Slashdot Mirror
Space is Silent but Space Habitats are too Noisy
cmuncey writes "This ABCNEWS.com story by Lee Dye brings up a problem I never knew about - noise in space vehicles. In all the SF movies you get vast silent space, (broken perhaps by John Williams music, or the sound of the wookie winning at chess) but the reality is noisier, and sometimes prevents communication, work, and sleep. Both of the Russian built modules for the International Space Station are noisier than NASA safety guidelines allow (like a noisy city street) and there have been reports of permanent hearing damage on Mir. The article explains why, and what can be done about it. "
This can sneak up on you. My hearing was damaged by working around diesel generators for several years. They didn't seem that loud, your brain gets used to background noise. It was enough to cause hearing loss after prolonged exposure.
This is going to make the honeymoon suites really popular! Maybe if the Space Hotels were advertised for what they really are, it wouldn't be so bad - lots of empty quiet, nothingness, with small pockets of unbelievable noise, mixed in with lots of money changing hands.
The answer is simple: stop feeding the astronauts pork & beans. No more loud noises *or* stinky odors.
http://www.luf.org/bin/vie w/GIG/GalacticInformationGuide
Does NOT link to anything about bubble structures. If you want me to bother reading your rants, link well, I can find the general site, and surf (except for the fact that luf.org doesn't have any internal search engines..) and find interesting things, I wanted to read about bubble houses, and it's gonna take much more effort, so it's not going to get done anytime soon.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
The problem (with some exceptions) isn't lack of interest. Its all takeoff weight. Water is *really* heavy. Plastic isn't, but the amount of water you'd need for the right amount of shielding would be *mundo* expensive. All for what? A space habitat? Now, granted, it would be nice, but that would be really freaking expensive.
We can't really attempt anything in space that requires a large amount of weight, until we get into asteroid mining. All the water, ore, etc. that we need.
Other plans, such as Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" plan, which proposes in-situ production of return fuel from mars' atmosphere is an example of accomplishing a large-scale mission without thinking large scale. But, if you specify using water...ouch!
Don't get me wrong...I wanna experience space travel...I want to go to Mars...but thinking in conventional terms with conventional means of getting human-made items into space just won't work.
And that vibration will set the air in motion (if there's no air in the room where you're trying to sleep, noise and vibration aren't your biggest problem). This will produce sound that will work it's way through the cancellation system to come back as out of phase vibrations in the air which will hit the metal and vibrate it, cancelling out (quite possibly imperfectly)the original metal-borne vibrations.
In an airless environment, this same method (phase-flipped, i.e., inverse, feedback)could be used with transducers attached directly to the structure of the station, some to sense vibration, others to be driven (just like loudspeakers)by the vibration-cancellation system.
Perhaps a lot more stories should be slashbox only, with decoys posted on the main page to keep the trolls distracted from the good stuff. What a pity the moderators are too busy stomping trolls and fighting flames to give my posts the extra points they so richly deserve :)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Was this story ever posted on Slashdot's main page?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It needs to start researching and doing civil engineering in space -- making new land and cities in space.
It's not for lack of interest. Congress hasn't allowed NASA to think that big for over 30 years. Every time a NASA center comes up with a project that could lead the way to opening up space to large scale anything it very quickly finds it's funding slacking off...
Look at what happened just recently to TransHab. Finally a chance to prove that inflatable space structures can really work. They've been theorized and studied since the 50s. But once again a few congressmen inserted language in last years NASA budget to deny all funding for the project.
Our congress simply doesn't want to open up space. They fear it will just suck up their budget (which they would much rather spend on their personal constituencies)...
Some of these problems sound (sorry) like they can be remedied by using active sound suppression, get a microphone that records the sound, have a chip invert the sound and play it back through a speaker in real time, the sound waves cancel each other out.
There's still the vibration, though.
George
thats why seti@home dont find anyting
Mir is too noisy
I bet there are people out there fit and willing to be astronaughts who can deal with the noise. The best thing is to find these people... they can stay in space for now. Surely, whatever the people would cost is far less than changing the envinronment...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
For example, consider the bubble designs by Michael Savage, consisting of a large air filled bubble, a layer of plastic, six feet of water (for cosmic ray shielding) and another layer of plastic (gold coated to control glare).
http://www.luf.org/bin/vie w/GIG/GalacticInformationGuide
http://www.luf.org/
Or consider the huge O'Neill habitats.
http://www.ssi.org/space_art.html
Sometimes, you just need to so something on a big enough scale.
http://www.imax.com/films/distributi on/L5.html
NASA needs to get over its fascination on building tin can space ships to go to planets (and tin can space stations to support that). It needs to start researching and doing civil engineering in space -- making new land and cities in space.
http://www.spaceandrobotics.org/debate.h tm
At least some people at NASA get it:
http://near.jhuapl.edu/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I sympathize. My box sounds like a freakin' microwave when it's running, and I can't leave it on all night anymore b/c it wakes me up. Surprisingly little noise, if it's constant, can blow that good night's sleep right out the window.
Freedom: "I won't!"