February 1976
From The Space Library
“Apollo-Soyuz: Handclasp in Space” article appears in National Geographic Magazine
Water hyacinths thought to be environmentally affected by the location of NASA's National Space Technology Laboratories in Miss. proved to have unexpected benefits for space-age processes and byproducts, when NASA scientists monitoring the effects of wastes discharged into nearby streams found that the water plants had a peculiar ability to absorb and concentrate toxic metals, and to metabolize various other chemical pollutants, while they continued to produce massive amounts of plant material. For a year, biochemists at NSTL had worked with the plants as a filtration system for purifying polluted waters, as a source of biogas for fuel, as a protein and mineral additive to cattle feed, and as a soil fertilizer and conditioner. The vascular plants could absorb and metabolize large quantities of nutrients and pollutants from domestic sewage waste waters. An installation of the size needed to meet pollution standards at the nearby community of Orange Grove would have cost about $500 000; stocking the sewage lagoon with enough water hyacinths to purify up to a half million gallons of sewage outflow daily cost only a few thousand dollars.
Plants taken from sewage lagoons had been dried and ground into feeding rations for beef cattle, producing a meal rich in minerals and protein, and added to corn silage fed to a herd of steers at the nearby agricultural experiment farm operated by Miss. State Univ. A 4-mo study resulted in weight gain comparable to that on a diet fortified with cottonseed or soybean meal. The high cost of fuel for drying the plants after harvesting led to construction of a prototype solar dryer at NSTL that was designed to dry 18 tons of wet material each 36 hr; the dryer might prove a solution for agricultural problems other than drying of grains and forage.
Another use of the plants was as a source of methane gas and fertilizer, using an anaerobic fermentation process with a yield of nearly 57 000 cu.m. (2 million cu. ft.) of gas from an acre of water hyacinths. A state like La., with more than a million acres of unwanted water hyacinths, might produce more than enough methane gas to fuel 2 million homes in the New Orleans region annually. Another study showed a remarkable ability of the plants to filter out "heavy" metals (cadmium, mercury, nickel, lead, silver) and other toxic organic substances common in industrial waste waters. Although plants harvested from these sites could not be used for animal feed or fertilizer, they could be used to produce methane gas; researchers found that biogas generated from plants containing trace metals yielded a higher percentage of methane than plants free from metals. Spinoff projects resulting from worldwide interest in the NASA findings included a survey by NASA investigators of water hyacinths blocking up the White Nile, requested by the Sudanese government; a plan to use hyacinth plantings as a detection system for assessing heavy-metal pollution in waters near thermonuclear installations; and use of the plants in a system to recover millions of tons of gold "tailings" left over from mining and present in streams near disused mines in the western U.S. (NASA Release 76-36)
A 7.6-m radio-controlled model of the dirigible Hindenburg, star of a recent motion picture on the last days of the world's largest airship, was given to the National Air and Space Museum for display along with a full-size control car used in interior and exterior filming of the picture. Other full-size sets had been constructed to represent the passenger compartments, internal engineering and cargo areas, and a complete bow section. The radio-controlled model could perform 28 separate functions, from dumping water ballast to operating a complex system of interior lighting. (NAA newsletter Feb 76)
The USSR had made good use of observations from its manned space stations, Soviet Academician Leonid Sedov said, citing photographs taken by Salyut 3 showing 67 locations where oil and natural gas could be found in the Caspian Sea region and 84 in Uzbekistan. The satellite did in 3 mo a job that had taken 60 yr of ground prospecting to reveal 102 deposits, he said. Published in the Feb. issue of the British magazine Spaceflight, the report by Sedov mentioned contributions to agriculture from a space survey that revealed millions of gallons of water "just below the surface" of arid lands near the Caspian Sea, showing areas that might be suitable for "oasis farming" or grazing livestock. Discussing changes in the environment made possible by space technology, Sedov said such influences should "bear a global character," to avoid a repetition of the "notorious experiment" (the so-called West Ford) in which the U.S. released a cloud of copper fibers in orbit in 1963 for communications experiments; West Ford caused worldwide complaints by radio astronomers. (Spaceflight, Feb 76, 54)
- January
- February
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
