I bet we could have a very interesting thread on products that have come and gone in our lifetimes.

Thank you, I'd forgotten the name. I just checked, and apparently they are no longer made.

Jan

NASA's early days was GE. We started out with Germans. Werhner Von Braun for instance. Although technically he was Polish born.

The Papermate Powerpoint

Wrote very well if you have a heavy hand.

In reality it's whatever you want on the front end and poop on the back end...but what's the difference?

Lol!

"Poop in one end....whatever you desire comes out the other end"

Is that not a functional description of political campaign promises?

Of course they don't get fulfilled, but still that is the claimed process.

Perhaps a replicator will be invented by that time.
Poop in one end...whatever you desire comes out the other end?
Talk about reverse osmosis...!

This too is a simple problem. A tethered capsule in flight can provide enough partial gravity to mimic the body's lower-gravity adaptation process. Combine this with the facts regarding known long-term effects of humans in 0G (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Poly... for starters) and it isn't a significant issue.

And yes, spending 501 days in space just to fly by Mars is a waste - go to Mars, don't just look at it.

The sad/cruel irony is that what you are describing of RE, NASA did in it's early days from Mercury through Apollo.

I have been thinking about this problem on and off for a while. The folks at planetary resources are planning to mine asteroids. The first stop will be water. A good choice considering its really amazingly expensive to transport it into orbit. Once they are good at water mining the price of water in orbit will fall. This will make water available for a lot of uses, including using it for shielding.

Poop for radiation protection, Marie Harf's jobs for Radical Islamist so they will stop their murderous rampage, Obama's selfie stick .............someone PLEASE wake me up from this nightmare!!

Gives new meaning to "glory hole"? Glory to Gory quicker than you can say Red Mars?

IMO it's a boondoggle - by making it a fly-by mission (unless it's to determine the effects of human exposure to lack of microgravity and the protective Van Allen belt) it would be better served to send a robotic mission - more economical, less logistical nightmares, etc.

If they go - then put boots on the ground, bring back samples, etc... One, being in the 38% Grav of Mars will counteract some of the space travel atrophy, and Two, use that "used food shielding material" instead as the propellant to get out of Mars's gravity well on the trip home. That... or find a way to react it off the iron oxide-heavy soil to compost it into something usable to grow something in. Or better - at the same time, farm the FeO2 for the O2 content...

Of course, the purists will decry "terraforming Mars", but why not? It would give us sustainability (and eventually, industry) on another planet.

This reminds me of the invention of the 'write in any position ballpoint pen', which was AE. The Russians just used a pencil.

On the other hand, 'write upside down' pens became a commercial product. That was bought by Russians.

Jan

But that is a long way down the biochemical road. The poop and food are complex organic molecules - the first things that will happen to them is that some of the molecular bonds will break. Keep the water on the sunside of the capsule on the way out and the food on the Ortside (which is nice to say, instead of just 'outside'). Then replace the water with dehydrated poop for the trip back. You are right, in that eventually organic material can become radioactive...but it tends to go through a 'grey slime' stage first.

Jan

Okay so unless the POTUS is going into space I don't think anyone else is that full of siht to make any difference.

Yuck! New meaning to "swab the poop deck."

Tis true. It's one area where 'Russian Engineering' ('RE') gives enormous advantages.

What is RE? It must be defined in relation to American Engineering (AE). When an AE requirement calls for a 'clamp' the engineer will draft the clamp in 3-D, write a machining spec, generate a BOM, and a tolerance table. The shop will create a progressive die or rigid tooling to hold the part, order materials, and arrange for disposal of scrap in an approved manner. Then there will be an inspection regiment, surface preparation, painting or plating, a package, and a hazmat disposal schedule. Finally the installer will don antistatic gloves, unbox the clamp, inspect it again, and it everything is in order he will install the clamp, after checking the computer for possible engineering revisions.

The Russian Engineer will 'clamp' the movable item by drilling a hole in it, threading a bolt through the whole, and tightening the nut!

And because of the psychological stress factors, the AE will be directed to seek counselling, while the Russian Engineer will toast a job well done with vodka.

they will never return. chances are with zero gravity their bodies will atrophy.
also, what a horrible waste of money.

What should they name the vehicle? Words always seem to sound better in a foreign language. I suggest "fligender schiesse." (My German spelling may not be correct) translates to "Flying shit." The German words have a sort of poetic lilt to them.

These people obviously don't know what they're doing. The water shield doesn't "go away" - it stands as a recyclable resource. Fecal matter will be composted, not stored as shielding.

Even the basic idea behind their alleged mission is fundamentally flawed. There is no point to a flyby of Mars. The vast majority of the cost is in development and production of the booster to get there in the first place. Gravitational slingshots are, movies aside, the more risky route than direct launch. It has even less value than a "Flags and footprints" mission.

Frankly this looks like an attempt to take advantage of government funding rather than genuine attempt to further the goal of getting to Mars. Another clue they don't have the actual knowledge and are merely striving for attention and funding is their reliance on cosmic rays and solar flares as their particular siren/boogeymen. These are two of the easiest problems to solve for a Martian trip - primarily because they have been soften exaggerated that without looking into the details you'd think they are insurmountable.

The reality of it is that most of the technology and techniques in a trip to Mars will be fairly "boring". This is good, and what you really want. The more crazy things people try to claim in their alleged plan the more likely it is just an attempt at more funding. Crazy may sound cool, but boring is safe and reliable.

Just one comment on the radiation protection scheme. The article states that the food packets lining the craft (the food that later turns into poop) do not become radioactive; they just block the radiation. From my studies of nuclear physics, and my involvement in the design and installation of radiation shielding for nuclear reactors, a substance does one of two things when it is bombarded with radiation: (1) it can reflect the radiation; (2) it can absorb the radiation, eventually becoming radioactive. It cannot "block" radiation without either reflecting it or absorbing it. It is almost impossible to reflect energetic radiation particles that have mass. They are easy to absorb, using non-radioactive mass as the absorber. Eventually that mass becomes radioactive. So, eventually, the food, the urine, and the poop would become radioactive. Water cannot become radioactive, because it will block only radioactive particles with virtually zero mass. Urine, however, can, because the chemicals other than water that constitute it can absorb radiation, eventually becoming radioactive.

It just seems to kind of diminish the glory factor.

Poop bags.. it's genius!
P.U! Open a window!!

There's an entire book on poop in space: Packing for Mars. I don't recommend it unless you like the topic of bodily functions in space.