Scientists Work To Produce 'Star Trek' Deflector Shields 193
cold fjord writes "This might be useful. From CNN: 'Recent evidence from NASA's Curiosity rover mission to the Red Planet has revealed that astronauts on the round-trip would be exposed to high levels of radiation from cosmic rays and high-energy particles from the sun ... this would clearly be bad for your health — and it is proving difficult to find a solution. ... [S]hielding to completely block the radiation danger would have to be "meters thick" and too heavy to be used aboard a spacecraft. In contrast, ... science fiction fans have once again got used to the ease with which Captain Kirk gives the order for "shields up" and the crew of the Enterprise being protected instantly from the hostility of space. Perhaps though, a real Star Trek shield may no longer be science fiction — scientists at the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) certainly think so. They have been testing a lightweight system to protect astronauts and spacecraft components from harmful radiation and working with colleagues in America to design a concept spaceship called Discovery that could take astronauts to the Moon or Mars. "Star Trek has great ideas — they just don't have to build it," said Ruth Bamford, lead researcher for the deflector shield project at RAL. ... The RAL plan is to create an environment around the spacecraft that mimics the Earth's magnetic field and recreates the protection we enjoy on the ground — they call it a mini magnetosphere." Related: 'Deflector Shields' protect the Lunar Surface.'"
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
When in doubt, copy nature.
Re:Star Trek? (Score:1, Insightful)
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll283/Frakker_77/SWvST.jpg
Re:star trek had two types of shields (Score:4, Insightful)
+1 NERD!
Re:Pardon my ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Micrometeorites (Score:4, Insightful)
Mostly empty isn't good enough at the energies involved. It really doesn't matter what the probability for an impact is, since it is almost always going to be > 0. Even at the relatively pedestrian speeds of highway travel, a tiny pebble to the windshield does huge damage if it hits right.
Re:sounds reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the magnetic field that''s the problem. Until you get EXTREMELY high anyway. Like, "rip the iron out of your blood" high. Or you have an implant with any ferrous material. (thankfully titanium isn't substantially ferrous)
The problem is the HEPs (High Energy Particles) that are flying out of the sun from CMEs (coronal mass ejections) at moderate speed. These are small atomic level particles, and are moving so fast and are so small that the odds of them ever hitting anything are very slim. But there's a lot of them. So it's like someone shooting at you with a shotgun from a few blocks away. But he's got a million shotguns. Odds are he's gonna get lucky eventually. It works the same as radiation. And when one of these "pellets" hits a strand of DNA, it'll break it up like a cue ball breaking a rack on a pool table. It will almost certainly prevent the cell from ever being able to divide, and will affect enzyme production, which may be fatal to the cell.
If there's enough HEPs flying your way, it's like getting hit with a high or massive dose of radiation. And massive DNA damage. There's also a lot of cellular damage, which the cells might be able to repair if they were working right, which they're not due to the DNA damage. So you get massive cell death throughout your body over the next few hours or days. Maybe enough to kill you. Or almost certainly give you cancer if you survive. Possibly a very nasty, widespread, aggressive cancer.
Aaaanyway, these particles are moving fast and there's a lot of them, but they're very light. And usually heavily charged from their explosive exit from the sun. Charged particles are very easy to influence with a magnetic field. So you put a magnetic field around an area, like the earth's magnetic field does around the earth, and the particles tend to route around the area instead of through it.
The aurora borealis is the visible effect of HEPs interacting with the earth's magnetosphere. When you can see that, there's enough HEPs hitting it to actually deform it. (cool videos [youtube.com] of this effect on youtube) The shape of the field is very important. Notice how the north and south magnetic poles of the earth offer far less protection.
The earth's magnetic field protects us from this, so we didn't evolve a resistance to it. So when we leave its protection, we'll need to have something else to keep the HEPs from damaging our cells. And the best two theories going right now are blocking it and deflecting it. Blocking it is heavy, and heavy is never good when you're talking space travel. Deflecting it... well, it's tricky, they're working on it.