Math. FUCK YEAH.
The mysterious syndrome impairing astronautsā sight
They go to space with perfect vision and come back with a loss of acuity.
Math. FUCK YEAH.
Technically, all thatās needed (as far as we know) is an energy source and a solvent.
Yea, I was just assuming everyone knew water or a solvent was needed - hehe :)
So the Methane lakes on Titan. They qualify as a proper solvent? Thinking back to my chem days and I know methyl alcohol I used in a lot of stuff but thatās a lot different than pure Methane.
Uh oh! Astronauts are losing their eyesight!
They go to space with perfect vision and come back with a loss of acuity.
Thanks for that. I wish I had something to say, but I donāt. Just thanks for posting it.
Going into space for more than an hour or three does shitty things to your body:
ā The bone-density loss can be slightly mitigated by a rigorous exercise routine, but if youāre up there for more than a few months youāll need a wheelchair for some time before you can walk on your own.
ā Your balance is screwed up and NASAās SOP is to forbid returning astronauts from driving for about a month after their return; astronauts get dizzy easily for a few weeks after returning to normal gravity.
ā Long-term astronauts typically have to wear compression garments as underwear after their return to make their blood pressure high enough to push the required blood up to their heads.
ā Your vertebrae stretch out and you gain a couple inches in height, with the expected back-spasms when you come down and it re-collapses.
ā Now the eyesight thing, which sounds more permanent than the others above.
On a lighter (haha) note, long-term space-farers report having trouble talking when they come downā¦ not because of neurological issues, but because theyāve gotten used to talking without having to support the weight of their tongue and lips.
Being up there is no picnic either. A good proportion are space-sick for a few days. The blood rushes to their heads because itās not pooling lower in the body as normal, which causes pounding in their ears and a bloated look. The sinuses cannot drain and your nose is more-or-less permanents clogged with mucus. Having your nose clogged up reduces your sense of taste already, but beyond that, microgravity seems to go something to taste-buds and astronauts pretty much lose their sense of taste (I think Iāve shared the story of the Soviet cosmonauts and the onions here before).
Really, thereās plenty of reasons not to go to space. Balancing that out is the fact that itās awesome, apparently.
Wouldnāt the āsolutionā to all of these problems simply be spending time in artificial gravity, though? So if we were to go into space in a more permanent manner, I think a lot more attention would be paid to artificial gravity environments.
Feel free to call me a doofus if thatās not even remotely possible. But Iāve seen plenty of space movies where they rotate circular things to introduce gravity, so it must be possible!
And of course, in the ultra-long term, people would evolve to deal with those issues. So some millenia in the future we will be dealing with tall spacefaring humans who have no sense of taste, stuffy noses, and poor eyesight. Hey, sign me up!
If you build a space station thatās large enough you can rotate the whole thing for enough pseudogravity to prevent dystrophy and other ailments. This is currently beyond our engineering capabilities because we canāt yet transport enough material into orbit to build such a large structure. And of course itās also not feasible for a moonbase, though perhaps 1/6 G is enough to at least reduce the rate of degeneration. Mars gravity might be enough to eliminate the problem entirely with enough gym time on the side.
Having your nose clogged up reduces your sense of taste already, but beyond that, microgravity seems to go something to taste-buds and astronauts pretty much lose their sense of taste (I think Iāve shared the story of the Soviet cosmonauts and the onions here before).
Iām interested in this, but I canāt find anything on google about this. Could you post it?
Hereās the story, reposted from a thread in P&R, for whatever reason:
Why are you withholding useful information [about getting laid at a party] from the rest of us?
OK, story time.
First Spacewalk. Alexey Leonov was the first man to walk in space. The Soviet engineers - like their US counterparts - tested the suits in big water tanks. Leonov practiced the space-walk for months before the mission, spending many hours in the tanks, and he thought he had the whole thing down to a science.
The problem was that although the suit was perfectly air-tight, the Soviet engineers didnāt ever test the thing in a vacuum. When Leonov left the tight confines of his Voskhod capsule, his suit was able to totally inflate to its full size. His arms and legs basically became rigid balloons, and he was barely able to move. He spent a few minutes outside the capsule, but he quickly found that he could not compress his arms or legs enough to get back inside the airlock.
After trying a few interesting maneuvers for a couple minutes, he determined that his only choice was to reduce the pressure in his suit. He restricted the flow of air and let some 20% of the air out. It wasnāt enough. Though he could bend the suit some more, it was still too āpuffyā and he couldnāt squeeze into the hatch.
So he had to let some more air out. Maybe another 20% or so. Now, obviously heās reducing the air he has to breathe, but he can increase the relative oxygen percentage, so heās not in a huge amount of danger of asphyxiation, but itās a lot of work to breathe. Additionally, one of the major problems heās facing is cooling. Itās damned hot in the suit and since there is less air-flow, there is less heat exhaust. Worse, heās sweating bullets and the sweat is evaporating immediately in the thin air, drying him out. Heās hot but shivering, and heās dehydrating rapidly.
Finally, he lets out air for the third time and can weakly squeeze into the hatch and barely close it after him.
I wish I could remember the statistics, but he lost a HUGE amount of weight (mostly water, but he was also space-sick) on the mission. I want to say he came back like six pounds lighter than he was when he took off the day before.
Space Onions. I tried to Google this story but came up empty. Itās been a good 18 years since I read it, so I canāt vouch for all the details.
The Russians had a LOT of space stations over the years. Most of these were actually military reconnaissance platforms with big honking cameras and telescopes, but they did scientific research as well. Iām pretty sure this story happened on a Salyut station, maybe Salyut 6.
Anyway, the cosmonauts were up there for months at a time and they were resupplied by robotic versions of the Soyuz capsules. What would happen is that the cosmonauts would get into their Soyuz reentry capsule on one end of the station and seal themselves up while the robot ship (Progress) would dock. After the all-clear, they would come out, open the resupply pod, pull out all the supplies, load in the garbage, and then the robot would undock and de-orbit.
One of the details that is not too widely publicized about space flight is that you effectively lose your sense of taste. One reason for this is that in a micro-gravity environment your sinuses canāt drain and you basically feel like you have a never-ending head-cold ā no smell, less taste, just like on Earth. But also, you get more blood to your head than on Earth (where itās normally pooling in your legs a bit), and they think that the extra blood in your mouthās tissue and tongue reduces the sensitivity of your taste buds. Regardless, the space programs have learned to send up stronger-tasting food for astronauts and cosmonauts, because otherwise everything tastes like cardboard.
So back to the Salyut station: youāve got these two guys, theyāve been up there for a few months, and itās been many many weeks since the last Progress resupply flight, which means that their fresh fruit and other perishables are long gone. The new Progress docks, and they start unloading their supplies, and they are rooting through the stuff checking to see what the Kosmodrome has sent them.
One of the two finds a bag of little onions. Now, onions, having a very strong taste, are a favorite space veggie, and the 'nauts are thrilled. They open the bag and divide the onions, and scarf them down more-or-less on the spot. Fresh, tasty onions!
Now I mentioned above, that between their military missions and trying to keep the Salyut mold-free (a losing proposition), they also ran science experiments. The Soviet Academy of Science, like American Academia, fought bitter battles to get one of their experiments included on the space station. It was a major honor, and it could make or break a career.
As you have no doubt guessed, the onions were not food, they were specially-bred onions that someone hoped would be suitable as a zero-G crop for an eventual space colony somewhere. The cosmonauts quickly realized that too as they RTFM and got down to the business of setting up the various experiments.
Now, being both military and Russian, the solution to this problem was obvious: they would lie. They would lie like Laika the Soviet Space Dog. They reported that the cargo had all arrived safely, and all the experiments were set up properly. Over the next few weeks, they would report back what they thought the scientists wanted to hear about the onions, based on what little the knew about space-onion farming.
How big are the sprouts? Oh, 1.4 cm, 1.6 cm, 1.5 cm, and no sprout.
How big are they today? Hmmā¦ 3.4cm, 2.1 cmā¦
And on and on.
After a few weeks the scientists started asking if there were any blooms on the onion plants. After a couple days, the two cosmonauts decided that yes, sure, two of the plants did have small flower buds. One, in fact was blooming.
Well, as soon as they said this, there was a huge riot of noise from the ground station. See, unbeknownst to the cosmonauts, up until that point, no plant had ever bloomed in space. The new breed of onion had somehow broken that curse! The scientists were sure to win the Nobel Prize for botany! Vodka for everyone!
At this point the cosmonauts knew they were doomed. They had hoped that they would dispose of the standard plant experiment on the next Progress garbage burn, but now they were instructed to keep it and bring the precious veggies back with them when their relief showed up.
They had to come clean, and of course did. The story did not go into a great deal of detail as to punishment or death-threats from the scientific staff, but I like to believe they were many and varied.
I must have told the story better at that party, and the girl had been drinking, but I swear that tale got me laid. It was the 90s, you could get laid for good space-onion story, believe me. Iāve got a good second-hand story about Soviet space robotics too, but itās bed time.
JunoCam sends back its first photo!
NASA released the first photograph taken from its space probe since its camera was turned back on after it locked into orbit on July 4.
Here is the photo.
NASAās Juno spacecraft took this picture of Jupiter on Sunday from a distance of 2.7 million miles. The Great Red Spot storm on Jupiter is visible as are three of Jupiterās large moons, Io, Europa and Ganymede.
Garbage collection ESA style.
What do you do with a problem like space junk? The European Space Agency has an idea: Use a satellite to catch a satellite.
Well since itās getting close to the Apollo 11 anniversary. I figure a little Apollo 11 stuff is appropriate.
Here is some pretty cool photos of Apollo, I hadnāt seen. .
buzz Aldrin has new book out, his 9th Iāve ordered it. He just finished up what most 86-year olds do a 10 week international book tour.
There is also a good interview with the guy damn he looks good for 86. Aldrin looks back at his historic career - from being second to set foot on the moon and first to take a space selfie - and ahead to his future plans
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on legacy he wants to leave behind
Has anyone tried the Apollo 11 experience in the Oculus store?
Wouldnāt the āsolutionā to all of these problems simply be spending time in artificial gravity, though?
If by āspending timeā you mean spending 50.000 years in there so a new race of human beings evolve with the correct biological adaptions for life in zero gravity, then yeah. :P
Otherwise no, the problem isnāt lack of acclimation like when someone climbs a tall mountain. Itās more āthe entirety of life in Earth has been designed by natural selection with gravity always being a factorā.
If you build a space station thatās large enough you can rotate the whole thing for enough pseudogravity to prevent dystrophy and other ailments. This is currently beyond our engineering capabilities because we canāt yet transport enough material into orbit to build such a large structure. And of course itās also not feasible for a moonbase, though perhaps 1/6 G is enough to at least reduce the rate of degeneration. Mars gravity might be enough to eliminate the problem entirely with enough gym time on the side.
I hope these problems will be solved in the future. About not having enough materials, maybe using a asteroid to quick-star the structure. Pick a big asteroid, turn it into a donut, then move it somewhere nice. Work enough for a whole generation.
At about 718,000 light-years across, UGC 1382 is more than seven times wider than the Milky Way ā 10 times larger than was previously thought. But that isnāt the strange part.
Whereas most galaxies have the oldest stars closer to the centre, this one is the reverse.
āThe centre of UGC 1382 is actually younger than the spiral disc surrounding it,ā says Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, in California.