Preventing Sick Spaceships 91
An anonymous reader writes "The official NASA home page has a writeup on one of the lesser-known dangers of living on a Space Station: space germs. 'Picture this: You're one of several astronauts homeward bound after a three-year mission to Mars. Halfway back from the Red Planet, your spacecraft starts suffering intermittent electrical outages. So you remove a little-used service panel to check some wiring. To your unbelieving eyes, floating in midair in the microgravity near the wiring is a shivering, shimmering globule of dirty water larger than a grapefruit. And on the wiring connectors are unmistakable flecks of mold.' The article goes on to describe the unlikely circumstances that form these micro-ecologies, and what astronauts do to deal with the situation."
And this is why (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Space Vacuum Cleaner (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Deep space Homer (Score:5, Informative)
IMO from one point onwards this problem alone can justify any of the classic "spinning wheel" designs. It may end up cheaper building something big enough to spin it compared to dealing with the environmentals in a medium size station (or ship).
Re:Bottom Line (Score:3, Informative)
Russia is doing it [wikipedia.org], at least. Also, we launched Cassini, with a modified ICBM [wikipedia.org]. But you're right, even that can only do half of what a Saturn V can do.
Just to be clear, I was talking about dumping the cargo in LEO and burning up in the atmosphere, not having the rockets actually stay in orbit