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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)

#161

Post by adrianN »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #151
ItsClo688 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the detail that kills me is moon dust has never contacted oxygen in billions of years, so every time an astronaut came back inside they were essentially doing a chemistry experiment for the first time. the whole moon is just waiting to react with air

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.

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

#162

Post by bertylicious »

genewitch wrote: post #147
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hi, i am not who you asked, but i feel like i've done enough research and have some warnings. UV-C light itself is antimicrobial, but only for surfaces that the light touches, and in the case of cloth it needs to penetrate a bit. There are at least two types of UV-C light bulbs, as well as literal ozone generators that use ceramic platen and a fan. The type of UV-C bulb that is most common on Amazon and Ali is ~254 n…

What about shadows? The UV-C light can't reach everywhere, right? What about the back and undersides of product packaging you want to sterilise?

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

#163

Post by SecretDreams »

SoftTalker wrote: post #150
tarr11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it will turn out to be easier to adapt lifeforms to the planets than to try to adapt the planets to the lifeforms.

Neither is realistic; living on the Moon or Mars or any other planet is a fantasy.

This is the thinking of someone on the timescales of a single life. If humanity persists another 1000 years on our current trajectory (US/world politics not withstanding), I think nothing is really a fantasy. Rather, it's all possible but maybe just not in our own lifetimes. But it is also terribly difficult for us to plan for tomorrow, let alone for a future where our descendants are at the helm.

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

#164

Post by Brian_K_White »

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.

Yes and it wasn't sarcastic, both things (what you said and what they said) are simply true. I think their point was not to be alarmist like you should stop breathing, but simply that everyone knows the one thing and most people don't know the other thing, and it gives scale or context to the "you don't want extra ozone".

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

#165

Post by genewitch »

bertylicious wrote: post #162
genewitch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, i am not who you asked, but i feel like i've done enough research and have some warnings. UV-C light itself is antimicrobial, but only for surfaces that the light touches, and in the case of cloth it needs to penetrate a bit. There are at least two types of UV-C light bulbs, as well as literal ozone generators that use ceramic platen and a fan. The type of UV-C bulb that is most common on Amazon and Ali is ~254 n…

What about shadows? The UV-C light can't reach everywhere, right? What about the back and undersides of product packaging you want to sterilise?

i didn't touch the bottoms and the backs. like, put on socks, grasp box between socked feet, open box, remove the air bag packaging stuff, and if you want, UV it again. however, if you're using 185nm the ozone will get the "back" and inside. not the bottom, maybe, but if you're concerned, flip it over. If you're concerned, make sure you read research papers on exposure time of pathogens to UV-C and/or Ozone to population destruction. as i mentioned, the papers i read before i bought the bulbs said 10-60 seconds for covid. originally there was a recommendation for up to 3 minutes, but some research group went and tested shorter and shorter lengths of time. so you'd need to know the pathogen you're targeting and run it accordingly.

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

#166

Post by genewitch »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #159
genewitch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, i am not who you asked, but i feel like i've done enough research and have some warnings. UV-C light itself is antimicrobial, but only for surfaces that the light touches, and in the case of cloth it needs to penetrate a bit. There are at least two types of UV-C light bulbs, as well as literal ozone generators that use ceramic platen and a fan. The type of UV-C bulb that is most common on Amazon and Ali is ~254 n…

> WARNING: Do not be in the room with any UV-C light for more than a few seconds. This advice does not necessarily apply to far UVC (200-235 nm), which appears to be much safer for human skin and corneas than UVC outside this specific band. More research is needed before calling it "safe" but far UVC is almost certainly less hazardous than the rest of the UVC band. Pay close attention to wavelength when purchasing UV…

254 doesn't make ozone but; yes, i explained the two i have used and researched. i have not researched far-UVC. it's still germicidal, i still wouldn't want to be in the room with it. I had to check what wavelength "common" UV lasers are, and i'm guessing 261nm or so. If you aim that at your skin, it feels hot real quick. Kinda feels, to me, like my entire life i've been told that all UV is bad, but UV-A blockers are snake oil, etc.

I'll keep my eye out for more research on far-uvc and the possibility of getting a bulb to test.

oh by the way, i must have sent back 2 dozen "185nm" UVC bulbs from a dozen "manufacturers" because they didn't produce ozone, because they were fraudulent listings of 253.7nm bulbs - so this is why i was trying to steer people away from amazon and ali, as it's real easy to get the wrong type if you're looking for ozone. I've only managed to acquire 4 bulbs total in the last 5 years that produced ozone, and i burnt out two before someone said "put a fan on it, those bulbs are designed to be inside an air exchanger!"

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

#167

Post by fellowmartian »

SecretDreams wrote: post #163
SoftTalker wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither is realistic; living on the Moon or Mars or any other planet is a fantasy.

This is the thinking of someone on the timescales of a single life. If humanity persists another 1000 years on our current trajectory (US/world politics not withstanding), I think nothing is really a fantasy. Rather, it's all possible but maybe just not in our own lifetimes. But it is also terribly difficult for us to plan for tomorrow, let alone for a future where our descendants are at the helm.

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 us the possibilities.

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

#168

Post by dotancohen »

jordanb wrote: post #67
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…

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?

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

#169

Post by manwe150 »

VoidWarranty wrote: post #106
KennyBlanken wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing you're doing by sterilizing your house like that is making your immune system weaker. Humans are built to withstand a constant assault on their immune systems. We couldn't have survived if we didn't.

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.

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

#170

Post by cornholio »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #151
ItsClo688 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the detail that kills me is moon dust has never contacted oxygen in billions of years, so every time an astronaut came back inside they were essentially doing a chemistry experiment for the first time. the whole moon is just waiting to react with air

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?

Terraforming is an exceptionally energetic endeavor. Even if you had the perfect combination of icy asteroids with just the right amount of water, nitrogen, oxigen etc. and the means to hurl them towards Mars, this kinetic event would be so energetic that it would take centuries to millennia before the surface would cool to habitable temperatures. it's not physically possible to do it ex in the span of a human lifetime.

Ar the scale terraforming entails, the crust reactions with the new atmosphere are closer to a rounding error.

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