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Lunar Dustbusters
Maggie McKee writes "Moon dust could be a source of oxygen and metals. But moon dust could also lodge in astronauts' lungs, possibly triggering long-term health effects. During the relatively short Apollo Moon landing missions nearly 40 years ago, astronauts reported difficulty breathing. So now, before astronauts return to the moon in 2020, NASA is working on a number of ways to reduce the amount of lunar dust astronauts are exposed to — from simple grates on the floor to magnetic wands and giant lint rollers."
But moon dust could also lodge in astronauts' lungs, possibly triggering long-term health effects.
Possibly? Is there not a consensus that this is likely to cause disease like silicosis?
RTFA - it's often smaller particles, and there is a lot more of it.
Why is Lunar dust so different than "normal" dust and/or sand that we breathe and/or eat every day?
:-)
Because it has not been smoothed down by water and wind. Only hits of meteorites scatter stuff there, and that is not enough to smooth away edges on grains of silica and other rough rocks.
Anyhow, the solution is simple: Have the astronauts take up smoking so that they have practice
Table-ized A.I.
That lunar dust is "not hazardous", read this: MICRO-MORPHOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF LUNAR DUST The part about "glass shards" really brings the "point" home.
I've got your sig, right here.
Actually smoking may be benificial here. The dust would tend to stick to the tar rather than scatter freely. Just look at the inside of a computer from a smokers house... the fans a gummed up, sticky dust covers everything and canned air does nothing on the tar laced dust. Mabe the tar can be used to help clean the dust from the air? NASA should give me funding to test this theory :-) Maybe the astronauts shouldn't smoke themselves but a tar derived from smokers homes could be used in air filters or something.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Hello, iRobot? Yeah I'd like to place an order for 1 million Roombas. And uhhh, what kind of delivery charge is there for the Moon?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
This looks like a nice stuff to breathe.
The iRobot Moonba
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Finally a use for Ionic Breezes!
Actually one of the problems with lunar dust is that it has a charge. Imagine sticking your arm in a box of packaging peanuts and pulling it out and have a number of the peanuts stuck to your arm. It's along that type of concept. The other big issue with lunar dust is that it's very abrasive. I believe in the original lunar missions, when they scooped up lunar dust into containers, it cut the o-rings on the containers that they brought the lunar dust back in.
I am currently involved in an experiment to use a circuit board to remove the lunar dust from solar panels in lunar gravity. If you tried and brushed it off, it would scratch the glass and the solar panels would become less efficient. The circuit has been proven before, but we're (as far as I know) the first ones to try it in lunar gravity. Hopefully this concept can be adapted in the future to create a lunar dust "vacuum cleaner" or maybe apply it to "repel" dust in other ways.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to just take 1 billion of those dollars and spend it looking for near earth asteroids.
Lets say you spend hours/days in a tin can with very little room (and head-room) while your head is tethered to the wall and inside a fish bowl. Now lets try and not only sleep in that fish bowl, but carry out day-to-day activities. I think I do see a problem.
Demented But Determined.
Zapp: Just let me catch my breath. Perhaps these will clear my lungs
[Zapp unravels a square pack from his t-shirt sleeve]
Zapp: Out-staaanding. Laramie Extra-tar now comes with cesnium-methyl-butate.
[Zapp's eyes roll back as he takes a long drag]
Zapp: Ahhh. Damn, that's smooooooth. [cough cough] Easy money baby. Another day, another euro.
Troy: Don't kid yourself, Branny. My good looks paid for that moon buggy, and my talent filled it with gold nuggets.
[Zapp laughs as a tar stained tooth drops from his mouth]
Zapp: Gold? I thought that was cheese.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
reduce the amount of lunar dust
Previously astronauts were men, which are all pigs, as is well known. Now the solution is obvious. Send a woman to every moon mission and she certainly won't tolerate dust, moon or other kind, to accumulate in the living quarters, solving the problem. I can already hear her... "Commander! If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times. CLEAN YOUR FEET before coming in!"
Just...let's hope they don't try to open the windows when dusting.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
You should read the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Sleeping in the suits was found to be very uncomfortable, even for the short missions (Apollo 11-14). Even then they had to take their helmets off to eat and drink.
Lunar dust is so fine it sticks to everything and gets into everything. Even Armstrong and Aldrin, who were only out for just over two hours, were absolutey covered with the stuff.
The longer missions being planned for the future will need to have a proper airlock area where the crews can strip down to their skin, shower, and only then enter the living area. The airlock would also be used to maintain suit fabric and seals, which are the real problem IMO because the dust is so abrasive.
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They would need to bring samples, equipment, and suits into the habitat for research and maintenance. The dust is so abrasive that the outer surfaces of the suits wear away quickly and would need to be regularly replaced.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yeah, apparently the space program is now doing their purchasing on the Shopping Channel.
During the relatively short Apollo Moon landing missions nearly 40 years ago, astronauts reported difficulty breathing.
And that is how we discovered that the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere...
A recent book (reviewed here) denounces the entire concept of manned spaceflight as the useless "madness" of boys who never outgrew childish games. Milder critics of the space program ask why we should send humans into space when automated probes are supposedly more useful for their price. Not too long ago, Discover Magazine had a cover article asking whether, maybe, space is so innately dangerous (with all that radiation) that we should avoid going back until we have robots or gengineered humans (!) able to cope with it. Others such as Vox Day, hater of humanity, begin using their word processors to declare that "science has outlived its usefulness to Mankind." And here, we have NASA saying hold everything; we're afraid of the dust.
(An excerpt from the book:
"If there is a lesson to be learned, it is in the futility of seeking fulfillment in outer space. We need to judge ourselves by who we are, not by where we go... Hubris took America to the Moon, a barren, soulless place where humans do not belong... If the voyage has had any positive benefit at all, it has reminded us that everything that is good reside on Earth.")
"We're not worthy, it's not safe, nothing we've ever done is worthwhile." I see this line of thinking as suicidal for the human race. If transhumanism is a supposedly unrealistic fantasy of doing more things than have ever been done before, then shall we call this sentiment "subhumanism," the desire for people to set their sights below what's been accomplished already?
Revive the Constitution.
I went to a lunch presentation on returning to the moon. One of the ideas for longer term use like colonization was to make roads by microwaving the regolith.
The iron melts into a continuous crust instead of being so abrasive and sharp
Let's look at the guinea pigs we sent to the moon:
Still kicking:
Buzz Aldrin is still alive. He's 77.
Neil Armstrong is still alive. He's 76.
Alan Bean is still alive. 75.
Edgar Mitchell. 77 and counting.
David Scott. 75 and counting.
John Young, 77.
Charles Duke, 72.
Eugene Cernan, 73.
Harrison Schmidt, 73.
Died, accident:
Pete Conrad died in 1999 at age 69. (Accident, crash)
Died, disease
Alan Shephard died at age 75 from leukemia.
James Irwin in 1991 at age 61. (Heart failure, which may have been a preexisting condition and caused him to suffer a heart attack during Apollo 15)
Not bad, actually. They should be healthier than the normal person, sure, but I don't see rampant cancer, lung or cardiovascular disease running roughshod over the ranks of the men who've been on the moon.
I call Bullshit.
Get off my lawn.
Another idea to deal with the dust is to fuse the surface around the habitat. The dust doesn't migrate like it does here on earth because there isn't an atmosphere to waft it. You knock dust loose on the moon, it plummets directly to the ground like a bowling ball. So the idea is to melt the regolith around the habitat so that most of the dust is shed just walking across a paved surface to the habitat. It won't get rid of all the mess, but it'll cut it down.
The Apollo 12 astronauts dealt with the problem in an ad-hoc, but effective, fashion. Gordon, the command module pilot, wouldn't let Bean and Conrad back in until they stripped to buck naked because he didn't want them gunging up their ride home. As they were firing up the engine to leave lunar orbit, one of them joked that if the engine failed, the recovery crew would be wondering why a couple of the astronauts were naked.