Scotch as in the tape, not the whisky

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 26th, 2023

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  • Ammonium nitrate isn’t dangerous.

    It’s not gunpowder, it’s not rocket propellant, it’s not liquified natural gas

    you need extreme heat and fuel to make it detonate, in the Beirut case that was given by nearby stored fireworks, but otherwise it’s pretty safe to use, you can blast it with a blowtorch and it doesn’t even burn

    The misconception of it being explosive comes from the fact that people buy it as fertilizer and then use it to make bombs by mixing it with fuel and other primary and secondary explosives (or just to have some fun with homemade gunpowder), and even then, usually you use potassium nitrate, a derivative of ammonium nitrate, because the ammonium nitrate is just so goddamn hard to detonate

    Now, should they accept the ship? I don’t know, as far as I know Russia’s regulations might as well allow storage of ammonium nitrate inside the ship’s fuel tanks, but some simple checks would mitigate 99.99999% of risks.

    That said, it’s still Russia and we shouldn’t be giving it money anyways, but I’m not gonna get into politics here










  • As a chemist,

    Air: A Sabatier reactor uses CO2 and Hydrogen to make methane and water, then the methane can be heated in an oxygen-less atmosphere (pyrolysis) to get hydrogen and elemental carbon, and you can electrolyze the water to get oxygen and hydrogen. the hydrogen from the methane pyrolysis and water electrolysis is enough to use again in the Sabatier reactor, while the oxygen can then be used again to breathe.

    For the food: A bit harder, for a closed loop like for the air you would need to chemically recycle pee and poo which IS possible, just insanely complicated (and gross, and dangerous).

    A better method for food, if you had access to water, would be to turn water into steam, then use the elemental carbon from the Sabatier reactor and the steam to make syngas.

    Once you have syngas, make Methanol with it, and then convert the methanol to Formaldehyde with a catalyst.

    Once formaldehyde is obtained, use the Formose Reaction to make various sugars.

    Then, use the sugars to eat or to feed animals/plants.

    Idk about other stuff tho, all the proteins, vitamins etc

    it could probably be possible to make them with genetically modified yeast/bacteria that feed on the sugar, but AFAIK this doesn’t exist yet (the above part of air+water to sugar is possible with current technology, tho)







  • How people are so confident in sharing their DNA, something you cannot change, that you will carry on for your entire life, and that can uniquely identify you with just a small sample, to a private, profit-driven company still amazes me

    And the worst part is, even if you’re careful about it, all that’s needed is a relative doing it and now the company can basically tell most of your family tree

    And all for what, knowing the parents of the parents of your parents come from some neighboring country? No shit, Sherlock, people move around