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color=#0000ff><BR><BR> ...Spike, your
current outside-the-box thinking remains worthy of you...</FONT><BR><BR>You are
too kind sir.<BR><BR><FONT
color=#0000ff> ...In fact, at the time
I knew several ladies that I would have gladly ushered off onto a very long
space voyage...<BR></FONT><BR>Yes and I knew several ladies who would have
gladly ushered us off onto a long one-way space voyage.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR><FONT
color=#0000ff> ...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...</FONT><BR><BR>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.<BR><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>
...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</FONT><BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>spike</FONT><BR><BR> <BR><SPAN
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<BR><BR>
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.<BR><BR> 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.<BR><BR> 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.<BR><BR>
spike<BR><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>