A strange twist on a subject I've blogged about before: the problem of hard radiation exposure on any manned space mission beyond the near-Earth environment. This involves reality TV shows, Mars, and Snooki...
"Plastic might work—the shields on the International Space Station are made of plastic—but it’s not 100-percent effective."
Why would they work (mostly) on the space station but not for a trip to Mars? The occupants of the space station are there for quite long durations as well. And frankly, nothing is a 100%.
My guess is that the reason the space station is habitable with the use of plastic shields is that it is in a low enough orbit to still be protected by the earths magnetic field. And even they have to take shelter from solar storms on occastion. But the article stops short and just dismisses the use of plastic shields with no explanation.
Additionally, the use of asteroids and even lunar soil as protective mass has been discussed for decades. Not to mention the orientation and mass of the spacecraft itself. Solutions may be cost prohibitive or impractical, but there are definitely possibilites and more likely there are in all probability going to be lots of people willing to take the risk for such an adventure.
The article is a bit lacking I think.
ReplyDelete"Plastic might work—the shields on the International Space Station are made of plastic—but it’s not 100-percent effective."
Why would they work (mostly) on the space station but not for a trip to Mars? The occupants of the space station are there for quite long durations as well. And frankly, nothing is a 100%.
My guess is that the reason the space station is habitable with the use of plastic shields is that it is in a low enough orbit to still be protected by the earths magnetic field. And even they have to take shelter from solar storms on occastion. But the article stops short and just dismisses the use of plastic shields with no explanation.
Additionally, the use of asteroids and even lunar soil as protective mass has been discussed for decades. Not to mention the orientation and mass of the spacecraft itself. Solutions may be cost prohibitive or impractical, but there are definitely possibilites and more likely there are in all probability going to be lots of people willing to take the risk for such an adventure.