The thread for space cadets!

[Borachio]

Interesting tour of the ISS


Link to video.

Staggering! Astonishing! Crazy!

 

[warpus]

Indeed!

And I don't mean to be crude, but I wonder how this particular female astronaut puts up with the obviously constant attention from the men. I mean.. She's the only woman up there right now, yes? I am not sure about the marital status of everyone on board, but.. She must have options I wonder what sort of social/sexual dynamics exist up there.

 

[Borachio]

But she's the Station Commander!!!

I guess she gets to choose.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Indeed!

And I don't mean to be crude, but I wonder how this particular female astronaut puts up with the obviously constant attention from the men. I mean.. She's the only woman up there right now, yes? I am not sure about the marital status of everyone on board, but.. She must have options I wonder what sort of social/sexual dynamics exist up there.

Officially, no one has had sex in space (though aparently Soviet Cosmonaut manuals/daily schedules included time for 'special massages').

However, sexual tension isn't usually a huge issue in space. For one, the crews have either been all straight men, short duration mixed flights, flights with mostly or all married crew, or some combination of these things. So those tend to cancel out most sexual frustration. IIRC there is also drugs available to supress labido if that becomes an issue.

There has been at least one (and possibly more) 'instances' in space, however. The Russians only ever send up men (the whole first women in space thing was only for show) and their men are very machismo by cultural upbringing. Non-Russians do not always know how to react.

For instance, the proper way to rebuff a sexual advance by a Russian man is to slap him. Telling him no is like telling him 'maybe, just try harder'. This actually happened where (after a round of drinking some illicit [or maybe not illicit - it's russians ] vodka) a cosmonaut made unwanted advances towards a female astronaut.

Everytime she told him no, it just egged him on until he had to be restrained. So now there is special cultural sensitivity training for all the astronauts/cosmonauts/guestronauts to help avoid this.

Random aside:
The japanese have had very bad problems concerning cultural differences. Because of their passive, non-confrontational demeaner (they don't make eye contact as a general rule - it's seen as an agressive thing to do) they have had Japanese guestronauts break down on orbit. One guy in particular came to feel like everyone was out to get him, when in reality he was misinterpreting body language and normal western social behaviors.

Then, instead of talking to the people who he had issue with, he began passive-aggressively sabotaging them (misplacing things on purpose, 'forgetting' to do things he had been asked to do, etc) and began having serious emotional distress. He was sent home early and the Japanese take special care to expose their guestronauts to western culture and manerisms so they don't have a freakout inside a $100b tuna can flying at 25,000mph 200 miles up in the sky.

In fact, IIRC, the japanese freakout happened in the same mission as the Russian sexcapade and the whole mission was trying for all involved. Could be wrong about them happening concurrently, but I know both instances did happen.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Indeed!

And I don't mean to be crude, but I wonder how this particular female astronaut puts up with the obviously constant attention from the men. I mean.. She's the only woman up there right now, yes? I am not sure about the marital status of everyone on board, but.. She must have options I wonder what sort of social/sexual dynamics exist up there.

Well, she is not particularly attractive (to not say ugly as sin). But i guess that if she looked like this:

Spoiler :

a lot of tension would arise and the mission would surely end in some sort of horrible catastrophe.

 

[peter grimes]

That large of an impact (6x bigger than Chixalub and much, much faster) will create a hailstorm of debris for years on end and there is a high likelihood in my estimation that Curiosity would get hit. On the upside, it would collect awesome data until the point of failure.

Oh and the kicked up dusts and high velocity winds wouldn't be good for it or its sensors either.

Well it certainly wouldn't be good news. I don't think there's any way you can slice it like that. Worst case scenario is bad and best case scenario is neutral, leaning bad.

6x Chixchulub? Holy Hamburgers!

I didn't realize that's what was being discussed. I came across that 20 billion megaton figure and my brain shut down.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

They said it could be 30miles across, chixalub was 5-6. Plus, it orbits retrograde, so the velity it has relative to Mars is crazy high. So yeah, it will totally frak Mars up for decades. Seriously, it will rain down debris for probably millenial timescales.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Actually, it would make mannef exploration very difficult, if not impossible for a while. On the plus side, lots of pieces of Mars will fly our way which will be interesting to study. Then again, large chunks would be dangerous.

 

[Borachio]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21603490

Some people are just too young to go to Mars.

The plan was to choose a middle-aged couple because their health and fertility would be less affected by the radiation they would be exposed to during such a long space mission.

The couple would receive extensive training and would be able to draw on psychological support from mission control throughout the mission

"The idea of sending older astronauts on longer duration missions, after they have had children, has been around for a while. The reasoning is that such a long duration mission, outside of the protective magnetosphere of the Earth, could leave them infertile,".

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Actually, it would make mannef exploration very difficult, if not impossible for a while. On the plus side, lots of pieces of Mars will fly our way which will be interesting to study. Then again, large chunks would be dangerous.

An impact on Mars, as exciting as it sounds to me, me being a disaster film genre buff, would ultimately re-inforce some of my pessimisms I mentioned in Rants the other day.

 

[uppi]

Uppi? Any input??

Sorry, missed that one.

That claim was a bit scientifically dubious and then obviously overhyped by the media.

If you take the standard model, assume that there is no correction to it at all, extend it to infinite energy scales and plug in the Higgs mass, then it ceases to be stable. If this was true, then there would be indeed the possibility of a spontaneous collapse. However, as well as the standard model has been experimentally confirmed, to claim that it extends to energy scales way beyond our current reach requires quite a leap of faith. That would require that there are no corrections, no new physics at all. And as the Higgs mass is quite close to a stable value, small corrections would suffice. And the standard model does not contain gravity, so we know that it needs to be extended at one point.

It is correct that supersymmetry could resolve the instability, but so could any other theory beyond the standard model.

 

[warpus]

Officially, no one has had sex in space (though aparently Soviet Cosmonaut manuals/daily schedules included time for 'special massages').

However, sexual tension isn't usually a huge issue in space. For one, the crews have either been all straight men, short duration mixed flights, flights with mostly or all married crew, or some combination of these things. So those tend to cancel out most sexual frustration. IIRC there is also drugs available to supress labido if that becomes an issue.

There has been at least one (and possibly more) 'instances' in space, however. The Russians only ever send up men (the whole first women in space thing was only for show) and their men are very machismo by cultural upbringing. Non-Russians do not always know how to react.

For instance, the proper way to rebuff a sexual advance by a Russian man is to slap him. Telling him no is like telling him 'maybe, just try harder'. This actually happened where (after a round of drinking some illicit [or maybe not illicit - it's russians ] vodka) a cosmonaut made unwanted advances towards a female astronaut.

Everytime she told him no, it just egged him on until he had to be restrained. So now there is special cultural sensitivity training for all the astronauts/cosmonauts/guestronauts to help avoid this.

Random aside:
The japanese have had very bad problems concerning cultural differences. Because of their passive, non-confrontational demeaner (they don't make eye contact as a general rule - it's seen as an agressive thing to do) they have had Japanese guestronauts break down on orbit. One guy in particular came to feel like everyone was out to get him, when in reality he was misinterpreting body language and normal western social behaviors.

Then, instead of talking to the people who he had issue with, he began passive-aggressively sabotaging them (misplacing things on purpose, 'forgetting' to do things he had been asked to do, etc) and began having serious emotional distress. He was sent home early and the Japanese take special care to expose their guestronauts to western culture and manerisms so they don't have a freakout inside a $100b tuna can flying at 25,000mph 200 miles up in the sky.

In fact, IIRC, the japanese freakout happened in the same mission as the Russian sexcapade and the whole mission was trying for all involved. Could be wrong about them happening concurrently, but I know both instances did happen.

Very interesting. I don't really have anything to add except that I think that there's far more sex going on up there than people would care to admit

Sex is a natural stress relief tool and spending soo much time in such close quarters is bound to result.. in natural happy happy joy joy time. I bet space wanking is fairly common as well. Heck, there's got to be "in the know" sexual tools up there, that we just don't hear about down here. The Russians have tools for everything. Why would sex be any different? It's a natural part of life, it's going to happen, you might as well make it more enjoyable. That very pragmatic approach can be expected from engineers, scientists, and.. yeah, Russians! I don't like to generalize but every culture is different and you've heard the thing about the Russian space pen.. Which is not true of course, but that general sentiment it conveys sort of might be

As for all those "straight" men, they are only straight on paper Coming out is still a big stigma in a lot of places so a lot of people prefer to keep that sort of thing to themselves.. On a space station in close quarters with several other people you are bound to get to know them fairly well... So... I'm not saying there's tons of gay sex happening on the space station right now, but it probably happens. And everyone up there is probably cool with it, and if not they would have never passed the initial tests to become an astronaut - Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to have a personality that's able to cope very well with various random situations, including social relations between the various crew members. This might be a far reach, and a couple of my leaps in logic are only based on partial data, so my conclusion might be off, but I will just stop this sentence right here before I conclude that there's goats up there too

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't really disagree with your assessment either. One thing you do have to remember though, the vast majority of all the spaceflights up until the ISS were very brief. Even with the ISS and MIR, you might have one or two long-timers on board but the rest came and went.

I'm not saying it's never happened, just that it's the official line that it's never happened. I'm also saying it can't happen very often for all the reasons I laid out, paramount among them the fact that most astronauts and cosmonauts were only up there from a couple of days to a couple of weeks and had their days scheduled 24/7 and thus had little opportunity.

And I do mean literally every minute of every day is accounted for. The Skylab 2 crew had a mini-revolt over it. None of them were ever allowed to fly again, but mission control had a serious rethink on the workload and tedium they made the astronauts go through and subsequently added a bit of down time (which is still next to nothing).
Edit: WHat is the Russian space pen?

Edit Edit: Yeah I'm sure some people have gotten it on, like I said I don't disagree with you on that. I just don't think it's as common as it might seem.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Guys, get your filthy minds out of the guttah!

I'm fairly certain sex in space is a hell lot less common than you think it is.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Come on, it is the ISS not an orbiting Turkish prison.

 

[Winner]

They said it could be 30miles across, chixalub was 5-6. Plus, it orbits retrograde, so the velity it has relative to Mars is crazy high. So yeah, it will totally frak Mars up for decades. Seriously, it will rain down debris for probably millenial timescales.

What? No. The ejecta blown up by the impact will either re-enter in a matter of hours, or leave Mars completely (a tiny fraction).

It could even be a good thing - it would bring water to the atmosphere and release a lot of heat - it could even trigger a brief period of global warming that would puff up the planet's atmosphere. And if there indeed are subsurface reservoirs of water or ice, the impact would melt-vaporize even more water, thus making the atmosphere even denser and wetter and warmer. Maybe enough to initiate a feedback loop of CO2 outgassing.

So yes please, by all means, let it hit!

Guys, get your filthy minds out of the guttah!

I'm fairly certain sex in space is a hell lot less common than you think it is.

From what I read, you aren't really feeling like having sex either. Your head/upper torso is all swelled, you're constantly tired from work, stressed, maybe slightly nauseous from the zero-G, very often you suffer flatulence, etc. etc. Not really things that make you want to have sex.

Not to mention, there is next to none privacy - no dark unmonitored corners where you could steal some woo-hoo out of sight of your crewmates.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

No, some of the ejecta from an impact that size would be sent into a solar orbit that is very similar to Mar's orbit and would eventually reimpact at different times.

 

[Winner]

No, some of the ejecta from an impact that size would be sent into a solar orbit that is very similar to Mar's orbit and would eventually reimpact at different times.

So? A few small rocks, mostly dust/gravel sized. Nothing like "raining death for thousands of years". Definitely not something for humans to worry about too much.

Such a huge impact on a terrestrial planet would be an amazing opportunity to study the effects of large impact events. Plus, as I mentioned in the previous post, it might even improve Mars's habitability for a 'while' (a few decades or centuries).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

A few small rocks? Sure dude, whatever. I tend to think a 30 mile wide retrograde comet can kick off more than just specks of dust and pebbles into solar orbit, but I'll defer to your years of experience or whatever.

Mars also has an atmosphere that's 1/1000 the density of Earth's, so even very small objects will get through without burning up. I wouldn't put money on such an impact causing enough outgassing to appreciably change the density of Mar's atmosphere.

 

[Winner]

A few small rocks? Sure dude, whatever. I tend to think a 30 mile wide retrograde comet can kick off more than just specks of dust and pebbles into solar orbit, but I'll defer to your years of experience or whatever.

Having a bad day again?

Ejecta fragments are usually quite small due to the energy of the impact which pulverizes/vaporizes everything. The heavier they are, the sooner they re-enter. A vast majority of the stuff re-enters shortly after the impact. Only very few ever completely leave a planet, and they get very dispersed.

If you think they would be in any way a problem for future Mars colonization efforts, by all means, prove it with something more that your gut feeling.

Mars also has an atmosphere that's 1/1000 the density of Earth's,

More like 1/100th

so even very small objects will get through without burning up. I wouldn't put money on such an impact causing enough outgassing to appreciably change the density of Mar's atmosphere.

I would - the energy of the impact coupled with the sudden injection of a huge amount of water vapour, CO2, and various other oxides could have a VERY large effect on the Martian climate. The Chixulub impact caused a long period of global warming following the brief 'impact winter' even though it was much smaller and less violent, and Earth's atmospheric composition wasn't nearly as radically altered as Mars's would be.

Surely it wouldn't magically turn Mars into a lush paradise, but if a denser, wetter atmosphere was the result of the impact, it could be a bonus worth decades of human-organized terraforming - and for free.