Star Trek Shields Now a Possibility? 220
An anonymous reader writes "British scientists have announced their intent to build a Star Trek-style magnetic shielding system to help protect astronauts from radiation. 'There are a variety of risks facing future space explorers, not least of which is the cancer-causing radiation encountered when missions venture beyond the protective magnetic envelope, or magnetosphere, which shields the Earth against these energetic particles. The Earth's magnetosphere deflects many of these particles; others are largely absorbed by the atmosphere.'"
So does that mean.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Or....did we fake the moon stuff?
"Denny CRANE"
dupe from 2004; lots of practical problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So does that mean.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Galactic cosmic rays [wikipedia.org] are the biggest, most difficult problem. For a variety of reasons, explained in the WP link, they're not a big problem for low-earth orbit space stations like the ISS. The Apollo astronauts did get exposed to a lot of radiation, but they were only out for about a week, whereas an elliptical transfer orbit to Mars takes 1.4 years round trip in interplanetary space. For anyone who's actually had to wear a radiation badge to work, the integrated dosages they've estimated for a Mars issue just sound nuts, like somebody moved a decimal place over three places by mistake. It's a huge amount of radiation, roughly on the right order of magnitude to kill a human being. The Apollo astronauts got dosages at the level where there's speculation they may be getting cataracts at a significantly higher rate than normal. Scale that up by a ratio of 1.4 years to 1 week, and you get effects that are just not on the order of magnitude that you could laugh off heroically.
Re:Alas (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So does that mean.... (Score:2, Interesting)
And that's just one of many knowns and quite a few unknowns. Your whole body will be quite fucked up by all the zero/low-G. Anything goes wrong, you might end up as everything from a tin can in space to a smear on Mars' surface to the first permanent resident on Mars. Even on the most deserted arctic outpost you don't get crammed up in so little space for a so long time. But with all that and more - if NASA called me up and said "If you pass all the tests, you'll be the first man on Mars" I'd go striaght into a three year exercise program. Really. Not for the second mission to mars though. Everybody knows Neil Armstrong. Some remember "Buzz" Aldrin. But the rest aren't remembered by anyone without at least a passing interest in space travel.
Re:Misleading Title (Score:3, Interesting)
How to deal with the radiation is one of the biggest issues that needs to be dealt with before a manned mission to Mars takes off. It truly is an unsolved problem that still needs a lot of work. Hopefully there is a good solution.
Not so misleading as you might think (with video!) (Score:3, Interesting)
Not correct: it will not work for neutral radiation (neutron and gamma) but will deflect charged particle radiation just fine.
And doesn't technically deflect anything away, but instead traps stuff. causing the particles to precipitate at specific locations (which can be more heavily shielded) at the poles.
It is a real shame that nobody thought to tell us physicists about this because we have been using magnetic fields to deflect charged particles for years. Whether or not a particle is trapped (or where it is deflected to) depend entirely on the shape of the magnetic field and the momentum and charge of the incoming particle. You can trap particles but it is by no means a requirement.
Interestingly with a high enough magnetic field you can actually affect neutral atomic matter through: see this video [youtube.com] of a floating frog. This is due to an effect called diamagnetism [wikipedia.org] (not paramagnetism which the video claims it is). It is certainly the case that the fields they are considering are no where near enough for this to be a noticeable effect but if they could increase the strenght a few orders of magnitude (and shield the astronauts) you might start being able to have something a little more Star Trek like.
Re:Maybe with this (Score:3, Interesting)
The Earth's magnetopause is at about 15 Earth radii on the sun-side. The Van Allen radiation belts are below 10 Earth radii. The moon orbits at about 60 Earth radii.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit_and_relat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_
Most terrestrial bodies in the solar system have very weak magnetic fields, much weaker than that of Earth. The moon has none to speak of, because it is solid and mostly non-ferrous.