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Dumb question: how much lead would it take to shield an unhardened cpu for space missions?

by jahnu 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
Depends what kinda of radiation and where. If you get outside the Earth’s magnetic field Gérard K O’Neill said you needed six feet of soil equivalent to stop protons from the Sun for a space colony with a long-term safe environment. It’s somewhat more complicated than that because there are very high energy cosmic rays that explode atoms when they hit and make showers of radioactive particles which are still going to affect you to some extent with the 6 foot shield, the effects might be worse if you added more shielding because the more shielding you have the more chances one of those heavy cosmic rays will blow up an atom in it.
- jahnu 4y ago
  Very interesting. Thank you!
- nullc 4y ago
  To deal with that the solution is usually stack of dissimilar materials so that the shower from one layer is stopped by a later layer.
- chasil 4y ago
  Those showers are present at and below the earth's surface as muons. This link looks kind of nice: https://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm https://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm Muon imaging exploits these muon showers. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-volcano-pyramid-physics https://www.sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-...
nerpderp82 4y ago
Depends on the radiation flux for where you are going. Either high energy protons or electrons.
dylan604 4y ago
My dumb follow up would be how much power is required to generate a magnetic field strong enough to perform like the Van Allen belt?
- kortex 4y ago
  It's probably surprisingly achievable. Going off of proposed ideas to shield Mars... About 1T, or roughly an MRI machine (or less). https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmo... I'm not sure if needs a certain distance away from the craft to fully shield.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    i had always wondered how you'd get this to work at planet scale, but this idea of shielding from L1 is interesting as you wouldn't need planet sized radius. how do you power something at that level forever would be the $64k question. i'm guessing they'd park it similar to JWST where it's orbiting the Mars L1 point. man, these scientist types are smart ;-)

Dumb question: how much lead would it take to shield an unhardened cpu for space missions?

by jahnu 4y ago

Dumb question: how much lead would it take to shield an unhardened cpu for space missions?

Depends what kinda of radiation and where. If you get outside the Earth’s magnetic field Gérard K O’Neill said you needed six feet of soil equivalent to stop protons from the Sun for a space colony with a long-term safe environment. It’s somewhat more complicated than that because there are very high energy cosmic rays that explode atoms when they hit and make showers of radioactive particles which are still going to affect you to some extent with the 6 foot shield, the effects might be worse if you added more shielding because the more shielding you have the more chances one of those heavy cosmic rays will blow up an atom in it.

jahnu 4y ago
Very interesting. Thank you!
nullc 4y ago
To deal with that the solution is usually stack of dissimilar materials so that the shower from one layer is stopped by a later layer.
chasil 4y ago
Those showers are present at and below the earth's surface as muons. This link looks kind of nice: https://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm https://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm Muon imaging exploits these muon showers. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-volcano-pyramid-physics https://www.sciencenews.org/article/muon-subatomic-particle-...

nerpderp82 4y ago

Depends on the radiation flux for where you are going. Either high energy protons or electrons.

dylan604 4y ago

My dumb follow up would be how much power is required to generate a magnetic field strong enough to perform like the Van Allen belt?

kortex 4y ago
It's probably surprisingly achievable. Going off of proposed ideas to shield Mars... About 1T, or roughly an MRI machine (or less). https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmo... I'm not sure if needs a certain distance away from the craft to fully shield.
- dylan604 4y ago
  i had always wondered how you'd get this to work at planet scale, but this idea of shielding from L1 is interesting as you wouldn't need planet sized radius. how do you power something at that level forever would be the $64k question. i'm guessing they'd park it similar to JWST where it's orbiting the Mars L1 point. man, these scientist types are smart ;-)