.

The same can be done with potassium hydroxide to form potassium chloride, aka salt substitute.

CO2 can be bubbled through sodium hydroxide in yet another tank to form baking soda.

I do not believe clearing to surgical standards is necessary. It's a home, people live there, microbes growing on ISS came from the astronauts. Considering the microbes came from the astronauts, I don't think they're a danger to the astronauts.

This is a public place, not just the home for one family. Astronauts come and go. Microbes left by one crew could infect another. But space agencies put astronauts through isolation before launch to ensure they don't bring harmful pathogens. So I think cleaning to the standards of a hotel are reasonable, not to standards of a surgical suite.

Atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea level is 14.69595 psi. Oxygen on Earth (near the surface) is 20.946%. That means partial pressure on Earth at sea level is 3.0782 psi. Higher altitude has lower total pressure, so lower partial pressure O2. Boulder Colorado has 2.54 psi partial pressure O2. So 3.0 psi is "pretty good".

Experiments done by the US air force in the 1950s give us more detail. They were interested in what fighter pilots require to remain functional. Cockpits in the early 1950s were not pressurized but aircraft were flying higher. They found fighter pilots could breathe 2.5 psi pure oxygen indefinitely, and operate complex equipment (aircraft controls). At 2.0 psi pure oxygen, they could remain conscious up to 30 minutes, but eventually everyone will black out. At 3.0 psi everyone can remain conscious and think clearly, even middle age individuals who are flabby and out of shape.

Mechanical Counter Pressure spacesuits are lightweight, flexible, simple equipment, and safe. If a gas bag spacesuit gets a pin hole puncture, the astronaut must immediately go inside a pressurized habitat. If an MCP suit gets a pin hole puncture, the astronaut says "ow" and continues to work. If a gas bag suit gets a tear 1 inch long (2.54 cm), he/she better be very close to an airlock and have at least one other astronaut close to help, otherwise he/she is dead. The suit will decompress quickly. If an MCP suit gets such a tear, it produces a nasty bruise on the skin beneath the tear; that's all.

A gas bag suit requires a water cooling system. With an MCP suit, you cool with sweat. Technically the entire cooling system is a 1 litre bottle of drinking water and a hose to your mouth. It can be a PET plastic bottle with a plastic bladder liner. One plastic hose from the bladder to the helmet to deliver water. Another hose from the suit or helmet to the bottle to deliver air. As you drink, volume of water decreases, but that sucks an equal volume of air (oxygen) into the gap between bottle and bladder. Total volume in the bottle remains constant so no back pressure. PET pop bottles are designed to withstand 150-250 psi before they burst. That's way more than suit pressure vs hard vacuum. Murphy's Law states anything that can go wrong will, so simpler equipment means fewer things that can go wrong. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

The first MCP spacesuit was designed by Dr Paul Webb for Apollo on the Moon. It wasn't ready in time. MCP works very well at lower pressure, but has a problem at higher pressure. Apollo was originally designed for 3.0 psi pure oxygen in the Command Module, 3.3 psi pure oxygen in spacesuits. That would allow a 10% pressure loss without trouble. After the Apollo 1 fire they considered a nitrogen/oxygen gas mix, but bottles of two gasses and equipment to balance them was too complicated. They finally used 1 atmosphere whole air at launch, bleading air as the rocket ascended and in space while flushing with pure oxygen. It was 5.0 psi pure oxygen in transit to the Moon, and during the mission. Apollo spacesuits used 3.7 psi pure oxygen. Dr Webb initially designed his MCP suit to use 3.3 psi pure oxygen, but increased that to 3.7 when NASA changed their specification.

Dr Webb expected to require bags of liquid silicone over the palms and back of hands to spread force of the elastic suit. He also expected to require bags in arm pits. Experiments with a test subject wearing a prototype suit in a vacuum chamber found those bags were not necessary.

Later work by Dr Mitchell Clapp in the early 1980s developed an MCP glove intended for the EMU spacesuit used on Space Shuttle and ISS. That was before station construction began, when they were expecting to build US space station Freedom. This glove would be used for station construction. Since the MCP suit used 4.3 psi pure oxygen, his glove was designed for that pressure. Dr Clapp found at that pressure the bags of liquid silicone were necessary. A test subject wore the glove and insert his hand into a glove box. The box was pumped down to vacuum. The test subject reported when he put the glove on, it was so uncomfortable it hurt. Once the box was pumped down so his hand was in vacuum, it didn't hurt any more. Dr Clapp measured angle each finger joint could bend, and counter force of the glove. Compared to a gas bag glove, the MCP glove was far superior in every metric. However, the pain reported by the test subject tells me 4.3 is too much pressure for MCP. Yes, once pressure was consistent across the body, that pain went away. So wearing the suit outside in space (LEO/Moon/Mars) is comfortable; the problem is donning and doffing. That means putting it on, and taking off. The pain happens when the suit is partially on.

Some researchers have tried to devise fancy fabrics with contractile polymers or wire of shape memory alloy. The idea is to don the suit unpressurized then to tighten the suit around the body all at once. Preventing difference in pressure of one part of your body vs another prevents the pain. However, there's a simpler solution: reduce the pressure. At 3.7 psi or lower, the plastic bags of liquid silicone just aren't needed. Dr Webb's first version prototype used 3 layers of elastic fabric. This made donning/doffing easier. But I want to reduce pressure to 3.0 psi because that allows a single layer of elastic fabric without pain, and without any contractile polymers. The suit can be made of Spandex and other fabrics readily available today. Any system to pressurize or release pressure could potentially fail. Removing that system removes a point of failure. KISS

The Oxygen Purge System was a way to maintain pressure in case a gas bag suit develops a leak. With an MCP suit it's simply not necessary. Another large, heavy, and complex piece of equipment in the PLSS backpack that's just not needed.

MCP suit backpack: oxygen bottle, Carbon Over-wrapped Pressure Vessel. Backup oxygen, a smaller COPV. Silver oxide granules to adsorb CO2. Heavier than lithium hydroxide, but can be easily regeneratef by simply baking out the CO2. Granules are compatible with a microwave oven. Ag2O sheet metal requires a toaster oven. The CO2 sorbent cartridge would also have activated carbon to absorb bad smells. That's just charcoal formed into a light foam. Carbon surface absorbs smells, so the idea is to maximize surface area, make foam bubbles as thin as possible. The activated carbon is also reused by baking out. The backpack would also have the bottle of drinking water. Circulate air in the suit by action of breathing, so no fans. Suit controller would be a microcontroller with user interface the size of a smartphone. Pressure regulator on the O2 bottles designed so they can continue to operate with complete electrical failure. Battery the size of a Power Bank for a smartphone.

I could continue with spacesuit design, but the point is this is where the 3.0 psi sui pressure comes from.

For the habitat, O2 is suit pressure subtract 10%. That rule is taken from Apollo, and allows 10% pressure leak in the suit while O2 is still what astronauts are used to. As a check, 2.7 psi is higher than Boulder Colorado, so safe. Boulder is 2.54 psi. Maximum nitrogen is 1.2 times total suit pressure: 3.0 x 1.2 = 3.6 psi. Back off a little as a safety factor, so 3.5 psi. Argon is separate, maximum nitrogen and argon do not add. There's also a maximum argon partial pressure for zero pre-breathe, but they don't add. So adding argon allows increasing total pressure in the habitat while maintaining zero pre-breathe. I could do a fancy calculation of exactly how much argon is the maximum, but adding enough so total pressure is exactly half Earth at sea level is easy. Another way to do it is maintain N2:Ar ratio to equal Mars atmosphere. That makes harvesting easy and increases argon a little. That makes total habitat pressure slightly higher than half Earth at sea level. But if you add a lot of argon it lowers voice pitch. You start to sound weird.

Does that answer your question?

Atmosphere specification, for large ship and Mars habitats:
2.7 psi O2
3.5 psi N2
1.148 psi Ar
Total: 7.348 psi total = 1/2 Earth atmospheric pressure at sea level

Spacesuit: 3.0 psi pure oxygen

If you want to increase suit pressure to 3.03 psi, sure! I wrote 2 significant figures, so I consider that to be within the fuzz factor (error margin, adjustment for individual suit, etc.)

Passengers travelling to the Large Ship could prebreathe oxygen on the ground before Starship launches. That's assuming a rapid rendezvous, about an hour after launch. But if rendezvous takes a day, passengers and crew can go through slow decompression on Starship. SpaceX Dragon mission 6 took 24 hours and 43 minutes from liftoff to ISS contact.

The issue is nitrogen dissolved in your blood. If you go through decompression too quickly, that will come out of solution, forming bubbles like a bottle of soda pop. In pop the bubbles are CO2, but in your blood it's N2. 78.084% of Earth's atmosphere is N2. As you breathe, gasses pass through thin membranes in the tiny air sacks of your lungs. Oxygen binds to hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells. But CO2 is carried by your blood as well, and nitrogen dissolved. If bubbles form, they block tiny blood vessels, preventing blood flow to that part of your body. Lack of blood flow means lack of oxygen, causing tissues to die. This is called "The Bends".

SCUBA divers who breathe whole air suffer this. High pressure at depth in the ocean causes more nitrogen to dissolve. If the diver returns to the surface too quickly, that causes the bends. Ascending slowly allows nitrogen to be expelled through your lungs as breath.

Decompressing from normal Earth surface pressure to the lower pressures we're talking about for Mars would do the same. One reason for lower habitat pressure on Mars is so habitat and spacesuit have pressures sufficiently close to each other that extended decompression time or oxygen prebreathe time is not necessary.

Oxygen prebreathe means you don't decompress, but this allows your lungs to exhale nitrogen from your blood. Oxygen prebreathe at reduced pressure would expell nitrogen faster, but again the pressure difference must be slight to prevent bubbles from forming in your blood.

Difference between 1 atmosphere and 1/2 atmosphere is enough that you must either decompress slowly, or go through oxygen prebreathe to expell nitrogen. Again, to prevent bubbles.

Budget day was Tuesday. Leaders of the Conservative party and the Bloc Québécois have said they will vote against it. Leader of the NDP said his party is reviewing the budget, hasn't decided yet. If the NDP votes against the budget, that would be a majority of the House of Commons. If Parliament votes against the budget, that would force an election.

Leader of the Green party also said she vote against the budget. But their party has 2 members in the House, so they don't matter.

Competition is a real factor. Elon doesn't talk about Blue Origin because you don't give your competition advertising. You certainly don't remind your customers that someone else is an alternative. But Blue Origin is working in New Glenn. Design work began 2012, high level specifications revealed September 2016. SpaceX had always intended a heavy lift launcher, since the company was founded (or before). Mars Colonial Launcher was announced in 2012. In 2016 the name was changed to Interplanetary Transportation System. At that time it was going to use carbon fibre. But notice the announcements are an attempt to keep public focus on SpaceX, to take attention away from Blue Horizon. SpaceX also poached talent from Blue Horizon, slowing their work. New Glenn is listed on Wikipedia as 7 metre diameter, 98 metre tall, 2 stages, payload of 45 metric tonnes to LEO, launched from Cape Canaveral LC-36. Starship is 9 metre diameter, 121 metre tall, 2 stages, payload 150 to 200 metric tonnes to LEO, fully reusable. The ITS variant with carbon fibre in 2016 was claimed to be able to lift 300 metric tonnes to LEO, fully reusable. Change to stainless steel dramatically cut cost and sped development cycle, but halved payload capacity. So now the SpaceX website is saying it will lift 100-150 tonnes to LEO fully reusable, or 250 tonnes expendable.

Remember Blue Horizon surprised SpaceX by successfully landing New Shepard 2 in 2015. SpaceX was trying to land Falcon 9 on drone ships but failed every time. New Shepard succeeded in landing on its tail, on land, the second test flight. It's first test crashed. But this took attention away from SpaceX. So SpaceX landed Falcon 9 on land instead of a ship, and that did succeed. Since Falcon 9 was a orbital launcher while New Glenn was a suborbital joy ride, SpaceX kept attention on them.

Also realize SpaceX is dependent on the "capital market". That means they depend on investors. SpaceX is profitable, so they could continue without investors, but would not be able to continue rapid development of Starship without them.

Falcon Heavy was always intended, but realize Falcon Heavy is competition for New Glenn. Starship is the big rocket designed to eclipse New Glenn. And New Horizon hasn't stopped development, just slowed down. Once New Glenn is able to deliver paying cargo to orbit it will start to generate significant revenue. That will make them real competition. SpaceX wants Starship working before that.

Every developed country in the world has a major problem: crashing birth rate. Some more, some less, but every developed country without exception. This has resulted in an aging population, large number of retirees with not enough young people to pay taxes to support pensions and healthcare. Also not enough workers to do the work: factory workers, people to maintain roads, water supply, power plants, sewars, etc. Many developed countries have tried to compensate with immigration. But since all developed countries have the same problem, immigrants must come from third world countries. This is causing problems.

Peter Zeihan talks about this a lot. In one of his videos he claimed that Canada has more immigrants as a proportion of their population than any other country. He claimed Canada has 3 times as many newcomers as the country with the next greatest number. As a proportion of population. He said Canada is "special" with "sprinkles" and other countries couldn't do this. But is that true?

Oops! Not! In this case Peter Zeihan is full of shit.

Hah! Actually I suspect eagles hunt goslings. Adult geese are big and can defend themselves. Theoretically an eagle could take down an adult goose but it would be a major rumble.

You may want to make this a metaphor, but both birds are native to both countries.

CBC: P.E.I. man captures on-ice battle between Canada goose and bald eagle

Protests will be held tomorrow. That's when the tax hike takes effect. Vehicles will drive from outside Winnipeg to Ottawa. They will start in every major city of Canada. There should also be a protest within Winnipeg.

Hopefully the government will not try to order police to attack protesters again. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was embedded in the Constitution as a major amendment. It guarantees rights of freedom of expression including freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association. This means every Canadian has the right to protest, on whatever they want, whenever they want, for however long they want. No limit. The courts have already ruled that invoking the emergency measures act to get rid of Trucker Protesters in 2022 was illegal. One rule is if a politician gives an order to police to commit an illegal act, police are required to refuse. The Ottawa chief of police in 2022 did refuse, so they replaced him. What will happen this time?

YouTube: Manitoba to as Ottawa to remove carbon tax from province
From CBC, one of Canada's mainstream new channels. Video is 8 minutes 51 seconds. Interview with the Premier himself.

This is the premier of my province, and he is the 8th Premier to as the federal government to remove carbon tax.

January 1st he removed provincial excise tax on gasoline. It was 14¢/L, and federal carbon tax is 14.31¢/L so that effectively removes carbon tax. Two big catches: he added 7% Provincial Sales Tax to gas. Based on current gas prices, that PST adds roughly 8.75¢/L, so it doesn't help as much as you might think. And effective tomorrow federal carbon tax is scheduled to increase to 17.61¢/L. And the federal government gives revenue from carbon tax on motor fuel (gasoline and diesel) to the province. However, the federal government gives taxpayers a partial refund once per quarter for carbox tax, so not all of that revenue goes to the province. There GST (federal sales tax) that's charged on top of per litre taxes, and the federal government keeps all of that.

At least this now means 8 of 10 Premiers are asking the federal government to axe the tax.