On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 08:11 AM, Brad Walsh wrote:

> You and I want a
> natural environment for our colony.

Sorry, colonies will be entirely artificial. We may be able to make
them look, and even feel, 'natural' in some ways, we may use 'natural'
processes and subsystems (including organic gardening) -- but no matter
how we build them, orbital colonies will be 100% artificial, created
entirely by homo sapiens from vacuum, radiation, and rock with a small
sprinkling of 'natural' stuff imported from Earth.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Speaking openly, I think that this talk of "Vaccines are Hazardous to Health"
are neo-Luddite crap in its purest form.

My mother was born in the 30's, and she says that polio incidence was rampant,
and one could see a sizeable fraction of the population using wheelchairs and
braces in the legs. Mortality in childhood was extremely high - it was
considered common and acceptable for a family to have, say, five children and
lose two or three of them. My own mother almost died of measles - and she
lost two of her younger siblings who were not-so-lucky.

On the other hand, I have never heard of someone of my age who got measles and
my only memories of people crippled by polio are from my deep childhood, when
vaccination was not so intense in Brazil as it became in the 80's. Also,
mortality in childhood dropped to levels so low that I have never heard of
children dying in any family that I know.

Just a few more anecdotal evidences to add to the vast amount of statistical
ones...

Lucio Coelho

On Tuesday 03 December 2002 15:24, Al Globus wrote:
(...)
> Do you have references on this? I'm not sure about other diseases, but
> I have several friends who suffered from polio when young and limp
> today. I don't know anyone who has been vaccinated who suffers from
> polio, and I believe cases are essentially unheard of. Smallpox used to
> kill huge numbers of people in massive epidemics. Vaccination
> eliminated it from the natural world.
>
> It is true that if most of the population is vaccinated, then the
> unvaccinated are partially protected since epidemics can't get started,
> and vaccines do kill a small fraction of those who take them. However,
> two unvaccinated kids at my child's day care did get whooping cough a
> few years ago. Fortunately, neither died.
>
>------------------ The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they
> weren't
> space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
> worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
> try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
> deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
> beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.
>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
(...)

On Tuesday 03 December 2002 15:15, Al Globus wrote:
(...)
> See http://people.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/papers/RNR-91-018/RNR-91-018.html
> for one that doesn't.
>

Interesting!

But shouldn't the cylinders have hemispherical endcaps?

> The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
> orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
> usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
> for details.
>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
(....)

Lucio Coelho

--- In spacesettlers, Al Globus wrote:

> On Monday, December 2, 2002, at 09:59 PM, Xenophile wrote:

>> EVERY SINGLE SPACE HABITAT DESIGN I HAVE EVER SEEN includes
>> oodles of natural sunlight streaming in.

> See http://people.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/papers/RNR-91-018/RNR-91-
> 018.html for one that doesn't.

Bookmarked. Haven't looked it over yet, but I will.

Xenophile (who is always happy to pick up another design)

This all has been interesting and I was looking back in my emails to see how
it began... and it seemed to be at the nonchalant suggestions of how to
"turn-on and off" the day in a space station...if a slow change like is
represented on Earth through dawns and dusk period or just flip upthe
shutters at once.

My suggestion was that perhaps as close a copy of what is "natural" on earth
due to unknown reprocussions from trace "ingredients" that were left out
because they were not recognized or understood, like the small changes that
have happened in our modern lifestyles (additives, food coloring) that may
seem to create non positive results (like the 803 NY schools increase in
grades) that somehow fall below our preception at first look.

Along the way, some seemingly acceptable "modern" medical procedures,
vaccinations, came into the picture and questions if knee jerk reactions
against them were scientific or "luddite" in nature, as was possibly other
inferences that "natural" may be best rather than counting on humans to
"adjust" and do just as well.

I have a personal stake in part of this vaccination question due to my four
kids, oldest 12 years. No one wants to knowingly risk the health of a child.
Yet after looking about a bit I have to admit what I thought was "a given"
started becoming weak.

I'm not a health practitioner, so please do your own research; there is
plenty out there in historical medical records.

But as given as I am to anecdotal concepts, I must admit that you all are
right in that sometimes that anecdotal evidence is seen in hind sight best,
and not recognized when apparently "staring you in the face" . I appologize
for this.

My dad told me also of his neighbors having polio and the unspoken fear of
the era. A child in every street was not uncommon as was mentioned. Since as
was mentioned, you don't hear of polio anymore, its natural to give credit
to medical technology, i.e. innoculations/ vaccines. But then I read a bit
more...

Here are some facts to consider, direct copies from papers. I include these
for your convenience: you can do your own research.

With this I beg the groups appology for swinging what may seem to have been
off topic...
However I do believe that when designing a new beginning, many factors need
to be considered; engineering / material capabilities of course, but within
that the parameters that help define the specifications required, including
ergomatic, psycological, physiological and is it plain good. My area of
study was architecture and later Planning. A straight mathematical grid type
layout seems easiest for a community, but winding pathways feels nicer.

So there you have me. :-)

....below is info on vaccinations for what is worth.

...as to the benefits of vaccines, polio has been eliminated from the
Western Hemisphere, and smallpox may have been eliminated worldwide,
although there are disturbing reports it is still to be found in parts of
the Far East. However, vaccine proponents would have us believe that
vaccines have been largely responsible for controlling virtually all of the
former epidemics of killer diseases in the U.S.

With the exceptions cited above, the facts do not bear this out. According
to the records of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, from 1911 to 1935
the four leading causes of childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the
U.S. were diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), scarlet fever, and
measles.

However, by 1945 the combined death rates from these causes had declined by
95 percent, before the implementation of mass immunization programs.(1) By
far the greatest factors in this decline were sanitation through public
health measures, improved nutrition, better housing with less crowded
conditions and the introduction of antibiotics. Also, the virulence of
microorganisms tends to become weakened or attenuated with the passage of
time and serial passages through human hosts.(2)

additional stats

Smallpox

A compulsory immunization program was set up in England in 1853 using
Jenner's methods. (McBean p.13) [8] Before that time, the highest number of
deaths in a 2 year period in England from smallpox was about 2000. Results
of this "immunization":

Year Deaths
1857-9 14,244
1863-5 20,059

In response, in 1867 Parliament enacted a stricter vaccination law, and 97%
of the people were inoculated. Result:

Year Deaths
1868 44,840

Null, Part III, p23 [22]

and more historical info...

...just after the US began vaccinating for smallpox (1902) England
stopped. By 1907 England decided: no more compulsory smallpox vaccination.
Holland, same thing in 1928. Australia - 1925 (Anderson, p 10) [7]

After WWI, there was a lot of surplus smallpox vaccine that didn't get
used. When the U.S. mandated a mass smallpox vaccination program in the
Philippines in 1917, some 25 million shots were given to those people.
163,000 Filipinos came down with the disease after the vaccination, and
75,339 Filipinos died from it, quadrupling the death rate prior to the
inoculation program.

a bit more....

Prussia, the most vaccinated country in Europe during the 1800s - also the
country that kept the best records. Here's what medical records showed:

Prussia passed a mandatory vaccination law in 1834 for smallpox. The law
provided that every infant be vaccinated, and then revaccinated when
starting school. After graduation the child had to be vaccinated again, and
then once more upon entering the Army. All healthy males had to go into the
Army.

Because of this practice, almost 100% of Prussians got smallpox vaccine.
35 years after this vaccination law, a smallpox epidemic killed "124,978 of
her vaccinated and re-vaccinated citizens after thirty-five years of
compulsory vaccination!" [14]

most confusing of all is:

POLIO

Six New England states reported increases in polio one year after the Salk
vaccine was introduced, ranging from more than doubling in Vermont to
Massachusetts' astounding increase of 642%; other states reported increases
as well.

The incidence in Wisconsin increased by a factor of five. Idaho and Utah
actually halted vaccination due to the increased incidence and death rate.
In 1959, 77.5% of Massachusetts' paralytic cases had received 3 doses of IPV
(injected polio vaccine).

During 1962 U.S. Congressional hearings, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, head of
the Dept. of Biostatistics for the University of North Carolina School of
Public Health, testified that not only did the cases of polio increase
substantially after mandatory vaccinations -- a 50% increase from 1957 to
1958, and an 80% increase from 1958 to 1959-but that the statistics were
deliberately manipulated by the Public Health Service to give the opposite
impression.

It is important to understand that the polio vaccine was not universally
accepted, at least initially. Despite this, polio declined both in European
countries that refused mass vaccination as well as in those that employed
it.

According to researcher-author Dr. Viera Scheibner, 90% of polio cases
were eliminated from statistics by health authorities' redefinition of the
disease when the vaccine was introduced, while in reality the Salk vaccine
was continuing to cause paralytic polio in several countries at a time when
there were no epidemics being caused by the wild virus.

For example, cases of viral and aseptic meningitis, which have symptoms
similar to polio, were routinely diagnosed and recorded as polio before the
vaccine, but were distinguished and removed from polio statistics after the
vaccine.

Also, the number of cases needed to declare an epidemic was raised from 20
to 35, and the requirement for inclusion in paralysis statistics was changed
from symptoms that lasted for 24 hours to symptoms lasting 60 days (many
polio victims' paralysis was temporary).

It is no wonder that polio decreased radically after vaccines-at least on
paper. In 1985, the CDC reported that 87% of the cases of polio in the US
between 1973 and 1983 were caused by the vaccine, and later declared that
all but a few imported cases since were caused by the vaccine-and most of
the imported cases occurred in fully vaccinated individuals.

Jonas Salk, inventor of the IPV, testified before a Senate subcommittee
that nearly all polio outbreaks since 1961 were caused by the oral polio
vaccine.

At a workshop on polio vaccines sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Samuel Katz of Duke
University cited the estimated 8-10 annual US cases of vaccine-associated
paralytic polio (VAPP) in people who have taken the oral polio vaccine, and
the [four year] absence of wild polio from the western hemisphere.

Compounding this contradiction are low adverse event reporting and the
NVIC's experiences with confirming and correcting misdiagnoses of vaccine
reactions, which suggest that the actual number of VAPP "sacrifices" may be
10 to 100 times higher than that cited by the CDC. For these reasons, the
live polio virus is no longer in widespread use.

To be sure, polio as it was known in the first half of the 20th century
does not exist today. However, declines following polio peaks in the late
1940's and early 1950's had been underway again for a period of years by the
time the vaccine was introduced.

From: "Lucio de Souza Coelho"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Are Dusk and Dawn Obsolete?

Speaking openly, I think that this talk of "Vaccines are Hazardous to
Health"
are neo-Luddite crap in its purest form.

My mother was born in the 30's, and she says that polio incidence was
rampant,
and one could see a sizeable fraction of the population using wheelchairs
and
braces in the legs. Mortality in childhood was extremely high - it was
considered common and acceptable for a family to have, say, five children
and
lose two or three of them. My own mother almost died of measles - and she
lost two of her younger siblings who were not-so-lucky.

On the other hand, I have never heard of someone of my age who got measles
and
my only memories of people crippled by polio are from my deep childhood,
when
vaccination was not so intense in Brazil as it became in the 80's. Also,
mortality in childhood dropped to levels so low that I have never heard of
children dying in any family that I know.

Just a few more anecdotal evidences to add to the vast amount of statistical
ones...

Lucio Coelho

On Tuesday 03 December 2002 15:24, Al Globus wrote:
(...)
> Do you have references on this? I'm not sure about other diseases, but
> I have several friends who suffered from polio when young and limp
> today. I don't know anyone who has been vaccinated who suffers from
> polio, and I believe cases are essentially unheard of. Smallpox used to
> kill huge numbers of people in massive epidemics. Vaccination
> eliminated it from the natural world.
>
> It is true that if most of the population is vaccinated, then the
> unvaccinated are partially protected since epidemics can't get started,
> and vaccines do kill a small fraction of those who take them. However,
> two unvaccinated kids at my child's day care did get whooping cough a
> few years ago. Fortunately, neither died.
>
-
>------------------ The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they
> weren't
> space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
> worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
> try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect and
> deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
> beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.
>
> Al Globus
> CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
> http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
(...)

This is clearly very offtopic. Please take this to a different forum.

Thank you.

-Ian

panamabob wrote:

On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 11:03 AM, Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:

> On Tuesday 03 December 2002 15:15, Al Globus wrote:
> (...)
>> See
>> http://people.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/papers/RNR-91-018/RNR-91-018.html
>> for one that doesn't.
>>
>
> Interesting!
>
> But shouldn't the cylinders have hemispherical endcaps?
>

That would make the colony much longer and therefor require more
shielding (and total mass). However, the flat endcaps may be
impractical from a strength-of-materials standpoint, but I don't know
how to do the calculations.

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

I don't have the post anymore, but if I remember correctly the bottom
line on light was that people exposed to a lot of sunlight or full
spectrum artificial lights don't get depressed as much, and the data on
this is very good. From a colony perspective, this means that
artificial light is fine, so long as you use a large proportion of full
spectrum lights.

That puts us back to a engineering tradeoff -- the more complex
structure necessary to allow sunlight into the colony vs larger solar
arrays, possibly larger thermal arrays and additional lighting necessary
to use full-spectrum artificial lights.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

On Wednesday 04 December 2002 14:18, Al Globus wrote:
(...)
> That would make the colony much longer and therefor require more
> shielding (and total mass). However, the flat endcaps may be
> impractical from a strength-of-materials standpoint, but I don't know
> how to do the calculations.
(...)

Neither do I. However, I know the rule-of-thumb that the only shapes that are
"pressure friendly" are the sphere, the torus and the cylinder with
hemispherical endcaps - thus most (if not all) of the colony designs use
them.

However, in practice I think that I have seen cylindrical pressure vessels
that do not have exactly hemispherical endcaps; instead, their endcaps are
just rounded like a flattened dome. (I guess that is is the combination of
the shapes of a torus in the border and a shallow spherical cap on the top,
so in a way the rule-of-the-thumb is still being obeyed.) That could work as
an acceptable approximation to the flat, Rama-like endcaps, I think.

Lucio Coelho