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The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

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Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#101

Post by sandworm101 »

eesmith wrote: post #61
ethbro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a huge Crichton fan when younger, and Andromeda Strain and most of his earlier stuff is head and shoulders above later work. The movie isn't bad either. I'd definitely skip reading anything newer than Lost World. Like Tom Clancy, at some point (and $) you lose the fire to write.

Danielle Steel has a net worth of over $300 million, and still has "the fire to write", so that point may be very high for some people.

Ghostwriters. They are such a norm that I wouldn't take any wealthy author on their word about them. Some call them them "assistants" or "editors" but the reality is that, if you can afford it, there is nothing stopping anyone from hiring a team to do the actual writing. And we all accept it.

See "The Art of the Deal". He says he wrote it. He genuinely believes he wrote it. Some people think talking to the ghostwriter, giving them the broad strokes and signing off on the final work, constitutes 'writing a book'. It is not that different than saying "I built a hotel".

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#102

Post by stallmanite »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #100
CydeWeys wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of a magnetic field ablates away an atmosphere only on cosmic timescales, not human ones. That seems like a problem that could be solved with the benefit of thousands more years of technological development. Never say never. Just a hundred years ago many people argued it was impossible to ever leave the atmosphere of this planet (And it wasn't ... using cannon. The rocket solved that problem).

It's a moral hazard to hold out hope for a "home away from home". Terraforming Mars is a moonshot. If we ever find ourselves in a situation where we cannot survive on a planet where food literally grows out of the ground, with abundant liquid water and atmospheric oxygen at 1 atm, how on Earth would we survive on a planet that is devoid of life, has no liquid water, an atmosphere that's 1% the pressure of Earth's wit…

What about impacts such as the one that created the moon? We can argue about likelihood of it happening again but large enough impacts can liquify even crust on the opposite side of the planet. The bottom of the ocean won’t help at that point right?

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#103

Post by eesmith »

sandworm101 wrote: post #101
eesmith wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Danielle Steel has a net worth of over $300 million, and still has "the fire to write", so that point may be very high for some people.

Ghostwriters. They are such a norm that I wouldn't take any wealthy author on their word about them. Some call them them "assistants" or "editors" but the reality is that, if you can afford it, there is nothing stopping anyone from hiring a team to do the actual writing. And we all accept it. See "The Art of the Deal". He says he wrote it. He genuinely believes he wrote it. Some people think talking to the ghostwrite…

Sure, but I've never come across a mention that Danielle Steel uses ghostwriters.

She vehemently denies it. Quoting an interview at https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/608.Danielle_Steel :

> Goodreads Author Patti Roberts would like to know if you work with a ghostwriter.

> DS: It's a shocking question. I've been asked by my fans, "Who writes your books? Does someone help you?" And I said something to my editor not long ago, "It's so insulting that people would even say that." She said, "Yeah, but you are one of the few authors left who doesn't use somebody." There is a very, very famous best-selling author who has apparently eight writers. He writes the outlines, gives them chapters to write, and doesn't write his own books—I was so shocked. And there is not just one. I don't know if the public knows that or not. Maybe I'm the last idiot on the planet, up until 4:30 in the morning typing my own work. It's just incredible. Then you are not a writer; you are some sort of scriptwriter. Nobody writes my stuff. I find it a shocking concept. It's different if a celebrity wants to write their memoirs, and they have no writing ability. OK, then they use a ghostwriter. Otherwise it's like becoming a tennis pro and having a stunt double. What's the point of that?

She's also well known for her decades-long habit of spending 20 hours a day working on a book.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#104

Post by pvaldes »

adtac wrote: post #63
orbital-decay wrote: post #14

There's also another similar long-term experiment being performed on the International Space Station [0]. It's not finished yet but apparently preliminary results [1] suggest that microorganisms can possibly be lifted into the upper atmosphere from the oceans somehow. They found different planktonic species from all over the world on the outer surface of the space station, which is hard to explain by spacecraft conta…

Interesting. I wonder if some extreme events could have kicked up enough microorganisms that some even went to the moon! That would be a false positive for finding life on the moon.

> I wonder if some extreme events could have kicked up enough microorganisms that some even went to the moon!

We could fit 56 planet mars in row in the distance between the moon and the earth, so... not. Really unlikely

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#105

Post by pvaldes »

perlgeek wrote: post #91
adtac wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I wonder if some extreme events could have kicked up enough microorganisms that some even went to the moon! That would be a false positive for finding life on the moon.

We find rocks from the Moon and from Mars[0] on earth, and have reason to believe that small pieces of rock travel from most inner solar system bodies to most others. I find it totally believable that some micro organisms could survive the ride on such rocks and possibly thrive on other bodies, if the environment is suitable. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite

Rocks expelled and melted after a collision. If i'm not wrong, none alive or organic would survive on magma. Not even prions.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#106

Post by pvaldes »

thirstywhimbrel wrote: post #41
not2b wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would mean you have a much harder time finding out if Mars once had life, if instead you're detecting mold that hitched a ride with your spacecraft.

I think you're right, this is the best argument against. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy[0] deals with this a great deal, the early scientists pretty quickly devolve into two camps, terraformers and preservationists. There's a lot of other things going on as well, but this is one subplot. At one point in the book, a terraformer made the argument if we discovered life on Mars we'd never know how or when it got the…

if we discover life in mars, and is similar to other life on earth we definitely can estimate an evolutive point of fork among both. If the DNA is basically identical in mars and earth, is from earth. There is not a lot of time to accumulate a lot of mutations since 1971

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#107

Post by mathattack »

tonyarkles wrote: post #21
bb88 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An armchair explanation might be that a hurricane or tornado might be able to do this. Water spouts have scooped up fish into the sky only to dump them on land hundreds of miles from shore. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254812/Hundreds-fi...

In Ben Rich's book about the Skunkworks, one of the aircraft (U2? SR71?) was encountering high-altitude insect impacts on their windshields. Turns out they'd been lofted up there by nuclear tests.

Great book. And this was my guess for the ISS too.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#108

Post by ChuckMcM »

ethbro wrote: post #59
mongol wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Andromeda Strain good? I have heard about it.

I was a huge Crichton fan when younger, and Andromeda Strain and most of his earlier stuff is head and shoulders above later work. The movie isn't bad either. I'd definitely skip reading anything newer than Lost World. Like Tom Clancy, at some point (and $) you lose the fire to write.

Anecdote time. (hey its saturday were I am ;-))

This comment: "at some point (and $) you lose the fire to write."

I had noticed the same thing with another author. And at the time I was working with Jerry Pournelle[1] helping him with things he didn't need or want to do with his BYTE column. I asked Jerry about it. His response was fairly enlightening so I share it here.

Jerry said that writers were arrogant, and in their arrogance they despise editors because editors tell them what they wrote doesn't read well, or isn't necessary for the story, or has the wrong character point of view and demand that the writer rewrite it. When a writer is young and hungry, they do this because they have to, if they don't they won't get published. But if they become successful, they get more sway with the publisher. At some point they have enough sway to override what the editor says and have them publish it the way they wrote it. And that is when you find out if they are a good writer, or if they are only a good story teller and without an editor their writing is sub par.

That made so much sense to me at the time and it was also the basis for Jerry's oft used phrase which was the secret of good writing was re-writing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#109

Post by thirstywhimbrel »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #54
CydeWeys wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine though. Having a second home for humanity is more important than maximally preserving the ability to detect past life (note that we wouldn't be eliminating that ability, just hindering it somewhat). Also, we think we'd be able to tell pretty easily whether any life detected is from Earth (i.e. we brought it along with us). Life that isn't descended from the same tree of life as us is likely to be radicall…

Mars will never be able to be a "second home" for humanity: it lacks the ability to maintain an atmosphere that can support humans due to its weak magnetic field. The bottom of the ocean would be far more habitable if we faced any type of extinction event.

> The bottom of the ocean would be far more habitable if we faced any type of extinction event.

Yeah, space has a coolness factor, and there are things about the origin of the universe we can't learn from the bottom of the ocean, but an underwater station is one of the most underrated projects humanity could pursue.

Oceans are phenomenal shields against radiation, extreme weather, or even the temporary combustion of the atmosphere, should things get that bad. The opportunity to learn about groups surviving in isolated habitats, or about megastructures that have to survive hostile external environments, could even provide really useful lessons for space.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#110

Post by ethbro »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #108
ethbro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a huge Crichton fan when younger, and Andromeda Strain and most of his earlier stuff is head and shoulders above later work. The movie isn't bad either. I'd definitely skip reading anything newer than Lost World. Like Tom Clancy, at some point (and $) you lose the fire to write.

Anecdote time. (hey its saturday were I am ;-)) This comment: " at some point (and $) you lose the fire to write. " I had noticed the same thing with another author. And at the time I was working with Jerry Pournelle[1] helping him with things he didn't need or want to do with his BYTE column. I asked Jerry about it. His response was fairly enlightening so I share it here. Jerry said that writers were arrogant, and i…

Essentially the same argument about a band's lead singer going onto a solo career.

Were they the main component of success? Or simply the most visible participant?

My rationale has always been that writing (or art in general) is hard. And that people are lazy. And that few people able to afford not working hard are still willing to pursue it with the same dedication.

But I really like your idea too. "The invisible team" makes a lot of sense.

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