The Great Unknowns of Space Radiation

Final thought: don't superconductor magnets still have poles, viz. where the magnetic field drops sharply inwards toward the magnet itself?

So you put small shields of very dense material at the north & south poles of your vehicle and surround your crew volume with the water and/or LH2 tanks, that you have to carry anyway.

Totally impractical for a small (10 to 20 mt) vehicle. Quite reasonable for a 100 to 200 mt ship.

One launch of a CaLV can put an empty, big, re-usable ship in LEO. Getting the fuel etc, up there for it to use each mission is the key. It has to be done relatively cheaply until ISRU is developed.

Delivery of propellant/fuel from another place than Earth may turn out to be no problem. t/Space already have published an idea at their homepage.

The vehicle can and should be assembled in orbit and could be made of inflatable components - this task Bigelow Aerospace could solve. I still have to continue to read Komerath's document - spacecowbow, Thank You for Your newly invitation to post questions you then offer to ask Prof. Komerath - I only need to read the document before questions come to my mind.

This moment I wonder if another way of protection against radiation might be absorption - materials absorbing evene gamma rays and truning them into electricity, normal heat and the like. If that's possible then this might reduce the required thickness of prtecting layers of water, hydrogen or anything else.

Is that something worth to be experimented with and tested in the Moon-Earth-space?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

That sounds wrong to me. The hydrogen is used to slow down neutrons to make them more easily absorbed by a thermal neutron absorber. The magnetic field is used to deflect charged particles with the Lorentz force. For gamma rays or any radiation that is photons you just need lots of mass.

http://www.johncaunt.dsl.pipex.com/shie ... hield.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_force
http://www.triumf.ca/EHS/rpt/rpt_7/node17.html

(EDIT) The 2nd link above is new because the original one on that subject was broken.

Link:
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=42275

It seems a bit as if currently a test or an experiment is going on by which something can be learned about the impact of radiation on organisms. It also might be taken as a test of radiation protection. According to Bigelow Aerospace Launch, Successful! (www.spacefellowship.com/News/?p=1614) there are "living systems" on board of Genesis Pathfinder-1.




Because of the videos, picture and the monitoring it will turn out if there is harm to these animals in space and if it so much that they shouldn't be sent further out. If the harm turns out to be neglegible farther distance can be risked I think.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

I still think that this is just a stunt. We can learn all that's needed through instrumentation. There's no need to send living creatures. Just test out the environment so that it's ok for humans and send them.

I thought this first one was pressurized with Nitrogen? Can bugs survive without oxygen, I don't think so.

I seem to recall hearing that it would be pressurized with nitrogen too. Maybe the bugs are in a smaller container that has oxygen in it. Or maybe we are just wrong about the pressurizing gas.

That the small station is pressurized by nitrogen doesn't mean yet that there is no oxygen for the bugs etc. - oxygen simply isn't available to the amount required to get the pressure wnated or required and deflate the station.

Bugs etc. don't need that much oxygen I suppose - not only because they are very small but in particular because they grow up normally within the eathian soil where there will be not that much oxygen like above the soil.

Perhaps we will hear about in the next days - having looks to Bigelow Aerospace's website for example.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Anyone who thinks that it is easy to test everything in an environment that could affect organisms there – AND THEIR SYNERGETIC INTERACTIONS – is either naïve, has no awareness of the realities of medical science, or has never tried to do any such thing! Clinical studies for FDA drug approval are all about moving from theory to reality, and the results are often very surprising!

Actually I have to agree with both rpspeck AND beancounter here.

What Bigelow has done is just a stunt, there is no science being done that I have heard of. But there is valid science involving radiation effects on living organisms, possibly people, that could and should be done on another flight for just the reasons that rpspeck mentioned.

As I have urged more than once on this forum, we need a test flight with a real human crew on a real space craft designed to fly to Mars but staying near enough to Earth for a quick return, to verify that people could really survive the trip. Nothing would be worse than sending someone toward Mars only to realize half way there that they were dying of radiation and would never make it alive. Better to have them orbiting high above Earth, outside the magnetosphere, and if they are found to be showing radiation symptoms they can come back to Earth within a couple of days to stop further exposure and get treatment instead of slowly dying half way to Mars on worldwide TV. If the test crew makes the full duration test flight safely, then next flight can go to Mars.

At the risk of introducing sumething that relates to the original subjet of this thread, here is an article from SPACE.com that suggests that radiation may enhance the bone loss caused by weightlessness.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... bones.html

G'day,

Do you seriously think the first testing of a new space station module is a stunt?! A module that's the first to space test the a completely new technology? They even tested some hardware for NASA. See:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=20368

The Bigelow flight is one of the most important of the year, certainly the most ground breaking so far.

ta

Ralph

There are several points to keep the focus on I think.

First - Bigelow is testing a new technology for space stations and he is testing the space station itself via a prototype. This neccessaryly must include the test if inside the station space radiation can be survived and how good it can be survived. Of course he simply could measure the dose of radiation - but it is well-known that this knowledge about the impacts on living organisms is insufficient yet today. Because of this he has nearly no chance than to send insects into space. Since insects may suffer impacts of the radiation quicker and more intensice than humans because of they are that small and have nearly no protection layers they may be the best indicatior he can think of.

Second - I have read the article Andy Hill is mentioning. This article assists one point rpspeck mentioned and I have said under "First" myself - there are surprises and unknown things about living organisms exposed to radiation. It sounds like a random scientific result that and how it has been found out that the radaiation causes the irreversible bone loss. And to expose animals to radiation on Earth is no way a better treatment of them than sending them into space - may be they survive space better than the experiment mentioned in that article.

Third - may sound like a repetition of "First" but it is a look from a different direction: Bigelow is no way out on scientific results.

Fourth - according to the BLOG Space-com links to there is a forerunner of the GeneBox aboard Genesis Pathfinder 1 - this is science and has a similar purpose like the insects.

Bigelow has no choice in principle to find out, check and/or prove the safety of his space station - he must make it visible and only can do that by living beings. He must observe it to loook for required or possible improvements and I read an article saying that this concept has been considered to provide too few protection when formerly pursued by NASA. Bigelow is forced to resreach its safety and to demonstrate it. There is no better way than this at present.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)