New Spacecraft Set For Dangerous Jupiter Trip 159
solaGratia passes along word of the equipping of Juno, the most heavily armored craft ever to be launched to another planet. The launch is scheduled for a year from now. "In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. ... 'For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays,' said... Juno's radiation control manager... [The] titanium box — about the size of an SUV's trunk — encloses Juno's command and data handling box..., power and data distribution unit..., and about 20 other electronic assemblies. The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds)."
why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:why? (Score:5, Funny)
To look for the monolith of course.
Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)
to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft) [wikipedia.org]
those are good questions (Score:4, Funny)
but from the story summary, i think the most pressing question would be why the heck does jupiter have millions of dental X-rays?
Re:those are good questions (Score:5, Funny)
Fat planet eats too many sweets.
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...hey George, there seems to be a dip in the water supply drug injection to sector 314...
it's a type'o (Score:2)
If you read the write-up you'll see that later on they say that they are an invisible force field.
As we all know from sci-fi movies, force fields protect things.
So, they must have meant to say, millions of denial X-rays, not dental X-rays.
It's a type'o, simple as that. Either that or someone forgot to rub out the little horizontal bit on the t to turn it into an i, when they were having a little joke with themselves to lighten up the day, working for the man an all.
no, no, no (Score:3, Funny)
as we know from 2001/ 2010 a space odyssey, enough black monoliths and jupiter will finally ignite and become a second sun. but the question is: what are those black monoliths? and, we finally have our answer: dental x-ray machines, alien dental x-ray machines. that is what inspired pre-homo sapiens species to begin the journey to modern man: the divine inspiration of advanced dental technology
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Wow, that guy who done the write up must have got a beta version of the SETI at home project that lets you write your own algorithms. Written his own one, and managed to communicate with the aliens that put the invisible, black monoliths around Jupiter. They then must have told him that they were using the force of Dental X-Rays to perform a denial of service attack on Jupiter and ignite it into a second sun as it overloads with the drilling of requests.
2010 you say, dam shame that NASA's budget got cut, du
My day as a moderator (Score:2)
lol. +1, funny.
next post. ... we finally have our answer: dental x-ray machines, alien dental x-ray machines. that is what inspired pre-homo sapiens species to begin the journey to modern man: the divine inspiration of advanced dental technology
LOL. +1, funny.
next.
SETI at home
Re:why? (Score:5, Interesting)
what's the purpose of its mission?
Wikipedia say:
The spacecraft will be placed in a polar orbit to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 km/h.
As to the big "why" as in "why this instead of spending money on something else"...Jupiter is the big laboratory in our solar system. Studying it lets us lets us collect data which will help us study places where terrestrial data alone leaves things a bit fuzzy. It helps us verify the models we're already relying upon. We can make some guesses based solely on what we can observe from Earth - some extremely good guesses. But Jupiter is the big checksum in the sky. Is our understanding of the behavior of the Earth's magnetic field correct? Do our existing models hold up well for a stronger field? Do all these weird patterns we see on the surface of Jupiter and the predictions and assumptions we've made about the forces driving them hold up if we take a lot of new data from a closer vantage point? Are our assumptions about the formation of the solar system valid - and thus most of the assumptions we start with when examining more distant objects?
If you're the kind of person who can't see the value in something which doesn't directly translate into new gadgets - where do you think the technology in the cell phone (or replacement device) you'll own 20 years from now is going to come from? New technological developments are predicated upon basic scientific research. Sure, you can come up with rocks and fire and a few other nice toys without understanding why they work. Maybe god did it, or a wizard, who knows. But modern technology doesn't really work that way, it's far too complicated. Your computer is based upon a number of scientists and engineers understanding what's going on in terms of quantum mechanics, solid state physics, chemistry...not to mention loads of math. You wouldn't be online to question this without people doing basic scientific research.
Besides, the best and most human reason to go is because it's there. How could we not?
USD $700 million, that's practically free. (Score:2, Interesting)
Juno is NASA's newest planned mission to Jupiter. As part of the New Frontiers missions, it will focus on cost-effective research of the planetary giant. The project's costs will not exceed USD $700 million, however, budgetary restrictions have caused the original launch date of June 2009 to be pushed back to August 2011.
Apparently, that's about the same as the US has spent on the war in Iraq (ignoring all the other countries [including Iraq] and the none-financial costs)
http://costofwar.com/ [costofwar.com]
or to put it an
opps, out by a factor on 100. (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, the cost of war in Iraq (financially to the US alone) is 100 times that of this mission to Jupiter.
Re:opps, out by a factor on 100. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it's 1000 times...
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A common mistake.
I suggest you take some drugs.
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Ah, food, coffee, cigarettes and Benzedrine. ;).
Breakfast of Champions.
I personally prefer to use all the other drugs.
Try no food, tea, joints and Acid for a couple of days.
It should at least stop your thoughts on getting arrested etc.
That would just be a drag, and too much bother to boot.
And who hid the front door anyway
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Try no food, tea, joints and Acid for a couple of days.
I'm bot sure what your suggesting?
Can you put the missing or in, it sounds like it may be an interesting proscription.
Do I put milk in the tea, opiates in the joint and then mix the left over opiates with some citric and bang it up?
That would probably chill me out a bit, but opiates keep me awake and make me crash big stylie.
'That would just be a drag, and too much bother to boot.', relatively, even with your proscription it would be a pleasant comfort
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Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism thata fundamentalist won't object to.
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should add, I think everyone know it was nothing to do with Iraq, personally I thought that was blatant enough. on both my post and the one I replied to.
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Actually, it may not have been the parody that was the problem. It may have been that I done it in the third person. Where I come from we call that sarcasm, legend has it that it's not understood over the pond.
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Oh I think that's entirely accurate.
Re:USD $700 million, that's practically free. (Score:4, Interesting)
Thinking about it, why the hell don't they turn the mission into a Movie (as cost effectively as possible) and then release it to generate a load more review.
I mean, I sat through penguins standing pretty much in one place for over an hour, and that was one of the best things I've seen.
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You're only off by THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!
You must be one of those Hollywood Accountants yourself.
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no I'm mixing up 100 millions and billiards ( a thousand million).
a billion is a million million. 'Bi' or 10^(2*6) a 'tri'llion is 10^(3*6).
Go look it up.
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Looking at your thirty-five posts in this thread, I have determined beyond any reasonable doubt that you are a moron.
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Actually I'm being facetious.
'you are mixing up millions vs billions
the cost of project'
That statement is impertinent. Asserting that they knew what I was doing, when in-fact I didn't do that.
Looking at your precious posts, your only criterion for idiocy is poor spelling.
Fuck me, can't your tiny brain even fix that one up, no wonder I'm a little to dry for you.
USD and NASA (Score:2)
I had no idea the UK started printing USD, or that NASA has moved to Europe.
I guess should go look it up, or you should learn about context.
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context.
What this context
http://costofwar.com/ [costofwar.com]
I see no mention of the words billion or million. Only numbers.
The context was my head.
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Doh,
Classic mistake.
The figure wasn't written in text it was written in numerical figures. The word 'billion' never came into it.
I was mixing up a thousand million and a million (initially)
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Like there's actually news in the news papers.
How do you know that I didn't in-fact mix up billiard and million?
Why do you assume I think the same way as you do?
Also, billiard is used in many many countries.
SUV's trunk... (Score:5, Insightful)
An SUV doesn't have a trunk.
Re:SUV's trunk... (Score:5, Funny)
It does when an elephant is driving.
Re:SUV's trunk... (Score:5, Funny)
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The joke continues:
Noah called a meeting for all the animals. Which one didn't come?
- The elephant - he was in the fridge.
How do you cross a crocodile infested river?
- Wait until they are at the Noah's meeting.
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You know, I was thinking the same thing. The area commonly called "trunk" is usually under the rear deck of a passenger car, separated from the passenger compartment.
Then I thought about my car (2000 TransAm). It has what's called a trunk area, but it's under the rear hatch, and doesn't necessarily have a separation to it. There is a removable interior cover, but I'd hardly call it a separator.
I went looking for a more accurate definition of the "trunk". It's the main car
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They didn't define the "trunk" to be enclosed, so the bed would count too. I agree, I've never heard anyone say "trunk" in relation to the back of a truck. It's always "cargo area", "back of the truck", or "bed of the truck". The rear doors are usually "cargo doors" or "rear doors". In helping my friend with his suburban, we needed to replace the "cargo door seal", as GM described it. My car has a rear hatch seal. The trunk on a sedan would be a trunk seal. :)
The rumble
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Trucks really don't have trunks, even if you have a tonneau cover. They have a "bed", which is true whether it's a pickup with a closed bed (with sides on it) or an open flatbed, with or without slat sides. I've been to school for auto body and paint and this is really what it's called. (I can probably still accurately name any part of the body, how useful if I ever want to actually do auto body for a living.) Or of course they can just have a hitch, as in the case of semi-tractors. I've seen at least one p
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I agree with you, and I'd suspect a lot of other people would agree with you, but what I found as definitions of a vehicle's trunk say otherwise. Unfortunately, someone at NASA referred to the trunk of a SUV in the article. {sigh}
Auto body is one of the things I've tried to avoid doing. Maybe I should learn it someday. I've been doing auto repairs for about 25 years. If it is driven on the road, I've probably worked on at least one of it's type at some point. That's kind of
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I guess it all depends on where in farm country you grew up. "Truck" was anything with 4 or more wheels that wasn't a passenger car. Being that SUV's were built on light duty truck frames, they were also called "trucks". Oddly enough, manufacturers also call light duty trucks "trucks" ... and the town I grew up in didn't have any IP data service when I left, other than dialup in the next county. The idea of a coffee shop, other than one attached to a doughnut shop was completely foreign.
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The manufacturer calls them trucks. In fact, they call them a pickup truck, or a light duty truck. I have a 1992 F250 diesel which is a light truck with a "light heavy duty" engine made by International. Whatever that means. They put the same engine in school buses and crap like that.
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Well.. International, Cat, and Detroit Diesel all make engines for various applications. I know some school buses have light truck engines, but some have the larger truck engines too. In looking at RV's and buses, I found some were gas or diesel light truck engines (like Chevy 350, Ford 351, or Chevy 454). Others had engines like the DD 6v72 and 6v92. I don't know the International motors very well, since they weren't in what I was looking at. I was told by someone that the motors that
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Yes, city buses tend to have big fat cast parts in them that have immense mass. I know a guy who's got a cruise bus with a twincharged DD of some type. His engine is larger than what's in my pickup, but not immensely larger. But then the OBS fords are stupidly heavy, maybe a thousand pounds heavier than the competition. And the International engine in my pickup is dramatically heavier than, say, the Cummins. You allegedly WILL find this engine in semi-tractors, and it was certainly commonly installed into t
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There are significant differences between big truck motors and car motors. Like I said, there is some crossover, but that's usually where performance isn't actually required. I drove a 26' U-Haul across the country, and it had a gas Chevy 454 in it, tied to some fairly stock automatic transmission. I didn't have a look at it, but the guy at the shop said they used dump truck transmissions, which would be similar to a standard automotive transmission except much lower gearing. Empty it dro
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Ya, you're right. I ran everything through a calculator so my mid-night math wouldn't go wrong. At least I wasn't planning a space mission with my bad math. :)
dangerous? (Score:2)
Yeah, al those other moon- mars- and other space-missions where a walk in the park ...
Re:dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
Compared to Jupiter, they were a cakewalk.
Do you have any idea the forces that are involved? Jupiter's tidal forces are so strong they may warp its moons enough to generate significant amounts of heat inside its moons - moons that are the size of planets (Ganymede is bigger than Mercury, and nearly as big as Mars).
We're not talking about just orbiting Jupiter either - we've done that before. We're talking going down into low-Jupiter orbit to study it up close and personal like. It's almost 320 times as massive as the Earth, so it's going to be hit with those insane tidal forces. It's also generating incredible amounts of radiation which will easily fry all the electronics on-board.
I mean, for heaven's sake, they've built it out of 500 pounds of titanium to withstand the radiation and crushing gravity. That's not exactly a heavy metal. They'll be ending the mission by diving it into the surface, and they are not even expect it to survive to the surface with all that protection.
Really, we've done nothing like it before.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The free market can sort this out. Given the crazy costs of healthcare in the U.S. these days it won't be long before the uninsured resort to taking a trip to Jupiter to get their teeth X-rayed. If NASA is really nice, they can probably get them to take the space probes with them, especially if they share gas money.
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You are correct that there are no significant tidal forces in a 10 meter spacecraft, but there are certainly solar tides on the Earth - they are about 1/2 the amplitude of the Lunar tides, and the interaction between the two gives rise to the Spring and Neap tides.
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Ahhh, is piece of pie!
SUV trunks? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll forgive people for not being familiar for units of radiation exposure because it's not something that 99% of the population will ever deal with, but how the hell does a dental x-ray put it in perspective? It's not like you can feel an X-ray. (If you can feel radiation then it's way more than enough to kill you, below insta-death levels you're not going to feel a damn thing).
At least with the size of the thing they gave dimensions in addition to their bullshit comparison, they didn't even bother to mention with real units how much radiation this thing will have to withstand. This serves to do nothing but perpetuate the idiocy growing more and more common in the US today.
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I suppose they could have used 2 hours in a microwave or 40 years under a tanning lamp. But then the radiation may well be x-rays (though they say they tested using a gamer ray source).
It may have been better to put it in terms of how bright the equivalent aura would be if earth had that much radiation in it's atmosphere.
But the article was written by a dentist who drives an SUV, so I doubt he'd have know about things like that.
Re:SUV trunks? (Score:5, Funny)
It seems to have degraded to the point of confusing surface and volume.
Volume is in cube meters.
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The US population hasn't degraded. The US population never went metric outside of science classes in school - which is a very small portion of their experience.
Luckily, I learned linear measurements before the "English System" when I was a child in the 70s and there was a movement to make the US metric. Before it was killed. You know, the metric system is sort of like health care, it spooks conservatives into thinking communism is around the corner.
I have an intuitive sense of some metric measurement
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Apparently so. Or don't you measure volume in cubic metres any more? :)
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Would you describe your level of outrage as being five times stubbing your toe or is it more like 0.5 times some idiot double parking you in for half an hour?
Dangerous to whom? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say any manned mission has a higher risk of fatalities than this one.
100 million dental X-rays (Score:4, Funny)
100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?
Re:100 million dental X-rays (Score:5, Funny)
Well, in this case it would be Librarians of Congress with tooth decay per fortnight.
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Beat me to it :)
But on a more serious note: a dental x-ray can vary between 5 and 170 micro Sievert (source: http://hps.org/hpspublications/articles/dentaldoses.html [hps.org]),
so this could be between 500 and 17000 Sievert. A rather large uncertainty in such a statement. Not that it wouldn't be lethal, since anything over 6 Sievert (acute dosis) is considered lethal (and even 1 Sievert acute will get you radiation poisoning - see Wikipedia).
What's with scaring people about dental X-rays, though? While I appreciate t
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100 million dental X-rays? Can't we use some standard unit, like Libraries of Congress?
4 - 6 megarads.
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The *real* question is: Why does this probe have teeth?
Now that's what I call good writing: (Score:2)
'For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays,'
Nice image. Everybody hates dentists and their evil cancer rays.
[The] titanium box — about the size of an SUV's trunk — encloses Juno's command and data handling box...
Everything is better with titanium, and a proper car analogy on top of that.
The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds)."
Metric first, and imperial units as backup. Very nice.
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Metric first, and imperial units as backup. Very nice.
What I like is that the author didn't say
The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (440.92 pounds).
The key to running "dual stack" on metric / English units is to realize that most of the time you do not have to be too precise in the conversion, as most of the time the original is not very precise either.
It's uglier than you can imagine. (Score:5, Informative)
It's uglier than you can imagine.
IIRC (sorry, it was long ago)... on the Pioneer 10//F 11/G missions Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope for an order-of-magnitude more than expected, and we pegged them. Pioneer suffered significantly--never regained full range on one channel of the IPP (Imaging Photopolarimeter--that thing that made the pretty pictures possible).
We nearly lost the spacecraft due to some spurious crap/commands during periapsis on Pioneer 10/F. Try dealing with an idiot-savant-brain-damaged-two-year-old throwing a tantrum with ~90-minute round-trip light time at 256-1024bps. It's ugly.
The running joke was... If you want to be absolutely certain a spacecraft is sterile, just make a flyby of Jupiter. Jupiter's belts are not to be taken lightly. A seriously understated quote from one post-mission presentation "Closest approach: It’s hot in there!"
It's not just hot, it's a red-hot-poker enema in your electronic guts. That Pioneer 10/11 F/G--the epitome of cheap deep-space exploration--survived those encounters and lived to tell--and did so for many more years still amazes me.
It is a testament to what we can do, and what deep-space exploration is all about. (So allow me a bit of hubris: Suck eggs Voyager... you had a much bigger budget, you got the press, you got your name in a Star Trek movie, but we were there first. Nah nah nah.)
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Van Allen spec'd the Geiger Tube Telescope
Oh man, I remember that concert, it was just absolutely insane.
Re:It's uglier than you can imagine. (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. The illusion of space safety largely comes from the fact that the space shuttle uses only LEO where radiation is only a bit higher than terrestrial (but still higher) and the gullible fantasies of SciFi stories. Get to a higher orbit or deep space and it's radically higher normal radiation levels. The mission profile of Juno is like the Earth's van Allen belts fully charged. Very nasty.
Most commercial semiconductor technology is burned up by the high orbit and deep space radiation levels shortly after being powered up - back in the day we tested off-the-shelf Intel processors and SNL clones of the same and the first small 10KRad dose destroyed the Intel processors dead while the clones (designed from scratch for rad hardness) lasted to MRad doses.
Humans beyond LEO? Don't make me laugh! This is the Achille's Heel of any Mars mission. There is no existing technology that can fix this either. Even the Juno shielding comes at a heavy price: using high Z shielding increases cosmic ray and ion spallation which results in increased total dose that the shielding is nominally trying to reduce - because the process occurs *inside* the shielding material and actually gets worse with Z, it's a trade-off between bad dose levels and really bad dose levels. That's what is alluded to in the article as well. Strictly there is no way to shield down to human-tolerable levels.
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> Strictly there is no way to shield down to human-tolerable levels.
Lots of shielding?
The coolest idea that I've seen is to snag a comet as it goes by, and drill our way to the center of that. Then you have several km of sheilding :) Wouldn't that be sufficient?
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Easy - by ejecting its insides. Simply through lumps of it out the back in the opposite direction that you want to go in. Hopefully its contents will include something that you can use as fuel to propel the lumps at high speed.
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Simply through lumps of it out the back in the opposite direction that you want to go in.
That's not steering, that's propelling. You could make some holes on either side and top and bottom as well, but the more holes you make the less shielding you have.
(btw, it's "throw" not "through")
Re:It's uglier than you can imagine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Deep space is considerably lower in radiative flux than it is when you're near a star for obvious reasons involving decay times and 1/r^2 laws. If it worked like you're saying, the universe would be extremely bright and extremely hot everywhere. In real life, most of it is just empty.
Also, there's an old trick which pops up in hard SF every now and then. Bury your interstellar ship inside layers of rock or water or both. Get it thick enough and it will shield out damn near anything which you're likely to encounter regardless of where you are or how fast you're going. Of course there are still places you're likely to want to avoid...stellar nurseries are probably not a nice place to be, nor do you want to get too far on the inside of the habitable zone of a star. Stuff like that. But the fun thing about radiation is that you can stop any conceivable level of radiative flux simply by putting enough matter between it and you. So much for "no way" eh?
As for something as simple as sending a probe to Mars - yes, you have to account for radiation in the design. But it's hardly insurmountable. If somehow it mysteriously happens that nothing else works, you can always fall back to covering the hull in water tanks. Higher fuel cost, but certainly possible.
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While the depth of the atmosphere also helps in shielding, 14 pounds per square inch (or, ten metric tons per square meter), is not a bad first guess for adequate shielding for most of deep space, although it would not nearly be adequate for Jupiter. (Not every part of the spacecraft would require this, but a shielded "safe room" for solar flares would be a very good idea.) Note that the Jovian / Solar Flare radiation is all charged particles (no X or gamma rays), so it might also be possible to do magnetic
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One advantage to this is waste management.
Since you'd need to recycle EVERYTHING on an interstellar (or even interplanetary) ship, use the massive radiation to your advantage. Feed the plumbing from all the waste to the outermost layers of the ship, exposing it to as much radiation as possible, thereby killing all bacteria, viruses and other parasites.
Doing this should a
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Uh... wouldn't that create irradiated water? Could you even use that water again, once it's been exposed to such high levels of radiation?
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Yes. Water irradiates fairly nicely. In the solar system, this "radiation" is actually high energy protons and electron, with a little Helium (AKA Alpha particles) and a smidgen of other stuff. Generally, you would worry about fission byproducts under such radiation. However, you can't fission Hydrogen at all, and you're not likely to encounter energies required to fission Oxygen either, or to make Neon from Oxygen by the Alpha process. You might make a little Tritium, but Tritium decays rapidly.
It's the he
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But the fun thing about radiation is that you can stop any conceivable level of radiative flux simply by putting enough matter between it and you.
Not quite true. There is one exotic exception you overlooked... neutrino radiation.
Even if you used the entire mass of the universe to build a spherical radiation shield around you, it would only block a small fraction of neutrino radiation. Of course on the other hand neutrino radiation is quite harmless unless the radiative flux is insanely high. The only known
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Just make a massive ship; its sheer mass would provide enough shielding.
Obviously, it would have to be built in space. But to make a good enough space or moon base, you'd have to bring fairly massive amounts of material as well. And the only cost-effective ways to do that are propulsion based on nuclear explosions or a space elevator.
One technology people are afrai
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One technology people are afraid of, two technologies that are not ready.
Seriously, people treat nuclear pulse production as if were a done deal, but there's been damn little actual engineering work accomplished. Exactly none of the equipment has been tested except in the form a non-nuclear (very small) scale model. Huge questions r
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Do you have any numbers for this? I thought that it was generally agreed that a Mars mission was survivable using a lightweight spacecraft with little shielding. (maybe a 'storm cellar' shielded room for when a solar flare happens but that's it.) And we're talking a slow Mars mission, using conventional chemical rockets and a many month trip.
Now, a trip to Jupiter or Neptune...yeah it sounds like the only humans making a trip like that would have to be genetically engineered for higher radiation resistan
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There has to be shielding, but not every part of the spacecraft has to be shielded. BTW, NASA does monitor radiation exposure to its astronauts, and you can't do a long duration mission to the ISS once you reach your lifetime limit.
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Humans beyond LEO?
well shit, I bet you're the type who thinks the various moon missions were fake as well.
The moon is beyond LEO.
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> The running joke was... If you want to be absolutely certain a spacecraft is sterile, just make a flyby of Jupiter.
Finally, someone writes about the _WHY_ of the titanium case. Thanks :)
Another poor robot sacrificed (Score:2)
We seem to be made to suffer, it's our lot in life.
Attempt no landings there. (Score:2)
This radiation will make it hard to ever do direct human exploration of the Jovian moons. The radiation peaks strongly in the equatorial regions, and all 4 Galilean satellites of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) have equatorial orbits. An unprotected human on the surface of Europa would be killed by the radiation within minutes (not quite as fast as from the vacuum of space, but still very fast), and so people on Europa would be restricted to moving around in something like tanks, for survival. C
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If I recall correctly, Callisto is outsaide the main radiation belts and has a much less harsh environment. Another possible target would be a manned base INSIDE Europa, protected by a few km of water and ice.
most heavily armORed (Score:2)
... am I the only one who read that as "armed" ? :)
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Indeed. The probe will have a GAU-8, an array of SA-10s and come with lotus notes installed.
Juno articles still plagued.. (Score:2)
And in other news, articles about the Juno spacecraft continue to be plagued by unit conversion errors.
The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds).
Really?!?! Because, the unit conversion for kilograms to pounds is x2.2. 1 kg = 2.2 lbs NOT 2.5 lbs!!!
For God's sake! The Metric system is not that hard to remember! If you don't know, LOOK IT UP!!!!
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Its a meassurement with 1 significant digit. Thats a more correct way than the typicel " about 1 inch (2.54cm)" type conversion that implies a higher accuracy in one type of unit
I agree with you with one small caveat (Score:2)
The purpose of the mission (Score:3, Funny)
Won't the solar panels get hit by radiation? (Score:2)
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We talked about this a month ago. Too lazy to look it up. Lots of jokes about sending tanks to Jupiter and such.
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It will take a few years, Jupiter is 8 times as far away from Earth as Mars, so however long it took to get to Mars, it will probably be about 8 times that (maybe less, depending on how long it can accelerate).
I didn't look up past missions to compare, but if I had to guess I'd say about 4-6 years to get there.
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Anyone know how long it will take the probe to get there?
Current plans [wisc.edu] are for a 5 year cruise phase with one Earth fly-by. This might change, especially if the mission has to slip for some reason.
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I guess given the cost of Titanium/processing...
The cost of Deep Space missions is so great you could make everything out of solid gold and it really wouldn't matter, as long as it saved a little weight. My guess is, using Ti instead of Pb saved a little weight, so they went with it.
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Lead is also too soft. It might not survive launch.