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

esa.int

121–130 of 288 posts

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

#121

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.

To put it into perspective, we are effectively terraforming Earth today, though maybe not in a good way.

We have converted most of the land to agriculture and released maybe trillions of tons of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, there are 8 billions of us working on it. And what did we do? Increased the global temperature 2 degrees? Made the sea level rise a couple of meters?

It may be bad for us, but compared to terraforming a planet like Mars, that's nothing, and we have the entire humanity industrial complex to do it while on mars, we need to build everything, starting from a hostile environment.

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

#122
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk was also into the solar panels and EVs so it's not all trash the planet. Even if living on Mars or Venus isn't practical we might develop interesting tech trying.

Wasn’t the solar panels thing just some financial fraud scheme?

If so, they are still going https://www.tesla.com/solarpanels so I guess not

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

#123
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun trivia (well, perhaps not fun) in the second paragraph: "the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), which was retrieved in 1990 after spending 68 months in LEO" Long exposure, 68 months, right. But it was only supposed to be in orbit for 11! Challenger being destroyed on reentry made a mess of things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Duration_Exposure_Facilit... >It was placed in low Earth orbit by Space Shutt…

Challenger was destroyed on launch, not reentry.

Yeah it was Columbia that was destroyed on reentry (17 years later).

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting one is Mercury. There is a latitude where the average ground temperature is comfortable for us. You simply need to dig in deep enough to put enough thermal mass above you to get that average rather than the swings. I don't know how deep that is on Mercury, on Earth 10 meters is enough. Real world, you'll want to go a bit farther towards the pole so your station is comfortable with the thermal load…

the swings?

Assuming they mean the ground acts as a heat sink, and sufficiently underground you’re not subjected to the above average heat of the day and below average cold of the night.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting one is Mercury. There is a latitude where the average ground temperature is comfortable for us. You simply need to dig in deep enough to put enough thermal mass above you to get that average rather than the swings. I don't know how deep that is on Mercury, on Earth 10 meters is enough. Real world, you'll want to go a bit farther towards the pole so your station is comfortable with the thermal load…

the swings?

[deleted]

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

#128

As a huge space nerd, I would like to point out that space, and other planetary bodies appear to really suck. It seems to be under-reported that the Earth is pretty nice.

Sadly, it's populated.

My friend, misanthropy is giving last year energy. Don't get so down. In other under-reported news: until the Earth reaches 100% de-population, it can in-fact get worse. Therefore, it's currently not that bad!

Let's take a moment to appreciate that we live on a populated planetary body. The Peter Thiel has not yet achieved its ultimate goal. Good times.

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

#129
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Talking to computers and expecting computers to answer coherent English was science fiction 4 years ago. Don’t lose faith

I wouldn’t go that far. It was pretty clear a long time ago that humans spending so much time filling the internet with content was going to eventually enable neural networks to pretend to communicate.

The advancements required to arrive at modern LLMs and the tech needed to get humans safely to Mars or live safely on the Moon are orders of magnitude in difference.

Keeping humans alive is hard.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also have to remember that those astronauts were some of the most physically fit individuals in a nation of hundreds of millions which may skew the expected medical outcomes. Especially if we assume they always had the best healthcare available, if from nothing else than doctors asking similiar qiestions about the effects of space travel.

That's just simply not true at all, I don't know where you're getting this idea. Literally every Olympic athlete was more fit that an any astronaut ever.

Most astronauts were chosen from a decent sized pool of military pilots. Pilots are some of the most expensive assets the military has (moreso than the planes they fly) and they have to be physically fit. People wanting to become astronauts are subjected to rigorous physical testing.

No, they're not Olympic athletes but they're considerably more fit than the average American.

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