Pressucookers

On 12/9/05, Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote:
>
> On 12/9/05, Dan Wylie-Sears wrote:
> > In some colony plans, the air pressure would be considerably less than
> > what we're used to on earth, because it's assumed that nitrogen would
> > have to be lifted from earth rather than being available in adequate
> > amounts from the available space resources.
>
> Nytrogen is not the only factor in the case for lower pressures. With
> lower pressures the tensile strength requirements for the outer hull
> would be relaxed, and so one could build larger habitats or cheaper
> habitats of normal size. Savage, for instance, advocates the use of
> pure oxygen atmospheres at only one fifth of sea-level pressure.
>
> > Would pressure cookers be ubiquitous on such colonies, given the low
> > boiling point of water? If so, that would be a nice touch to include
> > in a story or screenplay.
>
> I don't know how much ubiquitous they would be... At one fifth of
> sea-level pressure, the boiling point of water would be 60 Celsius (if
> I am not messing completely the units in my calculation), which is
> much less than the 100 Celsius of boiling water at sea-level pressure
> but still is hot enough to coagulate proteins and other stuff that
> happens during cooking. So I would say that the use of pressure
> cookers would depend on the food being prepared.
>
> By the way, and out of curiosity, since it seems that most of the list
> members are Americans, how frequently pressure cookers are used in
> your country? Here in Brazil they are kind of ubiquitous in the sense
> that every house has one or two of them, because most of our typical
> dishes include rice and beans and beans are quickly cooked in pressure
> cookers - about 20 minutes, while in a normal pan it would take, I
> don't really know, hours maybe. But I don't really remember ever
> seeing a pressure cooker in an American kitchen...
>
> Mother used one back in the fifties. She was cooking chicken to preserve
in glass jars.