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!"

Comments

warping of space...

[doublebackslash]

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

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

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

And then you get...

[j_cavera]

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.

The real reason for nacells

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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?

another solution for Mars colonists

[WormholeFiend]

would be to send a lot of them there... knowing that a majority would die from the exposure.

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

evolution is the key to colonizing other environments.

For the suits on mars

[foniksonik]

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.

Re:For the suits on mars

[silentbozo]

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

The other problem is that while this plan might be able to stave off bone loss in high-load areas of your skeleton (ie, legs, portions of spine), it doesn't affect the acceleration felt by muscles and bones not directly impacted by a higher load from where the suit contacts your body. It also doesn't affect how low gravity reduces load on your heart to get the blood from your feet to your lungs.

Although, now that I think about it, the increased physical demands of trying to move and control 3 times your body mass (even in a low grav-planet like Mars) might prove to have certain benefits - no more need for exercise sessions...

water.

[torpor]

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 ...

Re:water.

[cjameshuff]

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

The problem is that this requires putting a lot of mass into space, and then dragging that mass around wherever you go. Also, you have to carry enough water to protect against relatively brief periods of higher radiation, while with this shielding system, you could conceivably just overbuild the shielding systems and redirect more power to them when necessary.

If orbital mining gets started, we will probably have more than enough water to use for passive habitat shielding, but for anything that needs to accelerate or be lifted into orbit from the surface, it's just too much dead mass.

Re:Shielding

[barakn]

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

The real reason to use liquid hydrogen is to slow down protons and neutrons efficiently. In perfectly elastic collisions, momentum and energy are most easily transferred between objects of equal mass. To visualize this, imagine trying to play a game of pool using a cue ball made of styrofoam. It bounces off the other balls without imparting much energy to them, right? The hydrogen will quickly slow down the protons and neutrons until they are "thermalized", i.e. have the same kinetic energy spectrum as the hydrogen. Then a secondary process occurs. Protons happen to have the largest thermal neutron absorption cross section known. The protons eat the slow neutrons, releasing gamma rays and becoming deuterons in the process, or the neutrons will just spontaneously decay. Secondary shielding might be necessary, and yes, layers of metal will do the job. They pack enough electrons into a small space that they can slow down the electrons and the negatively charged members of the muon and pion families and absorb the gamma rays.