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What You Don't Know About Living in Space
Ant writes "There are spectacular moments, as well as the mundane, in space. Over the years, living in space has forced astronauts to make a few concessions to things you would not give a second thought about when staying at a hotel/motel. The article lists a few things that people may not have known about living in space." Your iPod needs to be modified to use Alkaline batteries. And also, did you know... that in space... you only get one spooooon. And some people, are spoon millionaires...
Funnily enough a friend and I were recently discussing the interesting geometric possibilities which would be possible when cooking in zero g, one of the recipies we came up with was the sperical pizza, where the dough gets inflated into a sphere (you need the air because the pizza dough would want to shrink) and the topping get layered around the outside, all of course being stick to the dough using the sticky marinara sauce.
This could then be cooked in an oven with the 'inflation pipe' blowing hot air into the middle to cook the dough, and also acting to keep the 'space pizza' in the middle of the oven.
The result, pizza with no crusts!
According to the article, "There is also no ice cream in space. No freezer." But besides freeze-dried ice cream, according to this blog, they actually did have frozen ice cream on the ISS.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
When I was posted in Antarctica for a year they gave us all a questionnaire about what foods we liked/disliked, to determine what to put in my food parcel. When I got over there I found they had packed all the foods I didn't like ! It's supposed to stop you scoffing all your food quickly. I was thinking of killing and eating penguin within a week.
Bastards.
I imagine space expeditions such as a manned Mars mission will use a similar methodology - fussy eaters beware when you fill in the form !
On earth, gravity striates your stomach contents so the heavier stuff is on the bottom and the gas is on the top. So when you burp it's mostly gas which comes up. In space, this doesn't happen, and burping is a lot like throwing up. So foods that make you burp, like carbonated beverages, are a no-no.
Spherical pizza would be difficult to cook properly, though. Frankly I think you'd be much better off to cook a cylindrical pizza in a centerfuge, with the toppings on the inside.
In fact... I think I need to file a patent on this method...
As the Endeavor approached the space station this week, crew members on board the station snapped this shot.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
Well I think they are doing things wrong. They keep talking about travelling to Mars etc when what they should do is focus on building much better space stations. Once you have a space station with artificial "gravity", decent radiation shielding, and all the other good stuff so that astronauts can live on it for years without suffering so much like the russian astronauts, then you can talk about travelling. In fact people might then prefer to travel to the asteroid belt instead - get raw materials for building more space stations without having to spend lots of energy fighting a gravity well.
They might also want to try out tethered satellites. Instead of a full space elevator right from the start, try suspending the "comms/sensor" bits of the satellite closer to earth, with the counter weight at the other end (solar panels etc), so that the satellite is still in geostationary orbit, but you have much better comms latencies. I suspect some people are willing to pay a premium for lower latency sat comms. If they can't even do such satellites then I think trying for a space elevator is silly.