Space Stations: Past, Present, And Future

[spacesailor]

"Trouble is they taste like $#1T "

 

AGREE

 

Now the Oranges are going "OFF" have a taste like grapefruit,!.

 

I think they're pick well before they're ripe & have NO sugar content.

 

Same with strawberries No taste & not sweet.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Bruce]

There is NOT a pill for everything. I asked for some young pills and was told there was no such thing. So I asked for some smart pills... same answer.

 

 

[spacesailor]

I'm booked in for a new hip !, When I'm called to surgery, I'm going to ask for a replacement "Body" Not just a hip. Lol

 

spacesailkor

 

 

[nomadpete]

You know, when my brother went in for hip replacements, I suggested he ask for the big ones - after all, he always wanted to be two inches taller!

 

 

[facthunter]

Anyhow apart from the food and space junk, your muscles atrophy rapidly and your bones become weak in a low or zero gravity situation and you have a problem with radiation. Nev

 

 

[octave]

speaking of space junk here is an interesting episode of Real Engineering.

 

 

[spacesailor]

"your muscles atrophy rapidly and your bones become weak in a low or zero gravity situation"

 

And that's the problem with Hip replacements that have you wait 12 months,!.

 

Can't walk or exercise, sit in the chair watch TV, & eat, If they gave some sort of date you could go away ,(from the fridge) sit in the "hot pools" (of which Australia has a lot of)

 

or anything other than wait for the notification, "Your Turn".

 

spacesailor

 

 

[nomadpete]

I feel for you, Space.

 

So, I'm guessing, you would vote for any party that guarantees reducing waitlists in hospitals?

 

 

[Litespeed]

I have spent the last week at Nepean with my son. He had a bike accident, home now doing well.

 

I meet many who were there for surgery and were cancelled repeatedly due to emergency needs. Fair enough but some have cancer and that should not have to wait ever. But you can bet a private patient could get a private bed and operation even if it was not urgent. Maybe not at nepean but somewhere in the system.

 

We have a public system that supports the private patient through big subsidies to private health funds and grants/ loans to private hospitals. It is a joke, just like education, a two their system that benefits the well off.

 

No federal or state funds or grants or loans should available. It should all go to the public system. The choice argument is just a lie to justify the largesse to private profits. Then people have a choice, the free government system or user pays.

 

If surgeons or specialists wont do public operations etc they should be excluded from any public funding.that is called choice.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I wonder when some worthy of note will suggest that we begin to address OVER POPULATION?. . as this is now becoming a serious risk to the entire human race. . .the areas of Earth which can support human life are Finite.

 

When we run out of Liveable space for all these new people, what then I have to wonder. . .since no one appears to be addressing this.obvious elephant in the room. . . .

 

We have not got much time left to sort this out.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

You're right about this Phil, but the focus shifted decades ago. The growth of our planet's human population is slowing rapidly. Many countries now have fewer people and battle with the economic problems caused by aging populations.

 

The damage being done to our planet now is not so much because of the number of our species, but because everyone wants to live like rich westerners. Their parents lived simple lives close to the land, but now they are plundering the earth's resources at an unsustainable rate just like you and I have been.

 

The natural world is in crisis. Species are now going extinct at an alarming rate.

 

But wait, there's hope. Over half humankind now live in cities, where new technologies can feed massive populations more efficiently. Small villages are being abandoned. Much remote, marginal farmland is being reclaimed by nature.

 

 

[Yenn]

Folk dancing. I have seen it and I prefer watching paint dry. Except for some that I saw in Malaysia I think it was. Folk dancing with big sticks, very skilled to avoid smashed fingers English folk dancing must be the most boring, stupid form of entertainment, unless you include ballet.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Anyhow, back to Space Stations: a good news story.The lessons learned by our cosmonauts and astronauts might help save Mother Earth. Their tiny space craft have to provide all their survival needs; hence the concept of Spaceship Earth. We cannot survive if the systems aboard our spacecraft fail. Space stations depend on recycling most of their water.

 

One enterprising farmer is applying space station efficiency to his food operation here on earth.

 

Could vegetables grown in an aquaponic system be the way of the future?

I learned all I know about space stations from a series of books about Kemlo the Space Boy written by EC Elliott in the 1950s. Kemlo was a Captain of the Space Scouts, who had their own "scooters" - small two-seat personal spacecraft for travel around and between the Satellite Belts. Kemlo, like all children born in space, breathed "plasmorgia" instead of air. This allowed him to breathe in space, although it meant he was unable to travel to Earth without the aid of compressed plasmorgia and "gravity rays".

 

[ATTACH]50106._xfImport[/ATTACH]

 

[Bruce]

Us lot have lived in the only time in history when food has been so cheap and plentiful that we take it for granted. Fat schoolteachers who have no conception of where food actually comes from teach the kids to despise farmers for their environmental shortcomings. Agricultural colleges are closing down.

 

How long can it last? The estimate I like best says that in about ten years, the calories of food produced will fall short of demand by trillions.

 

There are actually three enormous challenges facing our species:

 

1. Climate change ( which has already decreased food supply and its hardly started, the effects are not apparent to the poorly educated at this time)

 

2. Resource depletion: Soil, water, oil, phosphate, and fish are just a few resources in trouble.

 

3. Over-population. It was once hoped that as women became more educated, family size would drop. This has actually happened in a few places, but the total population is not slowing down in growth. The growth, plus Old K's point about rising expectations food-wise, mean that food demand should double by 2050.

 

Of course the world can't meet this demand, and the shortfall will become obvious by 2027. Some of us oldies will actually be there to see it.

 

 

[octave]

The global fertility rate has halved since 1950. In 1950 the rate was 5 children per women. in 50 years it has dropped to 2.5 children per woman. The problem is not really any longer at the source but those people from before the fertility rates dropped. If fertility rates don't increase the problem becomes life expectancy. If life expectancy stays the same it is predicted that the population will reach about 10 billion and remain stable in 50 years. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.tfrt.in?end=2017&start=1960&view=chart

 

Here is a good explanation.

 

 

[Bruce]

In 1950, the world population was 2.6 billion.

 

In 2019, it is 7.7 billion. This 7.7 billion is a lot more than the estimates for 2019 were some years ago.

 

Actually, I agree it probably will not exceed 10 billion, but not for the nice reasons put forward by well-meaning bleeding hearts.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

China 2021, the retaking of Taiwan. It will reduce the global population.

 

 

[Bruce]

Wars do not have a track record in reducing populations. Wars in the future might be different of course.

 

 

[octave]

In 1950, the world population was 2.6 billion.In 2019, it is 7.7 billion. This 7.7 billion is a lot more than the estimates for 2019 were some years ago.

 

Actually, I agree it probably will not exceed 10 billion, but not for the nice reasons put forward by well-meaning bleeding hearts.

What we do know is the percentage rate of population growth peaked in the 60s (a baby boom that I am part of) and is steadily decreasing. In terms of actual numbers of births - Total annual births were highest in the late 1980s at about 139 million,[8] and as of 2011 were expected to remain essentially constant at a level of 135 million,[9] while deaths numbered 56 million per year and were expected to increase to 80 million per year by 2040.[10] The median age of the world's population was estimated to be 30.4 years in 2018.[11]

 

Don't get me wrong there are way too many of us to live as we do however it is important to understand how population growth works and how it is growing. It is often said that we have exponential growth but we don't There is also a perception that the problem is the birth rate but without falling below replacement rate there is little we can do at that end of the equation. The total number of the population is determined by how many children are born and how long we live.

 

 

[Bruce]

On space stations as habitats: It has been suggested that a metre of moon-soil applied to the outside of an enormous rotating cylinder would protect those inside better than our atmosphere does. Rotation of the cylinder provides the gravity.

 

The moon-soil in sandbags can be catapaulted up into lunar orbit.

 

It all sounds plausible, but I reckon it would only be a matter of time before some cult started on that space habitat and the whole thing was sabotaged. Besides that, they have not yet managed to live in a closed system here on earth.

 

 

[facthunter]

Probable they will all end up fighting each other like they do here.. Animals and plants are all out there competing and eating each other. Nev

 

 

[pmccarthy]

The Greens would stop us mining soil on the moon. We haven’t done flora and fauna studies.

 

 

[Marty_d]

There's no green on the moon.

 

I reckon you'd find most green-leaning people, myself included, would not have a problem with mining the moon, asteroids and any other planet you like as long as we protect this one properly.

 

 

[Litespeed]

As a confirmed greenie, I do have a problem with.

 

Stop messing (edited...mod) in our nest before doing it on the moon.

 

The moon is dead and a great reminder of what our nest could end up like.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

As a confirmed greenie, I do have a problem with.

Stop messing (edited...mod) in our nest before doing it on the moon.

 

The moon is dead and a great reminder of what our nest could end up like.

Didn't some worthy scientist say, some time back, that the Moon could never support life as we understand it as it is too small to retain any sort of Atmosphere ? Using atmospheric physics to back up hs claim. . .Mars is far bigger than our Earth Moon but it has only a very tiny thin atmosphere, and No volcanically active core, so NO magnetic field to protect it from solar radiation. . .precluding even any advanced technology 'Terraforming' to make it liveable upon for Earth refugees, unless housed in protective domes, well shielded from aforementioned radiation resulting in limited travel outside. . .

 

it looks as if, under current and sensibly perceivable technology, that any escape to the stars will not happen for another millennia or so, or until someone miraculously invents a Star drive to find a better planet or us to wreck, which must also have an orbital Moon to gravitationally control the tides and the weather,and a type G yellow star which places us in the comfort zone, AND the new planet is inclined enough to produce the seasons we are used to. . . Yeah,. . this would be as likely as winning the lottery every week for a year . . . ..

 

Perhaps the universe will be better off without the Human Race further infecting it with our stupid religions. . .?