Venus Balloon Station: Ideas and development

[Artlav]

Oxygen garden??? Plants need CO2, not Oxygen. Oxygen is byproduct of photosynthesis. If you put oxygen instead of CO2 for plants, your garden won't last long.

Hm. Oxygen garden = a garden that produces the oxygen for the crew, not garden filled with oxygen. The co2 should be abundant in the air around.
Or did you mean something else?

 

[Linguofreak]

Oxygen garden??? Plants need CO2, not Oxygen. Oxygen is byproduct of photosynthesis. If you put oxygen instead of CO2 for plants, your garden won't last long.

Actually, plants breath oxygen just like we do. They use photosynthesis as a means of manufacturing sugar and O2 from CO2 and H20.

 

[Coolhand]

"Oxygen Garden" makes sense to me, i like the sound of that term. I wonder what is the best type of plant to put in it? Grasses, vats of Algae, something else? you could also grow food in there of course.

 

[Linguofreak]

"Oxygen Garden" makes sense to me, i like the sound of that term. I wonder what is the best type of plant to put in it? Grasses, vats of Algae, something else? you could also grow food in there of course.

I believe algae gives the best production/reabsorbtion ratio for oxygen. Higher plants end up using most of the oxygen they produce. I'm not sure how algae compares as far as oxygen/mass, oxygen/volume, or oxygen/man-or-machine-hour-spent-on-keeping-it-alive ratios.

 

[Coolhand]

Some plants use oxygen? thats a new one on me. I'm not saying that some don't at all in some way but what do they do with it?

I think you would want to avoid using trees or complex things, you're right... but mainly because the branches, trunks, stems, etc aren't helping to produce O2, they're just taking up volume and adding mass for no benefit for the people on board.

 

[ar81]

The best plants to absorb CO2 are trees.
They maximize CO2 absortion.


-----Post Added 4/8/2008 at 05 : 20 : 32-----

Hm. Oxygen garden = a garden that produces the oxygen for the crew. Or did you mean something else?

That's what I meant.

 

[Linguofreak]

Some plants use oxygen? thats a new one on me. I'm not saying that some don't at all in some way but what do they do with it?

I think you would want to avoid using trees or complex things, you're right... but mainly because the branches, trunks, stems, etc aren't helping to produce O2, they're just taking up volume and adding mass for no benefit for the people on board.

All plants use oxygen. Most or all produce more than they use, I believe, but some give a bigger surplus than others.

They do the same thing with it that animals do: Use it to burn sugars, fats, and proteins for energy.

Photosynthesis is a means of capturing and storing energy from the sun (by using it to form sugar and oxygen). Once photosynthesis is done with, the plants use what oxygen and sugar they need just as an animal would.

 

[Coolhand]

makes sense... i'd never thought of it like that. When space is a premium you must be better off with algae than more bulky plants, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS-3 then extra space can be used fo food.

 

[stjimmy225]

plants use oxygen in respiration (sugars to carbon dioxide and water) however under the correct conditions they produce more oxygen via photosynthesis than they use, algae are the best at removing carbon dioxide gram for gram as i assume is the important bit for spaceflight especially of the floaty kind, growing trees will add weight to the spacecraft as time goes on,and require a lot of external nutrients as unlike algae the trace elements are locked up in senescent cells of the wood. if you wanted to remove carbon from the environment then grow a tree and throw it out but for long term oxygen production i'd grow a vat of algae.

 

[Linguofreak]

One potential problem: How are users going to navigate to the station on re-entry? It's not a surface base, so it won't show up on Aerobrake MFD, and even if you put a surface base below it, it's 50 kilometers up, so given a glide ratio of 4:1 (which is about what the XR-1 gets), you'd end up about 200 km off when you passed through the 50 km mark if you aimed for the surface base.

 

[Andy44]

We've got some smart people here, somebody will figure it out.

 

[dougkeenan]

Come to full stop overhead in orbit (relative to station) and hover down?

No wait a minute, then there's the winds.

 

[Andy44]

Orbiter has no wind, wind only exists if applied by an add-on, like the Weather MFD.

But even if there is wind, you can deorbit to get close and use a powered approach, which you will need anyway. There should be no relative wind on the station, since it's riding the air currents.