[SpaceProgram] Introduction & Leightweight probes

[Máté Ravasz]

Hi there,

I took the liberty to reply to all the ideas you raised. Here is what I
think:


On 14 April 2012 21:32, Andreas Sturm <masterstorm123 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe we should start a new thread with that?
>
>
> Great idea, but what exactly:
>
> There's a dome of glas in which there are some organisms. Do they get
> their oxygen/carbon dioxide out of a tank or shall it be a closed cycle (as
> much as possible)?
>
>
Making it transparent probably makes things more difficult. If we want
light, we could make it more easily and stably with red LEDs.
A closed cycle in my opinion will break down at some point anyway, however
a few bacteria can survive on a few grams of nutrients for years. We still
need to control their environment, like removing dead cells, excrement,
used gases etc, and replenish their medium from a tank with new stuff.


> How do you confirm biological activities?
>
> With bacteria you see a lawn of them when they thrive. Optical density can
> work also.
>
> Liches grow very slow, so it's difficult to see the difference. A carbon
> dioxide and oxygen sensor is expensive.
>
>
I think that monitoring their activity is one of the key questions of the
project. If we take moving things like tardigrada or bacteria with
flagellae then we can simply take a picture a day and see if their position
is altered or not. The shrimp you posted is probably a very complex
organism, and has no history in space travel. I would assume we need
something sturdier and simpler.

For stationery creatures the only possibility I see is monitoring their
environment (oxigen and such). This we need to do anyway to accurately
replenish their food and gases.


>
> What would be interesting: Grow bacteria on nothing but moon soil. Taake
> some soil, add water, atmosphere and bacteria. Will they thrive? -> If so,
> phosphorus etc. is in the moon soil.
>
>
That sounds like a great idea. Although I would handle it separately, as it
asks different questions than the living box of the first idea.


> There is a fish that makes electrical discharges to paralyse other fish
> (get food and defense).
> If bacteria can also produce electricity, you could just measure the
> voltage thus seeing how much activity there is.
>
>
That seems a bit complicted to me. However, measuring the conductivity of
either the medium or the gas phase should provide valuable information
about its composition, which we could use to our benefit.


>
> or this: Bacteria that produce methane or hydrogen (better methane because
> lower osmosis!). Use this as an additional fuel for the probe. E.g. fuel
> cell. Or methanol producing -> methanol fuel cell. Voltage is directly
> proportinal to how much bacteria are their alive.
>
>
the problem with this is I think that if we want to mass produce fuel with
bacteria then we need resources for that. Since the whole probe is around
100grams in total, not much methane can be produced from that. I guess if
we can develop a closed system that survives for longer priods of time
without any external manipulation, that would already be a great success in
itself.


All in all maybe we could start by designing a palm sized closed box which
encapsulates some organism that can stay alive for a very long time (say
100 years). Then as the second step, we could maybe even build it.
Afterwards, we could use this as a basis for a space grade life box.


>
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