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A Mars Mission's Greatest Challenge: Radiation

Posted by michael on from the foil-underwear dept.

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."

3 of 417 comments (clear)

  1. Invalid Comparison by crow · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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... :)

  2. magnetosphere by cryan7755 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    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.

  3. How About... by ImTwoSlick · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Using superconductors to create your own local magnetosphere?