Slashdot Mirror
NASA Wants Revolutionary Radiation Shielding Tech
coondoggie writes "Long term exposure to radiation is one of the biggest challenges in long-duration human spaceflights, and NASA is now looking for what it calls 'revolutionary' technology that would help protect astronauts from harmful exposure. 'It is believed that the best strategy for radiation protection and shielding for long duration human missions is to use electrostatic active radiation shielding while, in concert, taking the full advantage of the state-of-the-art evolutionary passive (material) shielding technologies for the much reduced and weaken radiation that may escape and hit the spacecraft.'"
Nope. Completely different type of radiation.
In space, the main problem (unless your spacecraft is nuclear-powered) are high energy cosmic rays.
In Japan, the issue is with radionuclide contamination.
Also, NASA's looking for a way to keep external radiation out - in Japan they're trying to contain radioactive substances within a vessel that contains superheated water that is pressurizing it, water which is unfortunately radioactive (resulting in the steam being radioactive if they vent it)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And . . . jeeze: "Water, when exposed to vacuum, freezes."
No, it evaporates.
Or to be more precise, it evaporates, and the loss of heat due to the latent heat of vaporization results in cooling, which in turn results in freezing when the temperature gets sufficiently low (after which point you will still have some cooling due to sublimation of solid ice)..