Something I have noticed: (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Most of the time, when they speak about hydroponic gardens, greenhouses, growing plants in lunar colonies, and so on... they speak about tomatoes. Recently I read yet another "growing plants in space" article which mentions they now have found that hardy cyanobacteria can grow in lunar soil.

Lunar soil is inhospitable to plants because many of the nutrients it contains are locked up in tough minerals that the plants cannot break down. "It will not be able to support the growth of tomatoes" or other food plants, says Igor Brown of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, US.

Now, for me, tomatoes aren't that great as a main staple. They are nice in a sauce, but only with a grain product like pasta (which also requires eggs) or bread. Also, I would imagine a plant like a tomato has too much "waste" product: stems and leaves. People also forget how poisonous tomato stems and leaves are; they are a relative of the nightshade family of plants, which include eggplants, potatoes, peanuts, and the deadly poinsettia.

I would want a plant that is mostly edible, like carrots, onions, radishes, lettuce, celery, beets, and so on. Make the most of what we are growing per square inch.

Then I think of all the other stuff we need like salt, protein, sugars, and complex carbohydrates that rabbit food simply won't give us. I am sure we can create salt if we have the right minerals, and maybe we could use soy protein, but how long would a space farer last in such an isolated environment? Posted in: cyanobacteria , moon , science , tomatoes

Santa hat (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Working Christmas Eve

Yes, I am at work. We get off early at 2pm today, which threw a monkey wrench into takayla's day. Right now, as I type this, a bunch of my work mates have gone to get Chinese food. I leave at 2:30 so I can get a ride home.

The Metro was virtually deserted this morning, and I am not surprised. I had forgotten that being in a car with only a few people is kind of nice. Normally my 7am commute is packed to the walls with bitter and angry government workers. I am lucky that I get to sit most of the time. It's because I get on at Vienna, and sometimes the car doesn't fill up before I get to it. But two stops down, it's standing room only. And on some days, notably when it rains or the train has been slow, by Ballston, about 4 stops down, the cars become too packed to get more people on. The Metro simply cannot handle the riders it has anymore. How do they handle this increased business? Why increase their fares, of course. :(

I wore a Santa hat to work. anyarm, who gave me a ride to work, screamed, "SANTAAAA!!" and hugged me, which was a great way to start the morning. ALSO, Mars is the closest to Earth until 2016, and I showed her and Brian Mars, Venus, and the full moon in the morning dawn. Mars is so close and bright, you can tell it's orange. Venus, as always, is a dirty white due to its high albedo. I also explained a little about the ecliptic path. I wish I had become an astronomer sometimes :(. Posted in: astronomy , christmas , fares , mars , metro , moon , santa , venus

So... would anyone actually believe this? (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I got a warning from my SpaceWeather.com mail today that said:

BEWARE THE MARS HOAX: It's August, which means it's time for the annual Mars Hoax. An email is going around claiming that Mars will approach Earth on August 27th; the encounter will be so close, the email states, that Mars will rival the full Moon in size and brightness. (Imagine the tides!) Don't believe it. The Mars Hoax email first appeared in 2003. On August 27th of that year, Mars really did come historically close to Earth. But the email's claim that Mars would rival the Moon was grossly exaggerated. Every August since 2003, the email has staged a revival.

I, personally, have never gotten that mail. I would laugh hysterically at it, and if any of my friends sent it to me, I would pity the education they received as children, because their school system would have failed them.

I wanted to see this letter, so I went to snopes, and 23 popups later, saw the actual text of an example letter. Here's the humorous facts as I see them: first Mars has a diameter of roughly 6800km, and the moon is almost 3500km. This means Mars is almost twice as big. I would imagine that Mars would have to be further away than the moon. The moon varies from 356,000km to 408,000km away. I would imagine that would have us believe Mars was about 700km away from us "at its closest."

Mars orbits at an average of 227 million km away from the sun (like all planets, the orbit is a tad bit elliptical). Earth is closer to the sun, keeping Toronto and Vancouver away from pesky glaciers, at about 149 million km. That's a little over half the distance closer to the sun. Mars has an elliptical orbit, but not THAT elliptical.

The chaos of a flyby that close of a body the size of Mars would be horrific. Space Weather mentioned tides, but that would be the least of our worries. The gravity of a passing body that size that close would alter the Earth's orbit significantly. Assuming it was still in the same orbital plane, it would most likely nudge us into a new path that would send us towards the sun. Maybe not into the sun, but that would be moot. As we hurtled in our new path, if we got close enough to the sun, solar winds would overcome our magnetosphere, and Toronto and Vancouver wouldn't have to worry about those glaciers... or anything... ever again. UV light would cook us, and our atmosphere would strip away like panties at a drunken lesbian sorority party. Oh, and a little known fact: getting closer to the sun makes you hotter! Then, as we headed faster and faster towards the sun, those few humans who holed up in caves with oxygen tanks would find the surface heating up like the mantle below them. Maybe they'd survive. And what a world to come back to! Because when we spin away from the sun, and things cool down... and keep cooling... and keep... hey, maybe we should have turned back at that asteroid belt! No? Still going?

Our orbit would become very erratic like Pluto, and whatever scientists left would be forced to possible demote our frozen ball of rock from "planet" to "no fun at all." Meanwhile, Mars didn't just go away. Whatever forces it encountered to suddenly make a journey of 80 million km off course to our little neighborhood would have it keep on going. Maybe it would crash into the sun. Maybe it wouldn't. Its flyby with us would have altered its path; the Earth's diameter is nearly twice the diameter (size queen) and ten times the mass. Not to mention the moon, who may have seen where this was going and opted not to take the solar tour with us. Or maybe it ditched us near Venus. That planet always needed a moon.

And maybe we'll all meet again somewhere in a million years in a huge welcoming party that looks a lot like rubble going in all directions. I bet Venus will regret keeping the new moon.
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A source I used: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html Posted in: astronomy , earth , mars , moon