How To Live In Space

Everything you need to know for the not-so-distant future

Colin Stuart, 2018, Beaverton 629.45 STU

Pop-sci picture book. http://colinstuart.net/ Lacks proof-reading.

• p053 Atlas "agina"?

• p058 Ebullism is the formation of gas bubbles in bodily fluids due to reduced environmental pressure, for example at high altitude.

• p090 "Living bacteria were even found outside ISS in 2017 after swabs were taken during a spacewalk"
  • brief news flurry, no followup
• p090 "Perhaps used clothes could be fed to bacteria. This would create methane, which could be used on board as an additional fuel supply."

  • HAH where does the oxidizer come from? How to liquify and store the methane? Perhaps organic fiber and Martian perchlorates could make a low I_SP propellant, but the pollution would be a scientific nightmare.

• p208 7500 tonnes of human made material in orbit.

• p110 caption: "A net could be used to snare space junk and drag it into the atmosphere to burn up safely" HAH

• p111 "... simply can't pick up a enough number of ..."
• p111 "New rules are supposed to insure that a satellite safely deorbits itself after twenty-five years, however, that's proving difficult to enforce."

• p116 "...Soyuz slowly backs away from the ISS at a speed of just 12 cm per second.

  • about 7000 kg, so 800 kg-m/s momentum.
• p119 caption: October 3 1942 ... V2 ... "first human-made object to cross the Kármán line."

  • No. [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches | A V2 reached 85 to 90 km, not 100 km, the modern FAI definition.

• p130 Bigelow Expandable Activity Module BEAM 3.6 meters long by 3.2 meters diameter.

• p134 2017 MIT researchers: "ten times as strong as steel, 5 percent as dense.", no, superlubricity

• p139 Apollo CM lunar backside communication blackout, "any future ... lunar space station would have to contend with a similar blackout"

  • no, relay satellite like China's Queqiao

• p163 "Mars's natural resources", presumes available water ice is relatively clean and free of perchlorates
• p171 "A mirror could focus the Sun's rays onto the Martian ice caps ... statite ..."
  • vectors don't seem right.
• p173 image, Boloid events 1994-2013

  • https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-397

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• p186 "Wormhole", Einstein-Rosen bridge