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."
Bottom Line (Score:5, Insightful)
We will never be able to fully explore, experiment and gather resources in out solar system if trips between planets take 5+ years. We need to look into saner proplusion systems that seperate the ground to orbit engine from the interplanetary engine. Even sci-fi shows seem to have grasped that fact.
Perhaps microbe contamination is a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Moya and friends (Score:2, Insightful)
If the Navy can keep growth to a minimum under a steam powered water distillation unit (lots of water, lots of microbes, and lots of heat, lots of minerals, and difficult to clean) then astronauts can keep it clean in space.
Moisture is a common problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
The way to be sure that you don't get wet is to have the correct ventilation. This is easy to say but complicated to implement. One way is to configure ventilation to pass dehumidifiers and let the dry air be released in the electric compartments and allow it to leak out into the occupants space from where it is collected, cleaned and dehumidified again. On long-term space missions it will be a critical issue to re-circulate all water and not vent it into space.
Another more complex way is to seal off all electronics and use an inert gas in all electronics compartments. However, this is a very complex solution and it will certainly be hard to keep it safe and sound for a mission that will last for years.
Re:Oh Boy... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a 'new' space story - not if you are actually familiar with the state-of-the-art, as opposed to feeding at the teat of the mass media. It's a well known issue - NASA was studying it as far back as Skylab. Heck, Michael Collins (yes that [wikipedia.org] Michael Collins) used it as a plot point in his book Mission to Mars [amazon.com] back in 1990!
Re:Perhaps microbe contamination is a good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy solution (Score:3, Insightful)
1: EVA doesn't suit tight spaces or fiddly tasks, that means you have to make everything MUCH bigger to allow it to be maintained by EVA than to allow it to be maintained in a habitable atnosphere.
2: EVA is slow, putting on the suits takes a long time and all work done in them is much slower than that same work would be in a habitable atonosphere.
3: EVA is considered risky. Not as risky as takeoff or landing but certainly not something to be done without great care and a lot of planning.
4: vacum is unfriendly to many types of electronic assemblies (though this can be avoided by carefull choice of materials). Its also unfriendly to any pipes carrying liquids or gasses for several reasons including the fact that (assuming the pipes ultimately serve stuff inside the space station) that the relative pressure between inside and outside the pipes will be much higher.
5: vacum-non vacum boundries are a bitch to take wiring through (think a large metal lump with carefully machined brass pins individually incased in glass for insulation embedded in it).
Artificial gravity should be a top priority. (Score:3, Insightful)