Using waste for propulsion ?

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Alain Fournier

Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Sure. You just keep telling yourself that while you try to come up
with someplace I ever said anything about bringing sand to Mars...


--
"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of
your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."
-- Mark Twain

On Dec/1/2016 at 9:36 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Sure. You just keep telling yourself that while you try to come up
with someplace I ever said anything about bringing sand to Mars...

You didn't say anything about bringing sand to Mars. But while we were
discussing recycling **** aboard a ship heading to Mars by processing it
in a bio-digester, you say that it wouldn't work because that would
remove the carbon rendering it infertile. I say that if you remove
carbon from **** in that way, that doesn't make it any less valuable to
grow plants. You say that I should prove it by growing plants in sand.
We are still talking about growing plants in a Mars bound spaceship. Why
do you bring up the idea of growing plants in sand? It is just silly.
And has no connection to the discussion.


Alain Fournier

Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 9:36 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Sure. You just keep telling yourself that while you try to come up
with someplace I ever said anything about bringing sand to Mars...

You didn't say anything about bringing sand to Mars.


Yet you essentially claimed that I did. "Also, how can you possibly
imagine that Martian colonists would bring sand as the base for their
soil?"


But while we were
discussing recycling **** aboard a ship heading to Mars by processing it
in a bio-digester, you say that it wouldn't work because that would
remove the carbon rendering it infertile.


I said no such thing. The whole thread is right up there. I said
"less fertile", not 'infertile'.


I say that if you remove
carbon from **** in that way, that doesn't make it any less valuable to
grow plants.


Not quite what you said, either. You said absence of carbon and
hydrogen in the soil would make NO DIFFERENCE.


You say that I should prove it by growing plants in sand


Yes, I said you should prove your claim that carbon in soil made no
difference by growing plants in soil without carbon (sand).


We are still talking about growing plants in a Mars bound spaceship.


No. At that point we were talking about whether carbon in soil
contributed to the fertility of the soil.


Why
do you bring up the idea of growing plants in sand? It is just silly.
And has no connection to the discussion.


See what I mean about those moving goalposts? You've made multiple
claims that I've said things I never said, denied doing so, and now
claim the context was different than what it was.


--
"So many women. So little charm."
-- Donna, to Josh; The West Wing

On Dec/2/2016 at 8:55 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 9:36 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Sure. You just keep telling yourself that while you try to come up
with someplace I ever said anything about bringing sand to Mars...

You didn't say anything about bringing sand to Mars.


Yet you essentially claimed that I did. "Also, how can you possibly
imagine that Martian colonists would bring sand as the base for their
soil?"

I was just pointing out that it is silly to bring into the discussion
growing plants in sand. It has nothing to do with space colonist using
bio-digested **** to grow food.

But while we were
discussing recycling **** aboard a ship heading to Mars by processing it
in a bio-digester, you say that it wouldn't work because that would
remove the carbon rendering it infertile.


I said no such thing. The whole thread is right up there. I said
"less fertile", not 'infertile'.

That is still false. Bio-digested **** isn't any less fertile than ****
that hasn't been bio-digested. The fact that some carbon has been
removed doesn't make any less fertile.

I say that if you remove
carbon from **** in that way, that doesn't make it any less valuable to
grow plants.


Not quite what you said, either. You said absence of carbon and
hydrogen in the soil would make NO DIFFERENCE.

I didn't say that.

You say that I should prove it by growing plants in sand


Yes, I said you should prove your claim that carbon in soil made no
difference by growing plants in soil without carbon (sand).

That is not my claim. It is you who fantasize about growing plants in
soil without carbon. You said "Try growing plants in soil with no carbon
in it and see how that works for you (it mostly will work very poorly,
if at all)." I asked you if you could back up your claim. And you
provided a cite that doesn't backup your claim. In any event, I don't
care whether your claim is true or not. That is a totally uninteresting
thing to do. It is probably doable. But who cares about that. Remove
most of the carbon in a bio-digester and you don't lose any fertility.
That is what we were discussing.

We are still talking about growing plants in a Mars bound spaceship.


No. At that point we were talking about whether carbon in soil
contributed to the fertility of the soil.

Oh! I see you were no longer talking about the subject we were
discussing. So essentially you moved the goalpost and then because I am
still using the original goalpost you say that is no fair, because I'm
not using the new goalpost.

No one here cares about growing plants in sand. If you want to discuss
that go to sci.phytology or wherever. Here we discuss about things space
related.

Why
do you bring up the idea of growing plants in sand? It is just silly.
And has no connection to the discussion.


See what I mean about those moving goalposts? You've made multiple
claims that I've said things I never said, denied doing so, and now
claim the context was different than what it was.

The context hasn't changed. We are still in sci.space.policy. We are
still talking about using bio-digested **** in a spaceship. We are not
talking about growing plants in sand.


Alain Fournier

Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/2/2016 at 8:55 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 9:36 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Sure. You just keep telling yourself that while you try to come up
with someplace I ever said anything about bringing sand to Mars...

You didn't say anything about bringing sand to Mars.


Yet you essentially claimed that I did. "Also, how can you possibly
imagine that Martian colonists would bring sand as the base for their
soil?"


I was just pointing out that it is silly to bring into the discussion
growing plants in sand. It has nothing to do with space colonist using
bio-digested **** to grow food.


Since no one suggested any such thing, you were merely being
disingenuous.




But while we were
discussing recycling **** aboard a ship heading to Mars by processing it
in a bio-digester, you say that it wouldn't work because that would
remove the carbon rendering it infertile.


I said no such thing. The whole thread is right up there. I said
"less fertile", not 'infertile'.


That is still false. Bio-digested **** isn't any less fertile than ****
that hasn't been bio-digested. The fact that some carbon has been
removed doesn't make any less fertile.


So, having been caught dragging the goalposts by a second lie about
what I said, you now want to drag them back? Your current statement
is wrong, since it implies that the carbon you're going to remove has
nothing to do with the health of the 'soil'.




I say that if you remove
carbon from **** in that way, that doesn't make it any less valuable to
grow plants.


Not quite what you said, either. You said absence of carbon and
hydrogen in the soil would make NO DIFFERENCE.


I didn't say that.


Of course you did. It's right up there. I quote, "Plants don't need
carbon in soil".

That's when I told you to try the experiment of growing plants in soil
without it.




You say that I should prove it by growing plants in sand


Yes, I said you should prove your claim that carbon in soil made no
difference by growing plants in soil without carbon (sand).


That is not my claim.


"Plants don't need carbon in soil". Your words.


It is you who fantasize about growing plants in
soil without carbon. You said "Try growing plants in soil with no carbon
in it and see how that works for you (it mostly will work very poorly,
if at all)." I asked you if you could back up your claim. And you
provided a cite that doesn't backup your claim. In any event, I don't
care whether your claim is true or not. That is a totally uninteresting
thing to do. It is probably doable. But who cares about that. Remove
most of the carbon in a bio-digester and you don't lose any fertility.
That is what we were discussing.


You made a claim. "Plants don't need carbon in soil". I disagreed
and told you to run an experiment, reality being the proof. You've
done nothing but shuck and jive since.




We are still talking about growing plants in a Mars bound spaceship.


No. At that point we were talking about whether carbon in soil
contributed to the fertility of the soil.

Oh! I see you were no longer talking about the subject we were
discussing. So essentially you moved the goalpost and then because I am
still using the original goalpost you say that is no fair, because I'm
not using the new goalpost.


You made a claim. "Plants don't need carbon in soil". I disputed
that claim and told you to try an experiment to see if you were right.
Now you shuck and jive and whine.


No one here cares about growing plants in sand. If you want to discuss
that go to sci.phytology or wherever. Here we discuss about things space
related.


I take it you want to walk back your claim that "Plants don't need
carbon in soil", then?




Why
do you bring up the idea of growing plants in sand? It is just silly.
And has no connection to the discussion.


See what I mean about those moving goalposts? You've made multiple
claims that I've said things I never said, denied doing so, and now
claim the context was different than what it was.


The context hasn't changed. We are still in sci.space.policy. We are
still talking about using bio-digested **** in a spaceship. We are not
talking about growing plants in sand.


You claimed "Plants don't need carbon in soil". I say you're full of
**** (and not the digested kind). You've done nothing but whine,
wriggle, and lie ever since.


--
"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of
your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."
-- Mark Twain

29.11.2016, 4:53, Fred J. McCall kirjoitti:

Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

I believe this is essentially what hydroponic farming is about.

In book Hydroponic hothouse there is a description of farming plants
(tomatos, I think) using glass fibre as soil. Chemically this is just
about equivalent to sand. Nutrients are introduced in water soluable
form in the fertilizer-water solution running through the glass fibre.

More on the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics

Several substrates are mentioned including polystyrene peanuts.

H Tavaila

In sci.space.policy message , Sun, 27 Nov
2016 08:24:39, Alain Fournier posted:

Even growing food on the spaceship probably isn't worth the trouble.
The trip is not long enough to do serious farming. I think that the
best use of human waste on a spaceship bringing colonists to Mars is to
store it. Land it on Mars. And then, once on Mars compost it and use it
to grow food. You will want to have lots of fertilizer handy for your
colony on Mars.

Incomplete consideration.

On Earth, one composts by putting stuff into an open box exposed to
nature. There is no nature yet to do that with on Mars. And there is
not a copious supply of food-like substances on Mars either.

Therefore, human waste (gas, liquid, solid) will be processed on Mars,
using machines and other equipment, when humans are there to provide it.
No such gear exists in Mars; it will need to be imported. The gear
could be imported, ready to assemble, in "crates in the hold". But it
would be more efficient to import the gear assembled, operating, and
processing the human wastes generated /en route/. That will reduce the
amount of food needed at earth departure.


From the diagrams of Musk's Mars ships, it is clear that the volume used
for storing propellants would be very much larger than the volume used
for storing humans; also, fuel, unlike humans, packs with no wasted
space. On a chemically-powered journey to Mars, the passengers will
want roughly their own weight in food, and will arrive at about the same
size as on departure. Therefore, the maximum mass of solid waste that
would be available will be insignificant in comparison with the mass of
propellant needed, and cannot provide a benefit justifying carriage of
the mass required to convert it into engine-ready propellant.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Merlyn Web Site - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

Harri Tavaila wrote:

29.11.2016, 4:53, Fred J. McCall kirjoitti:

Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

I believe this is essentially what hydroponic farming is about.


Yes, but that's not what's being discussed. If you 'predigest'
everything for the plants, you can grown them in air.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

On Dec/3/2016 at 2:00 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/2/2016 at 8:55 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 9:36 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Dec/1/2016 at 2:15 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/30/2016 at 6:31 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/29/2016 at 9:47 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

Le Nov/28/2016 à 9:53 PM, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 10:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On Nov/27/2016 at 1:17 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
JF Mezei wrote:


100pax over 3-4 months will consume large amounts of food. That is a lot
of mass that you have to lift and accelerate out of earth's orbit
towards mars most of which will become waste. Not doing anything with it
means wasting that mass which you spent much fuel accelerating.


I know it's hard for you, but think about it. Most of the mass of
food (and feces) is water. You're going to get the water back for
recycling on the back side of the process. That means each person
will generate 1-2 ounces of solid waste per day once the water has
been recovered (and you'll get 3-6 ounces of water out of the same
waste stream). Let's use the larger number as more 'favorable' to
your case; 100 people (not sure what 'pax' are when they're up and
dressed) will generate around 12.5 pounds of solid waste per day. That
waste is a mix of dead bacteria, indigestible food elements like
cellulose, minerals, and indigestible fats. You're not going to turn
it into methane without giving up a lot of the recovered water and
even then most of it isn't going to 'convert'. Recovering the water
is more valuable, since you can make things like breathing air out of
that stuff. So you're going to accumulate a little over half a ton of
such cruft during the course of the trip.

It's not one or the other. You can very well recover the methane and the
water and grow food. Plants don't need the methane from human waste to
grow. So after extracting methane, the waste isn't any less fertile than
it was before extraction.


What 'methane' is there to recover? To get methane from ****e, you
have to process the ****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less
fertile because you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen.


Plants don't need carbon in soil, removing carbohydrates is not a
problem. Plants get their carbon from CO2 in the air.


Try growing plants in soil with no carbon in it and see how that works
for you (it mostly will work very poorly, if at all).

Do you have a site to support that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition#Carbon
Doesn't seem to agree with you.


While carbon isn't used directly by plants, it seems to be very
important in enabling soil chemistry that is essential to plant
growth.

http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2012/pd..._2012_CH_2.pdf

Maybe I missed something in there. But here is what I saw.
1) Soil organic matter is important because it slows down water run off
which is important not only because plants need the water but also
because this reduces erosion and loss of soil and nutrients.
2) The large amounts of carbon in soil world wide is important because
if all that carbon was released in the atmosphere that would exacerbate
global warming.
3) The biota, mainly bacteria, in the soil decomposes soil organic
matter, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, which leaves behind
important nutrients.

Point 1) There shouldn't be any large sudden rain fall in the spaceship
carrying colonist to Mars. So this is irrelevant here.
Point 2) I think we will both agree that spacecraft greenhouse warming
is a non-issue.
Point 3) Basically says that to provide nutrients to plants, the carbon
must be removed.


The proof is in the pudding. Go grow some plants of various types in
sand with no carbon content. Fertilize at will, but nothing with
carbon as a component. Let us know how that goes.


The hard part of that would not be growing the plants. It would be
extracting all carbon from manure. Of course that means that on a
spaceship they also wouldn't be able to extract all the carbon in a
bio-digester, only most of it. Therefore your pudding isn't germane to
the current discussion. But if you do succeed in extracting all the
carbon from manure without extracting other nutrients and add it to
sand, there shouldn't be much of a problem to grow plants in there.

Also, how can you possibly imagine that Martian colonists would bring
sand as the base for their soil?


I'm sorry. I was deafened by the screeching from you dragging the
goalposts like that.


You are hearing sounds that don't exist. I haven't dragged any goalpost.


Sure. You just keep telling yourself that while you try to come up
with someplace I ever said anything about bringing sand to Mars...

You didn't say anything about bringing sand to Mars.


Yet you essentially claimed that I did. "Also, how can you possibly
imagine that Martian colonists would bring sand as the base for their
soil?"


I was just pointing out that it is silly to bring into the discussion
growing plants in sand. It has nothing to do with space colonist using
bio-digested **** to grow food.


Since no one suggested any such thing, you were merely being
disingenuous.




But while we were
discussing recycling **** aboard a ship heading to Mars by processing it
in a bio-digester, you say that it wouldn't work because that would
remove the carbon rendering it infertile.


I said no such thing. The whole thread is right up there. I said
"less fertile", not 'infertile'.


That is still false. Bio-digested **** isn't any less fertile than ****
that hasn't been bio-digested. The fact that some carbon has been
removed doesn't make any less fertile.


So, having been caught dragging the goalposts by a second lie about
what I said, you now want to drag them back? Your current statement
is wrong, since it implies that the carbon you're going to remove has
nothing to do with the health of the 'soil'.

It has nothing to do with the ability to grow plants and food, that is
what was being discussed. I'm not sure about what you mean with health
of the soil.

I say that if you remove
carbon from **** in that way, that doesn't make it any less valuable to
grow plants.


Not quite what you said, either. You said absence of carbon and
hydrogen in the soil would make NO DIFFERENCE.


I didn't say that.


Of course you did. It's right up there. I quote, "Plants don't need
carbon in soil".

Yes that is what I said, and that is true. I didn't say "absence of
carbon and hydrogen in the soil would make NO DIFFERENCE". And that is
not true. Note hydrogen is not carbon.

That's when I told you to try the experiment of growing plants in soil
without it.




You say that I should prove it by growing plants in sand


Yes, I said you should prove your claim that carbon in soil made no
difference by growing plants in soil without carbon (sand).


That is not my claim.


"Plants don't need carbon in soil". Your words.

And those words are true.

It is you who fantasize about growing plants in
soil without carbon. You said "Try growing plants in soil with no carbon
in it and see how that works for you (it mostly will work very poorly,
if at all)." I asked you if you could back up your claim. And you
provided a cite that doesn't backup your claim. In any event, I don't
care whether your claim is true or not. That is a totally uninteresting
thing to do. It is probably doable. But who cares about that. Remove
most of the carbon in a bio-digester and you don't lose any fertility.
That is what we were discussing.


You made a claim. "Plants don't need carbon in soil". I disagreed
and told you to run an experiment, reality being the proof. You've
done nothing but shuck and jive since.

You made a claim "To get methane from ****e, you have to process the
****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less fertile because
you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen". I have disagreed with you
and explained to you why. You've done nothing but shuck and jive since.

We are still talking about growing plants in a Mars bound spaceship.


No. At that point we were talking about whether carbon in soil
contributed to the fertility of the soil.

Oh! I see you were no longer talking about the subject we were
discussing. So essentially you moved the goalpost and then because I am
still using the original goalpost you say that is no fair, because I'm
not using the new goalpost.


You made a claim. "Plants don't need carbon in soil". I disputed
that claim and told you to try an experiment to see if you were right.
Now you shuck and jive and whine.

You made a claim "To get methane from ****e, you have to process the
****e, removing carbohydrates. That makes it less fertile because
you've removed all the carbon and hydrogen". I have disagreed with you
and explained to you why that is false. You've done nothing but shuck
and jive since.

No one here cares about growing plants in sand. If you want to discuss
that go to sci.phytology or wherever. Here we discuss about things space
related.


I take it you want to walk back your claim that "Plants don't need
carbon in soil", then?

No. I'm not interested about growing plants in sand. That doesn't mean
that plants need carbon in soil.

Why
do you bring up the idea of growing plants in sand? It is just silly.
And has no connection to the discussion.


See what I mean about those moving goalposts? You've made multiple
claims that I've said things I never said, denied doing so, and now
claim the context was different than what it was.


The context hasn't changed. We are still in sci.space.policy. We are
still talking about using bio-digested **** in a spaceship. We are not
talking about growing plants in sand.


You claimed "Plants don't need carbon in soil". I say you're full of
**** (and not the digested kind).

Wow, I'm full of ****. Your arguments are so convincing.


Alain Fournier