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Mars

NASA's HI-SEAS Project Results Suggests a Women-Only Mars Crew 399

Posted by timothy from the couple-of-jockeys-too dept.
globaljustin writes "Alan Drysdale, a systems analyst in advanced life support and a contractor with NASA concluded, "Small women haven't been demonstrated to be appreciably dumber than big women or big men, so there's no reason to choose larger people for a flight crew when it's brain power you want," says Drysdale. "The logical thing to do is to fly small women." Kate Greene, who wrote the linked article, took part in the first HI-SEAS experiment in Martian-style living, and has some compelling reasons for an all-women crew, energy efficiency chief among them: Week in and week out, the three female crew members expended less than half the calories of the three male crew members. Less than half! We were all exercising roughly the same amount—at least 45 minutes a day for five consecutive days a week—but our metabolic furnaces were calibrated in radically different ways. During one week, the most metabolically active male burned an average of 3,450 calories per day, while the least metabolically active female expended 1,475 calories per day. It was rare for a woman on crew to burn 2,000 calories in a day and common for male crew members to exceed 3,000. ... The calorie requirements of an astronaut matter significantly when planning a mission. The more food a person needs to maintain her weight on a long space journey, the more food should launch with her. The more food launched, the heavier the payload. The heavier the payload, the more fuel required to blast it into orbit and beyond. The more fuel required, the heavier the rocket becomes, which it in turn requires more fuel to launch.
United States

White House Wants Ideas For "Bootstrapping a Solar System Civilization" 352

Posted by samzenpus from the to-the-stars dept.
MarkWhittington writes Tom Kalil, the Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Senior Advisor for Science, Technology and Innovation for the National Economic Council, has an intriguing Tuesday post on the OSTP blog. Kalil is soliciting ideas for "bootstrapping a solar system civilization." Anyone interested in offering ideas along those lines to the Obama administration can contact a special email address that has been set up for that purpose. The ideas that Kalil muses about in his post are not new for people who have studied the question of how to settle space at length. The ideas consist of sending autonomous robots to various locations in space to create infrastructure using local resources with advanced manufacturing technology, such as 3D printing. The new aspect is that someone in the White House is publicly discussing these concepts.

Comment why do cowboys hate freedom? (Score 2) 294

by Thud457 (#48162867) Attached to: Michigan About To Ban Tesla Sales
Are you colour blind?!! From the very map you cite, it looks like an even break between red & blue states.

With the exception of a few states, this looks more like a Western (non-coastal) state thing.
Western : Montana, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas.
Plus a scattered handful : Arkansas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, Alabama, Virginia, South Carolina, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey & Delaware.

Comment journalism is dead, capitalism killed it (Score 2) 463

by Thud457 (#48149259) Attached to: Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker
It used to be back during the days when terrestrial broadcast television was king, that the FCC mandated that stations produce a certain % of public service programming. That's the reason we ever had television news reporting in the first place. Or educational kids shows that weren't just half-hour commercials for the latest toys and sugary breakfast cereals.

Then we went to cable, which doesn't have the same regulation, removing the public service programming mandate. From that point everything was driven purely by the capitalistic profit motive.

So instead of filling the multiple 24 hour news channels with thoughtful, in-depth reporting, we've got CNN screaming OMGWTF every five minutes trying to grab attention.

See, the Invisible Hand makes everything better. Do not blaspheme the hand.

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