Work Breakdown Structufor SCSC

Hi Ted,

A pure oxygen environment at 3 psi is no more a risk
to combustion than a earthly partial pressure of
roughly 20% of 14 psi. This can be reduced further to
around 2 psi safely as this is what mountain climbers
routinely face. At the top of Everest it is more like
1 psi to give imagination for what people can survive.

Cheers, Thor

Quick question

14 PSI is sea level air pressure on earth if I
remember correctly. I
remember reading that space suits either are or could
be pressurized to
3 PSI using a nearly pure oxygen mixture. The question
is would it be
worth the risk to have 3 PSI oxygen or standard 14 PSI
air mixture.
There is a plentiful supply of oxygen tied in moon
material on the
surface. Nitrogen will need to be shipped in. Another
bonus to having a
lower PSI approach is if by some off chance your dome
was punctured your
air would seep out instead of blow out. Someone
correct me if my physics
are off. =] The only downside that I can think of
would be the rather
extreme fire risk that near pure oxygen imposes. Which
of these
approaches would you use in your geodesic dome of much
glass?

- Ted

for SCSC

On Tuesday, January 13, 2004, at 01:30 PM, Valens

> Will the pressure being outward rather than inward
(vacuum as opposed
> to
> underwater) affect the design you have in mind?
>
No difference. The forces on the blocks are dominated
by weight (in
the case of ~1m thick blocks). For the underwater
dome, the external
pressure is structurally important, but for a lunar
dome the weight of
the blocks is really all that matters. Pressure is a
second order
correction.

......Andrew