Cosmic Rays Could Kill Astronauts Visiting Mars

jvchamary writes "Given the recent stream of reports of 10th planets and the relative success of the NASA Discovery mission, it might again be time to get excited at the prospect of visiting the Red Planet. Unfortunately, New Scientist reports that Astronauts traveling to Mars would be exposed to so much cosmic radiation that 10% would die of cancer."

Sign me up

[Lehk228]

I'd be willing to take a 10% risk of cancer later in my life in order to see mars. Hell i'd take a 10% chance of not surviving the trip home.

Oh no!

[nathan s]

Let's never leave our little shielded planet because we might get cancer!

Seriously, I'm sure that there are thousands of people who would line up, despite that 10% chance of a disease that some of them will get anyway. I would.

Go to Mars, keep working on cancer cure. Everybody wins.:-)

Oh crap.

[BigZaphod]

Space is dangerous?!? Wha??!!! Wow.. We better not go there then! RUN AWAY! Someone might die! *gasp* *shock* Horror!!!!!!1111one!

I think any first travelers to Mars would have far more impressive ways to die than a 10% chance of radiation damage. The ship could explode, they could run out of food, they could hit any of the various bits of rock out there, they could get abducted by the aliens that live on the other side of the moon, they could slip and fall while getting out the shower cracking their skulls open, etc.

Re:Risk v. Reward

[failure-man]

Exactly. If I'm gonna give myself cancer I'd rather do it by exploring desolate, irradiated worlds than by standing outside in the cold making some rich assholes richer.

Of course, option three is to do both and feel like you're in Cowboy Bebop. ;)

Well its less than smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

So people can smoke cigarettes and have a better chance of getting cancer than going to mars.. You smoke your cigs and ill get mars cancer. At least ill be doing something awesome

On the bright side.

[pavon]

Permanent settlers, while having a significanly shorter life expectancy, would also undergo slightly excelerated evolution :)

Seriously though, what about the first europeans to the Americas. They were at least as likely to dye from malnutrition during the trip, not to mention all the hardships they faced when they got there. That is what it means to be a pioneer - to take risks and pave the way so others after you can go more safely.

Re:Whoa, that's gotta suck

[Zocalo]

Not only that, but apparently "[women] are more susceptible to breast and ovarian cancers.". So, are New Scientist implying that there is a chance that men going to Mars could actually develop breast/ovarian cancer or that they are going to change into women, *then* develop breast/ovarian cancer?

They probably meant "also", but seriously, doesn't *anyone* proof-read anymore?

Re:Just how much shielding is needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should just develop a cure for cancer before heading off to Mars. Might be easier than developing TARDIS technologies for instantaneous space travel.

Don't do anything, it'll give you cancer.

[bigtallmofo]

Basically this study is saying that with our current technology, it would be difficult to go to Mars or anywhere beyond. That itself wouldn't be so bad if the tone of the article made it sound impossible to do at all.

With 1960 technology it wouldn't have been possible to go to the moon. But with 1969 technology, it sure was. In 2005, we might lack radiation shielding that makes interplanetary distances hard to traverse without killing you 50 years from now. But in 2015, it might very well be easy to have lightweight material shield you adequately.

Re:impractical, to say the least

[man_of_mr_e]

I wouldn't say that the moon race got us "nothing". A ton of technology came from the space race. Sure, it may be been developed for other purposes, but surely not as quickly.

Can you imagine the technology that a "Mars race" could spawn? New kinds of environment control. New kinds of waste scrubbing technologies, new kinds of filtering and recycling, etc... It could be big.

Re:Is this news?

[Eugene]

the problem of going really fast in a reallly short span of time, is you'll need to use a large quantity of propellant to achieve it, and you'll also need to equal amount of propellant to slow you down once you reach the destination.. all those translate to huge amount of weight.

and weight is probably the single most costly factor that limit space exploration right now >.>

Re:What kind of propulsion?

[indianaDave]

The article was based on a return trip of 2.7 years. That's just about unreasonably long for anyone, and Bob Zubrin's Mars Direct plan got it down to 180 days each way using a Hohmann transfer, as I recall.

Re:impractical, to say the least

[Lumpy]

No prob... have the nuclear reactor a few thousand feet away from the crew capsule on a tether or girder. let it generate the massive magnetic shield. it can happily radiate away at a safe distance.

heck, why cant we use an ablative shielding in a super large "jiffy pop" bag behind the craft? a chemical reaction that creates a large metallic "sponge" with lots of crevices and surfaces to slow down or stop that radiation? if you have a crap load of surfaces (bubbles in the metallic sponge) your radiation is going to slow down significantly at each surface interface. a very light metallic sponge that is several feet thick and 60 feet in diameter will do more to limit radiation exposure than carrying the same weight in solid metal.

There are gobs of solutions to this, Heck I remember going over solutions to a mars mission when I was in odyssey of the mind back in the late 80's and we were only 13-14 year olds basing our decisions on physics information from 15 year old textbooks. I am sure that someone can come up with more elegant solutions as well as better ideas to limit exposure and risks.

Re:Sign me up

[Maxo-Texas]

If you offered that option, I bet you would still have to turn away thousands of people interested in going. Not suicidal depressed people- just people who felt that going to mars one way was their purpose in life or valuable enough to give their life for.

And heck- if I was dying of a disease that was going to kill me in 5-8 years anyway- what's to lose?

Re:impractical, to say the least

[soft_guy]

But another thing is that instead of coming up with better shielding, we could just invent a cure for cancer. That would be worthwhile. Then, if 10% of the astronauts got cancer, we could just cure them.

Older Astronauts

[CustomDesigned]

Another solution to the cancer risk is to send older astronauts. The older you get, the lower the risk that a cancer is going to significantly shorten your life. That is why the treatment for slow growing prostate cancers is often to do nothing. Someone in their 50s, in good shape, would be up to the rigors, but not going to (or at least shouldn't) feel cheated when cancer strikes 15 years later.

Even easier solution

[mrjb]

Let them breed. The 90% that survives are obviously more cancer-resistant than the others. In a few generations, cancer rates will be at acceptable levels.

Re:Oh crap.

[imsabbel]

You forgot:

We also never had a ship more than half a week of traveltime away from earth.

Food managment and psychologial stability becomes a MAJOR problem if we are talkin in years of traveltime.

Re:10% isn't bad compared with earlier voyages

[bill_kress]

We try not to send people into situations where they might die any more. Used to be a much more popular concept, but now it only applies to war (and even at that you don't see the presidents and decision makers sending their kids into danger as often)

This is probably a positive thing. Anyone who thinks we should just risk the 10%, please volunteer your children (or yourselves) now.

An even bigger problem with this type of situation is that people cannot conceive of a situation until they have lived it.

Most (all?) of the people in the US Military would probably turn around and head home if they had the choice. This is why it's a 6 year program and not just a "Job" that you quit. It's why they put you in jail for quitting. They are relying on the ignorance and innocence of youth, and when that fails, they can always start drafting people.

In the same way, even people who volunteer to go on a mars mission would probably regret the decision after 10 years in the hospital or so. Ignorance of the possibility, or the inability to understand it's actual consequences is the only way they could recruit people for such a mission.

Let's just wait until we have better shielding.

Re:10% isn't bad compared with earlier voyages

[Anonymous Coward]

We try not to send people into situations where they might die any more.

Other than the drive to work everyday, Disneyland
on summer break?

Anyone who thinks we should just risk the 10%, please volunteer your children (or yourselves) now.

Well, as you would have seen if you had bothered to read, many ./'ers have stated that they would
volunteer.

Most (all?) of the people in the US Military would probably turn around and head home if they had the choice.

There is no draft. People are still signing up.

In the same way, even people who volunteer to go on a mars mission would probably regret the decision after 10 years in the hospital or so.

About 25% of the public will have cancer without setting foot on Mars. Few will spend
anywhere near 10 years in a hospital. There's always surgery, chemotherapy, and if those fail,
death, all of which shorten the duration of the
illness.

Ignorance of the possibility, or the inability to understand it's actual consequences is the only way they could recruit people for such a mission.

So astronauts are stupid, are they?
Odds are they are all far more intelligent
than you, and in addition, they have a sense of
adventure, which you obviously do not. And BTW, you still have nearly as much chance of
dying of cancer as the Mars explorers. The difference is, you'll rot in your recliner,
while they will have actually experienced something humans have dreamed about for centuries.
Seems you're the loser, here.

Re:10% isn't bad compared with earlier voyages

[Cameroon]

Sign me up right now. I'd actually be up for a lot higher than 10% chance. If it's a one-way trip, then I don't much care what the chance of getting cancer would be and I'd still go. As plenty of other people pointed out, exploring the earth and pushing out the "known" terrestrial frontiers was a dangerous business.

There are certainly a lot of naive/innocent people who, as you say, simply don't grasp the consequences, but I don't think finding intelligent and aware people to take the risks is the problem. It's that the risks require a lot of money that few people/governments are willing to spend without immediate, obvious returns on investment.

It's gotta make more sense to spend billions to put people on Mars than to spend billions creating and prepetuating violence. Too bad we can't convince all sides of that though.

Re:Or...

[man_of_mr_e]

If only humans worked that way. The biggest leaps forward in technology have been due to catalysts of some sort. Be it war, arms races, space races... oh, and porn ;)

The problem is, of course, that it's not just the scientists that have to be on board, but the funding as well. Funding only comes when there is a serious problem that enough people want to address.

How exactly do you plan to get all the legislators, corporations, and stockholders to all agree to this massive R&D effort?

Re:MMPP

[xPsi]

The MMPP will only potentially shield against charged particles (beta's, alpha's, etc.). But most of those can be stopped with a tiny amount of shielding anyway (e.g. modest energy alphas can be stopped with a piece of paper). However, you still have the gamma rays and the neutrons to worry about...