An idle thought: Reducing life support load

dogscoff · #1 June 26th, 2006, 07:37 AM

Humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.

Phong breathe in carbon dioxide and (we might suppose) breathe out oxygen.

So if you had a ship crewed by an appropriate mix of human and Phong crew members, you wouldn't need any atmospheric processing equipment at all=-)

Dizzy · #2 June 26th, 2006, 08:11 AM

geoschmo · #3 June 26th, 2006, 08:22 AM

Carbon Dioxide: Some call it pollution, Phong call it life.

Randallw · #4 June 26th, 2006, 08:45 AM

See, now what occurrs to me is to enslave the Phong and restrain them in cages like chickens. Then the Humans could go on crewing the ship while the Phong serve as an organic life support system.

Ragnarok-X · #5 June 26th, 2006, 09:52 AM

Wow this is a cool idea. But wouldnt it require a hatch in order to exchange the different atmospheres ? The two races wouldnt be able to life in the same room, wouldnt they ?

Caduceus · #6 June 26th, 2006, 10:02 AM

Probably not live together as we require ~20% oxygen in the atmosphere to remain counscious.

Kamog · #7 June 27th, 2006, 02:39 AM

What would happen if some of the crew are killed in battle, and the balance of Humans to Phong is changed? Now there's too much oxygen or too much carbon dioxide. Then the air would gradually become unbreathable for the race with more survivors. Then if some of the members of the larger race die from the bad air, equilibrium will be restored automatically and the air mixture would go back to normal.

For example:
Many humans die in battle -> less oxygen is used up and less carbon dioxide generated -> percentage of oxygen in air rises, carbon dioxide decreases -> bad for Phong -> Phong die -> ratio of Human / Phong restored.

Fyron · #8 June 27th, 2006, 03:41 AM

Clearly you just have to space a few of the other race to restore balance.

Randallw · #9 June 27th, 2006, 03:43 AM

Yes but the percentage of oxygen is not breathed in by any indiviual, thus that once they run out of their percentage they expire tipping the balance. If there is more CO2 being generated than oxygen, the humans will go along breathing enough until the total amount of oxygen is depeleted at which time the humans will all drop dead enmasse. This all of course avoids the issue that if the atmosphere is an equal amount of CO2 to Oxygen neither species should be able to breathe properly, I think.

Kamog · #10 June 27th, 2006, 03:52 AM

If there is too much oxygen and too little carbon dioxide, you just need to start a nice fire inside the ship to restore balance.

Maybe when you go on a spacewalk, you don't need to carry any tanks of air on your back. You just go in pairs, one human and one phong, and have a tube connecting the two spacesuits.