New answers tagged crewed-spaceflight
1
Sources are from Ed Pavelka's oral histories in April and May 2001.
The idea came up when Flight Director Gene Kranz asked Pavelka for a way to improve morale:
Gene Kranz thought in the military way about the morale of his troops, so to speak, and he wanted a way that he could kind of raise the morale. So he talked to me about something that we might be ...
1
The specific chemical identity of the germicidal pouches is described in Biomedical Results of Apollo:
The germicidal liquid was a mixture of sodium orthophenylphenol and sodium chlorophenylphenol of amaplast blue LXT (NASA, c. 1967). The bag was kneaded to rupture the inner pouch and mix the germicide with the wastes.
12
Like @OrganicMarble, I have found a considerable lack of evidence that such a thing happened.
On the other hand, early astronauts had lots of nicknames, which allowed a distinctive way to address a particular person in a roomful of astronauts:
Walter "Wally" Schirra versus Walter Cunningham
Charles "Pete" Conrad versus Charles "Charlie" Duke
Thomas "Ken" ...
16
Signs point to no.
There's an excellent overview of the rather complicated Apollo crew selection process in this answer: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/23149/6944
Then throw in this story of those offered Apollo missions who turned them down, which complicated the story even more:
The Moonwalkers Who Could Have Been which states that Borman, McDivitt, ...
2
Are they building on mars or do they have a camp there?
No and No!
Part of the problem is the Mars One scam. You can see there are many posts here specifically containing the search term "Mars One": https://space.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22mars+one%22 and despite all of the hype, we can take the word of Canadian astronaut, space musician and public ...
5
The short answer is: probably nothing significant.
There have been multiple investigations into human circadian rhythms and their variations, especially in the absence of external clues regarding diurnal cycles and timekeeping. The best appears to be the 1974 paper by Mills et al.,"The circadian rhythms of human subjects without timepieces or indication of ...
1
Yes, there have been and are multiple crewed mission concepts to celestial bodies other than the Moon and Mars, but they aren't covered by the media that much.
As stated in another answer, a Venus flyby in the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn V's third stage was a concept for the 1970s, but never realized. It was part of the Apollo Applications program to which ...
5
I don't know the exact details of the Gemini suit, but here are some contemporaneous patents that describe similar joints. The different parts are in red and blue, bearings in green and o-rings yellow.
Omni-directional high altitude helmet, US3030626A by Leonard F Shepard, filed 1958:
It's basically a large ball bearing with an o-ring, both in such an ...
0
Colonization of Ceres (respectively its surface) is actually not possible because of two main factors related to sleep:
First, a day on Ceres is about 9 hrs 5 min. That is about 3/8 the length of day on Earth. When should astronauts on Ceres go to sleep? When should they wake up? This is an issue that could be avoided by setting a base on a peak of eternal ...
0
First: As (somewhat confusingly, IMO) stated in the other answer, the use of "brachistochrone" is somewhat of a misnomer, potentially. I will use the term "constant-acceleration minimum-time transfer".
Second: "Efficiency", in spaceflight, is a somewhat complicated and many-sided thing. Efficiency of cost? Total spacecraft mass lifted into orbit? Amount of ...
0
In space missions, it is common to have two pilots. The "commander" is the more senior one, and does most of the piloting, while the "pilot" is the junior one, and may have some roles. Neil Armstrong, as commander, was the more senior pilot, and practiced the landing. Buzz, on the other hand, was primarily tasked to manage the spacecraft when on orbit, ...
4
Most shielding is just mass plus atomic number - for cosmic Ray shielding you want light elements, as heavy elements make more radiation. Water and polyethylene are good options.
The main interesting thing is how to make the shielding do double duty.
Options include:
supplies
thermal protection systems
fuel/propellant
water supplies
boxes of food
sewage ...
7
For the shuttle program, the water was not recovered.
The water that was not vaporized ran through concrete channels and was collected in two holding ponds.
(NASA photo, annotations mine).
The water was later pumped out and allowed to soak into the sandy soil.
The discharge of deluge and firex water (during the launch of each
Space Shuttle) resulted ...
3
No. There is no need for windows, from a technical perspective. Humans like windows, or at least display screens so they can see what's going on, avoid going stir-crazy from living in a capsule for months etc..
In reality, windows will be as small as possible, as they are on any high stress vehicle (aircraft or spaceships) because they are a likely failure ...
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