Space, Planets and eclipses

[alexora]

Originally Posted by Tallifer

20 years of the ISS.

There's an interesting article in NY Times but don't think I can paste a link, but check it out

I think this may be the original source:

How to live in space: what we’ve learned from
20 years of the International Space Station

November 2 marks 20 years since the first residents arrived on the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiting habitat has been continuously occupied ever since.

Twenty straight years of life in space makes the ISS the ideal “natural laboratory” to understand how societies function beyond Earth.

The ISS is a collaboration between 25 space agencies and organisations. It has hosted 241 crew and a few tourists from 19 countries. This is 43% of all the people who have ever travelled in space.

s future missions to the Moon and Mars are planned, it’s important to know what people need to thrive in remote, dangerous and enclosed environments, where there is no easy way back home.

A brief history of orbital habitats

The first fictional space station was Edward Everett Hale’s 1869 “Brick Moon”. Inside were 13 spherical living chambers.

In 1929, Hermann Noordung theorised a wheel-shaped space station that would spin to create “artificial” gravity. The spinning wheel was championed by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun in the 1950s and featured in the classic 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Instead of spheres or wheels, real space stations turned out to be cylinders.

The first space station was the USSR’s Salyut 1 in 1971, followed by another six stations in the Salyut programme over the next decade. The USA launched its first space station, Skylab, in 1973. All of these were tube-shaped structures.

The Soviet station Mir, launched in 1986, was the first to be built with a core to which other modules were added later. Mir was still in orbit when the first modules of the International Space Station were launched in 1998.

Mir was brought down in 2001, and broke up as it plummeted through the atmosphere. What survived likely ended up under 5000 meters of water at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

The ISS now consists of 16 modules: four Russian, nine US, two Japanese, and one European. It’s the size of a five-bedroom house on the inside, with six regular crew serving for six months at a time.

Adapting to space

Yuri Gagarin’s voyage around Earth in 1961 proved humans could survive in space. Actually living in space was another matter.

Contemporary space stations don’t spin to provide gravity. There is no up or down. If you let go of an object, it will float away. Everyday activities like drinking or washing require planning.

Spots of “gravity” occur throughout the space station, in the form of hand or footholds, straps, clips, and Velcro dots to secure people and objects.

In the Russian modules, surfaces facing towards Earth (“down”) are coloured olive-green while walls and surfaces facing away from Earth (“up”) are beige. This helps crew to orient themselves.

Colour is important in other ways, too. Skylab, for example, was so lacking in colour that astronauts broke the monotony by staring at the coloured cards used to calibrate their video cameras.

In movies, space stations are often sleek and clean. The reality is vastly different.

The ISS is smelly, noisy, messy, and awash in shed skin cells and crumbs. It’s like a terrible share house, except you can’t leave, you have to work all the time and no-one gets a good night’s sleep.

There are some perks, however. The Cupola module offers perhaps the best view available to humans anywhere: a 180-degree panorama of Earth passing by below.

‘A microsociety in a miniworld’

The crew use all kinds of objects to express their identities in this miniworld, as space habitats were called in a 1972 report. Unused wall space becomes like your refrigerator door, covered with items of personal and group significance.

In the Zvezda module, Orthodox icons and pictures of space heroes like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Gagarin create a sense of belonging and connection to home.

Food plays a huge role in bonding. Rituals of sharing food, celebrating holidays and birthdays, help form camaraderie between crew of different national and cultural backgrounds.

It’s not all plain sailing. In 2009, toilets briefly became a source of international conflict when decisions on the ground meant Russian crew were forbidden to use the US toilets and exercise equipment.

In this “microsociety”, technology isn’t only about function. It plays a role in social cohesion.

The future of living in space

The ISS is massively expensive to run. NASA’s costs alone are US$3-4 billion a year, and many argue it’s not worth it. Without more commercial investment, ISS may be de-orbited in 2028 and sent to the ocean floor to join Mir.

The next stage in space-station life is likely to occur in orbit around the Moon. The Lunar Gateway project, planned by a group of space agencies led by NASA, will be smaller than the ISS. Crews will live on board for up to a month at a time.

Its modules, based on the design of the ISS, are due to be launched into lunar orbit in the next decade.

One preliminary habitat design for the Lunar Gateway has four expandable crew cabins, to give people a little more space. But the sleeping, exercise, latrine, and eating areas are all much closer together.

Since ISS crews like to create improvised visual displays, we might suggest including spaces reserved for such displays in next-generation habitats.

In popular culture, the ISS has become Santa’s sleigh. In recent years, parents around the world have taken their children outside on Christmas Eve to spot the ISS passing overhead.

The ISS has shaped the space culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, symbolising international cooperation after the Cold War. It still has much to teach us about how to live in space.

Source:

http://theconversation.com/how-to-live-in-space-what-weve-learned-from-20-years-of-the-international-space-station-144851

[LongTimeLu]

British firm is given £250,000 by the European Space Agency to figure out how to extract oxygen from moon rocks and help create a permanent human colony on the lunar surface

http://rothbiz.co.uk/2020/11/news-7519-metalysis-to-aid-hunt-for.html

As part of its process it uses electricity to strip away oxygen atoms that are bound to the metal in its natural state. Currently, the oxygen, when released, is a by-product and is left to seep into the air, with the metal the precious commodity. But if applied to the lunar rocks, the roles are reversed and the oxygen created is the prized goal, with the freed up rock a bonus. Being able to create oxygen in space has long been a goal of astronauts, as it opens up a host of possibilities for long-term space exploration.

Metalysis has been working with the European Space Agency to see if any of the "raw materials" on the Moon which have the potential to be mined can be converted into usable materials using the firm's electrochemical process. The company holds the worldwide exploitation rights to the FCC Cambridge process which sees specialist powder metals created in a simple, cost effective process with significant environmental benefits.

The Metalysis process has recently been proven for the industrial-scale production of metals and alloys, leading to the present investigation into the potential application of this process to regolith-like materials in a lunar context. An initial proof of concept study has resulted in a metallic powder where 96% of the total oxygen is successfully extracted, in conjunction with giving a mixed metal alloy product that can be used for in-situ manufacturing.

The project will provide an assessment to prepare and de-risk technology developments, focussed towards oxygen production for propellants and life support consumables. The ability to extract oxygen on the moon is vital for future exploration and habitation, being essential for sustainable long duration activities in space. In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) will significantly reduce the payload mass that would be needed to be launched from earth.

Metalysis has successfully scaled-up its technology, with a further three generations designed, commissioned, and in operation. As of 2018, titanium and tantalum metal production has been developed at an industrial scale, and the production of many other metals and alloys has also been proven. More recently, the production of intermetallics of aluminium and scandium has been increased to industrial scale.

Ian Mellor, managing director at Metalysis, said: "We are really pleased Metalysis is involved in this exciting programme; taking an established earth-based technology and applying it to a lunar setting. The fact that the process is capable of simultaneously producing both oxygen and metal powders is unique, offering potential solutions to two key areas of the ESA Space Resources Strategy."

[BrewerJ]

I took the pups out at 5am this morning and it was the clearest the sky has been in months. The cold weather and snow has helped snuff out a bunch of the fires here in CO. The moon was to the East, low on the horizon with just a sliver illuminated. Venus was the brightest and most vibrant I've ever seen her. It's nice to be able to see the stars/planets again.

We are very lucky to live in such a beautiful solar system.

[LongTimeLu]

World’s first biofuel rocket takes flight for the first time

http://telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/02/01/worlds-first-biofuel-rocket-takes-flight-first-time/
http://bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55845762

A rocket company that hopes to become the “Uber for space” has launched the world’s first biofuel-powered rocket.

Brunswick-based bluShift Aerospace’s 20ft prototype hit an altitude of around 4,000ft in a first run designed to test the rocket’s propulsion and control systems on Sunday.

Sascha Deri, founder of bluShift Aerospace, told the BBC the rocket’s biofuel took six years to create and is sourced from farms. He would not expand on exactly how it is made.

Mr Deri said: “We want to prove that a bio-derived fuel can serve just as well, if not better in some cases, than traditional fuels to power rockets and payloads to space.

“It actually costs less per kilogram (2.2 lb.) than traditional rocket fuel and it’s completely non-toxic.”

“There’s no service allowing one or two payloads to go to space. There’s no Uber to space. We want to be the Uber service to space.”

The rocket launched from Limestone in Maine from the site of an US Cold War era runway.

The first rocket launch carried high school experiments and a new kind of alloy being developed for rocket launches.