Carnival of Space #4

Have a look at this week's Carnival of Space by clicking on the post title. There are some great posts in it this week, and some fantastic pictures.

Obstacles to Space Exploration Part IV, but technically part IIc - I keep forgetting how I'm numbering these: Keeping Fit in Zero-G

Thus far we've talked about how we get into space, what we eat, and how we keep from choking.

Today we're going to look at how astronauts stay physically healthy when travelling around the universe. (This is a relatively short and unadorned entry. I just found out my wife is pregnant and I keep drawing pictures of what my bank balance is going to look like in two years. Think of space, and take away all the stars. That's what I'm drawing.)

Physical Effects of low-gravity

Imagine carrying your own weight in a backpack every day. For most people this is between 60 and 80kg (130 to 175lbs). Do this every day for 10 years, and your body will become stronger, your bones will become denser, and your heart will work more efficiently. That's what exercise does, it makes you fitter.

Now imagine that you leave your backpack at home every day for 6 months. When you start carrying it again, will you be able to lift it? Nope. Your bones, muscle and heart will all have lost strength. This is similar to what happens when people go into space.

Because there is little effective gravity, the body doesn't have to work as hard. We don't need to use our big leg muscles to stand, we don't have to use our back and stomach muscles to sit up straight, or use our neck and shoulder muscles to stop our heads from drooping.

Our bones get brittle, blood moves up in the body because gravity stops pulling it downwards, and our hearts suffer because they don't have to work as hard in space to move blood. When we get home, our bodies are wrecks.

We also suffer from spacesickness ( like seasickness but worse), dizziness, and overly active farting. Seriously, going into space may look like fun, but it's like drunkenly stumbling onto the last train after running a double marathon and discovering that every passenger on the train has been eating beans for two weeks. Not pretty.
So how do we counter these effects? Exercise.

One way to counter at least some of these effects is to trick our bodies into thinking that we are still on Earth by doing funny exercises.

1. Stationary bikes are a great way to keep legs strong because they don't rely on gravity to work. The pedals move a chain that moves a wheel that has resistance to it. Pretty simple.
2. Rowing machines are also good because they don't require gravity, and they exercise many more muscle groups than the regular Earth bike. (Space bikes are built differently so that you can exercise more than just your legs, but the rowing machine still gets that hard to reach area in the small of your back.)
3. Treadmills are kind of wierd because you'd think that they require gravity. I mean, you're "standing up" after all. But they work pretty well because you just strap a bunch of bungie cords to your body that pull you down towards the treadmill. While you're running, you can read a book, watch TV, or check out the other cute astronauts hanging out in the gym. Most people just exercise their upper bodies of course.
   
4. Weight training is difficult to do, but by attaching bungie cords to something solid and pulling against the cord, you can simulate the actions you would do by lifting a barbell.
   

The problem with all of these exercises is that people still lose bone and muscle mass, the exercise just slows the loss. And the other stuff like fluid movement, dizziness, and unpleasant tooting still occur. What we need are more drastic measures.

Advanced Solutions

1. Artificial Gravity - Spin the Spaceship. Pretend our space ship looks like a paint can, and we live on the inside where the paint can is curvy (not the flat ends). If we spin that paint can, we can simulate the effects of gravity. You can kind of see how this works. Fill a glass about one-third full with water, and start stirring the water with a spoon. When you stir, the water moves around in a circle and starts to move closer to the side of the cup, right? That's because the water is accelerating outwards now because of the energy you gave it with the spoon (and also downwards because of gravity). But, because the glass is in the way, the water can't get out, and so it moves in a circle with your spoon. It's kind of the same in space, except we spin the glass instead of the water.
   
2. Artificial Gravity - Break all the laws of physics. This isn't a real solution, but I thought I'd bring it up. No one really knows how to make the science fiction gravity work.
3. Magnetism and Chain mail? - (First link didn't work. I've changed it.) I won't explain this one. Just read the link. It's funny, but hey, it could work.
   

So physical health, while it's something that we seem to really understand on Earth, is one of those that we haven't really sorted out yet in terms of space travel. Of course, another part of physical health is safety. We'll talk about that next week. Maybe my brain will have accepted the whole baby thing by then and I can get back to rockets.

Thanks to Space Future's article for help with the physical effects. It's a very interesting read, and I suggest you go on over to their site.

Ex-pat clubs in Tokyo

I actually planned on having an extra for this month's Asahi article with hundreds of links to ex-patriate clubs, meeting places and times, and maybe some pictures of elephants, but it turns out there aren't any ex-patriate clubs in Japan with websites.

If anyone knows different, please send me an email. In the meantime, you can read the article at the Asahi Weekly site.

Carnival of Space #3

Have a look at the next carnival of space by clicking on the post title. There are quite a few big astronomy bloggers involved, and there are some great posts.

In Space, no one can hear you complain about the room service

Obstacles to Space Exploration Part III: Air

[Note: If you can't see any images in this post, please let me know. Something broke in the blogger server. Maybe they just didn't expect me to get so many hits in one day.]

All unattributed pics either courtesy ESA/NASA, or I drew them in MSPaint.

So where does air come from?

This is an easy one. On Earth, our air is made up of a bunch of different gases, including nitrogen (a very important gas), carbon dioxide (which we breathe out and plants breathe in), argon (which is often used in incandescent lights), and most importantly oxygen (which of course, we breathe in.)

So to survive in space, we just need to take a bunch of oxygen bottles up with us? No. It ain't so simple.

1) Oxygen in air only makes up 20% of the volume, (79% is nitrogen with the others making up the last 1%). When the oxygen percentage gets too high it becomes poisonous. So we need to bring nitrogen into space as well, increasing the mass of our spaceship and making it harder for us to get into space in the first place.

2) When we breathe out, we release carbon dioxide, which is also poisonous. So even if we have a bunch of nitrogen and oxygen on hand, the longer we remain in the spaceship, the more carbon dioxide will be in the air. If there's too much CO2, we die.

3) As anyone who has eaten beans knows, humans release...other... gases in addition to CO2. Over the course of a day, we let out methane (the stinky gas), ammonia (which can be used to clean windows), carbon MONoxide (a super poisonous gas, which is why we get rid of it), and even acetone (found in nail polish remover).

We are walking pollution factories, and all the gases we let out are poisonous in large quantities. not only do we have to bring oxygen and nitrogen with us, we have to get rid of the gas we make ourselves.

Luckily we have many options available.

Some sample systems:

1) Bottled air and charcoal cleaning

Taking the air with us is the probably the simplest option for short duration trips. Just as a SCUBA diver carries air in a bottle on her back, a spaceship can carry a number of bottles of air into space to replenish oxygen. That leaves us the problem of cleaning the bad gases out of the air, but this problem was solved years ago.

A recycled air system filters bad gases out of the air using chunks of charcoal. As you can see below, I ain't no artist. But it gets the idea across.


This system is simple. The air is drawn into a pipe with a charcoal filter installed inside. The dirty air goes through the filter and the bad gases are trapped inside. The clean air then continues through the pipe to be pumped back into the living area of the ship.

When oxygen or nitrogen levels run low, new gas is pumped in from the bottles we brought with us.

This is convenient, but it has limitations. We can't use it for long duration flights for two reasons. The first is that eventually we will run out of new gas from our bottles. The second is that eventually the filter will become saturated with bad gases, and we will need to install a new one.

Neither problem is insurmountable. A space station could carry supplies of both filters and new air, and could replenish a ship in orbit near the station. But if the ship has a different orbital inclination (e.g. the ship goes North to South around the Earth and the station goes West to East), it would cost a lot of fuel to change orbits to match the station. The fact is that there aren't any truly effective filtration systems yet. We'll have to rely on charcoal for a while yet, at least until we can find a recyclable way of filtering the pollutants out of air.

2) Electrolysis (and charcoal cleaning)

The electrolysis system is great because it kills two birds with one stone. When we go into space, we have to take water with us. We also have to take air. Luckily for us, (especially the crew of the International Space Station), water is loaded with oxygen. All we have to do is get the oxygen out. Electrolysis does that for us.

Electrolysis is when we zap water (H2O) with electricity. The energy in the electricity separates the hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O).

Once the oxygen is separated, we collect it and stick it in tanks for later use, and vent the hydrogen into space. (Venting means that we slowly release it. If we let it go too quickly, the hydrogen will act just like air coming out of a balloon and make the spaceship shoot around all over the place. This is inconvenient, especially when you are trying to eat soup.)



In another process, the hydrogen can be recombined with the carbon dioxide we breathe out. As you can see in the picture on the right, combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide gives us water and methane. We can pump the water into our own tanks, and either drink it or use it again for air.

We'll have some methane left over, but that can either be vented into space, or used as propellant for the spaceship when it makes small course corrections.




3) Space Water (Sigh. And charcoal cleaning)

Since we're talking about exploration, we may as well look at all the options.

Although air is sparse in our Solar System, water (in the form of ice) is abundant. We can find ice on asteroids, moons, planets, and comets, and if we can find a way to mine that ice, we can use our trusty old electrolysis system to make air.


(The picture is of water ice in a crater at Mars' North Pole. I borrowed the picture from the ESA, but I promise I will give it back.)

4) Hydroponics


Hydroponics is the art of growing plants in pans of dirty water under big bright lights, and NASA has tested hydroponic systems for use on spacecraft. [EDIT: The above link describes an older experiment no longer running. I will update the link with newer work shortly. DOUBLE EDIT: Looks like NASA has stopped researching hydroponics. I'm waiting for an email from a researcher in the states who used to do work on it. Maybe he can let me know what's happening now.] The great thing about hydroponics is that the system is not used just to grow food.

A hydroponics system can be used to recycle sewage water, which not only cleans the water of, well, poo, but it also serves as fertilizer for the plants we are trying to grow. And if we clean the water of sewage, we can drink it again. (I know this sounds gross, but astronauts already recycle their urine. It's not that much different.)

Of course, the most obvious benefit of growing our own food in our ship is the oxygen.

I'm sure you recall that the carbon dioxide we breathe out is used by plants in photosynthesis (ignore the creepy voice on that link). As a by-product of using light and carbon dioxide to make food, plants make oxygen which they then release into the atmosphere.

On our little spaceship, plants can be used to refresh the oxygen supply, filter out the carbon dioxide we breathe out, clean our water, and after all that we can eat them. Some of the plants can even be used to refresh the nutrients in the water, so that we can grow more plants.

So which is best?

The best system for long-duration spaceflight is probably the one in which we grow our own food. The benefits are tremendous, but there are some drawbacks. A hydroponics system is labour intensive, takes up a lot of space on our ship, and still has plenty of technical bugs that have to be worked out.

Without the influence of gravity, the water we want to use to grow our plants won't stay in one place of its own accord. And the soil in the water tends to either be too chunky or too powdery. How do you grow plants in a puddle of water that is floating in the middle of the cabin? And how do plants react to zero-gravity? Do they still grow up towards the light to maximize light intensity, or will they grow sideways to maximize plant surface area? Research is in progress on these issues, and many of these questions have been answered. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Once the details are worked out, I'm sure we'll eventually see a greenhouse module being attached to the Space Station (or a future incarnation of the ISS.)

But we still have some way to go in our discussion on space exploration. We've talked about how we get to space, and how to physically survive once we get there, but we haven't talked about how we stay happy or physically healthy.

Our next entry will be all about physical and psychological health, and the quest to stay sane in space.

Who owns what you say on the net?

A few weeks ago popular news aggregator Fark.com had a makeover, and in the wake of the change, members hijacked pretty much every thread to talk about the new look. Some hated it, some loved it, and some were indifferent to anything other than how to avoid doing work that day (and wanted to tell everyone else about their indifference).

Then someone – perhaps in a fit of ire at the unwanted font and background colour changes - found and posted a link on their blog to Fark’s copyright notice. The notice (at the time) claimed that anyone who posts on Fark offers to the website, “an implied assignment of the entire copyright interest.” Basically, it meant that Fark assumed ownership of every post. This discovery set off an tiny avalanche of posts on Fark and on other sites (this blogger had an interesting article), raging against Fark’s implied "betrayal".

Fark is not unique in claiming copyrights. Slashdot, probably the most popular geek portal on the web, makes the same copyright claim using slightly different legalese. (Ctrl-f for “user grants OSTG” to find the relevant passage).

Slashdot leaves the copyright with the user, but claims the worldwide rights to republish, change or adapt anything you say on its site. In other words, it says exactly the same thing as Fark did, but from the point of view of the user rather than the company. It gives website the right to make money from anything you say, but leaving you the right to do the same thing.

EBaum’s World gets around the need for a copyright claim that by stating on its site that, “any information that is disclosed in these areas [the public forums] becomes public information.” In other words, they can use anything you post to make money because it is in the public domain the instant you post it. Even YouTube – a site embroiled in its own copyright battles - claims republishing rights to all your own work.

There are sites that claim more than simple republishing rights. Collegehumor.com claims not just the right to republish, but also the right to sublicense anything you submit to their site. Anything you post – whether it be a photoshopped picture of a squirrel or a quip about Dick Cheney’s colostomy bag – could end up in movie script with no money coming to you.

At the other end of the scale, musicians on MySpace have nothing to worry about except people versed in downloading music files out of imbedded players (which is probably a pretty small portion of the Internet population). MySpace claims the same republishing rights as Slashdot (in order to legally compress song files and showcase them to other members of the site), but it limits its republishing rights to the MySpace website. It can neither sell user content, nor license its use to others.

The advent of the Internet has allowed new interpretations of copyright law that didn’t exist before, but it didn’t destroy copyright law altogether. The law will change – as we saw happen with the Digital Millennium Act – and as with the DMA, not all changes will be for the benefit of the end user. But, the essence of the law will likely remain the same.

Fark’s copyright notice wasn’t new – according to the Wayback Machine it had been in effect since December 5, 2005. Fark, “grants back to the submitter a non-exclusive, non-transferable and royalty-free license to republish that submission in any and all forms." So Fark claimed the copyright and then gave the rights for it right back to the submitter. Does this mean that Fark owned the submission and could sue if the creator made money from selling the work? Not according to an email from Fark’s owner, Drew Curtis.

“We claim the right to republish, the submitter owns the content,” he wrote.

The epilogue of Fark's copyright fracas found Curtis soliciting advice from the users in order to make a notice more palatable. The basic meaning of the new notice is no different from that of the old, but I guess people feel better that the "ownership" of their posts about cat bottoms and toilet habits remain in their own hands.

There are two morals to this story. First, to protect your intellectual property online, use common sense. Just like in the real world, don’t sign anything without reading the small print.
Second, don't pay attention to bloggers who post kneejerk commentary without researching the whole story.

I love food

This is an article I did for Asahi Weekly in December 2006. It was the most fun to research because we ate a gross of brand new dishes for the next two months. It was freaking great.

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I stole this from Gastronomy Domine. Don't steal it.

My wife and I have a problem; we are addicted to change. We move to new apartments in order to have a change of scenery, we buy new curtains TOO often, but most importantly we try to have a different meal every night. We have meals we enjoy - from mabo-tofu, tonjiru, to Chicken Kiev and rosemary roast beef – and we have them as often as we can because they taste good. However, our favourite meals always seem to come from out of nowhere.

Because of my love of food, and because this is a column on learning English online, this month we are searching the blogosphere for new recipes. As is often said, the only way to learn a new language is to use it. Studying vocabulary, verb tenses, and prepositions can only get you so far. You have to read books, write diaries, and talk with others about things that interest you.

We have three sites to look at today; one for your main meal, one for dessert, and one that will help you choose a wine with which to wash it all down. Each site highlights different recipes and cooking styles, using everything from woks to barbecues, and each site has been running for a while so there is a lot to choose from. The sites are all very simple to navigate, so you can concentrate on understanding the English they use.

Our first site this month is called Gastronomy Domine. If you are looking for a main dish, something you haven't tried before, then this site is perfect for you.

You can find recipes from many different countries; England, Malaysia, Italy, India, and Greece are just some of the countries Liz (the blogger) borrows recipes from. On the left side of the page are the most recent recipes (plus comment sections), and on the right you can find the different categories that Liz has set up. At the top of the right-hand side, you can look through the sweets recipes, savoury hors d'ouvres, or wine and drink mixes. If you scroll a little further down you can find links to other food blogs and Liz's archives for the last year and a half. On the blue bar in the top left of the page you can search the blog for specific recipes, but I suggest you just use the links on the right. If you only search for things you know, you may miss out on some great food. There are literally hundreds of recipes here, and you can find one for any occasion.

Our second site, for our dessert, is called The Bakingsheet. Everything you ever need to know about any food that is cooked in an oven can be found here. Nic, a food blogger from Los Angeles, has given us stuffing recipes, cake and cookie recipes, and even recipes for special breads. I have gained almost two kilograms this month because it all tastes so good. You can navigate the site in the same way as Liz's – with the newer entries on the left, and the category links on the right – with only a small difference. Nic's archives of previous recipes are at the top, with links to other food blogs at the bottom (Liz's site is the opposite). Nic has been running this site since 2004, so with a little searching you will be able to find any type of dessert recipe you desire.

Our last site, and perhaps the most important, is The Winecask Blog. There are three people who offer reviews on this site, so it is updated quite often. The main entries – on the left side of the page with a teal background – showcase a different wine every day or two. Each entry describes everything you need to know about the wine: flavour, the aftertaste, and even what foods the wine will taste best with. On the right hand side – with the cream background – you can choose wines based upon your budget for the night, search the archives for a wine you know, or click links to other wine blogs and compare reviews for similar wines. Unfortunately, because it is an American site, the price categories are in US dollars, but in general, wine prices in America are similar to wine prices in Japan. Get out a calculator and convert to yen, and you should have a good idea of what you will have to spend for the wine you are looking for.

This month was great fun for me; I had a great time eating the food I learned how to make. If you have any questions, all of the bloggers are quite friendly and helpful. Don't hesitate to ask questions, or to just leave comments on the blogs about your experience with the recipe. It's great practice for your English, and will give the bloggers good feedback.

Good luck, safe surfing, and try not to burn the cake.

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There are handy metric-imperial converters located all over the net, but you only really need to know five things, so I've included them below to save you some time.

1 teaspoon (tsp) = 5 millilitres (ml)
1 tablespoon (tbsp) = 15 millilitres (ml)
1 cup = 240 millilitres (ml)
1 ounce (oz) = 30 grams (g)
For baking temperatures, go to the Temperature Converter.