Thank you for your follow up on this topic from 2005. It is ** good ** to see the activity ... there seems to be a lot recorded for 2022.
(th)
]]>Getting chloroplasts to remain viable long enough to be practical for life support on a spacecraft requires special treatment. One is genetic modification of the pea plant. One limit is recycling 2PG. Normally the first step of photosynthesis is binding one molecule of CO2 to RuBP. That is a 5 carbon molecule. Binding to CO2 splits it into 2 molecules, each with 3 cabin atoms (3PG). One is recycled back to RuBP, while the other becomes sugar, a monosaccharide. But when oxygen binds it forms one 3PG and one 2PG. The 2PG must be recycled. Part of that processes is done by mitochondria, part by another organelle. Chloroplasts evolved from cyanobacteria. The whole process is done within cyanobacteria. In fact, cyanobacteria use the same recycling pathway as plants, plus a second recycling pathway, plus some is processed back into CO2 so it can start over. I suggest taking the genes from all 3 pathway, put them into the chromosome of a pea plant that becomes the plasmid for a chloroplast. That way invitro chloroplasts will have them. One side effect should be more efficient photosynthesis, so peas should grow faster. There's a manufacturer of pea starch in a small town near the city where I live. Would they be interested in funding this? At the Mars Society convention, I was told Monsanto tried to eliminate photorespiration. Would they be interested?
Just before convention, Robert Zubrin announced the Mars Technology Institute. I spoke with Dr. Zubrin about the chloroplast idea. Could this be used to produce starch, which in turn could feed other foods? For example, use the enzyme amylase to break starch into sugar, then feed sugar to bacteria to produce protein. Engineering bacteria to produce protein has already been done for various pharmaceuticals. Human growth hormone used to be extracted from pituitary glands of human dead bodies. Now it's grown by bacteria in a vat. Could we grow wheat protein this way? Mix that protein with pea starch to produce artificial flour.
Dr. Zubrin was not impressed. He felt chloroplasts or any living thing is not sufficiently energy efficient. But that means he's talking about chemical synthesis of food, such as chemical synthesis of protein. I worry that is not food safe. Brian said it has been done but the process is wildly energy inefficient. So now I have to convince Dr. Zubrin that adding CO2 to bags of chloroplasts will reduce photorespiration and thus increase energy efficiency.
My chloroplast idea was primarily for oxygen generation. This replaces both the water electrolysis tank and Sabatier Reactor of the current system on ISS. It uses sunlight directly as energy, so eliminates power needed for electrolysis and Sabatier. It would need some pumps and fans, but dramatically reduces power required. And produces starch as a byproduct instead of toxic gases. Perhaps food production isn't it's best use.
Brian asked about methanol production. We spoke at length about this, trying to find effective ways of bringing return propellant for a Mars mission all the way from Earth. That is completely different than what Brian talked about. So it hasn't "transitioned".
]]>The chapter includes several images showing energy usage of various kinds. The Global Carbon Utilization graph in Figure 2.5 is easy to describe in words ... It is an almost straight line ascending from 0,0 at lower left toward the upper right corner.
Along the line are decades from 1875 to 2020. Along the left border, ascending from (about) 200 to a high value of 12000 is average GDP per person. Along the base of the graph, from 0 at the origin to 12000 at the right corner, is a count of millions of tons of carbon per year.
The correlation between carbon utilization (in energy) and well being of the population is clear.
It can be seen that between 1800, when the industrial revolution commenced, and the present, human living standards, measured in constant dollar GDP/capita, have improved in direct proportion to our total fossil fuel use.
As the purpose of the book is to advocate nuclear power, it is understandable that the chapter concludes with a reminder that nuclear power is dangerous, but that it has the capability to "also do unlimited good".
(th)
]]>I have found that when Apache is having a fit, it is possible to break up a post into little chunks. All the post is present. It is simply distributed over multiple Post ID's. We have plenty of Post ID's, so this solution may be of interest to our members.
(th)
]]>It appears (from a first scan) that most of the papers included in the collection were given at Mars Society conventions.
Here is a screen scrape of the table of index terms:
Currently the MarsPapers archive contains over 600 documents. Each document is categorized by one of the following keywords:
Keyword List of Categories for Archive Shortname Label
Mars in History, the Arts, and Fiction MarsArts
Political Action Politics
Education and Public Outreach Outreach
Private Funding and Commercial Investment Commercial
Robotic Exploration Robotics
Human Exploration Exploration
Human Settlement Settlement
Science and the Search for Life Life
Terraforming Terraforming
Utilizing Martian Resources MarsResources
Human Factors and Crew Considerations CrewFactors
Medicine Medicine
Law and Society Law
Computer and Communications Infrastructure CommTech
Philosophical, Ethical, and Societal Implications Society
Mars Mission Planning and Engineering MissionEngring
Propulsion and Power Systems Power/Propulsion
Analog Mars Research and Research Stations AnalogStations
Mission Support MissionSupport
Mars Society Organization and Processes MarsSocOrg
Note: the keyword column lines up in preview, but it may be out of alignment when rendered by your browser.
(th)
]]>It appears (from an initial scan) that the only overlap between the Mars Society leadership, and the NewMars forum, is Executive Director James Burk.
(th)
]]>The talks by BeerMan and by GW Johnson appear to be covered by the links.
It should be possible to find all five of the presentations by comparing the schedule pdf with the presentations.
(th)
]]>Researchers find way to shrink a VR headset down to normal glasses size
https://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-fin … sses-size/
Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols closes hailing frequencies
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.the … _obituary/
https://www.marssociety.org/news/2018/0 … ine-store/
https://www.marssociety.org/topics/online-store/
lest we forget there is also chapters
]]>Hi all
Is anyone on this forum in Florida?
Any interest in working on group projects? either hardware or political? other?
Thanks
Terry Mackintosh <terry@mackintoshweb.com>
The Mars Society, FL chapter: http://mackintoshweb.com/mars/