[ExI] Update on the Hawaiian observatory shutdown

[spike at rainier66.com]

>…Those islands are one hell of a lot more livable than Mauna Kea, it's hard to breath at 13,803 feet and it's cold and dry as a bone, nothing and no one has EVER lived there and until astronomers came along nobody even wanted to live there, except of course for the invisible man… John

 

 

Even the invisible man left as soon as they finished the gym facility and established Title 9 sports at the University of Hawaii.  Since they you know where the invisible guy has been hanging out.

 

Something occurred to me when this discussion started.  I have been to the top of Mt. Whitney twice.  The first trip I camped up there two nights at about 12,400 ft.  The second trip I went up and back the same day, because I knew how uncomfortable it is up there.

 

The peak of Whitney is just over 14k, so it is comparable to Mauna Kea.  My brain was not fully operational up there and I can assure you, sleeping was most uncomfortable.  The astronomers wouldn’t want to hang out at that altitude very long, definitely wouldn’t want to spend the night up there where the pressure is about 0.6 atm.

 

If we created a pressure vessel with air locks, that might work.  They would do their maintenance tasks on the instruments at ambient pressure of course, for there is no practical way to pressurize that, but I can imagine a pressurized office and sleeping chamber.

 

Failing that, we could make a closed system oxygen-enriched office/sleeping space.  It would not be pressurized but more like a warm car on a cold day, with that kind of doors, a rubber seal but at ambient pressure.  Instead of about 20% oxygen in there it would be about 33%, so that the oxygen level is about the same as down at the women’s locker room where the invisible man lives. 

 

spike

 

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