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A Mars Mission's Greatest Challenge: Radiation
daSeiz writes "A New York Times article explores the possible effects of prolonged radiation exposure in deep space. Surprisingly, very little is known about the subject. We'll need to find innovative new ways of shielding spacecraft from fraction-of-lightspeed interstellar rubbish if we're ever to spend much time outside our own magnetosphere."
Tinfoil hats!
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Deflector dish. DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!1!1! Oh wait thats TV... It can work
http://www.users.muohio.edu/reamsjp/donate.html
Brb... I am going to buy my anti-radiation suite
By the lack of consistent success in getting small probes to the red planet, I'd have to say that rushing out a manned mission should NOT be a priority.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
...love all this! they think radiation is what made the lunar landings impossible and therefore obviously faked!
Others include price, estimated at $30 billion to $60 billion, and launching enough food, supplies and fuel for a round trip. Any one of these could make the project impractical.
Well, not to sound too bitter, but going to Mars seems like a much better way to spend billions than going to Iraq.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I've done the math. It would take shielding 100x stronger than the stuff I use to build the hats that keep the psychotronic weapons from affecting my brain!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-boxed do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you.
Pernicious nonsense!
Everybody could stand 100 test X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
isnt every speed less than the speed of light a fraction of light speed?
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
No nukes in space!!
We can't risk leaking any deadly radiation into space.
Won't somebody please think of the (Martian) children!
Ready.gov has plenty of useful information on radiation shielding. If you have a thick shield between yourself and the radioactive materials more of the radiation will be absorbed by the thick shield, and you will be exposed to less. Perhaps NASA could use some insightful advice from the Dept of Homeland Securty. I bet a couple rolls of duct tape and some plastic would be quite useful in Space!
Just reconfigure the modulators.
They tried marijuana first, but the mice just got paranoid and started eating everything in sight.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
This would not do any good unless the particles
d el /M2P2/
have a charge, but still it could shield the crew
and provide propulsion.
http://www.geophys.washington.edu/Space/SpaceMo
Well we will have to reroute main engine power through the deflector dish to create a graviton feedback wave which will in turn allow us to turn the radiation into a non-harful form of chocolate
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
And of course I'll wear a pair 'o
Levis, over my lead BVDs.
(Slightly different context, but hey.)
And then fly up to it. Duh.
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
Sure, funnyman. Show me the calculations that show that a human being could survive exposure to radiation outside the van Allen belts.
The owls are not what they seem
About 100 layers of it.
Ummm... Actually, wouldn't the worst problem be bone density loss. That's one of the main problems on the ISS (International Space Station). Without the effect of gravity, bone density decreases. From what I understand it's a pretty nasty recovery. The time required to go to and from Mars plus mission time would require much more time in space than any ISS mission to date.
this problem is known, and Mars Society already has some solution for this problem.
Anyway if you also wanted to know about radiation on the planet Mars, be sure it is not dangerous.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
$30 to $60 billion to get to Mars? I know how to do it. Tell Dubya that Martians are stockpiling weapons of mass destruction!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Martian Cherry
Ingredients
1 oz Cherry Vodka
1 oz Dry Vermouth
3/4 oz Sloe Gin
1 oz Pineapple Juice
Directions
Shake and strain into a glass three-quarters
filled with broken ice.
Alcohol (ABV) - 18% (37 proof)
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Ok, IANAP, but what would be the requirements to build a device capable of generating a magnetic field similar to the earth's magnetosphere? I would imagine that it's more efficient to generate a powerful magnetic field around a spaceship than it would be to line the whole thing with lead bricks...
/.s out there who may be able to answer this.
Would the energy requirements be far to high, or maybe the diameter has to be a certain size to deflect solar radiation around the ship? This is all pure non-researched speculation of course, but I know that there's more than a few intelligent
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
If radiation shielding is our greatest problem, then we REALLY need a new way of lifting mass to orbit. Because tons and tons of lead is the only decent way we know to stop radiation.
Could a spacecraft create it's own magnetosphere? The Earth's field is not that strong .. though it is huge. The power requirements and weight of such a device would probably make it unfeasible.
</thinking aloud>
Look, I'm not even going to RTFA or even the slash comment. EVERYONE knows that radiation is bad. Bad Bad Bad. So, just stay away from it, OK?...nice easy solution. Use the Nancy Reagan thing and "Just Say No" to Radiation.
All you need to do is steer any Mars Missions away from radiation, OK? Just use your radiometer or whatever you geeks use to measure radiation, right... for example, you get a reading over to port of "5" and over to starboard of "18", OK? Steer to port, man! Now!
It's so easy. Just stay away from Radiation.
And I don't mean regular cosmic Radiation, I mean ALL Radiation. Including infrared.
Awww darn...my troll just turned funny
Bring along a magnetosphere.
with Deanna Troi, aren't you.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Yeah, right...I hope Captain Picard is reading Slashdot right now and gets mad enough to kick this guy's ass!
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
It would take more than a neuralizer to get me to go in there.
I wonder where on the assistant they insert the special keys?
sigs, as if you care.
Water is one of the best radiation protectors. By filling the double hull with water (and compartmentalizing against breaches) you could effectively shield an entire crew. Some form of EM "bubble" technology would also work, but it would be much more difficult to implement.
Oh, and they should use nuclear engines like NERVA or Orion. That way the extra weight of the water is less important, not to mention that the craft may be able to reserve enough fuel for emergency maneuvers.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I do remember from my O'Neill colony advocacy days that people who knew more about the subject than I did recommended putting heavy, static shields around the colonies. One meter or so of solid waste products (think left over materials from mineral refining) in a layer around the colony could effectively shield the inhabitants from cosmic radiation.
This, unfortunately, makes for a pretty massive structure -- difficult to move around the solar system with contemporary propulsion. Travel is possible, especially with better propulsion, but more difficult than Star Trek et al. would have you believe.
This problem also could impact those proposals for Martian bases and settlements. I think Mars doesn't provide the same protection from radiation as Earth does. So, we could build bases on Mars -- just bury them underground. That's hardly what I think Zubrin and company want.
It might be interesting to see what can be done, if anything, with some sort of magnetic shielding. Although that could be a lot trickier again than SF TV shows imply.
I think problems like this are resolvable, but it's going to take a wide variety of efforts in multiple fields and directions to come up with solutions. Is there enough interest in space currently to make that kind of effort? Or can research in various fields be done with other goals in mind to solve this specific problem?
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
A New York Times article explores the possible effects of prolonged radiation exposure in deep space. Surprisingly, very little is known about the subject.
They've obviously never read the Fantastic Four.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
A little mutation never hurt anybody...
Comparing the potential success of a manned mission to that of unmanned missions isn't valid. With a manned mission, the margins of safety are completely different.
:)
With an unmanned mission, they can save weight and money by not including redundant backup systems. It's cheaper to send two probes and have one fail than to send one probe with redundant backups on all systems. With a manned mission, everything changes. Systems have backups. Margin for error is reduced.
Perhaps in old Soviet Russia...
What we need is a few trillion trillion tons of molten iron turning rapidly.. that oughtta do it. Just put that in your ship, and you'll be fine. Something a few thousand miles across should be adequate.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I think you meant LARGE fraction of lightspeed interstellar rubbish. The spitballs my cubicle mate hurls at me are fraction-of-lightspeed rubbish. A very small fraction of lightspeed. Shielding requirements are minimal.
How, though, will we protect ourselves from the terrible secret of space?
can someone copy/paste the article for those of us who refuse to sign up to nyt, please?
What you really have to worry about is mid-energy stuff coming from the sun during a flare; that will bake you in a couple of hours. Luckily you just need a meter of water or so and you're good, so you can have a hidey-hole in the core of the ship to duck into for a few hours during flares, which you can get a warning of.
There's not much you can do about cosmic rays in a ship; you can't economically carry that much shielding, but luckily it's pretty low flux; a Mars mission would, by the estimates I've seen, raise a participant's lifetime chance of dying of cancer by 2%.
The problem is finding a shielding material that will absorb the radiation that will affect a human body, without transmuting radiation that would pass harmlessly through a human into radiation harmful to a human. Thus, you need a shielding material that is cheap and has the same absorbsion parameters as a human.
I suggest using spammers.
www.eFax.com are spammers
All the futurists depict Martian/Lunar colonies as above ground structures/modules launched from Earth. I am convinced that humans and robots that wish to remain permanently on the moon or Mars will need to bury themselves underground to protect themselves from the radiation. Further, I believe that as a precursor to these permanent outposts, we will send up mining robots to develop the required infrastructure.
OpenOffice tips:richhillsoftware.com
Perhaps we'll get our chance to see Marvin the Martian. Any chance NASA is taking requests for autographs?
-Certified TechnoWeinie
The documentaries I have seen mention this. It has been suggested that a Mars-bound spacecraft include a "storm cellar"-- a very heavily shielded compartment that the crew can get into when necessary if the sun shoots a dangerous amount of radiation their way during a coronal mass ejection.
with all that radiation.... you think it could be a cure for cancer out there? hey! we could all go bald, then... and not have to worry about looking funny, 'cause then we'd all be bald and have five arms growing out of us!! :-D
I propose a solution to this problem. The main problem with launching rockets/satellites is exactly that -- launching them...i.e. generating enough power to achieve escape velocity required to overcome the Earth's gravitation force.
An alternate approach, however, would be to use the planet itself as a spaceshuttle for the reasons below:
1. Capable of high velocity:
The Earth is capable of travelling at very high speeds (currently 18.55 miles/sec) without causing noticeable discomfort/grievances to the passengers (astronauts).
2. Strong shield against radiation: The Earth's atmosphere provides a strong shield to protect the astronauts from high amounts of radiation present in outer space.
3. Fuel efficient: The planet is extremely power efficient at converting the energy generated due to the gravitational interaction between planetary bodies into rotational/revolutionary motion.
4. Huge storage area: The proposed space shuttle provides a huge hold/storage area capable of holding large amounts of food/water and other resources. The storage areas are regenerative, in that they help degrade waste into material which can be used to reproduce useful material.
The only area which needs research is navigation--figuring out how to make the Earth go where we want. I think that's what NASA/etc should focus on now.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Statistically, 25% will be able to invisible at will, 25% will be transformed into big stone monsters, 25% will be able to turn into flames without getting hurt, and 26% will be able to stretch their body many times its normal length.
There are 1% uncertainty on these numbers.
Here's the link: link
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
You should write to them. I bet those 70 year old men would like to know that they died of radiation exposure decades ago!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Ack ack ack, ACK, ackackack. Tommy Jones. Ack. Ah well. We can still get to the moon easily. We should focus there first, not Mars. Even though we've already been to the moon. We'll probably race to Mars, then abandon it for a long amount of time, just like the moon. What a shame. http://www.merkey.net is a good place to discuss stuff like this.
http://www.merkey.net Insanity with a healthy dose of Spam
We've sent dogs and monkeys up, but neither for extended periods of time. How about send something up with a bunch of mice, make sure they are given food and water (logistics would suck), and leave them in orbit for a couple of weeks/months if we really want to try to measure the radiation on animal cells. Sure experiments on earth are nice, but nothing beats the real thing.
Bill Gates truly is a very generous man (giving away billions through an orginization run by his father), and those that he has helped out I'm sure are very thankful he did help them... but it's time to focus on the big picture Bill!
Donate say, $20 - $30 billion to NASA (or hell, just donate a piddly $10 billion) for a mission to Mars. Hell, Microsoft has $40 billion in the bank, why not use some of that? Yeah, we'll have to have everything running Windows 2010, but as long as you don't require the computer to be named HAL (or BILL for that matter) I think everything will be ok.
Even though many contend you're evil, you'd be just slightly less evil in the eyes of every true geek out there.
Casual Games/Downloads
I'm the Vice President of an engineering facility that does space stuff and I thought I'd take the time out of my busy schedule to explain the science behind this story.
Everyone knows about the Big Bang. When the Big Bang happened, all the planets were created and life began. These lifeforms then produced trash from their planets and dispelled it into space, much like we do with our garbage (where else do we keep it? under the 'ground'? *scoff*). This then causes all the showers of trash that we need to avoid when we go to Mars.
I believe the commonly held point of view in the scientific community is that most space trash is caused by life. For example, planets on the other side of the universe launch satellites which eventually turn up here and bombard our planet. But because they took so long to get here, they get dusty and are called meteors or comets. I think some scientists said once that Halley's Comet is a spaceship from the other side of the universe that is very dirty and some aliens wrote 'I wish my wife were as dirty as this' into the surface.
mogorific carpentry experiments
A New York Times article explores the possible effects of prolonged radiation exposure in deep space. Surprisingly, very little is known about the subject.
Why is this surprising? How much experience do we have with "deep space"? Doesn't deep space mean outside of our solar system? If so, that means there is one space craft tht has even made it that far. No space craft has made it there and back to allow us to do a thorough analysis here on earth.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
If we move away from each other at the speed of Light who gets older as the other stays younger? If we pass each other on the highway at 1/2 the speed of light, then we will have acheived light speed by just passing each other. If we could go the speed of light, do you think there will be some guy behind us blowing his horn saying "Move it or lose it asshole"?
Let me be the first to pledge my allegance to our new highly-radiated mutant astronaut overlords with freakish superpowers and lucritive future comic book deals!
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Actually, my research last year on what it would take to get to Mars turned up that a very long hydrocarbon chain, like the hydrocarbons in plastic shopping bags, were the best way to transport lots of hydrogen atom shielding into space in a fine powder so it could be mixed into hydrogen clay with water at Mars.
There are also hydrogen material bricks in some sleeping stations on the ISS, I think they were first used on MIR.
This low-tech shielding was the inspiration for part of the filtering my Foil Hat in my sig.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
As the article indicates this is not that much of a problem if you design the crew compartment, or at least part of it, with a second hull and fill it with water which you'd use when you get there anyway. The major challeneges are:
- a pretty major propulsion system to get a heavy ship headed to Mars at a high rate of speed, presumably nuclear
- getting a lot of mass into LEO in the first place
It doesn't bode well for a new Moon or Mars mission that NASA can't even get mass in to orbit in a reasonable way. As I've said before throwing a bunch of money into NASA for a new space initiative is not a good idea. As the shuttle and ISS show NASA has developed fundemental institutional flaws which tend to result in large amounts of money being spent and not much being accomplished. To think you're just going to set a new goal and get a better outcome, with no structural change, is naive. Set up a new skunkworks if you want to accomplish something in space, hire the best people and reward them in a meritocracy, not a bureaucracy.
This article is also flawed in the same way as most discussions of a Mars mission. The goal SHOULD NOT be a round trip. The goal should be to start sending big unmanned cargo ships, carrying water, food, habitats, green houses and nuclear power plants to Mars and when they are arriving reliably send colonists on a fast one way trip to stay for the duration. The other major challenge finding men and women who are compatible and are willing to produce future versions of the colonists.
Spending 60 billion to send a few astronauts to pick up rocks and come back just isn't worth it. Apollo kind of proved this. As soon as landing on the moon had been done, missions to pick up rocks didn't hold public support.
A permenent colony is also kind of an underhanded way to insure long term funding for the program since once you have colonists on Mars you are going to have to do whats necessary to keep them alive, until they are self sufficient (though they may not be fully self sufficient for a long time for manufactured goods like electronics).
Once you have a self sustaining colony you are insured a perpetual mission and are free of the whims of whether Mars 18 will be funded or not.
@de_machina
I just finished four eights of a fifth -Accountant
the conclusive video proof is here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Robert Zubrin covers this in The Case for Mars. Roughly the increased radiation from a round trip to Mars and a 6 month stay only amounts to a 1% increased chance of Cancer provided current sensible precautions are taken (ie placing sandbags or the like on top of the habitat while on Mars).
he said it, 'if we ever want to leave or _magnetosphere_'.
and doesn't it seem a tad familiar, to all ST geeks? (something we have heard, lots and lots of times... 'polarize the main...'...
Now I know it's not as easy as it is to say, but isn't it withneeth our grasp to realize something that'll utilize 'creating some sort of artificial magnetoshpre around our vessels' to protect us?
ps, and may I suggest also utilizing 'neodymium' *if magnets we'll be our savour, as they are the the most powerfull magnetical 'minerals' I can think of...*
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
So how is the Flat-Earth Society doing these days?
All the problems on earth and we have to find more problems elsewhere??? What's next? Spammers in Space? D'oh too late.
And they could also steam vegetables like magic!
But maybe we can find a young ensign to help out.
(I don't know what's scarier. The fact that I have Wil Wheaton's Slashdot nick memorized, or that I'll probably get 25 replies to this correcting me on the actual rank Wesley Crusher held on the Enterprise.)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
give the ship its oen magnetosphere, as it were.
There, another problem solved. Someone tell the engineers I need it by friday.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, not to sound too bitter, but going to Mars seems like a much better way to spend billions than going to Iraq.
If the Martians start flying spacecraft into buildings on Manhattan Island and mailing anthrax around the US, I'm sure that BOTH parties will agree with you.
Or even if the Jupiterians do, and the Martians are suspected of funding them.
B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If the Time Lords hadn't intended us to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, they woudn't have given us Sonic Screwdrivers.
Scream Of The Shalka, starring Richard E Grant as The Doctor, out now at BBCi.
It should be noted that "heavier" doesn't always mean "better" radiation shielding in space.
Hydrogen, the lightest atom, makes one of the best shields, because it doesn't kick out radiation very well after being struck by a high energy atom from the Sun.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"In a new $34 million NASA laboratory here, part of Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists are using subatomic particles accelerated to nearly the speed of light to slam into materials that could be used in a spaceship, and tissue samples and small animals. Using tools like PET and M.R.I. scans and DNA sequencing, they hope to shed light on ways that radiation damages biological tissue, and what can be done about it"
Today: NASA puts cuddly animals in particle accelerators...tomorrow: world destroyed by giant mutant rodents!!!
Why isn't PETA having a field day with this???
This scheme looks pretty appealing but has a few of drawbacks I can think of.
1. Magnetic fields have poles and usually the charged particles thrown at a magnetic field tend to follow the magnetic lines to either one of the poles. They may or may not hit the pole depending on their velocity and the magnetic field intensity. However, this means that there would be points on the space craft that receives intense dosages of the particles where as other areas are spared of it. So, we end up with a funny looking spacecraft, alike the one used by Dr.Evil.
2. The saviour is also the achilles heel. plasma shield failure = human thanksgiving turkeys on the spacecraft.
3. the propulsion is always present when the field is used due to the etheral presence of solar wind. so, there would be times when one needs to turn off the field/use opposite propulsion for making manouvers. Also, parking in one orbit becomes impossible without continuously bleeding fuel for propelling against the solar wind.
4. can get butt kicked by magnetic giants like jupiter.
If we do go ahead with the administration's somewhat-ridiculous moon base idea, we could just launch some carved lunar rock shields -- perhaps encased in a polymer to prevent micrometeor-induced fractures. Throw those off the surface of the moon for much less energy and attach them to the mars craft at Lagrange or in orbit. Get a slow but steady start helped by some gravity slingshotting and you're on your way to mars.
I'm sure there are slashdotters with a stronger grip on rocket science than I have (which is basically limited to F=ma). Is this feasible? Or would it make more sense to just pay for firing lead/water into space from earth?
which moderator modded that insightful :) :) funny yes, but insightful :!
Seems to me it would make sense to return to the moon and establish a base there. Practice mining for materials, building a liveable environment, grow food. Basically set up a biosphere type environment on the moon, then worry about Mars. Next, I would imagine launching a mission to mars could be in some cases easier from the moon. Less gravity, tested equipment, people used to the idea of living off earth. And to echo another poster, why not send robots for a couple of missions well in advance to set up stuff, start mining, building shelters so when the people get there they don't have to cart a ton of stuff with them.
Can someone explain what it is about two feet of lead that stops radiation better than a single sheet of carbon nanotubes?
Obviously, one would need a way to manufacture such a sheet, but my point is, is a thin, light, radiation impermeable material technically conceivable? What are the issues?
We'll need to find innovative new ways of shielding spacecraft from fraction-of-lightspeed interstellar rubbish if we're ever to spend much time outside our own magnetosphere.
Great, space FUD.
I recommend The Case For Mars (amazon.com link), by Robert Zubrin. You can also check out The Case For Mars website.
The short version is this: we have all the technology we need to safely colonize Mars right now, and with less danger and hardship than the American colonists suffered four centuries ago. If funding were allocated today, the first scientists could be on Mars in 10 years, and colonists in perhaps 20. (The money required would be a small fraction of the US civilian-bombing budget.)
Safety from radiation is easy. Zubrin points out that you can just go to the center of the ship and stack your supplies around you to reduce radiation to acceptable levels, even in the case of a powerfuil solar flare. On the surface, you just build homes underground for everyday living. People here on Earth are doing this now just for the energy-bill savings. I think we can do it in order to colonize an entire planet.
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
I've found very thorough study regarding mars radiation risk (two pages down). It contains a link to quite long .pdf document on this topic.
.pdf I've converted it into html, and here are parts related exactly to the subject of material shielding. Here are materials proposed. And here is a cute graph of effectiveness of the materials.
For those who don't want to bother downloading whole
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
haha, naturally you forget about all the non US countries that would have known if it was a fake. Why didn't they say anything?
What about the stuff on the moon? how did it get there?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
WTH was this modded down? For the ignorant out there, space debris - particles even as small as a grain of sand travelling at whatever velocity can do serious damage to spacecraft. How is this off topic? Moderators are jackasses.
Don't NASA engineers ever watch Star Trek or buy the Blue Prints for the ships? Geeeez... The solution to this problem is trivial, all NASA needs to do is equip the ship with a deflector array to protect the ship from stray radiation , debris, and high energy cosmic particles.
I think an alternate solution to this problem is to develop a cloaking device since it acts as a lens and diverts electromagnetic radiation around the ship instead of through it. However, NASA probably isn't up to cloaking devices just yet and should probably stick with the deflector array.
"with a second hull and fill it with water which you'd use when you get there anyway."
you just might want that water for the return trip...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the Martians start flying spacecraft into buildings on Manhattan Island and mailing anthrax around the US, I'm sure that BOTH parties will agree with you.
This is all rubbish. The 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, there is no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 and the anthrax mailings appear to be domestic.
In this case it really does look more worthwhile to have gone to Mars.
Chris
It also makes sense to have the cargo ships in a continuously-returning route between Mars and Earth, only using gravitational braking to slow down and drop off cargo into orbit.
I have also seen it suggested where they use shuttle fuel tanks as a cheap way to construct the cargo ships.
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
Why not build a ship in space with the shielding requirments for travel to mars. That way you only have to move the pieces up in small amounts while doing other trips to space. Then we could fuel it somehow via nucluar or ion drive. I have heard ion drive tests are working well in orbit.
To do the same on a smaller scale would require a much stronger field
What if you put a weaker magnetic field far in advance of the ship, but on the same trajectory? The field would change the course of the charged particles very slightly, but a small deflection a mile away could cause the particles to completely miss the ship by the time they reach it.
Think of it as creating a magnetic lens, except instead of focusing the particles, you are dispersing them. I'm sure this makes a lot of assumptions that a physicist (IANAP) would catch. So, any physicists care to comment? Usually you can't throw a dead/live cat without hitting/missing a physicist around here...
I heard that Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9-11. Perhaps I'm just the victim of a liberal media conspiracy.
Given that nuclear activists have effectively ended the prospect of building nuclear power plants, I highly doubt that a nuclear heated rocket engine would be allowed to fly, regardless of how safe it is.
Shake and bake.
- a pretty major propulsion system to get a heavy ship headed to Mars at a high rate of speed, presumably nuclear - getting a lot of mass into LEO in the first place
Actually right now the future seems to be ion engines, not nuclear, for long-term missions because it is lighter and far more feul efficient. Light reading: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/exploration/fut urespaceflight/ionengines.shtml.
The goal SHOULD NOT be a round trip. The goal should be to start sending big unmanned cargo ships, carrying water, food, habitats, green houses and nuclear power plants to Mars and when they are arriving reliably send colonists on a fast one way trip to stay for the duration.
I've always been fascinated by the idea of colonizing other planets. However, to say that should be the first manned mission to a planet seems foolish to me. At the very least I would think we would need to send a sort of "exploratory mission" to make sure things exist on the planet the way we think they exist.
Preferably on whatever planet we one day colonize, we find a source of fresh water. Colonizing a planet without that seems counter-productive except for long-term research. The vast amount of water that even a single city on Earth uses makes it impractical and insanely expensive to set up a system in which water must be constantly delivered, at least in order to maintain any sort of lifestyle we're used to. And really, if we can't provide something resembling a "normal" life on a colonized planet, and the "colonization" amounts to only a scientific outpost, we have to weigh the costs of that colony against its benefits. Is the extra benefit of living there for a while worth the extra money it would take compared to occasional visits to pick up something to research?
And what of biological entities? As you probably know, the NASA folks are put through an extremely rigorous quarantine and "cleaning" (I can't think of the word right now) to ensure we neither bring any of our bacteria and such to another planet nor bring any from there back with us, if any such exist. Assuming we can say with any certainty that no life of any kind exists on Mars (or any planet) is a dangerous assumption. It is, after all, one of the questions that drives space exploration.
It seems that all of your ideas hinge upon a self-sustaining colony. We'd certainly better send some folks to investigate whether or not that is ever possible before we start sending settlers. I agree with you that our long term goal should be colonization of a planet (not Mars necessarily if it is not adequate), but that's a goal that should be significantly farther down the road. It might not ever be possible. Between the extreme temperatures, lack of water, etc, we might never find a planet we can colonize that is within our reach.
I wonder has anyone ever looked into the viability of generating our own portable magnetosphere, for a space craft??
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
On a Mars mission, everyone will shave off all their hair anyway for practical reasons. In a sealed environment, humans shed so freakin' much hair (and dead skin cells too) that you'd never think we actually had that much hair on our bodies to start with. In weightlessness, the shed hair gets into everything, making a real mess. Just ask the folks who stay extended peroids of time cooped up sealed inside small buildings in Antarctica about the hair problems. They'll laugh and tell you all kinds of disgusting stories about how you'll find hair *everywhere*, including in the food. And they don't have the added problem of weightlessness to deal with either. I think you'll find any Mars-going astronauts, male and female alike, will be eager to shave it all off (all over too) if they're going to be cooped up in a tin can together for that long period of time. They will be very well aware in their training just how gross that a bunch of shed hair floating around inside the ship would become.
Why not wall paper the inside of the ship with Demron [sciam.com] for the outside use a the foam/armid lamiante process developed for the Cassini probe for the outer shell. All of it could be made out of plyable frabrics and assempled in space. No metal, so its easy to bring up on ship rolled up in bolts of cloth, the foam can come up as a liquid. Just a big ass micrometor and radiation proof ball with a truster on one end. Let it spin and even hav a parital G for the ride.
Why don't those people at kennedy space center drive over to Coral Gables Florida and talk with the the people who make Demron radiation shielding?
1 &d o=nw&ct=NA&1y=US&1a=&1c=&1s=&1z=32899&1ah=&2y=US&2 a=&2c=&2s=&2z=33134-4418&2ah=
http://www.radshield.com
This stuff can be easily sewn into fabric and a thin sheet is as protective as a few centimeters of LEAD sheilding!! It even stops gamma radiation as effectivly as lead!! Sheesh the answer is sitting there infront of them!!!
Take this fabric and wrap it in the interior of the ship like a carpeting on the walls and give the astronauts jumpsuits that are covered with this stuff for even more extra protection!!
Here are the driving directions!
http://www.mapquest.com/directions/main.adp?go=
Why can't these people read the fracking news???
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Once you have a self sustaining colony you are insured a perpetual mission and are free of the whims of whether Mars 18 will be funded or not.
What if we send some people there on a one-way trip, then discover some reason why they can't stay there permanently (like unknown side-effects of long-term radiation exposure). Then we'd have to send a rescue mission to bring them back. And no, we wouldn't leave them to die. Americans would put half the country into poverty to save one life, it's just our way. So we have to do a round trip first, just to make sure we can.
Or, perhaps the problem is you don't read the links you provide.
Why not use super conducting magnets (work well in the deep cold, like space) to build small magnetospheres around our spacecraft, or perhaps someone can explain if the physics of that are impossible.
We prefer the term "Jovian," thank you.
This is only one of many issues.
Human bones become brittle in less than 1G environments, after extended time. The time it would take for a mars mission, given current technology, the damage to astronauts would probably be irreversible for all but a short-stay mars mission.
Bone loss in zero G is about 10% per year. 10% is a lot of bone loss.
A short-stay mars mission is where you only stay on mars 30-90 days, and total mission time runs between 400 and 650 days. This may be long enough to do permanent damage.
A long-stay mars mission has a round-trip time of about 900 days. Even with half of that spent on mars, the combination of the extended stay in low G combined with the other half in zero G will turn most people to jelly. You're probably looking at around 25% bone loss here.
Not just the bones you normally think of, but your teeth will rot and fall out as well with these kinds of trips.
Even with exercise, muscles, ligaments, and tendons will atrophy significantly.
The plain fact is, human beings weren't built for space travel. By providing an artificial gravity (which would therefore mean a larger ship to shield), you can get by this, but then you're adding weight, which adds fuel and time, and so forth.
I personally don't think we're ready for a mars mission any time soon. Probably not in my lifetime. We ought to concentrate on closer targets until we have the technology to send people to mars safely.
Someone please rate this guy's moderation as unfair. If the original poster can take pot shots at people's political views, it shouldn't be offtopic to point out the factual falicies in the post.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
We'll need to find innovative new ways of shielding spacecraft from fraction-of-lightspeed interstellar rubbish if we're ever to spend much time outside our own magnetosphere."
Why not just make a magnetosphere for the ship? I'm sure there is enough free floating energy in space to do so. Solar or microwaves who knows what. Or even some system to convert the highly energectic rubbish to a magnetic field, where the more it gets hit the more it protects.
Not to mention the millions of men who die from prostate cancer.
Wait, nevermind. Nobody cares about men.
A pretty good troll.
But in case anyone is wondering, a 1km asteroid impact would kill billions of people, probably all of them, and we have no backup plan without space travel.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Reality.
that on earth it takes lead to protect a person from radiation exposure, but in space thin pieces of aluminum are more than adequate.
Not to be flippant, but I would imagine it would be similar to the effects of prolonged exposure to radiation on earth, i.e. not good.
Next they'll want to study the effects of being shot in the head... IN DEEP SPACE.
Radiation is nothing.
The Mir was said to have a rather unique odor..
Using superconductors to create your own local magnetosphere?
All they have to do is reconfigure the main deflector array to emit a polarised field of nanotachyons and redirect 20% of power from the EPS conduits to make sure that the ship maintains a stable warp field without compromising the counter-radiation shielding. Like, duh!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The problem with the unmanned probes is the remote control. You have to predict everything, and nothing can ever break. The failed missions are usually a result of losing contact with or something getting jammed.
With humans there who can fix most things that go wrong, the craft becomes self repeairing. So most problems that would have been fatal in an unmanned probe, are easily fixed in short time on a manned one.
The manned missions may fail too, but mostly for other reasons than the unmanned failed.
from that kook, Erik Von Daniken of Ancient Astronauts fame? In one of his interpretations of a Mayan carven rock image, he sees an astronaut in a reclined position operating instruments. Outside the "vehicle" he sees a rocket plume, etc. The thing is, and I always wondered about the possibility of this working, he produced an "engineered" drawing of the "spacecraft" and added annotations. One of them indicated a magnetic shield around the spacecraft.
Since way back when Ancient Astronauts was new and I saw that drawing, I have wondered about that idea. Could you not generate a magnetic field around your spacecraft so as to deflect charged high speed particles? You could also use water shielding. Water tanks could be placed to completely encircle the crew compartment(s)/living quarters and act as shielding as well. So...what about combining an artificial ship's magnetic field and water shielding?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
In the current incarnation, it is intended as a solar-sail like drive for very low-mass probes. However, attached to a larger mass, like an interplanetary vehicle of the scale suitable for human occupancy, it would barely impart momentum at all, which would make it unsuitable as a drive technology.
Though it would work wonderfully to shield the vehicle from the solar wind and other problematic radiation.
The crazy thing is, though a portable magnetosphere is so obviously a crucial requirement for trans-planetary travel, there isn't a single resource available through my above-average googling skills. The technology is either so far removed from mainstream mission planning circles, or...
Right. Let's put all of humanity's other efforts on the back burner until your pet causes have been resolved. Tomorrow we'll all drop everything until we've got breast cancer figured out. After that we can work on AIDS, SARS, malaria, TB, and influenza; in that order. Once these pressing issues are out of the way we can lat NASA go back to playing with their rockets.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I wonder (and this just occurred to me now):
If we had the technology to send people off to colonize a barren place like Mars, wouldn't we also be able to use the tech (and more easily) to keep a colony of people alive on earth after an asteroid impact? (assuming the colony isn't close to the impact point or the coasts, and you can tolerate the intense guilt of hanging out while everyone else dies a la Dr. Strangelove's plan)
What's the point of: Publicly Funded Art? Big Science? Pure Science? Exploration? Going to the Moon? Going to Mars? SETI? Falling in love? Climbing a Mountain? (last one's a clue)
You will find many "justifications" for such endeavors--many of which are to the scale that they must be publicly supported (funded) if they are to happen at all.
They are just that. Justifications. Rationalizations of a decision after the fact. All the justifications offered for these acts are BULLSHIT.
The reason we do these things is "because". Peroid. This is the concept of intrinsic value.
Think about this for a moment. If we do something--anything, we give a reason. I go to work to make money. I make money to buy things. I bought a car to go to work. But what do all these things get me? In the free time that I have when I'm done working, when I'm done driving, what do I do?
Love? Learn? Raise children? Why? What do these things get me?
Nothing except themselves. They have value because I say they do. Nothing more. There is no "purpose" for love. There is no purpose for "Going to Mars".
Sure, we got useful stuff--national pride (some think that has value), new technologies, etc. from our trip to the moon.
But that's not why we did it.
We did it because it was hard. And it would be cool to have done it.
That's what makes us what we are. The things we do "just because". Not because we have to or because they are a means to an end. Just because we think they would be cool to do.
Intrinsic value is by definition subjective. If there's no justification, then there's no logical argument I can provide that says the things I value are the things you value.
But, as a society, there are some "great things" we can do.
The challenge of doing a "great thing" is not the doing of the thing (solving the radiation problem). The challenge is getting enough committed people together--through social imperatives (taxes, congress) or consensus--to actually get up and do it
Why do you climb a mountain?
Becuase it's there.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
While putting people in orbit is tricky and expensive, there is a way to put food and water into space very cheaply: Superguns!
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Even with space travel, we probably couldn't do much about it anyway, right?
This may seem naive, but what prevents us from including a magnetic core in our interplanetary space craft? The weight for that kind fo thing has to be a lot less than the weight of sheilding.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Love is a trait that was smiled upon by natural selection. Couples that mate for life (or at least for longer than it takes to hump) have a better chance of raising their offspring to adulthood and thus having their love-prone genes passed on.
Further, one could easily argue that a person does not control whether or not they fall in love - clearly we do have control over whether or not we climb a mountain or go to mars.
Why not use a permanent magnet to create a magnetic field around the space craft. That would have the same effect as the earth's magnetic field. I'm not sure it would work but it's worth a shot. It beats carrying a ton of Lead around with you.
He's probably not young anymore, but at this point I'll settle for him to do the job.
Mars Missions Greatest Challenge : Getting to Mars
I couldn't think of a sig.
Tether the living module to the upper stage of the launcher, 300 meters apart, spin for Martian gravity (1/3 Earth's), keep it that way for the whole trip.
Send a small number of ppl to Mars to live forever. Many ppl would be more than happy with a one trip and the opportuntity to build future for their offspring. No doubt there would be death, but that is common when exploring (or exploiting, depnding on your POV) unknown areas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
All the diseases the poster mentioned are preventable: AIDS (safe sex, use clean needles, etc), SARS (everyone washing their hands properly being much more effective than face masks), malaria (sanitation), TB (sanitation), influenza (wash your hands, don't share telephones, keyboards, mice, etc., improved ventilation).
As for weaponized smallpox - I was vaccinated against smallpox as a kid. It's not like we don't have the technology to do this...
As for breast cancer - heart disease is still the #1 killer of women. And both heart disease and breast cancer are, to a certain extent, preventable as well, (diet, exercise, not smoking all improve your odds against both diseases, and breast-feeding also reduces the odds of breast cancer).
Overweight has just recently replaced smoking as the #1 health risk in the United States, and both these risks are totally preventable. We already have the cure. It's just that the majority are too fat, lazy, selfish, and stupid. So we're going to see the first generation where the children don't live as long as their parents. Not because of AIDS, or SARS, or an exotic disease, but because they choose not to exercise self-control over what they put in their fat, nicotine-stained mouths.
Especially in light of another post talking about plastic bags--the material they're talking about in the link is a polyethylene composite.
What was just as interesting to me, though, is the radiation map linked to in the story. It shows the radiation risk across different regions of Mars.
Am I misreading the map? It appears there's a big region in the south, as well as some regions near the north poles, that doesn't have very much exposure at all. Is that right? Is it an artifact? What are those regions? Why don't they go there?
This is all rubbish. The 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, there is no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 and the anthrax mailings appear to be domestic.
...)
I think you misunderstood my post. I made NO claims that Iraq had anything to do with either the hijackers or the anthrax.
What I did was point out that part of the support for the action in Iraq was the belief on the part of some people that he did have something to do with it.
It's funny. Laugh. (And remember that the Rs, as well as the Ds, are the but of the joke.)
(But as long as I'm playing truth squad
The theory that the anthrax mailings were domestic was based primarily on identification of the strain in question as one that had been used in US labs, combined with a "likely suspect", who had once written a description of such a scenario and had worked with microbiological agents.
But it turned out that the strain was one of the standard experimental strains which had been broadly distributed to labs worldwide. Meanwhile, none of the evidence against the suspect panned out (though his carreer WAS ruined in the witch hunt that ensued, despite his, and his relatives', complete cooperation with the investigators).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This article discusses researching how radiation affects the human body. What better direction can you think of for cancer research?
That said, isn't it a waste of money to research cancer, aids, hepatitis, TB and sars when it would cost a tiny fraction of the money being spent on any of those diseases to provide food, shelter and clean water to everyone in the world. Or are you saying that we should pick one (breast cancer for example) as being the "worst" and therefore.
Since I cannot change that. I have to be content in my belief that it is possible and productive for a number of areas of research to coexist. There have been any number of engineering efforts throughout history which have been slammed as a waste of money and which consequently changed the course of civilization. For example, consider Queen Isabella's court (late 1600s?). If she had decided to fund research into TB instead of an expedition to parts unknown, I am sure the world would be a much different place.
Lead aprons, jock straps, etc. are for low energy X-rays. For high energy x-rays, gamma rays, high energy electrons, high energy light nuclei and high energy heavy nuclei; you need different shielding. The part of cosmic rays that cause the most biological concern, are the very high energy (up to 1TeV) heavy particles, like Fe-56 nuclei.
Even when making up the original backstory for invading Iraq the Bush administration couldn't directly connect the two (and we know they tried).
Tough choice. but seriously folks, where would America be if early explorer/settlers had decided to stay put in europe until the killer diseases of the day were cured?
If the radiation in space is a big problem when travelling throught space and it is not on earth then we should be looking at what protects us here. Now I saw some other else say that the magnetic field around the earth helps protect use for radiation. If this is correct then would it not be possible to generate a magnetic field around the space ship which is large enough to have a similare affect as the earth version? this maybe a stupid question but even if the megnetic field only helped a little it may reduce the amount of shielding that maybe needed!
Your mirror would become a slab of molten silicon - you may observe this effect when someone tries to mirror a site targeted by /. with a machine that has insufficient resources.
So how about using a magnet?
I think that what's REALLY needed is to think outside of the box.
We know of short term goals - produce some mass-based shielding, polymers, hydrogen, etc. yadda yadda.
Long range solutions, however, would be best implemented by producing an actual magnetic field. Obviously this requires a buttload of energy.
Energy seems to solve just about all of the problems of space travel.
In other words, our current energy producing or storing technology is the REAL problem. Long-term, we really need to address that.
Once we have enough raw power generation capability on a spacecraft, (basically repealing the second law of thermodynamics) a whole lot of these other problems just go away. Then, your main problem is eliminating waste heat (the other thermodynamics issue).
Yeah, propellant is still a sticky issue. How to make sure the ship has enough propellant for accelleration and decelleration. Expelling smaller amounts at greater energy helps. But finding a way to propel ships without expending reaction mass (basically, repealling Newton's 3rd law) is another major hurdle.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I really dont see the benefit of a short duration manned exploratory mission. Robotic missions can do all the essential resource searching better. A short duration manned mission wouldn't cover much ground and the long low G exposure would be a real problem when the astronauts return to earth. It will need to be proven but I wager a human can adapt to 1/3 G on Mars as long as they dont plan on returning to earth and 1G which is another reason for a one way trip.
Water, oxygen and fertilizer would seem to me to be the big issues. I would agree you would want to insure you are good at recycling, which the Russians already are to an extent, and you can either find or manufacturer supplements on planet. Presumably with abundant nuclear power and the basic build blocks you could manufacture enough to replenish your reserves. Again robotic missions would be better at finding basic resources better than a manned exploratory mission.
Extreme temperatures are a fact of life though they are a lot less extreme than a moon base would face. Build habitats underground at first and again make sure you have an abundant, redundant nuclear power plants as the Russians are already planning.
As for "biological entities" this is nearly a non issue. It is another compelling reason for a one way trip. If you are round tripping you would need to be extremely careful to not return a biological agent to earth. On a one way trip you need to have some concern that an agent doesn't infect the colonist but I wager the odds of there being biology on Mars is slim and of it being able to infect humans, even slimmer. As for colonists carrying contamination to Mars some of that is a fact of life and we should get over it. It would be comendable to screen colonists to prevent scourages like HIV and Hepatitis from making their way to the new world.
As for radiation exposure, once again shield the habitats and provide the best shielding you can in space suits or vehicles.
The people going on this mission would know what they are signing up for and it wouldn't be under the expectation they are going to a place with swimming pools and shopping malls. They would be going to a place with a hard, subsistence living. Instead of thinking like a modern American think like a frontiersman in the mid 1800's who struck out in a wagon with a marginal prospect for survival but did it anyway. These frontiersman did have explorers lead the way but so do we, its just that ours are machines.
I wager this mission would weed out a lot of the weak kneed over achievers in the current NASA astronaut core.
@de_machina
The answer is to design the Mars transit vehicle to carry its own magnetic field. Superconductors allow us to create fields of such strength that just about any cosmic ray will be bent to miss the spacecraft. Also, we can inject some local ions into that magnetic field, trapping them, and they in turn act as a partial shield against electromagnetic radiation (charged particles and photons have a nice high interaction probability). For more, and on even using such magnetic fields as a modest propulsion mechanism (interacting with Solar Wind), see this.
I saw a talk given by a astronaut/space physician at Johnson Space Center back in January. He did indeed say dealing with the interplanetary radiation is the single biggest challenge in going to Mars. He even said they think they've got all the other problems - food/water, long-term zero-gravity, etc. - largely figured out. But they don't really have a solution for the radiation.
John Kerry is a Joke!
They use a process called "radiation hardening" on electronics then why not use the same process on humans. Get a colony of humans on earth and ship them to chernobyl. Send the one that survive to Mars. Easy as Pie.
Please no Soviet Russia Jokes.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Would it be possible to perhaps create a miniature version of our own magnetosphere? Make our own electromagnetic covering for the ship so that the electro-magnetic radiation was diverted as well? I'm not a physics expert and I have only extremely elementary space knowledge, but is this an idea worth pursuing or nay?
Oddly enough there is an article over at the BBC about how it looks like the radiation levels on mars are low enough to support a human mission.
You could deeply bury a colony on earth and expect it to have some chance of survival. Post impact there would be issues with food production due to the lack of sunlight, which wouldn't be an issue for the hypothetical mars/moon bases. You might be able to solve this with some good artificial light.
... having a catastrophe plan that is as flexible as possible makes sense.
I think a key problem with maintaining a colony underground on earth is convincing a survival size population living in it or close enough to it to be safe 24/7. Convincing people to open up the frontier of mars on the other hand won't be very difficult.
There are lots of other issues too
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It also appears that DUcrete was originally conceived as a means of stopping uncharged radiation-- neutrons, high-energy photons, that sort of beast. With neutrons, wouldn't there be a problem with the progressive conversion of DU to plutonium and subsequent fission of the plutonium if the material is under constant neutron abuse?
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
whats wrong with making our own magnetosphere? I am SURE its rather simple, just make a HUGE electromagnet, and a huge amount of power... of course the spacecraft will need to made of plastic or something...
My potato gun was confiscated by the United Nations. They said I wasn't allowed to have weapons of mash destruction.
Yes that gas thay produces that nice white glow from new cars is alredy being used as means of reliable probpulsion. The Euro consortium is using it in their new comm sattelite (forgot the name, was featured on /. a month or so ago). basically XEON can easily be stored, produces a considerable thrust, and most of all it will be light enought to transport, while being capable of producing enough sustained thrust to get the astronauts to and from mars. I wonder why NASA isnt looking more into it.
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
130 rem protracted over 2 years will do little to effect the astronauts. Wasted $$ spent studying this. Some minor incresed risk of cancer, but nothing compared to the risk that you and I take driving in your car to work each day. I can't see worrying about this much. Normal risk of space travel and death due to equipment malfunction dwarfs risk to a little radiation. As usual the NY times exaggerates the risk of radiation yet again.
If were gonna build a water shield, couldn't we just fill up on the moon? I don't know much about this sort of thing, but wasn't ice found at the poles? (My name is Neil Armstrong (no relation), so I guess I really should know about this sort of thing)
Here's some examples. I'm sure you could poke holes in them, too... ...Donating this money to a cause that has lots of supporters already--and will get along just fine without your few dollars. Why?
Because I support the cause. (And not all "causes" are altruistic...)
Letting someone cut in front of you in a traffic jam. You'll never see them again, and they won't pay you anything for it. Why?
Only if they ask nicely by way of using their turn signal - this helps reinforce courteous driving, which is more often than not synonymous with safe driving. No warm fuzzies there.
Continuing from your original post...
Love? Learn? Raise children? Why? What do these things get me?
Let's set aside Learn for the purpose of this discussion.
You are genetically programmed to seek out people that make you feel what you call "love". You are genetically programmed to feel intense gratification at the conception as well as the birth and rearing your offspring.
What do these things "get" you? They get you feeling good. You are what is known as a hedonist. Even worse, you are a self-righteous hedonist.
And since you seem to have been left in the dark, you should know that there basically aren't any motivations for having children that aren't 100% selfish.
"But what about all of the sacrifices I've made to raise my kids! How can that possibly be selfish?" you ask. Before you can know the answer to that (and no one who's already had children dares to), you first have to honestly examine why you decided to make a person in your image.
(You mentioned "The Church", so I have to wonder if that means you subscribe to any form of spirituality, in which case your ability to reason has already been compromised beyond all hope. You would spout some drivel like "For the greater glory of God" or some bullshit about "souls".)
The real motivations are typically a feeble attempt at some form of immortality (I live on after I die), a relationship strengthener, and the most widely acknowledged honest reason, "Because I want kids". (But why...)
Raising kids is not a selfless act. You did it for you, and your genes reward you for it every time they do something cute.
But hey, that ship has sailed as far as you're concerned. No chance in hell you're going to backpedal even the slightest bit and acknowledge the selfishness of your actions - you'd lose way too much face.
The things we do "just because". Not because we have to or because they are a means to an end. Just because we think they would be cool to do.
So you popped out some kids because you thought it would be cool to do? Okay, I'm doing some creative editing here, but I think this is a valid representation of your sentiment. You feel that raising children has "intrinsic value" and you state that we do things we believe have "intrinsic value" "just because". Is that really how you would answer if someone asked you why you had children? Because you thought it would be cool? Does that sound very responsible? Regardless of your commitment or your ability to care for the child, this just doesn't seem like a very convincing reason.
To that end I would suspect that to many murderers, violently extinguishing a life has "intrinsic value".
Arbitrarly creating life is just as monsterous as arbitrarily ending it.
I saw a documentary on the topic about a year ago, which included interviews with people working in the Russian space program. They said that at the time they were all saying it was impossible with current technology, for numerous reasons, and that it must have been a hoax.
Apparently the US media chose not to cover this side of the story...
And I'm sure you'll be able to find well trained people willing to spend the rest of their lives on a far away planet.
An M2P2 shield would provide propulsion and protection from radiation. Of course, thats too obvious for NASA to fund.
M2P2
-Mike
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
I'm no expert on the subject by any means, but isn't water supposed to be a very good radiation shielder? It's not exactly light, but I'm guessing that it's lighter than lead, and the body produces it as a waste product.
So, all you'd have to do is have triple outer walls with gaps inbetween and an adjustable middle wall, fill one of the gaps with a bit more than enough water to last the return trip and hook up the waste system to extact the water from all waste products and pump it back into the other gap. As the waste product water grows and the drinking water product reduces, change the position of the middle wall.
I think you misunderstood my post. I made NO claims that Iraq had anything to do with either the hijackers or the anthrax.
Ahh, I couldn't tell that what you said didn't have anything to do with how you felt about things.
The anthrax strains also seem domestic due to the recipients, democratic senators. Maybe this was done to trick people into thinking that it was domestic interests, seems unlikely though.
Chris
National Geographic
Sydney Morning Herald
Google News
If we followed this mode of thinking, we would no investment in the arts, or other science fields. It is up to a society to decide where the funds are best put to use. If we actually did what u want, then basically we all should become medical doctors and try to save as many people....
Short answer - yes. With lots of qualifications. I think it worth investigating.
Google for M2P2 (mini-magnetic plsma propulsion) - researcher name is Winglee. His goal appears to be making a propulsion system - which we really really want to work. But would it protect the internals to some degree.
However a lot of the particles that they are worried about would have energy above what a magnetospheric shield could deflect. But if a shield like this could deflect a lot of the lower energy ionized radiation, it may lead to an overall cheaper (read less massive) radition solution - because you only have to design against the high energy/nasty stuff to the degree required rather than all of it.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
If you live in a country where 30% of the country is infected with AIDS, the fact that the disease is preventable is not going to do you a whole heck of a lot of good.
There are towns of children because all the adults have died, there are countries that can not produce food because everyone is either sick or caring for the dying. These people need help. Even far right Senator Jesse Helms agrees.
That said, I don't know why NASA is the agency we have to cut.
Hey, that sounds dirt cheap, when you compare it to the cost of recent "geopolitical events". Let's just skip one of the wars on Dubya's list, and off to Mars we go!
You realize the links between diet, etc. and cancer are there, but they are definitely nowhere near statistically significant enough to be labeled as "causes" - they are risk factors, that's it. Smoking - now that causes lung disease and lung cancer, that's pretty plain, and rather different. And being overweight is definitely a big risk factor for several kinds of diseases, and people should do everything they can to avoid that, though I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a cause of disease, though it's pretty clearly causally related to cardiovascular problems, and to a much lesser extent, cancer.
Some diseases are mostly or partially preventable, and we should all make a damned good effort to take good care of ourselves and reduce all the risk factors, but please don't try to make it sound like people who suffer from cancer are to blame for their own conditions.
Considering other advances in technology, you could almost double mission efficiency :-)
Someone has already forseen these problems, and come up with a solution.
I agree about the whose suffer from cancer are not to blame for their own condition, it's a very western doctor thing to claim everything is preventable, and it's the patients own fault for getting whatever they have gotten, could have been avoid with a lift style change (western doctors will even give you that line if you where hit by car).
Saying that I believe that we can (could have) prevent cancel. Unfortunately we've chosen to build nuclear reactors, to use nuclear weapons and not care about radiation containment. Hershey's Chocolate factory is ~13 miles from Three Mile Island, which means that we've been feeding (our fat ass selves and) our children highly radio-active chocolate and candies. I was a child when a big cloud rained down on me, this cloud was from Chernobyl. I will probably die of cancer (or get hit by car), I know that I will never know which radio-active particle really caused it or where did it come from, but I do know it could have been prevented.
M0571y H@rml355.
A century ago, when a doctor came across a patient with lung cancer, they would bring in all the interns and say "Look at this, because you'll probably never see another case of lung cancer in your lifetime." What changed? Poeple smoke like crazy now.
We're also seeing kids as young as 2 and three who are already obese (not just overweight, but obese. There's no excuse for a 2-year-old to weigh 70 pounds, or 3-year-olds topping 120 pounds).
The link between breast cancer, diet, and lifestyle is becoming more apparent (consumption of foods such as soy-based products that mimic estrogens, for example, and over-consumption of alcohol are both risk factors).
While I agree that not everybody who has a heart attack or breast cancer is ar fault, I have no sympathy for those who, as I said, do everything they can to ensure they get the disease in the first place.
As for diets: Sure, a waist is a terrible thing to mind, and we all like eating, but being overweight is ultimately a choice - which do you want more, the immediate gratification the food gives, or the long-term gratification of a longer life?
That depends; will it be a longer life that lacks the simple pleasures such as smoking a fine cigar or eating a pumpkin pie?
The McStuff-Ourselves-Silly crowd doesn't have the reputation of savoring quality over quantity, but in a (somewhat twisted, I suppose) way that's exactly what they (we?) do.
Also, some forms of cardiovascular disease are much more preventable then others. Additionally, among women who are not naturally predisposed to these, the recent changes in statistics are certainly due to preventable disease. Does that mean that if you meet a woman who suffered a stroke, she must have caused it? Of course not, and no scientist in their right mind would ever accept that we have sufficient data to make such a claim.
I agreed with all your other points about the unhealthfulness of lethargy and being overweight the first time around, just not your logic about blame since it reverses causality, and takes what you know very well to be a modest statistical association between any one factor and try to claim it is THE cause.
"Deflectors just snapped on! Solar flare detected!"
I think an electromagnetic shield is perfectly feasible and should protect against even strong charged particles. Non-electrically charged particles (like x-rays, gamma radiation) and extremely high strength charged particles could probably be filtered out by a water barrier.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
In the case of someone who gets lung cancer from second-hand smoke. I won't just feel for this person, I am angry, because they are victims in the true meaning of the word. Tobacco manufacturers and retailers are merchants of death, and should be forced to use their products continuously, 24/7/365 until it kills them. In their case, the death penalty is too lenient. The only product that, when used as directed, is fatal, with no compensating benefits to the user.
That being said, the majority of heart and cancer cases are self-inflicted. There's no getting around that. These ARE lifestyle choices, for the majority of the cases. Please note the difference between "most" and "all".
If I see someone who weights in at 300+ pounds, smokes like a chimney, and complains about their recent heart attack/cancer, I'm not going to be sympathetic. On the other hand, someone who HAS taken reasonable (read: rational) measures to avoid self-inflicted diseases WILL have my sympathy - it's just that they are in the minority nowadays, as I've been pointing out in every one of the previous posts.
The original comment that inspired my posts was that we shouldn't be wasting resources on space exploration when we have health problems here on earth - and then the poster went on to complain about problems that are, in MOST cases, preventable, self-inflicted, lifestyle choices.
It is a question of allocating resources - so why waste resources on people who are not going to change their behaviour? There's an oncologist at one of the local hospitals who had a lung removed due to cancer (he of all people should have known the consequences of smoking). Did he stop smoking? No. Is it going to kill him? Sure. Unfortunately, he knows that we're not going to ration health-care to the point where he's forced to make a life-or-death choice TODAY. However, other doctors HAVE refused to continue to deal with patients who won't assume some responsability for their own health. As one doctor put it - If it's not important enough for the patient to make any required changes, why should it be important to him? He'd rather spend his time with patients who are willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary.
There's a reason why they're called "risk factors", not certainties. They're probabilities. If you walk across the street without looking, you probably won't get killed. However, continue doing this all the time, and you probably will become road pizza.
Simple fact, it's not a MODEST statistical correlation (thoug even if it were modest, prudence would dictate trying to mediate risk - after all, it IS a life-and-death matter) - there's a direct correlation between each of the risk factors and increased mortality rates. Smokers are more likely to die prematurely of various cancers than non-smokers. Obese people are more likely to die prematurely of various weight-related diseases than skinny people.
It's like that old joke:
Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Doctor:"Then don't do it!"
People want to have their cake, and eat it too, and supersize it, and have seconds and thirds and eat, not just to the point where they're not hungry, but to where they are stuffed.
Same with someone who insists on having unprotected sex with people who they don't know - don't go crying about getting AIDS afterwards.
Same with someone who smokes and gets lung cancer.
I'm not inhuman. I feel sorry for them. But it's their own fault in all the aforementioned cases.
We need to build 3 great ships. In the first ship go all the adminstrators and managers and lawyers and politicians. Into the second ship will go all the engineers and technicians and other people who are not actively employed in building ships. Into the third ship will go all the construction workers since they will be required until the thrid great ship has been completed.
Of course - after the first ship has left we'll cancel plans for the second and third unless the species of administrators and managers and lawyers adn politicians happen to repopulate.
Funny how the magical technology that flew to the Moon has completely disappeared while the dangers of Space radiation simply wont go away dispite the vain assurances of many devoted Lunatics that they dont matter. Funny how NASA has failed so miserably at for 30 years trying to accomplish next to nothing when the vainly insist that they really can do the impossible. Get a life, it was only a TV show! The vain lies you insist everyone must believe only sew the seeds of destruction of your real manned space program which couldn't be more useless. If you ever want to begin to understand the real world of Space Exploration realizing that you cant fly to the Moon is a neccesary first step, otherwise you're just dreaming. Nothing will come of these of these out of this world fantasies because they have nothing to do with real spaceflight. You've got the rest of your lives to figure it out but if you cant after 30 years will you be able to realize it after 50 years?
On your other point, there is another answer. I know the one you propose is simple and fast and gets the job done, but it has the nasty side effect that about 1/2 of the people in the world have to die.
There are good answers out there, we just have to find them. We have gotten around several large imposible problems in the past and we can get around this one.
If there is, and we were just too lazy to look for it, I want you and all the people that think like you to look at least a few of those people in the eye and tell them that you are sorry, but they have to die because there are too many of us...
CDC sets aside money for the states often called "Ryan White" funds by DOH workers that is specifically for caring for those with AIDS. It can not be spent of prevention. If you read one of the webpages about Ryan White you may understand why CDC thinks this is so important.