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Space Science

NASA Studying Energy Shields for Spacecraft 76

Posted by michael from the photon-torpedoes-still-a-ways-off dept.
Shafe writes "SPACE.COM posted an article concerning enhanced shielding technologies research for futuristic spacecraft en route to Mars. One particularly interesting goal is essentially an energy shield known as a 'multipole electrostatic shield' that would deflect both radiation and micro-meteoroids. We're one step closer to Star Trek: shields up!"
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NASA Studying Energy Shields for Spacecraft More

NASA Studying Energy Shields for Spacecraft

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  • I wanted to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Soul-Burn666 ( 574119 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @12:54PM (#9278355) Journal
    say that their website should shield up against the slashdot effect, but it's still alive ;)

    If it already died, then: "OMGz!! YOU'VE SLASHDOTTED SPACE!!!1"

  • warping of space... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by doublebackslash ( 702979 ) <doublebackslash@gmail.com> on Friday May 28, 2004 @01:49PM (#9278989)
    If we were to get a warp drive to work, then that would be our ultimate shield. All this nonsense with electrical this, and radiation that is pointless. All you have to do is warp space in such a way that it creates a vessel in which the spacecraft can exist, but that joins the otter boundary of the 'pocket' into one point. essesntially the pocket plane would not exist from the outside, and since no disturbance of the surrounding space would be apparent by the radiation passing through that point of set of points it would be a perfect cloak. Propulsion would simply involove warping a 'door' on one side of you pocket plane, and connecting that plane to another set of points a certain distance away.

    Simple, just as soon as we can manipulate space and time like LSD manipultes the mind with the skill and artistry of Davinci and at speeds aproching that of light.

    --
    echo "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAACB7VnbesvfvrFgPBW+7ZBQdVm y5RAoSjYpomy0DYGxa5w== rsa-key-20040528" >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

    • And then you get... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by j_cavera ( 758777 )
      the TARDIS! There are a number of people studying this sort of space warping. go to arxiv.org and so a search for Alcubierre, Krasinov, etc. You will see that this is not such a new (or such a far-out) idea.

    • Re:warping of space... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:40PM (#9280094) Journal
      The only problem with this idea is that it requires at least several other impossible things, so don't hold your breath. You need:
      • Amounts of energy comparable to the entire output of the Sun. (And the corresponding efficient equipment to handle it without your spaceship suddenly resembling a sun.) Probably impossible (remember, this energy generation has to fit inside the bubble; even if we could do it in general we could never fit it in a spaceship.)
      • The ability to directly control gravity, with, to date, absolutely no evidence that it is possible with anything other then black-hole-sized quantities of mass... and black holes still are just general suckers, you can't direct their gravity like you'd need to.
      • Negative mass. Much hypothesized, probably impossible in macroscopic amounts. (It's one of the more possible out of this list, but that's not saying much.) You need this for the negative gravity needed to stabalize these spacewarps; it's impossible to build a stable field with any sort of hole in the middle out of pure attractive, inverse-square based fields. (Actually, it's impossible with inverse-square fields in general; you have to have a matter shield in the mix if you want a hole (a charged hollow sphere has a hole on the inside of the sphere), but what shields against gravity?)
      • The ability to control all of this not just "in general", but extremely tightly, to create a high distortion outside of the ship without utterly destroying the inside of the ship with gravity fields or tides in the millions of Gs range or more.
      A thing that requires multiple other most-likely impossible things is itself impossible, even if you can sort of make the math work.

      (Am I absolutely sure such space warping can't be used for travel? Technically, no. Then again, I'm not absolutely sure that when I drop this apple, it will fall to the ground, either; there's an ever so small chance that it won't, even under conventional QM as I understand it. But unless something really strange opens up at the string theory level, with as I said, no reason with current evidence to believe that it will, you're not getting any of this. You're welcome, as so many Slashbots are wont to do, to post an angry reply saying "How do you know this is impossible? We broke the speed of sound, didn't we?" (Which itself betrays a serious misunderstanding of history, reason why left as an exercise for the reader.) But be aware, the evidence is on my side; FTL has reached the point where we need something magical to make it work, and I don't hold my breath waiting for magic.)
      • black holes still are just general suckers

        Might I remind you - suckers is an improper choice of word. More like - Black holes are massive gravity wells, forcing particles inwards.

        Better now, isnt it?
      • Breaking the sound barrier is one thing. But teleportation is another impossible thing we've conquered through a basic discovery in quantum physics.

        We know alot, there is still a great deal we don't know and VAST amount we are guessing at and the evidence is straws stacked on top of guesses which may or may not be any better.

        We like to pretend physics as we know it is all based around a simple set of guesses which have proven true again and again. Reality is that although there are an initial set of gue

        • Re:warping of space... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @08:50PM (#9282450) Journal
          But teleportation is another impossible thing we've conquered through a basic discovery in quantum physics.

          You're entitled to your opinion so I won't jump on the rest of your post like I kind of want to.

          However, note that teleportation in the conventional sense remains impossible. AFAIK, to date, only single photons have been "teleported" (actually, their quantum state was transferred which still doesn't match most people's mental model; there was still a photon on one end and a photon on the other), and the way in which it was done strongly indicates the impossibility of teleporting anything macroscopic... or for that matter, microscopic. In theory, it's just an "engineering problem"; in reality it's an insurmountable one.

          Teleportation, as most people use the word, is more unlikely seeming now then it was fifty years ago. Which brings me to the other nit I'll pick...

          I guess what I'm saying is that there is more we don't know than we do know,

          Yes, but what we do know increasingly keeps making the probability of ever having certain things continue to recede. More knowlege isn't bringing us closer, it's showing us the uncrossable chasm in increasing detail.

          Sure, maybe there's this little string flung across it somewhere, but we've searched more and more of it and we keep finding no such string. Eventually, you have to conclude that it either isn't there, or even if it is, it's so delicate as to be useless.

          It's a case of the infinity fallacy: "If we knew an infinite amount of stuff, we'd know how to do X." (A similar argument is often made for "a really, really lot".) But that's a fallacy; an infinite set can still not contain certain elements. The infinite set of all odd numbers does not contain 2, no matter how many of them you examine. To me, it's looking more and more like "how to travel FTL" or "macroscopic teleportation" or a number of other sci-fi concepts ("science-fiction forcefields" (as opposed to the real things, of course, which are entirely different), "time travel" (again in the science fiction senses)) simply isn't in the set of things you can know about the universe, so looking harder isn't going to help. We've been looking harder, and we haven't found any meaningful loopholes to date. The number of places those things can hide is shrinking.

          (After all, we're not searching the entire set of knowlege about the universe, which you seem to imply; the fact that I don't know the weather on a planet on the other side of the galaxy does nothing to make FTL possible. The vast sum of knowlege is entirely irrelevant. We're searching a rather narrow domain, and we're running out of places to look.)
          • "After all, we're not searching the entire set of knowlege about the universe, which you seem to imply; the fact that I don't know the weather on a planet on the other side of the galaxy does nothing to make FTL possible. The vast sum of knowlege is entirely irrelevant. We're searching a rather narrow domain, and we're running out of places to look."

            I suppose we simply disagree. I don't really see any argument in your post, just your own view.

            Personally I don't believe we've uncovered either the smallest
          • try explaining an atom to a scientist 500 years ago. Do you think he would understand? It's not a matter of running out of places to look, but more like we haven't even thought of the places to look yet.
      • Hah! I do three impossible things every day before breakfast, just like the book says!

        So come back in about two days for the prototype...
      • FTL has reached the point where we need something magical to make it work, and I don't hold my breath waiting for magic.
        You mean magic like in a Vegas magic show, in a fantasy novel or as said by A. C. Clarke?-)

      • Actually, the thing that worries me is that someday we'll be visited by [Aliens|Vulcans|Wookies|Bugs|Centauri|Other], and they'll say to us "No wonder you don't have a warp drive, you still believe in XYZ" where XYZ is something silly, like Schrodengers Cat, Photons, gravity waves, etc..

        OB MIB Quote
        A person is smart.
        People are dumb panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
        1500 years ago everybody "knew" the Earth was the center of the universe.
        500 years ago everybody "knew" the Earth was flat.
        5 minut

  • SCI-FI hits it again. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Deflagro ( 187160 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @01:51PM (#9279012)
    I bet all these engineers were just big geeks that loved sci-fi and when the problem comes up, they fall back to what they know: Star Trek!
    It really never amazes me when they think up something out of a Roddenberry or Asimov story. They are good ideas, just not possible at the time.

    Technically, nothing is impossible....given time ;)
    • Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

      Having said that, Asimov's really just interpersonal relationship hack in outer space. You could take the SF elements out and the story would change only tiny little bit.

  • article short on details about construction/energy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by snooo53 ( 663796 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @02:01PM (#9279114) Journal
    The article is very short on details. I am very curious how they plan to make these three spheres. Are we talking actual metal spheres surrounding the spaceship? Or thin strands of wire? Or doing something with a magnetic field similar to earth's without a physical shield?

    My other question is what sort of energies are we talking about here since protons are fairly massive? I would guess in the 100+ GeV range (ie. particle accelerator size). Any thoughts or better links?

    • Re:article short on details about construction/ene (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lady Jazzica ( 689768 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @02:20PM (#9279314)
      I found the abstract for the paper presented by Metzger, Youngquist and Lane here [usra.edu].

      There's no metal spheres involved, just some sort of electrostatic field:

      "We have recently observed, however, that the physics and the shielding problem possess certain asymmetries which may be exploited in order to obtain the intended shells of isotropic protection without deploying radially-symmetric charge around the spacecraft. The basic concept is to leverage a multipole expansion of the fields, assigning a different function to different terms in the expansion. As shown in Fig. 1, a positively-repulsive quadrupole term may protect the region closest to the spacecraft from high-energy protons and HZE particles, whereas a weaker but slowly decaying monopole field may deflect thermal electrons away from the larger region of space. The result is that the significant fluxes of both negative and positive particles may be deflected away from the spacecraft using the same electrostatic field. This has the potential to create isotropic protection with a significant reduction in spacecraft mass."

    • No Trees? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Red Rocket ( 473003 )

      No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

      That is extremely and profoundly incorrect. Trees were killed. In fact, streams, valleys, and even entire mountains and watersheds were destroyed so that you could send this message. See for yourself.
      Here [appvoices.org] and Here. [ohvec.org]

      • Re:No Trees? (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by Cecil ( 37810 )
        I'm impressed, you managed to use this guy's inoffensive and amusing signature to segue into an unrelated environmentalist tirade.

        Congratulations, you're a bleeding heart hippie.

        P.S. There are only a few places you can economically get coal from. Telling them to stop this sort of mining is impossible as long as people are buying it. On the other hand, coal-fired powerplants are horrific polluters, and there are numerous other ways to generate electricity, which any respectable power company could switch t

        • Re:No Trees? (Score:1, Offtopic)

          by Red Rocket ( 473003 )

          I'm impressed, you managed to use this guy's inoffensive and amusing signature to segue into an unrelated environmentalist tirade.

          Tirade??? Wow. If you think that was a tirade then you've led an extremely sheltered life. I simply and politely pointed out the fallacy that the poster seemed to believe. The fallacy is that electricity is an environmentally benign energy source. The reality is far, far to the opposite extreme, so I believe it deserved a correction.

          Congratulations, you're a bleeding hea
          • Very good points you made. It is rediculous that we still use so much coal power when there are plenty of alternatives. Burning coal releases a lot of radioactive material into the air that is virtually impossible to recover. Something in the neighborhood of 10,000+ metric tons. Yikes. At least with nuclear fission most of the waste is concentrated in the byproducts. Coal is definitely one of the most impure fuels around. Not to mention all the other damage that comes from mining.

            Oh and you gave me

    • Somewhat unrelated, but perhaps they could use something along the lines of this [washington.edu].
    • My other question is what sort of energies are we talking about here since protons are fairly massive? I would guess in the 100+ GeV range (ie. particle accelerator size). Any thoughts or better links?

      Actually when it comes to cosmic rays, the spectrum extends to the EeV range and even beyond. Here's an energy spectrum [uchicago.edu]. In fact I'm doing my PhD on the study of cosmic rays at energies 10-1000 EeV, much higher energies than can be achieved in current particle accelerators.

  • Shielding (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mark of THE CITY ( 97325 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @02:03PM (#9279135) Journal
    From the article:
    The atoms of liquid hydrogen are particularly good as a screen for galactic cosmic rays because they don't fragment into secondary
    particles as much as heavier elements -- like lead -- do when bombarded by high-energy radiation.
    IIRC, bombarding lead with cosmic rays (high energy radiation) produces secondary radiation, not particles. In terresterial radiation shields, a series of layers of metals is needed to provide protection: shield metal layer n+1 absorbs the secondary radiation from layer n.

    Of course, such shields are too heavy for space.

    • Re:Shielding (Score:4, Informative)

      by EMH_Mark3 ( 305983 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @02:08PM (#9279184)
      beta radiation == charged particles

    • did you just say too heavy for space?
      • Too heavy to be economical to launch from Earth into space.
      • But unfortunatly we aren't at the point where we can extract resources and manufacture things in space or in a low G (the moon) location. Also, i dont know if theres an abundance of suitible materials for physical shielding (lead, vanadium etc) easy accessable to us off planet. So for now we still have to shoot stuff into orbit and that means we need to save as much weight as possible. Although less weight means less mass which means less energy needed for ac/deceleration, so in space there are still some a

    • Re:Shielding (Score:3, Interesting)

      by barakn ( 641218 )
      Space.com muddled this, but you yourself seem to be think that radiation can't be particles (even electromagnetic radiation is released as massless particles). Calling cosmic rays "high energy radiation" does little to clarify the issue. They are high speed ions, mostly protons but also a measure of heavier nuclei right on up to iron mixed in. When cosmic rays slam into our atmosphere they hit the nuclei of oxygen or nitogen, which actually do fragment into a mix of protons, neutrons, pions, and kaons, s

  • The real reason for nacells (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) <seebert42@gmail.com> on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:06PM (#9279767) Homepage Journal
    from the article: The center sphere, set close or even attached to the crew module, would be positively charged, while two outrigger spheres on either side would carry a negative charge.

    Outriggers? So the real reason for the nacells on Star Trek is to generate electrostatic fields?
    • The nacelles that are in pairs contain the warp coils which are also in pairs. They allow the ship to 'submerge' into subspace. They inject plasma into the warp coils to cause a reaction which the subspace field then counters by creating a warpfield.

      Thats a very brief explanination, you can read a hell of alot more about it [physicsguy.com] if you have the time. I sadly, had that time...
    • No, the nacelles generate the warp field, which is used for propulsion. This is strikingly similar to deflector shields, which are produced by the big blue thing between the nacelles and under the saucer section (in the common saucer/body/2 nacelle configuration). The deflector shields though, are different from the shield shields, which protect from phasers and torpedoes etc, not sure where those are generated from. Deflector shields are a practical idea in the real world though, and something similar is a
      • The deflector shields though, are different from the shield shields, which protect from phasers and torpedoes etc, not sure where those are generated from.

        To answer your question, the sheilds were generated from emmitters all over the ship. When they said something like "forward shields flucutating" it means one or more emmitters was having problems (ie, not enough energy to cope with attack, emmitter was lost and others had to compensate, etc). Atleast thats what I think I remember reading from my frie
    • So the real reason for the nacells on Star Trek is to generate electrostatic fields?

      I imagine the reason for the nacells on Start Trek is somebody thought they would give the ships a cool futuristic look.

  • another solution for Mars colonists (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:52PM (#9280220)
    would be to send a lot of them there... knowing that a majority would die from the exposure.

    those survivors might be more resistant to radiation, and could possibly pass on that resistance to their offspring, and so on.

    evolution is the key to colonizing other environments.

  • For the suits on mars (Score:5, Interesting)

    by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @05:08PM (#9280891) Homepage Journal
    Seeing as how Mars has 1/3rd earth gravity and seeing as how less gravity causes bone loss because our bodies need to respond to our own weight to maintain bone density, seems to me that the ideal suit would be one which weighed just enough to compensate for the lack of gravity. Hopefully the amount of shielding needed would not account for all the extra weight so you could make suits one-size-fits-all and just add extra weight as needed per person.

    • The problem with this is even though you may now be anchored with the same relative "weight" on Mars as you would be on Earth, you now have to contend with moving and controlling 3 times the amount of mass.

      The other problem is that while this plan might be able to stave off bone loss in high-load areas of your skeleton (ie, legs, portions of spine), it doesn't affect the acceleration felt by muscles and bones not directly impacted by a higher load from where the suit contacts your body. It also doesn't
    • Hrm, I thought that the suits already had to be custom-fit, so that they could fit and seal properly. Is that still the case, or do we make them cheaper now?

  • Start rounding up the Scottish (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nascar_Geek ( 682890 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @05:28PM (#9281064)
    We'll need one appropriately surly, slightly alchoholic, mechanical genius Scottsman per ship please.

    It will take some careful screening, but who else could keep all of the hardware required for this working?

  • water. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by torpor ( 458 )
    what i never understood is why NASA doesn't focus on super-structure construction ... say a spheroid structure of some geometric order ... which is then filled with water, which then has the crew module inside, which is incidentally designed for self-enclosed, sufficient, sustained surrounded-by-water living ... something we can develop fairly well down here.

    in other words, all this effort to make a spacecraft, when in fact we need to a) blow a very big bubble of water, b) put crew in it, c) shove it off i
    • I think the most basic problem would be that water is pretty heavy. Lead is heavy too, but it probably takes a significantly larger mass of water to create a barrier similar to a mass of lead. And then you need to create some sort of container, which would have to be pretty heavy duty to protect the water from the extreme temperature changes you tend to find in space. That container would probably end up being almost as heavy as whatever shielding the water replaced.

      • Re:water. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cjameshuff ( 624879 )
        Water would probably be better for its mass, actually. More nuclei for the mass...in lead, more of the mass is squeezed into bigger, but still tiny nuclei. Hydrogen and oxygen nuclei are smaller, but there's a lot more of them, so there's more of a "visible" cross-section. You want something dense (to reduce total volume) yet composed of light elements. I also seem to recall that hydrocarbons were particularly good at absorbing radiation.

        The problem is that this requires putting a lot of mass into space, a
        • The problem is that this requires putting a lot of mass into space, and then dragging that mass around wherever you go.

          okay, with regards to the former, i believe we could put a hell of a lot more water into LEO if we just tried (hell, make it a line-item for future World Bank Loans, or some such ficken thing...), and on th elatter, once you push, its no longer a shove. as long as its in the direction you want to go ...

          personally, in a few years time, if there is a 'water is key to space epxloration' e
          • We could put it into low earth orbit...but we could put a lot of other, more useful stuff up for the same price. And then you're just in low earth orbit...not a very useful place to be, and you will have to continually re-boost the thing back into a higher orbit because of atmospheric drag, which will be harder because of its high mass (though it will be necessary less often for the same reason). Put the same mass into power systems for running this deflector, and you could use the same power supply to run

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