From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: Re: Human-powered propulsion?
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 19:57:23 GMT

In article <6g3h00$jum$2@platform.uoregon.edu>,
Christopher Michael Jones <cjones@ix.cs.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>: >Finding a suitable fluid for "breathing" is a much more difficult problem.
>: It exists, it is real.
>
>Yep, liquid perfluorocarbons can dissolve a large enough quantity of O2
>to be sufficient for breathing...

Even water will do that, if pressurized somewhat -- the earliest studies
used water.  What's harder is finding something that will also dissolve
enough CO2; the early experimental animals died of CO2 poisoning.  Both
have to be soluble enough to be carried in and out adequately without
excessive breathing effort (breathing a liquid is much harder work than
breathing a gas, and exhaustion was a contributing factor in the animals'
deaths).
--
Being the last man on the Moon                  |     Henry Spencer
is a very dubious honor. -- Gene Cernan         | henry@zoo.toronto.edu