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#1 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Skyrora British space small ship launchers » 2020-10-31 05:41:02

They are proposing to move their launch site to Shetland Islands which are even further North than the one in Ross. I guess they are looking at Polar orbit markets.

#2 Re: Human missions » 3D printing of glass... » 2020-09-26 10:32:24

You have some nasty chemicals there, Robert. Phosgene in particular has been used as a terrible chemical weapon and is banned except by special license. Consequently all commercial processes using it have measures to generate it and use it immediately, without storage.

#3 Re: Mars Analogue Research Stations » Underwater Research Facility Space Habitat Simulation » 2020-07-28 09:47:33

You are right, Void. The further down the food chain you can get the more resources are available, but this must be balanced against the difficulty of obtaining nutrition from the low levels of the chain. No warmblood that I know of eats copepods, never mind planktonic algae. At the level of krill it all starts to make sense for large animals to specialise for gathering the resource.

#4 Re: Life support systems » Crops » 2020-07-28 09:40:20

I have read that if you rely on pulses for your protein intake you should have at least 3 different varieties. eg lentils, mung beans and chickpeas. Soy beans are an exception, they contain all the needed amino acids
In India, in the North in particular, untold millions of people rely on vegetables, pulses and rice and have developed hundreds of ways of preparing them. Some seem weird to the western palette, most are nice, many are fabulous.
Occasional supplements are paneer, a bland kind of cheese, and dried fish.
From time to time I will make a vegetable curry with lentils, veg such as Spinach, other brassicas or roots and chickpeas ( I cheat and use a canfull). My wife loves them and so do I.

#5 Re: Human missions » Starship is Go... » 2020-07-27 04:23:39

how will this proposal satisfy the pork barrel lobbies?  If it doesn't the money will not flow that way. Musk is right to maximise the work in house.

#6 Re: Mars Analogue Research Stations » Underwater Research Facility Space Habitat Simulation » 2020-07-27 04:02:47

For Void.
I understand that the 10:1 ratio for prey/predator applies where the predator is warm blooded. For cold blooded creatures it is more like 3.5:1. Being warm blooded is energetically expensive.

#7 Re: Meta New Mars » Housekeeping » 2020-07-27 03:55:45

HA Ha. In my student days a friend had a 6 volt Citroen 2CV. It had to be parked at the top of a hill overnight during the winter. 55mph was flat out!

#8 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » 2019 NCOV a.k.a. Wuhan's Diseases » 2020-07-12 05:41:42

Flu vaccine works against single strains of flu and, to some extent, to very closely related strains. Every year the medics must make their educated guess which strain to go for and vulnerable people are given that vaccine. In a good year the guess is right. In a very bad year it would be way off and the vaccine would be the wrong one. But it takes months to prepare for a vaccination campaign. The fact that there is no universal flu vaccine does not, however, mean that there is no vaccine at all. This may be where we are going to end up with Covid 19.

#9 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Technology Updates » 2020-07-12 05:31:51

Pressurised cars will have round bodies, like earth aircraft fuselages, because this is efficient structurally. Therefore the railway must be built with this in mind, so as to allow passenger transits without suiting up. Such a car could mate directly with an airlock assembly. With such a railway the cargo transport arrangements would also mimic earth aircraft cargo arrangements, rather than marine/terrestrial containers, I would expect.

#10 Re: Not So Free Chat » Vaccinate Your Children! » 2020-07-12 05:20:29

It is an unfortunate fact that the decline in child mortality experienced in all developed countries means that less healthy children survive and contribute to an appearance of reduced child health overall.

#11 Re: Water on Mars » Recent Water on Mars » 2020-07-12 05:05:27

Water may be in the form of huge piedmont glaciers from when Mars had a vigorous hydrological cycle, now covered in dust and volcanic ash and thereby preserved. If the cover is thick enough it might even isolate the glacier from overflowing lava. Where lava is inserted under the glacier there would be widespread melting and huge outburst floods and surface collapse. In Iceland such floods are called jokullhlaups (=glacier leaps).
Mars water has a certain percentage of the deuterium isotope and it is from this that the loss of water is calculated. It is possible that the measured concentration of Deuterium (based only on ground surface or atmospheric water) is not representative if there are large ancient ice masses which are effectively isolated (in billion year terms) from the surface. The calculation reference is Earth water, but there is no proof that Earth does not concentrate Deuterium in the depths of the mantle, in preference to light water, which would add further uncertainty to the calculation results.
So with these assumptions the water loss calculation can only be for guidance.

#12 Re: Life support systems » Greenhouse Architecture » 2020-07-12 04:47:57

Without buffer gas (on earth that is Nitrogen, on Mars it might be Nitrogen and Argon mixture) fire is a huge problem. Things burn in pure Oxygen very vigorously and are exceedingly difficult to extinguish.

#13 Re: Life support systems » Minerals, Metals from Sea Water/brines. » 2020-07-12 04:40:00

colours of Iron oxides and other iron compounds are heavily dependent on the state of oxidation of the iron and on the degree of hydration of the compounds. They vary from a quite pale yellow through oranges, browns and reds to black.

#14 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Orbital Mechanics » 2020-07-12 04:16:14

this windows 10 machine is less effective and more difficult to operate than my wifes old windows 7 machine! Our 'phones are way better except in the matters of keyboards and screen sizes.

#15 Re: Human missions » Revisiting Project Orion - Article. » 2020-07-12 04:05:07

trouble is "good enough for government work" is a major part of the problem due to the extraction of taxpayer cash being the objective.

#16 Re: Human missions » Lunar economics etc » 2020-07-12 03:42:08

Retaining Falcon booster fuel will require booster recovery from a greater height and higher speed as that fuel will be expended later in the flight. This might represent a big cost increase if the boosters cannot be recovered.  If the mass of the upper stages is increased then the solids booster change would be cancelled out and Falcon boosters could still be recovered, but stresses would be much greater.

#17 Re: Human missions » Revisiting Project Orion - Article. » 2020-07-05 09:43:11

So why not a moveable extension which is housed at launch and extended at high altitude?

#18 Re: Human missions » NASA's Moon Mission » 2020-07-05 09:25:10

Surely we don't need to justify our own curiosity. We go and have a look because we are curious, because we have an urge to acquire knowledge and this urge is part of what makes us human and what makes humans such a successful species.
There is another reason, though. We were caught with our pants down by the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 and might be again. The dinosaurs were wiped out by a big one of these things, and the Younger Dryas has been blamed on one. These are not the only possible cases of global catastrophe- there are still risks of vulcanism, disease, famine and war which could set us back to the early iron age at least, or maybe wipe us out on this planet. A plan B might be handy!

#19 Re: Terraformation » Is terraforming Mars impossible? Maybe not... » 2020-07-03 04:10:50

Spacenut. What is the document source for Thiophene in Mars' soils?

#20 Re: Human missions » GPS system for Mars? » 2020-07-02 09:37:30

Could Spacex build and test the proposed satellites in 2 years? Probably not, but 4 years is credible for such a task if they build on the experience of others. Well maybe not then.

#21 Re: Human missions » GPS system for Mars? » 2020-06-30 01:40:21

They also need to have a comms relay function. There isn't likely to be any shortwave round-the-globe communications as was used on Earth when I was young.

#22 Re: Human missions » Human Business and flight plan for mars » 2020-06-25 02:11:25

Not just the Moon, TAH. That applies to any body that you want to exploit for a change of velocity. Its called the Oberth Effect.

#23 Re: Meta New Mars » Housekeeping » 2020-06-25 01:55:17

Good luck to you GW, and to your wife.
Take heart! I had it without respiratory tract problems, but lots of diarrhoea, brain near shutdown and high temperature. My wife either didn't get it or was asymptomatic. I am 72 and she is a little bit younger.

#24 Re: Human missions » Starship is Go... » 2020-06-24 10:33:41

I noticed that the latest effort, using type 304 L stainless (a much better selection, in my view) had a sharp change in curvature where the domed top connected to the conical bottom. There's a reason why pressure vessels are made with smooth transitional curves and theres also a reason why you don't see circumferential welds within these transitions. I could have saved them millions, and I'm not a pressure vessel specialist.  I know they have to make them as light as possible but a stress raiser is still a stress raiser!

#25 Re: Human missions » Human Business and flight plan for mars » 2020-06-24 10:22:12

OK. I just wondered. Thanks GW.
I dare say that somebody in Nasa would have thought of it and worked it up if it is realistic.

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