Stardust landing

"snidely" wrote in message
oups.com...

Oh, the exterior of the capsule should be pretty well sterilized,
too...I think it exceeded 104 F for more than 2 mintues....


There's not much that that would kill.

To truly sterilize something here on Earth generally requires an autoclave
so you can get high pressure and high temperature.


/dps

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:25:07 -0500, John Doe wrote:

Jim Oberg wrote:

At the impact speeds of the particle collection,
it would be self-sterilizing to the nth degree.

In a PBS (USA) report, it was stated that the particles would be
"gently" captured by a special semi transparent foam (Aerogel I think
it is called). The vehicle would have been going at roughly the same
speed as the comet.

Exactly. The particles were gently decelerated.

Dale

But that probably makes for bad TV...

"Steven L." wrote in message
.net...
John Doe wrote:

Am I the only one who was reminded of "Andromeda Strain" upon seeing a
capsule that had travelled in outer space fall back on the ground in
remote area of USA ?


Out of curiosity, has NASA taken any steps to filly isolate/quarantine
the capsule ? From the video footage I saw, it didn't seem obvious at
all.

What do you suggest we do about quarantining all the meteorites that fall
to earth?

It's a lot more important in this case to stop organisms and Earth dust from
getting *in*.

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:


"snidely" wrote in message
roups.com...

Oh, the exterior of the capsule should be pretty well sterilized,
too...I think it exceeded 104 F for more than 2 mintues....


There's not much that that would kill.

To truly sterilize something here on Earth generally requires an autoclave
so you can get high pressure and high temperature.

Heck 104F won't even meet health department standards, which fall far
short of sterilization to start with.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:


"snidely" wrote in message
roups.com...

Oh, the exterior of the capsule should be pretty well sterilized,
too...I think it exceeded 104 F for more than 2 mintues....


There's not much that that would kill.

To truly sterilize something here on Earth generally requires an autoclave
so you can get high pressure and high temperature.

Heck 104F won't even meet health department standards, which fall far
short of sterilization to start with.

Sorry the humor passed everyone by. I was hinting that the exterior of
the capsule exceeded 104F *by a large margin* (though perhaps by a
smaller margin than the Space Shuttle, depending on details of the
plasma generated)...and the elevated temperature persists significantly
longer than the 1 minute span recommend for boiling-water
sterilization...by 15x, more or less.

The significance of 104 F is that is a "high fever" temperature in a
human; it doesn't sterilize the human, or the critter that triggered
the fever, but the body does appearently use fever to stress the
critter so that other immune mechanisms can be more effective. Running
this high a fever for a prolonged time stresses the human cells, too,
and fevers over this temperature are very stressful and often
considered "runaway".

Meanwhile, that capsule at a significant fraction of the melting temp
of aluminum should be sterile.

/dps

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:


"snidely" wrote in message
groups.com...

Oh, the exterior of the capsule should be pretty well sterilized,
too...I think it exceeded 104 F for more than 2 mintues....


There's not much that that would kill.

To truly sterilize something here on Earth generally requires an autoclave
so you can get high pressure and high temperature.


Heck 104F won't even meet health department standards, which fall far
short of sterilization to start with.

D.

Methinks Snidely was using a bit of understatement here...

More like 4900F (2704.4C to those of us living in the 21st Century ;-) )
That's 27 time hotter than the boiling point of water. That should
have done the trick.