Word: nitrogenating
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...initial choice of oxygen was not made lightly. NASA scientists were aware that a two-gas system, one that would supply an earthlike atmosphere of roughly 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen, would substantially reduce-but not eliminate entirely-the risk of catastrophic fires. It would also do away with some of the known, adverse physiological effects of exposure to pure oxygen: eye irritation, hearing loss, clogged chest, and possibly other painful symptoms not yet known to doctors...
...other hand, an oxygen-nitrogen system has serious drawbacks for space flights. The additional storage tanks, valves, tubing and instruments necessary to blend and monitor a two-gas atmosphere would add an estimated 500 lbs. to a spacecraft the size of the Apollo...
...only 5 lbs. per sq. in., a two-gas system would have to approximate the sea-level pressure on earth-14.7 lbs. per sq. in.-to ensure that enough oxygen reached the astronauts' lungs. If a small meteorite should puncture the skin of a ship containing a nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere and cause rapid decompression, the astronauts on board would develop a painful and perhaps fatal attack of the "bends"; nitrogen dissolved in their bodies would come out of solution, forming gas bubbles in tissues...
James H. Bedford, 73, a retired psychology professor dying of cancer, in Glendale, Calif., had decided years ago that he wanted his body preserved by freezing for later revival if possible. He had left $4,200 for a steel capsule and for liquid nitrogen to keep his body frozen at about 200° below zero centigrade. When Bedford died on Jan. 12, his physician, Dr. B. Renault Able, began to pack the body in ice. Members of the Cryonics Society of California arrived to help. They spent eight hours, sending out periodically for more ice, getting the body frozen solid...
...when the moon was near produced friction and violent heating of the interior and surface layers of the earth, Singer believes. This could well have led to the sudden degassing of rocks, volcanic activity and the creation of an atmosphere that probably consisted of water vapor, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Thus, the capture of the moon by the earth may well have produced an atmosphere much earlier in the earth's history than anyone had heretofore believed- and led to the evolution of life itself. Terrestrial gravity had an even more spectacular effect on the newly arrived moon...