Hi,

I updated my page again.
http://www.geocities.com/alt_cosmos/index.html

>I don't think rotation will help you. It is not true gravity.

It has the same effect. It pulls you down, but don't forget the Coriolis
effect. It will have a significant impact on developing physiology.

>:-) Yeah? Have you even begun to consider the energy required to spin Venus
>up to something terrestrial? Or are you contemplating sealed habs with
>day/night shows? And therefore why not just make orbital spun ones?

Although it would be nice to have a 24 hour day, it is not essential.
A longer or shorter day will change animal behaviour, plant biochemistry
and breeding cycles. Life adapts. Arctic and Antarctic animals are adapted
to 6 month days/nights. Dolphins and a lot of other animals don't sleep at
all. Most plants are already adapted to summer/winter. Experiments have
already shown that animals can adapt to changing light cycles within only a
few cycles, easily within a single generation.

>> Venus only needs to be cooled down...
>Interesting use of the word "only". I can't wait to see a timescale for this.

lol sorry, I try not to use emotive words but that one slipped in :]

>then some of the atmosphere to be compressed and stored in a gas cylinder
>type structure.

Most of the Carbon dioxide, 45 percent of the Nitrogen.

>Fill the thing up with water and create a biozone with an underwater
>ecology.

There is a proper name for one of these. I can't remember what it is called
though. A big ball of water in space held together by it's own hydrostatic
force with an ecosystem in side. Anyone know what it's proper name is?

>Whales are mammels, if you fill the whole cylinder with water they won't be
>able to breathe.

Are whales seriously being considered as internal space settlement Fauna?

Michael

Real gravity pulls down real rocks that cause real damage.

What I find curious is the fixation that some have with the moon.
Here you have gravity and no atmosphere to burn up the little ones.

In space you don't really need to spin yourself unless you plan to
return to earth or think it might help with child development (natural
habitat concerns [or real advantages?]).

Planets, as far as human settlement goes, should be avoided.

Visit and explore - yes, of course (especially with remote equipment).
But keep your family alive and safe in space. It's easier to control
the thermal conditions and air quality of family-sized
interconnectable mobile habitats than an entire planet.

But safety won't sell go-carts.

We've got to focus on the benefits.. the resources.. the products and
services that space will allow us to market.. and all the stuff that
allows humans not only to survive - but thrive.

And by doodily oodily, there's a bunch o' stuff up there!

http://www.cygo.com/prods.shtml

> Are whales seriously being considered as internal space settlement
Fauna?
>
> Michael

No, this was my fault. I had asked the group because I am working on
a
fictional setting in a role playing game, where humanity colonize
space with settlements. One I wanted to have for whales since, in
that
setting, the earth's oceans were having a bad time of it. A different
take on saving the whales concept.

I DO thank everyone who contributed, you've given me some more
thoughts to contemplate.

Jeff ^_^

On Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 04:23 PM, Jeff wrote:

>> Are whales seriously being considered as internal space settlement
> Fauna?
>>
>> Michael
>
> No, this was my fault. I had asked the group because I am working on
> a
>

In spite of an idiotic post I sent where I forgot that whales need to
breath air, I rather like the whale friendly space colony discussion.
I think it might happen someday (a long time from now). When there are
thousands of orbital colonies, and they get cheap to make, a group of
whale lovers could conceivably build a colony specifically designed for
whales -- although food supply is an enormous problem for reasonable
sized colonies.

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

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

From: Al Globus [mailto:aglobus@...]

> In spite of an idiotic post I sent where I forgot that whales need to
> breath air, I rather like the whale friendly space colony discussion.
> I think it might happen someday (a long time from now). When there are
> thousands of orbital colonies, and they get cheap to make, a group of
> whale lovers could conceivably build a colony specifically designed for
> whales -- although food supply is an enormous problem for reasonable
> sized colonies.

All one would have to do is ensure the right amounts of CO2 were available,
add self-reproducing plankton to the artificial ocean, let in sunlight, and
problem solved.

One might need to discuss sending up frozen whale embryos, and arranging
some kind of in-vitro gestation and birth, as sending an adult whale up into
space (Mr. Scott's miracles notwithstanding) might be problematic.

Regards,

Mike Combs

On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 09:17 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

>> When there are
>> thousands of orbital colonies, and they get cheap to make, a group of
>> whale lovers could conceivably build a colony specifically designed
>> for
>> whales -- although food supply is an enormous problem for reasonable
>> sized colonies.
>
> All one would have to do is ensure the right amounts of CO2 were
> available,
> add self-reproducing plankton to the artificial ocean, let in
> sunlight, and
> problem solved.

The problem is the amount of plankton. Whales live in a very big
ocean, and I strongly suspect that a couple of cubic miles of salt
water can't possibly produce enough plankton to support one whale, much
less a pod. Anybody have data on this?

>
> One might need to discuss sending up frozen whale embryos, and
> arranging
> some kind of in-vitro gestation and birth, as sending an adult whale
> up into
> space (Mr. Scott's miracles notwithstanding) might be problematic.
>

Whales are pretty smart, possibly even smarter than we are. I strongly
suspect that mother whales teach their kids a lot, although perhaps not
the right stuff for space colony living. Anybody know anything about
whale learning in the wild?

>

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

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

Al wrote:

>The problem is the amount of plankton. Whales live in a very big
>ocean, and I strongly suspect that a couple of cubic miles of salt
>water can't possibly produce enough plankton to support one whale, much
>less a pod. Anybody have data on this?

Lovely question.

Plankton concentrations = 1 - 2.5 joules per litre.
(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/kils/biomas36.htm)

I need about 10 million joules of food a day. A 100 tonne right whale is
going to need something like 12.5 billion. Taking the high level for
plankton energy (Planks Constant!? ;-), and factoring in a magnitude
of inefficiency for a canivorous diet, the whale needs to filter-feed
something like fifty billion litres of water per day. That's a cube of
water about a third of a kilometre on an edge, per whale.

Given that Krill and much plankton require oxygen levels above those found
at 250m depth, and that plankton (all sorts of different species, remember)
reproduce over a fairly short timespan (~20 days) you might be able to
self-support a small pod of half a dozen individual great whales in an area
of 25km2, a quarter kilometre deep.

This feels more or less ok: the Southern Ocean (20 327 000 sq km - CIA
factbook) might well be able to support a population of 5 million great
whales. The calculated 95% cull in whale biomass during the 20th century,
coupled with figures for Minke whales in that region of around 300 000 make
me think this is the right order of magnitude.

That said, it would be a remarkably generous society willing to invest in
developing an environment containing a gigatonne of water per whale, in a
volume able to support half a million humans.

Andy G