Astronaut poop will be used as a radiation shield on a trip to Mars
Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 9 months ago to Technology
Can you imagine the results of a micrometiorite strike? Most times when someone is found covering their walls with their own poop, they generally wind up in the closest Mental Ward.
The surface of Mars. The required delta-V is the lowest thus the energy cost is the least. Due to the way orbital mechanics works (among other factors), asteroid mining won't be a going concern until we are already on Mars. One of, if not *the*, dominating factors in an economical asteroid mining industry is your mass-ratio. Launching a mining expedition to, for example, Ceres from Earth would cost over 50x as much as doing it from Mars. That doesn't include regulatory and environmental costs on Earth - just the basic mass required to do it. Propellant is fairly cheap to produce on Mars.
Mars is the cheapest place to send goods from whether you consider the belt, a planetary surface, orbit, or a lunar surface - excluding dilithium crystal -driven antimatter warp cores, impulse drive, and warp drives of course. ;)
Of course as water is effectively abundant on Mars it won't likely be a huge market for them initially. Only once we were to begin wholesale terraforming would martians be interested in large quantities of water.
Honestly the shielding bugaboo is funding hype. Spend a year traveling between Mars and Earth (these guys' 510 days in flight is suspect right from the onset) via a basic low-energy conjunction mission and you won't even hit 40 rem of total exposure (assuming a solar flare event which is an average of the three worst solar flares in history hits you enroute) . An average trans-atlantic airline pilot, at 5 trips/week, receives about a rem per year. Since this alleged mission can happen once every 15 years or so you're not looking at much exposure, really.
Even if you suffered that entire year's worth of radiation in a single dose you wouldn't get sick from it.
Jan
That phrase made no sense to me!
P.U! Open a window!!
IMO it's a boondoggle - by making it a fly-by mission (unless it's to determine the effects of human exposure to lack of microgravity and the protective Van Allen belt) it would be better served to send a robotic mission - more economical, less logistical nightmares, etc.
If they go - then put boots on the ground, bring back samples, etc... One, being in the 38% Grav of Mars will counteract some of the space travel atrophy, and Two, use that "used food shielding material" instead as the propellant to get out of Mars's gravity well on the trip home. That... or find a way to react it off the iron oxide-heavy soil to compost it into something usable to grow something in. Or better - at the same time, farm the FeO2 for the O2 content...
Of course, the purists will decry "terraforming Mars", but why not? It would give us sustainability (and eventually, industry) on another planet.
Regarding air and water, you send an advance craft which takes hydrogen feedstock and begins stockpiling air, water, and fuel. You have a habitat and return craft fully stocked for the return trip before you ever leave Earth. And we don't need to use the soil to do it - old technology allows us to convert the CO2 in the atmosphere and the hydrogen we take into fuel, oxygen, and water.
Sure, it's proven, basic, "boring", and reliable; but that is what you want.
Poop in one end...whatever you desire comes out the other end?
Talk about reverse osmosis...!
Is that not a functional description of political campaign promises?
Of course they don't get fulfilled, but still that is the claimed process.
also, what a horrible waste of money.
And yes, spending 501 days in space just to fly by Mars is a waste - go to Mars, don't just look at it.
Even the basic idea behind their alleged mission is fundamentally flawed. There is no point to a flyby of Mars. The vast majority of the cost is in development and production of the booster to get there in the first place. Gravitational slingshots are, movies aside, the more risky route than direct launch. It has even less value than a "Flags and footprints" mission.
Frankly this looks like an attempt to take advantage of government funding rather than genuine attempt to further the goal of getting to Mars. Another clue they don't have the actual knowledge and are merely striving for attention and funding is their reliance on cosmic rays and solar flares as their particular siren/boogeymen. These are two of the easiest problems to solve for a Martian trip - primarily because they have been soften exaggerated that without looking into the details you'd think they are insurmountable.
The reality of it is that most of the technology and techniques in a trip to Mars will be fairly "boring". This is good, and what you really want. The more crazy things people try to claim in their alleged plan the more likely it is just an attempt at more funding. Crazy may sound cool, but boring is safe and reliable.
What is RE? It must be defined in relation to American Engineering (AE). When an AE requirement calls for a 'clamp' the engineer will draft the clamp in 3-D, write a machining spec, generate a BOM, and a tolerance table. The shop will create a progressive die or rigid tooling to hold the part, order materials, and arrange for disposal of scrap in an approved manner. Then there will be an inspection regiment, surface preparation, painting or plating, a package, and a hazmat disposal schedule. Finally the installer will don antistatic gloves, unbox the clamp, inspect it again, and it everything is in order he will install the clamp, after checking the computer for possible engineering revisions.
The Russian Engineer will 'clamp' the movable item by drilling a hole in it, threading a bolt through the whole, and tightening the nut!
And because of the psychological stress factors, the AE will be directed to seek counselling, while the Russian Engineer will toast a job well done with vodka.
On the other hand, 'write upside down' pens became a commercial product. That was bought by Russians.
Jan
Wrote very well if you have a heavy hand.
Jan
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-PaperMat...
Of course there is all of the music media: 78 records, cassette tapes, 8 track tapes...
Jan
Windup watches > self winding watches > LED watches > LCD Watches > EL watches
Calculator displays - Nixle tubes (AC only) > LED > LCD > EL
And in that vein, who still uses standalone calculators instead of their phone?
B&W Tvs (tubes ) > Color tvs (tubes) > B&W solid state > Color solid state > CRT > Plasma > LCD > LED
Portable transistor radios powered by a 9V?
Reel to Reel > 8 track > Cassette > CD > MP3 player
Blue ink mimeograph (still remember the smell) > photocopy and xerox becomes a common usage verb instead of a company name.
So much technology changes in the last 40-50 years. Shocking when you look back on it.
Jan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Coloni...
Nor is this a privately funded operation:
"In addition, the foundation has formed a partnership with NASA via a reimbursable Space Act Agreement between Paragon and the Ames Research Center to conduct thermal protection system and technology testing and evaluation. "
Furthermore SpaceX and "Space exploration engineering corp" are not the same company.
The development and production of a booster capable of sending a lone pair of elderly people to fly by Mars will take longer than flight ready by 2018. The statements they make regarding how only during this time is there such a "short" journey are demonstrably false. Anyone even partially versed in the material knows this to be true. With tech from Apollo a low energy conjunction mission could do it approximately ever two years, and in a under 180 days transit time for a total round trip of about one year. With some desire to go faster, ie. burn more fuel, 150 days is relatively easy.