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

esa.int

191–200 of 288 posts

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

#191
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.

The permissible exposure limit for ozone is 0.1 PPM. The IDLH (Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health) level for ozone is five ppm. That's half of chlorine which is 10 ppm. Most major brand air purifiers put out a very minimal amount; the ionization is beneficial because it makes the really tiny (and thus most hazardous) particles clump and fall/stick to surfaces faster. It's the offbrand units that generate lots o…

I don't trust most air purifier manufacturers. They totally would add a fancy-sounding feature which sounds good, even if it has negligible effect, or even negative effect. Case in point: they're still pushing ultrasonic humidifiers.

The tiniest particles aren't necessarily the most dangerous, so even if "clumping" worked as advertised, it wouldn't necessarily be good. Air filters are worst at filtering particles at about 0.3 microns, they're better at filtering smaller ones (I understand it has something to do with brownian motion). I wouldn't be at all surprised if a similar thing affected our biological "filters". Either way, if you have a filter, you don't need UV to clean air. Just push more air through it if you need cleaner air faster.

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

#192
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I vent the house after running UV lamps using a 4400 CFM air mover. I leave the house and run errands. I have 3 of these [1] They have a remote control that "arms" them and it starts beeping slow, the faster, then much faster then activates. It kills insects be destroying their lungs and entirely destroys mold, bacteria and even damages viral material. Hospitals run the same lamps in wings that they close…

How does this affect surfaces like walls, finished wood furniture and floors, plastic, paint, etc? I imagine it will cause some material to off-gas aldehydes at the very least.

I don't think off-gassing is a problem, ozone treatment is famously how they get rid of cigarette smell in used cars, furniture and whole apartments.

But I would worry about the effect on e.g. plastic seals. There are a lot of plastics that become brittle with ozone exposure, let alone UV exposure.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful. The venn diagram bubble depicting your statement overlaps heavily with the anti-vaccine bubble. Its a bit naieve to claim that cleaning one's home will result in an extinction of enough microbes so as to be threatening to our immune system.

That’s because the parent claim is known as the hygiene hypothesis and has been disproven by science, in common with anti vaccine claims. The immune system has not been shown to benefit from training, but has been shown to be damaged by illness.

Maybe you should qualify 'anti-vaccine claims'. Throughout the history of vaccines which have saved countless lives, some people have died or suffered severe reactions linked to a vaccine. This is hardly surprising given our metabolic heterogeneity.

'Anti-vaccine claims' suggests a taking of sides on that knee-jerk division into those who claim without evidence that almost or even all vaccines are deadly and on the other hand, those who are frankly contemptuous of any claim that a particular vaccine (evident particularly with the vaccines developed in response to the Covid outbreak) might be dangerous for certain people. Both extreme views have been on view recently and are indefensible.

The major issue here is the difficult task of identifying people likely to react badly to any specific vaccine.

Meanwhile 'Congress and Institute of Medicine Confirm Government Licensed and Recommended Vaccines Can Cause Injury and Death' and 'The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Act was the first U.S. law to officially acknowledge that childhood vaccines licensed and recommended by the federal government, which are routinely mandated for school attendance by state governments, can and do injure and kill a minority of children.'

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

#194
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it include oxygen?

Stars kinda famously fuse elements up to iron as part of normal operations. And even if you exclude that, the entire solar system is leftovers from a previous star - all that is inside our current star too. Sure, much of it isn't at the surface, but there's not much of a reason to expect that literally zero of it randomly floats up among the lighter elements. Have a reference tho: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_…

That said, "heavy ions and atomic nuclei of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, and iron" makes up only "trace amounts" of the solar-wind plasma [1].

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

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the sample did auto-ignite, what was the procedure?

Empty out a glass of water and blow the floating blobs towards the fire.

The moon has gravity. The blobs wouldn't float.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody smoked back then. Besides, until you get older your health is much more affected by your lifestyle than whether or not you smoke.

Armstrong literally did not believe in physical excercise though. He thought the human heart had a fixed number of beats and didn't want to "waste" them. Look it up. They guys really did not care about physical fitness back then.

Whether he believed in it or not, he passed rigorous physical tests for the Navy and NASA. They don't let just any slob be a fighter pilot, much less a test pilot or astronaut. If you don't have good cardiovascular fitness, you can't handle high G-forces or maintain good judgement while sleep deprived (those jets didn't fly themselves while the pilot napped like modern ones do).

Maybe he was just naturally fit. Some people are. But he was undoubtedly fit.

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

#199
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was some concern when Apollo 11 landed that when they repressurized the LEM with moon dust samples inside it would start a fire. I think they had a small test article that they blew a small stream of oxygen over to ensure it wouldn't auto-ignite.

And if the sample did auto-ignite, what was the procedure?

Throw all their samples back outside, then very carefully sweep the inside of the LEM and throw the broom & dustpan out too?

In theory, they could have been equipped to partially pressurize the cabin with (say) helium - which would allow some sort of vacuum cleaner to work. But that could have added a fair bit of mass (by the LEM's very tight mass budget standards).

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

#200

I recall an article from a long time ago that basically said “astronauts report” the moon smells like spent gunpowder and outer space smell like… I think it was ozone. What they were actually reporting was the smell of the airlocks after they returned from their excursions. The moon has no atmosphere, so it has been accumulating dust from billions of years of asteroid impacts that have never come in contact with oxyg…

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