[ExI] Carbon

[spike]

        ...Spike, your current outside-the-box thinking remains worthy of
you...

You are too kind sir.

        ...In fact, at the time I knew several ladies that I would have
gladly ushered off onto a very long space voyage...

Yes and I knew several ladies who would have gladly ushered us off onto a
long one-way space voyage.

My notion regarding small female astronauts was primarily motivated by the
observation that the weight of a pressure vessel scales as the cube of the
linear dimension.  This is a classic weights engineer notion: if we can find
a three-foot tall astronaut to replace the six footer, I see no reason why
nearly everything would not scale down to half scale, which means a pressure
vessel one-eighth the mass.  As you pointed out at the time, they *almost
did* choose the Mercury astronauts based on their size: Ike decided that
fighter pilots would be the right choice.  These were almost all short light
guys, for they needed to fit into the tight confines of the jet cockpits of
the day, limiting their height to 5'9" which clearly would have excluded
both of us, and most of the men we know.

Not everything in a space mission scales as the cube of the linear dimension
of course: the pressure vessel does, but the vessel's surface area only
scales as the square of the linear dimension and the computers and
communications gear cares not at all scale with the size of the human cargo.
An SAWE paper I always wanted to write and never did is to ask the question
how does the mass of an interplanetary mission scale with the human aboard?
As near as I can estimate, that exponent is somewhere in the 2.2 to 2.4
range.  But I digress.

        ...I can think of numerous workable variations to your current
idea...   Your idea.in effect, a process that uses a
large-closed-pressurized container.would result in a particular family of
products...

Yes but of course when you say large closed pressurized container, I had in
mind maintaining atmospheric pressure inside the vessel.  I would not wish
to risk forcing the material into fissures which could find its way into a
local unmapped aquafer.  That being said, your memetic contribution points
out that there are useable vapor phase products that would likely be formed;
the metabolic processes in the micro-organisms are not completely and
immediately stopped by heat in the newly introduced material near the top
surface and along the cooler sides of the pit.  Right when the new material
is introduced, some breakdown would occur from temporarily surviving
organisms within the waste matter.  This would result in carbon dioxide,
methane, sulfates and traces of hydrogen and phosphates for instance.
Behind the CO2 and H20, methane would be the next largest fraction.  This
could be recovered and used as fuel.  The sulfates and phosphates could be
processed into fertilizers and plastics.

        ...CO2 could easily be captured and used for different purposes.as
fed into CO2 enriched vegetation-growing facilities.  At the moment this
valuable raw material is.well.simply flushed away. Keep thinking!  Bob

It has been proposed to bury carbon in the form of ground up charcoal,
however the idea of burying excrement is compelling, for it is already in a
form that can be relatively easily transported.  In fact the infrastructure
already exists to a large extent: tanker trucks specifically designed for
hauling that particular material.

spike

       


 





        
















        ---------------------------------

        Bob I had an idea today regarding sequestering of carbon. We create
an enormous hole in the desert, perhaps a km deep and 100 meters in diameter
with a cover, build a pipe from the large population centers, and fill the
hole with human excrement. At our current sewage processing plants, bacteria
break down this substance forming carbon dioxide, but note that the volume
of a container increases as the cube of the linear dimension whereas the
surface area (through which heat is lost) increases as the square. It scales
such that given a large enough hole, the heat from the metabolism of the
micro-organisms that break down the waste increases the temperature
sufficiently to actually slay the bacteria and stop the decay process
itself. So we could imagine a hole large enough to keep the solid waste
sufficiently hot to prevent its breakdown, thus maintaining it in its mostly
carbon form while boiling away the water, leaving the rest buried safely
below ground.

        It is easy to estimate: waste is produced at perhaps a kilogram a
day, so a city the size of San Jose population of about a megaperson, would
produce about a thousand tons of excreta per day, at approximately the same
density of water (some float, some sink) so the volume would be about 1000
cubic meters.  The hole I described would have a volume of about 8 million
cubic meters, so San Jose would fill the shit pit in about 8000 days, or
about 22 years.

        As a side benefit, it would provide the greenest way I know for
those who wish to dispose of themselves after they pass from this earthly
existence: arrange for their remains to be flushed.  We could even imagine
it as a terrifying form of execution that would discourage even the most
cruel murders and rapists and the most zealous Presbyterian terrorists.

        spike


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