Scientists have been saying for some time that travel outside Earths atmosphere was full of hazards from radiation. It is one of the arguments used to say that Man did not get to the moon. It has always been one of the stumbling blocks for a manned flight to Mars and yet scientists have argued that we could still make it and plans have been drawn up.
Now, however, it seems that the radiation risk is too high for anything approaching a trip to Mars. The trip will take over a year compared to the two weeks for a trip to the moon. So, talks seem to be aimed at raising the level of radiation deemed acceptable and asking astronauts, the people who willingly sit on top of a big pile of explosives, if they are willing to accept a 1 in 5 chance of getting cancer rather than spending more on making sure the shielding is adequate.
Personally, I think that the risks are high enough as it is and the object should be to safely get there and back rather than a suicide mission. Nothing would be worse than seeing these guys die from cancer within a few years of returning. Of course, its up to them but I think if you told them that they would get to Mars and not get back they would all still volunteer. That is what these guys are like.
What exactly is the problem with shielding anyway? We know what we need to do to provide the shielding we need. We know that it will require extra fuel to push the extra mass, we know what the distances are and the timings for everything so can calculate the requirements exactly as we could do with less shielding. So what can the issue be? Cost and time are the only factors that can be changed. The shielding and its associated costs must make a significant difference to the total and/or the the trip time or development time must cause significant delays so that the current bunch of politicians won’t get any benefit from it. I’m leaning towards cost in the current economic climate. Going to Mars or funding a socialist utopia. Mmmmm. Let me think. What would our current politicians choose?
Of course if the astronauts do it with the current shielding then we can get it much cheaper and what are a few lives anyway from the mass of humanity. People, mass produced by unskilled labour.
The thing I particularly like is that you don’t just rabbit on about some new tech device but put it in a social context for the future. This is real brain food and I don’t have to go out looking for it myself.
I always wondered why it was not possibly to adequately shield, whatever the cost and as you say, cost in the current climate is an issue but at the same time, moving forward should always be an issue. New Cold War?
The problem with shielding is that each pound requires hundreds of pounds of fuel to lift into orbit and push through space. So they really do minimise the weight of everything,including shielding. But if the current 4cm only covers less than 200 days or so, and remember that is up to the risk factor, so it is not immunity then for a trip of four times that requires a significant increase in size and weight. Although I would have thought human ingenuity would come up with viable alternatives such as a heavily shielded living chamber with the rest of the ship limited to minimum use only.
If we don’t solve this problem now then we really are stuck here.
Surely, like the WIG planes, where the takeoff was the whole issue, a stage able to be jettisoned could be used and weight doesn’t matter in space after that.
Well we don’t want to jettison anything at any stage. We want the shield for the whole trip so it gives maximum protection. Plus it’s not the weight that is the problem it is the inertia caused by the mass of the object. A larger shield still takes more thrust to move in space than a smaller one does to get it to the same acceleration and speed. It’s all to do with the laws of physics. Laws not made up by politicians so they are fairly consistent. We need Scotty to get around them.
The problem is known, several solutions are known yet it is being talked about as a show stopper. It is just an excuse and, tbh, I think I would probably be doing the same thing in the current economic climate and if my long term plans were to turn us into worker ants in a socialist paradise.