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Huge ISS Science Report Released
Earthquake Retrofit writes "NASA has released an extensive report (PDF) on science results from over 100 experiments performed at the International Space Station. From the summary: 'One of the most compelling results reported is the confirmation that the ability of common germs to cause disease increases during spaceflight, but that changing the growth environment of the bacteria can control this virulence. The Effect of Spaceflight on Microbial Gene Expression and Virulence experiment identified increased virulence of space-flown Salmonella typhimurium, a leading cause of food poisoning. New research on subsequent station missions will target development of a vaccine for this widespread malady." I can't tell if this is good news, bad, or both. Also from a quick look at the report, I see that soybeans grow bigger in space with no harmful effect."
Just wait for the "concerned" special interest groups to claim that it's unnatural and that selling the resulting product should be banned.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
When it comes down to it, if food products are larger but do not provide additional "food value" to go with the size, the only benefit would be for those trying to lose weight, since there is less food "value" for a given mass. 1000 calories of something grown in space may take up more room, but it is still only 1000 calories worth of food. Now, if you take a plant that on Earth provides 1000 calories and when grown in space it provides 1500 calories, THEN that would be worth looking at.
Woah, this title will look so dated when one day every ship has artificial gravity. They should write "Microgravity", not "Spaceflight", in order to stay timeless.
I wonder if there is an "ISS v2" on the cards or if they will only keep expanding this one?
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
At a price tag of $100 billion (at least) for the ISS, these experiments average over $1 billion each. Worth it? Nope.
It's a necessary building block that has, now, been demonstrated. After that, everything else is of secondary importance (but I do think that demonstrating VASMIR will be cool.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Once again, besides Velcro and Tang, what have we gotten from manned space flight?
When it comes down to it, if food products are larger but do not provide additional "food value" to go with the size, the only benefit would be for those trying to lose weight, since there is less food "value" for a given mass. 1000 calories of something grown in space may take up more room, but it is still only 1000 calories worth of food. Now, if you take a plant that on Earth provides 1000 calories and when grown in space it provides 1500 calories, THEN that would be worth looking at.
A reciprocal argument can be made about mass-farmed food on Earth. Generally the calorie content is higher in industrially farmed foods while the nutrient content is lower. Therefore it's a problem for those looking to lose weight because getting the required calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, etc. are diluted relative to the calories that come along with them. Furthermore, since grains (the source ofproblematic omega-6 fatty acids) replace leaves (the source of important omega-3 fatty acids) in industrial meat farming, some important nutrients are very difficult to consume regardless of the amount of calories consumed. Supplemental nutrients are often added to make up for these deficiencies, but considering that nutritionists have only vague ideas of which nutrients matter, whether quantity or ratio matter, or whether seemingly unimportant chemicals are necessary to properly utilize the nutrients that we know are important, this doesn't have a reliable effect.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
An easy way to taste this fact is to compare apples or strawberries of different sizes. (But presumably not comparing apples to strawberries.) Same total amount of sugar per fruit, usually, so the big ones are less sweet.
Revive the Constitution.
It's nice that NASA has been able to do some science experiments in space. It's also nice that their robotic probes have gathered information about the planets and the rest of the universe.
Ultimately, though, I don't care about the raw science. This research does little to get us closer to actually bringing life to other planets. A few weeks back, NASA released a report saying that they can't keep running the ISS, the Shuttle, and their other experiments while also gearing up for a return to the Moon or a mission to Mars. If I could drop the ISS into the ocean next year and use the money for a Moon/Mars venture, I'd definitely do it.
Revive the Constitution.
In zero gravity every microbe is a potential airborne contagion.
Think about it. A germ that usually causes symptoms like the common cold could be far more lethal when infecting the lungs instead of being limited by gravity to contact based exposure.
How-many-billions of dollars and NASA still can't provide an answer to this burning question. What are we paying these people for?
And don't even start about the vitamins & co that you actually need to not become sick from processing those 4186.8 Joule*.
__ ;)
* Welcome to the 20th (!) century!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I would think that if that is the case then it is worth looking at for that reason alone. The obesity problems we have and all of the associated issues that come along with it are huge. Letting someone continue eating the same volume of food with reduced calories would be beneficial.
Great... that's precisely what we need: mutant tofu to go with our irradiated mercury-soaked sushi.
One of the most important facts to come out of these missions is that higher life forms, such as mammals, cannot effectively reproduce in micro gravity. That basically means very large radii spin simulated gravity space colonies will be needed to have self sustaining extraterrestrial human populations in case catastrophe strikes earth. These types of stations and infrastructures will require a large percentage of the Human race working together in a more social manner for the betterment of all mankind. The reduced gravity of the planet mars probably means that it is unsuitable for human reproduction and child rearing,, making any colonies dependent on other sources for manpower. Sorry folks, but there will be no single family homesteading in outer space.
"engineering is sound to built a habitat in space"
The Russians already proved that for a LOT less money with Mir.
If the pinnacle of achievement of the ISS is a study on bacteria in zero G we pretty much squandered $150 billion dollars on nothing. Though hey... we squander that much in Iraq in a couple months so many its all relative. Still NASA should have been put that money to a lot better use building launch capability that doesn't suck, more robotic, science and observatories or getting to Mars. Instead they pretty much did a high tech jobs program for a couple decades
@de_machina
... or the U.S. could have spent 10 billion and finished the super conducting supercollider and not squandered its leadership position in nuclear physics to the EU.
@de_machina
BZZZT. Wrong. Or at least, not yet correct. The Russians started out and created a lot of groundwork (ignore the pun). We still are not at the stage at which fixing things in orbit is 'routine'. Every EVA, every repair, takes months of planning and practice. We need to do much better before we get our asses out of LEO. And the only way to do it is practice, practice, practice. Which means the ISS or something like it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If something has more mass and that extra mass is digestable, it would follow that there's more sustenance of some sort in there.
But the economical value of growing food in such an environment and importing it back to earth, to be redistributed to the hungry in poor countries, is laughably poor.
Absolutely. The most important thing we've learned from the ISS is how to build a complex habitation in space and operate it autonomously. If you're going to Mars or anywhere else more than a few days from earth, even simple things like a toilet failing could have dire consequences (hygiene problems, running out of water without recycling, etc...) if you're halfway to Mars. If your oxygen generator has an unexpected and unplanned failure mode, it's much better to learn about that in orbit of earth than it is halfway to mars.
To paraphrase Dara Ó Briain:
"engineering is sound to built a habitat in space"
The Russians already proved that for a LOT less money with Mir.
If a baby learns to take one step, do you think there's no point in its taking a two steps; it can just go right on from there to climb Mount Everest?
Mir was a step. 350 m2, 120 tons.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There are few disciplines that have gleaned as much from exceptions to the norm as have biology and it's attendant practise medicine. Genetics and Morgan's studies of fruit flies by subjecting them to stresses, brain lesions and cognitive science, the list goes on and gives more than adequate support that biology experiments in space will pay dividends. The classic idea of a ceteris paribus experiment at 1 atmosphere, 20 degress C (? 25), done at sea level should make anyone want to jump on a chance to do experiments of any nature on the space station where one of the key fundamentals is changed.
Aside from international cooperation inherent in maintaining a space station and the sharing of information, I suspect space biology experiments, perhaps more so in terms of medicine, will pay ample dividends.
ideopath @ play
It's particularly worth noting that what's been done so far science-wise is only the beginning of science results from the ISS, as most of the effort so far has been in construction. The crew size was also just doubled this year, allowing for even more time to be spent devoted to science:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6628585.html
After 15 years of construction, narrow congressional votes, delays and, yes, cost overruns, the $100 billion international space station finally appears ready for prime time. ... In May the space station doubled its crew from three to six astronauts, and this summer two space shuttle missions delivered a new laboratory and critical scientific equipment. ...
Then, earlier this month, a panel appointed by President Barack Obama to study the future of human spaceflight gave the station high marks, recommending its life be extended until at least 2020 and full funding to reach its potential.
The station is now beginning to do just that, as astronauts use the ISS for its intended purpose as an outpost for scientific research in a weightless environment, and learning to live for long periods in space.
Until now, crew efforts have focused on assembling disparate modules built by Russia, the United States, Japan and Europe into a cohesive whole. Since habitation began in 2000, therefore, astronauts have devoted only about 12,000 hours to scientific research.
Now with the crew expansion, and likely completion of the station by early 2011 allowing astronauts to swap their hard hats for test tubes, NASA estimates that total to increase by a factor of eight by 2015, to about 90,000 hours.
"We're just beginning to scratch the surface," said Julie Robinson, who oversees the ISS science program.
Well, let's see what NASA is claiming this time.
This is many billions of dollars worth of work, remember.
oblivious to any actual data on this i'm still fully convinced that prolonged life cycles outside of the atmosphere will result in really interesting mutations due to the cosmic rays and whatnot.
Ants *can* sort tiny screws in space!
I believe parent was speaking of high energy particle physics rather than nuclear physics.
Stay the fuck out of space stories idiot.
Um, no. Size is a factor, but it's not the only factor by any means, nor even the main one. Sun exposure, proximity to the trunk/main stem, number of other fruit on the same plant, and water available also have major effects on the the amount of sugar in each individual fruit.
How many $billions to grow a larger soya bean? If the space experiments had to compete for funding with other science projects I doubt any would get funding, even with a 99% subsidy. The ISS is not about science, it is about television. Very expensive television.
As to man going to Mars, astronoughts are obsolete technology. Get used to it -- robots are the way of the future in space. And, I fear, on earth as well.
T.
To paraphrase Dara Ó Briain:
To add to that, I don't think dietician is all that telling, either. It's still a very immature science, and difficult to really call a science. Dieticians don't seem to have any actual, verifiable answers that aren't directly tied to the laws of thermodynamics.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
geez what a wanker
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Says MartinSchou:
I'm a little tired of this argument.
The original Reagan-era vision for the space station was to spend $8 billion to build a design that included hangars in which large interplanetary spacecraft would be assembled. (Those facilities were eliminated in one of the several Congressionally-mandated "money-saving" redesigns.) Too bad we have to wait at least 40 years to see that vision realized.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Don't think tonnage is a particularly good way to judge the effectiveness of how you spent hundreds of billions of dollars. Since the Russians built the core of ISS using Mir as the proof of concept its not like ISS was breaking much ground in a lot of areas. I'll credit NASA with their efforts on gyros for attitude control, for the massive power systems and the Canadians for their work on robotics, but those were all incremental acheivements, nothing groundbreaking. All in all ISS is just a colossal failure as a program. Worse than the squandered billions is the squandered decades NASA has been marching in place, going no where.
About 30 years ago someone should have noticed that there wasn't actually anything about the ISS that had a point or was actually worth the time or money. Instead, for some unfathomable reason NASA chose to justify the Shuttle as a mean to service the ISS and they justified the ISS as a place for the Shuttle to go and forgot to notice there was no actual point to either.
@de_machina
Mir was a step. ISS is another step. You know what? If we're actually going to expand civilization into space, we're going to need a lot of steps.
Or we can chose not to. It's our choice.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Taking one step forward and then one step back isn't a way to get any place either.
@de_machina
Exactly.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com