Constance Adams, a NASA architect, is telling us about TransHab, an inflatable living place for space travelers.

Two surprising (to me) aspects of living in no gravity: hot air doesn’t rise so airflows have to be redesigned, and sweat floats so electrical outlets need to be sweat-proof.

The initial design of TransHab didn’t design around the needs of the astronauts. “These are great engineers. Give them the right problem and they will sovle the hell out of it.” E.g., the astronauts need to be able to meet together and see one another, which means building a big enough area. How wide is too wide? In Space Lab there was 6.5 meter space. An astronaut fell asleep without being tethered and found it to be a wide area to navigate.

“If you can’t draw it, forget it.” In all of the drawings of the TransHab, no one had the guts to show astronauts sitting upside down relative to one another. Constance said that showed a flaw in the design.

They designed a galley that works like a kitchen, a first. (“On the shuttle, the galley’s next to the toilet. That’s always good.”) The kitchen table rests on a slow helix so that people of all heights can sit on the helix.

Constance noticed that designing TransHab’s outer shell faces the same problem as confronted by people weaving baskets.

She ends with a plea for caring about exploring space and for understanding the earth as a beautiful, closed system.

Whitfield Duffie asks if TransHab will accommodate sex since it is a wet activity. Constance replies that it’s designed to filter all sorts of fluids, but that in a body in zero gravity, fluids tend to gather in the head and feet, not the right places for sex.

Constance says that the ideal person for a flight to Mars is a 55 year old woman, but she doesn’t elaborate. [I myself am quite fond of women around the age of 55. Well, one anyway.]

Great talk. So much that was new, at least to me.

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Jonathon Coulton is about to sing a song. The one he sang yesterday was very funny.

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