Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

esa.int

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 288 posts

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#91

Post by dmurray »

echelon wrote: post #56
Bender wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell Those are similar but sweeter. If I sterilize a room with UV it has a very distinct smell like nothing else aside from lightening and stun guns. I would UV the bathroom right now but then I have to vent the entire house and its 34F outside right now.

I don't think any of you should want to be smelling Ozone. Diatomic oxygen is already a highly reactive fuel that is killing us and giving us cancer every single day. The ozone species is even more oxidative. Oxygen is how we move about the energy gradient, but it's also killing us. Ozone is worse. "Air purifiers" with ionization are probably not worth the squeeze.

Aside from "killing us and giving us cancer every single day", isn't "diatomic oxygen" the stuff we breathe every single minute and need to survive?

I'm not normally one to miss the sarcastic or satirical posts, but this one seems oddly earnest.

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#92

Post by JumpCrisscross »

operatingthetan wrote: post #48
lukan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, as terraforming means changing that. Whether it is really possible, is a different question, but after you have an atmosphere, you could have engineered microorganism processing the soil etc.

In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy.

> In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy

NASA has proposed using "synthetic biology to take advantage of and improve upon natural perchlorate reducing bacteria. These terrestrial microbes are not directly suitable for off-world use, but their key genes pcrAB and cld...catalyze the reduction of perchlorates to chloride and oxygen" [1].

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#93

Post by [deleted] »

colechristensen wrote: post #61
Bender wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell Those are similar but sweeter. If I sterilize a room with UV it has a very distinct smell like nothing else aside from lightening and stun guns. I would UV the bathroom right now but then I have to vent the entire house and its 34F outside right now.

You might be smelling the oxidation of biologicals via ozone and UV might have the same chemical effect

[deleted]

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#95

Post by wincy »

wolvoleo wrote: post #62
operatingthetan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy.

Doing something like that at planetary scale is science fiction anyway even if we did have the tech to do it.

Maybe we’ll turn all of Mars into paperclips with our efforts! Glorious paperclips. First Mars, then the universe!

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#96

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hvs wrote: post #37

If you want to get depressed about all the problems with trying to colonize Mars, I recommend A City on Mars: https://www.acityonmars.com/ It's by the cartoonist of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and his wife (the one with an actual science PhD). https://www.smbc-comics.com/

> If you want to get depressed about all the problems with trying to colonize Mars

I had the opposite reaction. I thought it set forward a realistic set of challenges we have to solve and experiments we have to do before building anything more than a research outpost on Mars. That, in turn, makes a permanent Moon base more valuable.

Standout problems were low- and zero-g trauma medicine, plumbing (something Artemis II started working on) and mammalian reproduction.

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dmurray wrote: post #91
echelon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of you should want to be smelling Ozone. Diatomic oxygen is already a highly reactive fuel that is killing us and giving us cancer every single day. The ozone species is even more oxidative. Oxygen is how we move about the energy gradient, but it's also killing us. Ozone is worse. "Air purifiers" with ionization are probably not worth the squeeze.

Aside from "killing us and giving us cancer every single day", isn't "diatomic oxygen" the stuff we breathe every single minute and need to survive? I'm not normally one to miss the sarcastic or satirical posts, but this one seems oddly earnest.

> isn't "diatomic oxygen" the stuff we breathe every single minute and need to survive?

I think they're referring to oxidative stress [1] caused by cellular respiration.

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

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#98

Post by marcosdumay »

lukan wrote: post #43
operatingthetan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we terraform mars, isn't the dirt still toxic?

No, as terraforming means changing that. Whether it is really possible, is a different question, but after you have an atmosphere, you could have engineered microorganism processing the soil etc.

Just exposing the Martian soil to water for some time is enough to destroy the perchlorates.

(Turns out there's a region in Antarctic with them too, so we can always test things there.)

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#99

Post by rrr_oh_man »

Bender wrote: post #46
coffeebeqn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell

Photocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell Those are similar but sweeter. If I sterilize a room with UV it has a very distinct smell like nothing else aside from lightening and stun guns. I would UV the bathroom right now but then I have to vent the entire house and its 34F outside right now.

Side quest: Can you tell more about the UV sterilisation thing? Why do you do that? How often? Where? It seems like such a specific thing to do.

Re: All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)

#100

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nomel wrote: post #88
imglorp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or effective decontamination performed in the airlock. There was a recent demonstration of an electrostatic repulsion device reducing dust on suit fabric which might help with sticking. And an air shower like used for clean rooms does not seem too far out.

Is that required? Could the suit itself be used as a type of airlock, to leave outside things outside? For example, mounting yourself onto a wall, then the back/whatever of the suit opens to the inside, and you hop out? (yes, there would be some dust recovery required, but minimal in comparison)

> mounting yourself onto a wall, then the back/whatever of the suit opens to the inside, and you hop out?

Isn't there a plan for the Artemis lunar rover to be configured this way? The outside of the suit never comes inside the rover.

Post reply on HN