ellie probably thought “as long as I have you, it’ll be okay.” option three is we go together just like this. in spite of how unfair and fucked the situation was, she probably found some sliver of comfort knowing that she’d die next to her best friend. that if nothing else, at least there was this small mercy to make it easier. that they’d go together. only for nothing to ever happen.
she had to watch riley turn. watch her die. with the guilt of knowing she didn’t.
technology
REPORTS OF THE END OF HALLOWE’EN HAVE BEEN HIGHLY EXAGGERATED: For this year’s Hallowe’en party, I built a lil’ Paper-Maché Devil to sit on my shoulder and whisper all SORTS of Mischief into my ear, and though I’m LONG since immune to Infernal Temptation (I was quaffing Holy Water every five minutes and had a Protective Sigil in my sock), we came to a compromise and did an Elaborate Autumn Photoshoot, and I think the results speak for themselves
Nasa’s rover makes breathable oxygen on Mars
Nasa’s rover makes breathable oxygen on Mars
An instrument on Nasa’s Perseverance rover on Mars has made oxygen from the planet’s carbon dioxide atmosphere.
It’s the second successful technology demonstration on the mission, which flew a mini-helicopter on Monday.
The oxygen generation was performed by a toaster-sized unit in the rover called Moxie – the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.
It made 5 grams of the gas – equivalent to what an astronaut at Mars would need to breathe for roughly 10 minutes.
Nasa’s thinking is that future human missions would take scaled-up versions of Moxie with them to the Red Planet rather than try to carry from Earth all the oxygen needed to sustain them.
Oxygen (O₂) is also an integral part of the chemistry that propels a rocket. Thrust is achieved by burning a fuel in the presence of an oxidiser, which could be simple oxygen.
Mars’ atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide (CO₂) at a concentration of 96%. Oxygen is only 0.13%, compared with 21% in Earth’s atmosphere.
Moxie is able to strip oxygen atoms from CO₂ molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. The waste product is carbon monoxide, which is vented to the Martian atmosphere.
The Nasa team behind Moxie is running the unit in different modes to discover how well it works.
The expectation is that it can produce up to 10 grams of O₂ per hour.
“Moxie isn’t just the first instrument to produce oxygen on another world, it’s the first technology of its kind that will help future missions ‘live off the land’, using elements of another world’s environment, also known as in-situ resource utilisation,” said Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations within Nasa’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
“It’s taking regolith, the substance you find on the ground, and putting it through a processing plant, making it into a large structure, or taking carbon dioxide – the bulk of the atmosphere – and converting it into oxygen. This process allows us to convert these abundant materials into useable things: propellant, breathable air, or, combined with hydrogen, water.”
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