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

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

#241

Post by semi-extrinsic »

nandomrumber wrote: post #230
corysama wrote: post #34

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…

Oxygen if the third most abundant element in the universe.[1] The Moon minerals contain plenty of it: The finer regolith, the lunar soil of silicon dioxide glass .[2] Minerals forming the lunar crust are made up of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, along with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen. [3] I figure you mean free oxygen or diatomic oxygen O₂, but that s…

Even though some minerals on the Moon contain oxygen, it doesn't mean the dust can't oxidize further when exposed to a gaseous atmosphere with high oxygen partial pressure.

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

#242

Post by altmanaltman »

spauldo wrote: post #198
altmanaltman wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Look up those tests and see what they selected for, its not as much as raw physical fitness but rather how their bodies reacted to stress + a host of other pyschological factors + flight training. Yes, it is without a fact that they are no slobs but calling them the most fittest is also hyperbole and paints this image of hyper fit astronauts which wasn't true back then. They also didn't care much about long term effects of space travel on the body back then because missions were very short back then.

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

#243

Post by chmod775 »

mr_toad wrote: post #69
krunck wrote: post #9

Mars has toxic levels of perchlorates in the regolith. That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it. Those space suits that dock to vehicles seem like a necessity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate#On_Mars

> That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it. It’s really only a concern if you ingest it.

Not a big deal then either. Just don't do it daily.

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

#244

Post by gus_massa »

adrianN wrote: post #161
stonecharioteer wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what trips me up about terraforming. If we learn to create an atmosphere, are we going to instantly poison the oxygen we introduce?

It took about a billion years of photosynthesis on earth before all the ferrous iron dissolved in the oceans was oxidized and atmospheric oxygen concentration began to take off.

... and it probably killed most of the then current bacteria/archea, because they were adapted to an atmosphere without oxygen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

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

#245

Post by RetpolineDrama »

chromacity wrote: post #44
krunck wrote: post #9

Mars has toxic levels of perchlorates in the regolith. That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it. Those space suits that dock to vehicles seem like a necessity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate#On_Mars

Calcium perchlorate is only slightly toxic. Not good for you, but living in an environment with background radiation levels 50x higher than on Earth may be your bigger worry... Still, I'm pretty sure we have plenty of people who wouldn't mind giving it a try.

>but living in an environment with background radiation levels 50x higher than on Earth

We can park a big honkin magnet at the mars-sun lagrange point and cut that down massively.

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

#246

Post by tarcon »

emsign wrote: post #229
corysama wrote: post #34

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…

Outer space smells like burnt flesh is what I've heard. Space is full of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are created in novae and are everywhere in outer space in small amounts. They're the same chemicals that generate when organic compounds and fossil fuels are burnt. Makes me wonder even more why some people really want to go and live there.

Has anyone tried to breath space? :)

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

#247

Post by daveguy »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #241
nandomrumber wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxygen if the third most abundant element in the universe.[1] The Moon minerals contain plenty of it: The finer regolith, the lunar soil of silicon dioxide glass .[2] Minerals forming the lunar crust are made up of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, along with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen. [3] I figure you mean free oxygen or diatomic oxygen O₂, but that s…

Even though some minerals on the Moon contain oxygen, it doesn't mean the dust can't oxidize further when exposed to a gaseous atmosphere with high oxygen partial pressure.

Exactly this. Oxygen in minerals is very different than gaseous oxygen.

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

#248

Post by ryandrake »

jiggawatts wrote: post #221
fellowmartian wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it’s just a failure of imagination. Some folks correctly foresee not being able to continue what we’re doing now in the exact same way in some new context and conclude everything is impossible. Life isn’t this fickle, it’s adapted before and will adapt again. This is why great science fiction is so valuable, as some people are better at imagining new ways of being more than others, and can show the rest of u…

The counterargument is a simple opportunity cost calculation: There will never, ever, ever [1] be a scenario where if you weighed up the options of "expand into some less habitable area of the Earth" versus "expand to Mars", the latter is the better option either 1) financially, or b) quality of life. Nobody[2] ever picks the dramatically more expensive and dramatically worse option! Also, people that are desperate e…

I wish this kind of economic and biologic sanity was more common in discussions of colonizing outer space. We've watched too much Star Trek.

Building a city in Antarctica will be economically viable long before building a city on Mars is.

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

#249

Post by diegoperini »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #203
quotemstr wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But you could pour water at the fire from across the room! Lower gravity is giving the defender an advantage over the elements... at least until it gets low enough for things to start floating, when this flips around. In microgravity, water turns into floating blobs, but fire turns into actual floating fireballs . Water blobs vs. fireballs. Pretty sure there's a nice videogame idea hiding in there somewhere.

> Water blobs vs. fireballs. Pretty sure there's a nice videogame idea hiding in there somewhere.

I like the way you think. :)

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

#250

Post by amluto »

chromacity wrote: post #44
krunck wrote: post #9

Mars has toxic levels of perchlorates in the regolith. That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it. Those space suits that dock to vehicles seem like a necessity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate#On_Mars

Calcium perchlorate is only slightly toxic. Not good for you, but living in an environment with background radiation levels 50x higher than on Earth may be your bigger worry... Still, I'm pretty sure we have plenty of people who wouldn't mind giving it a try.

On the one hand, it's not particularly toxic as toxic things go. On the other hand, 0.6% is not a small concentration.
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