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I occasionally get to work with the Astronomical Society and have gotten into a few conversations about manned Mars missions with people from NASA, JPL and vari
by warpspeed 15y ago
I occasionally get to work with the Astronomical Society and have gotten into a few conversations about manned Mars missions with people from NASA, JPL and various educational institutions. The numbers are from a study NASA conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The problem with shielding is the weight involved to achieve any level of protection.. wrapping the ship in enough lead to make a difference would be hard to get it off the ground. Also while this type of shielding may be effective against normal solar radiation, high energy galactic cosmic rays are far more dangerous and are almost unaffected by conventional shielding.
If you're interested, I recommend this paper. It goes a bit deeper into exactly why radiation is such a problem for any proposed Mars missions (warning, PDF):
http://spaceradiation.usra.edu/references/Ch4RadCarcinogen.pdf http://spaceradiation.usra.edu/references/Ch4RadCarcinogen.p...
- Daviator 15y agoThis is a pretty relevant and interesting read about magnetic shielding. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/308/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/308/1 I hope this technology is thoroughly investigated before moving forward with the standard absorption method of radiation protection.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoUnless I'm missing something interesting (maybe a plasma shield?), this only works for radiation with an electric charge - protons, electrons, helium nuceli. Cosmic rays and other EM radiation are not affected by a magnetic field.
- MaysonL 15y agoCosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating in outer space; i.e. they will be affected by magnetic field. About 89% of cosmic rays are simple protons or hydrogen nuclei, 10% are helium nuclei or alpha particles, and 1% are the nuclei of heavier elements. The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation. [Quoted from Wikipedia]
- marvin 15y agoI didn't read the whole paper, but your own link completely disagrees with your 52,000mrem/520sV-figure: Whole body doses of 1 to 2 mSv/day accumulate in interplanetary space, and approximately half of this value accumulates on planetary surfaces (Cucinotta et al., 2006; NCRP, 2006). That's millisieverts per day, not sieverts. Am I missing something?
- warpspeed 15y ago52,000 millirem is 520 mSv, not 520Sv. This number is taken from the Brookhaven National Lab tests. The paper may be talking there about accumulated absorbed radiation, not total exposure.
- DannoHung 15y agoWhy does the entire spacecraft have to go up at once? Also, why does the entire spacecraft have to go down?
- shasta 15y agoYa, you should swing by the space station and pick up your lead shielding on the way out, drop it back off on the way home.
- Zaak 15y agoIt doesn't. However, the more launches required to assemble your spacecraft, the more chances there are for something to go wrong.
- Ralith 15y agoThat's a silly argument. You could just as well say that the more things you launch that aren't a passenger-loaded vehicle, the more likely you'll have worked out the glitches by the time large numbers of lives depend on it.
- Zaak 15y agoA mission to Mars is guaranteed to be the most complex space mission ever attempted. Every additional rocket you need for the mission adds complexity. Complexity is the enemy of reliability. What happens to your Mars departure window when the rocket carrying your life support system goes off course and is destroyed by the range safety officer?