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Trip To Mars Could Damage Astronauts' Brains
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Alex Knapp reports that research by a team at the Rochester Medical Center suggests that exposure to the radiation of outer space could accelerate the onset of Alzheimer's disease in astronauts. 'Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts... Exposure to ... equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer's disease' says M. Kerry O'Banio. Researchers exposed mice with known timeframes for developing Alzheimer's to the type of low-level radiation that astronauts would be exposed to over time on a long space journey. The mice were then put through tests that measured their memory and cognitive ability and the mice exposed to radiation showed significant cognitive impairment. It's not going to be an easy problem to solve, either. The radiation the researchers used in their testing is composed of highly charged iron particles, which are relatively common in space. 'Because iron particles pack a bigger wallop it is extremely difficult from an engineering perspective to effectively shield against them,' says O'Banion. 'One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete.'"
Once you leave the atmosphere of this blue planet, *everything* will kill you. No amount of engineering, terraforming, or any other science fiction magic will ever make any other body within human reach survivable for long, and certainly not without HEAVY and CONSTANT support from earth.
There is no earthly analogy. Even the most hostile environments on earth usually have at least SOME oxygen, water, soil, air pressure--*something* that could make it at least *somewhat* survivable. Leave earth, and finding even *one* of these conditions becomes very rare. Establishing even the smallest of colonies out there will take orders of magnitude more resources than it will take to solve even the worst problems here. Short of a planet-obliterating collision, we'll always have a better shot on earth. And even with such a collision, having a colony will only slightly delay the inevitable, since no colony out there could survive for long without constant support from earth.
No other body is survivable in our solar system. And with the next-closest solar system at over 100,000 years journey away in the fastest craft we can build, don't think of escaping to another solar system either.
We are stuck here. There is no escape. Dream all you want--write stories about it, make movies about it. But we ain't leaving.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
A trip to mars is probably "one way" so who's worried about Alzheimer's...?
No sig today...
The sudden stop on impact will cause the most damage. It's not the fall, but the sudden stop that kills you.
Wrapping the ship in water frozen or not, is a far more practical protection measure than wrapping it in lead.
You can do a lot more with water once you get there.
tin foil hats... duh...
It seems like a six foot thick lead wall is not that big an obstacle to overcome.
Sure, it's expensive to get that much fuel into space but we're talking about a frickin' trip to mars here. It's not gonna be cheap.
No air, no water, no food, no sleep, no freezing, no unusual housing, no doctors, no psychologists, no morticians...
Robots win.
Strong magnetic fields created to deflect incoming charged particles would make much more sense than having 6 feet of shielding on all of our ships. It would conserve fuel use and make whatever ships are built much easier to handle in space (stopping that much mass during assembly could be very difficult). A more costly, but still better, alternative would be taking asteroids and hollowing them out for ships. Getting 6 feet of plating on a ship meant for more than a dozen people would be incredibly arduous in any other scenario.
a 6' shield of concrete? Why not hollow out asteroids that are near our orbit, and adjust their orbit to transit between earth and mars?
their tinfoil hate ???
Just asking
No lead, no cement, just foil !! Tin, not aluminium !! Then let the stars be your future !!
No amount of engineering, terraforming, or any other science fiction magic will ever make any other body within human reach survivable for long
Space is far more hostile than any planet, and we can manage to survive up there for quite a long time.
Terraforming is not "magic", and small scale examples of humans changing conditions where they live abound.
Even the most hostile environments on earth usually have at least SOME oxygen, water, soil, air pressure
The moon even has most of those.
Mars has all of them.
no colony out there could survive for long without constant support from earth.
They will not if you never try.
We are stuck here. There is no escape.
You might be, but all the trapping being done is by your own mind, not any kind of scientific basis.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's likely a line of millions of people (myself included) who would happily line up to risk their own life for such a step forward in mankind.
Is a strong magnetic field not an effective solution for the solar wind? Heck, with large enough solar arrays, you could use the solar wind to power a magnetic field that would protect the crew cabin from the solar wind. There's something poetic in that. Alternately, if fusion ever gets off the ground as a power and thrust source, you could just use its magnetic field to protect the crew.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Do we have enough empirical evidence to quantify how many more cosmic rays one would be exposed to at some point X between here and mars, compared to being on board the ISS, or the earth or moon's surface?
If it's only 1% more than an ISS astronaut would experience, then it doesn't seem that risky. If it's a 10-fold increase, that's a different story.
A quick googling doesn't turn up anything. The TFA is in Forbes, and is full of "coulds".
It seems to me that the Forbes target audience is the same that hates space, and all the money wasted on NASA, which I'm sure they'd rather be given to the banking or insurance industries.
It only takes about 7 T*m to get the equivalent level of shielding on a spacecraft as to what you have on earth. With modern HTS tape conductors this is not an insurmountable technical problem. In fact we will be testing a small prototype for just such a device where I work in a few weeks.
Colonization of other worlds is ultimately about survival of the human species. Earth only has another 1 billion years or so of habitability, presuming we don't get hit by a Tunguska-sized asteroid between now and then.
We have the choice of traveling to the planets (and eventually the stars) or becoming extinct. And we're the first species in Earth's 4½ billion years to recognize that we have this choice and that there's simply no better time to act on it.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
If magnetic fields protect the earth, we can't the same be done to a space craft?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Highly charged Iron particles huh? Hmm, how about generating a rotating magnetic field around the ship? aka "Force Field".
You know a ship of that size will have a nuclear power source of one sort or another like many other of our space craft have and do, so it should be capable of powering a magnetic field generator. Should be old tech even.
I don't understand why they would have to wrap the whole ship in a 6-foot thick lead shield. That's incredibly inefficient. Just make 6-foot thick lead helmets instead. It's a lot cheaper and their brains will still be protected from the killer brain rays.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
which can be tapped for oxygen, provide shielding, provide water and so on. It's not as good as lead, but you need water anyway. You may as well multipurpose the stuff.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Assuming the astronauts are sufficiently supported with food, air, and water, so they can physically survive, and that they are shielded from radiation, I see no reason they WON'T survive. The only people to suffer brain damage will be the ones that don't get to make the trip, from banging their heads against the walls.
Me: "Here's a pen dad, sign the picture for them" ...
Dad: "Why do they want my signature?"
Me: "You were an astronaut when you were younger, you went to the moon"
Dad: "What?"
Me: "Yes, you went to the moon."
Dad: "We've been to the moon? That is amazing!!!"
Me: "Yes Dad, and *you* have been to the moon"
Dad: "*I've* been to the moon?!?"
Me: "Absolutely, see that picture you are signing? That is you"
Dad: "OK. Why am I signing this?"
Me: "Your were an astronaut when you were younger, you went to the moon"
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Excelente artigo, você deveria escrever mais sobre isto! Toxicologia
Its all about exposure time. The longest Apollo mission lasted about two weeks. Mars missions will last many months, possibly a year or more.
Have gnu, will travel.
A trip to mars is probably "one way" so who's worried about Alzheimer's...?
And the best part is once there you wont even remember why you'd want to leave anyway!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trip to the moon, 3 days, trip to mars 3 months in the best possible scenario. If the moon landing was a scam, the USSR would have absolutely 100% for sure called us out on it.
Good-bye
The moon is still slightly protected by earths magnetic field. The field doesn't just suddenly end; inverse square law, and all that.
Not only that, extremely dilute atmospheric particles have been discovered on the far side of the moon - the moon is technically inside Earth's atmosphere.
People like you were also prognosticating that we were all going to starve, that the environment would be destroyed by pollution, that we'd run out of oil, that we'd freeze to death, that we'd boil to death... it ain't happening.
The solar system is a tremendously rich place, full of water, hydrocarbons, and metals, in convenient large chunks that are easy to exploit and easy to move around. They provide everything we need in a form that is far simpler to use than anything on earth. Food and oxygen production are trivial in space: there's plenty of sun, space, water, and carbon. Add some algae, and you get all the oxygen and food you would ever need.
As soon as we capture and exploit the first chunks of iron, carbon, and water in space, there will be an explosion of innovation and movement into the solar system; it will make the changes of the last century look like child's play. Within a few decades, engineering in space will dwarf the entire infrastructure we have built on earth. And we need no new technology for any of that.
I would guess that the difference is the exposure time. Mars and back is a trip that will take more than a year. The Moon and back is a few days.
My brain is already fairly damaged from smoking so much pot in high school, so a little more from cosmos radiation, wont matter..
OK, I bite. Launch to another solar system, say 10 light years away ( .01% of the distance across our Milky Way).
Assuming we run at 5% of the speed of light, avoid radiation damage (hopefully avoiding plasma damage to the spacecraft from those pesky neutrons and protons, let alone heavier "things", that means 200 years to get to the planet with the first explorer group and maybe it is simply uninhabitable for any number of reasons you can imagine: temp right, oxygen wrong, oxygen right water wrong, organisms which view us as yummy.
We would have to grow humans, enroute, kill them eventually (no retirement) and feed them to the plants to sustain their children and go through this for at least 5 generations.
It's hard to believe that we had proper shielding back in the 60s and 70s when it comes to protecting ourselves from any meaningful exposure. Check out what these suits are made of.
they've found the main cause of Alzheimer's? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think that the earth's magnetic field block *all* cosmic radiation... Perhaps the bit that slips through is causing this horrible disease.
They should do a study that looks at how well Alzheimer's patients living environment would naturally shield them from these particles (i.e. if they worked in an office tower, which would provide >=6 feet of concrete shielding)
I'm not surprised if this guys trip to Mars was anything to go by: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSiFXhrxE3Y
I wonder how much water it would take to shield a majority of the radiation, scientists have played around with water shelters for years for solar storms. Simply place the water tanks for the astronauts around the spacecraft hull in 6"-1' thick layers. Combined with some form of magnetic shielding (which would likely be very effective against iron particles) I doubt this is much of an issue.
This is the single most convincing argument. But I am sure there are nut cases who will argue that the USSR was in on the conspiracy.
Spacesuits were used long before the moon landings, so if your reason to doubt the landings is the suits you'll have to doubt the orbital + EVA missions as well. The very thin shielding used in the moon missions would be a problem if they stayed for years (like in space stations, that do use better shielding). But for a short stay a little radiation isn't a deal breaker. And, really, if they had to fake it why not fake a whole base instead?
Researches found that eating raw fruit was damaging to the health of children. I guess some kid had to bite the bullet and peel that orange *and* eat it, to prove them wrong. That's how it always goes. And btw, Mars? Why on earth?? There are far more interesting places.
Seriously, it is the return trip that will do the most damage. The reason is that we will not send as much fuel there to comeback with. IOW, the return trip will be slow. So, send the ppl on a one-way and put them underground. Once we have NERVA going, and can make a trip in 1 month, THEN allow them to come back.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I've been space out plenty of times and haven't suffered any ... uh.. what.. any er.... hmm.. why am I on Ebay buying troll dolls?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
As opposed to the idiot political ones.
How about generating a strong magnetic field around the ship? Maybe even bring it into what's effectives an RTG?
mark
Fix the people.
Re-engineer people so we don't need:
1) High temperatures
2) Oxygen
3) Liquid water
4) Carbon-based food as an energy source
5) Shielding from cosmic rays
6) Gravity
7) High pressure
8) Fast travel times (i.e., much longer shelf life for people)
A solid-state person who is radiation tolerant and built to subsist on low levels of solar radiation and live in a low temp/low pressure space environment would be *much* better suited to space. And once you're suited to space, why, why EVER go back down onto a planet? Oh, and if your primary brain is destroyed by the impact of a micrometeoroid, just boot up your backup! Go set up civilization in the asteroid belt, and go to sleep while you go over to the next star system!
--PM
The way I see it, it couldn't damage their brains. It would also have the advantage of getting them off Earth.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
You forget, going at speeds that you can compare to C makes time go slower for you. Going to Alpha Centari would take about 8 years observed by crew time. Going 100 lightyears would take 100 observed by crew years assuming a speed of .5c.
I remember reading an article about a plasma or "electromagnetic" shield which scientists began working on several years ago. It was a relatively simple concept. This isn't it, but it's close: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/11/04/171242/experimental-magnetic-shield-against-cosmic-rays
If it's iron particles, why not use magnetic fields to shield against them?
From the paper, you noticed that they irradiated the mice very quickly.
"using a foam tube holder positioned at the center of a 20×20 cm beam of iron ions accelerated to 1 GeV/ at a dose rate ranging from 0.1–1 Gy/min. Male mice received total doses of either 10 cGy or 100 cGy. Female mice received only a 100 cGy dose."
1Gy/min is a lot dose in a very short period. So for the female they gave all the dose in a timeframe measured in mins. At lower dose rates, cells repair the DNA damage better. I think that lower dose rates would be more likely to occur in a mars trip.
For those without much radiation background, 100cGy delivered in 1 min isn't the same as 100cGy delivered over 6 months.
So what? space travel is dangerous wtf did you expect?
In retrospect rocket engineers estimated the survival of Alan Shepard in Freedom 7 to around 50% !!
The moon is still slightly protected by earths magnetic field. The field doesn't just suddenly end; inverse square law, and all that.
Actually, the moon is usually not protected by the earth's magnetic field. The earth's magnetic field is greatly affected by solar wind so that the part of the field projecting towards the sun is squished and the part away from the sun forms a long "tail"
If you look at this website, you can see that the moon only spends about 6 days/month inside the earth's magnetic tail.
Not only that, extremely dilute atmospheric particles have been discovered on the far side of the moon - the moon is technically inside Earth's atmosphere.
I think this is just false. Although some missions have detected traces of an atmosphere on parts of the moon (e.g., Apollo detected Argon, O2, CO2, CH4, etc, and LRO detected H3), these are thought to be from outgassing or sputtering from material inside the moon itself. The reason that some of them are similar to earth atmopheric components are that the earth-moon system may have actually been formed from prehistoric collision
Seems to me that more and more, these landing were scams all along.
The retro-reflectors set up by the Apollo astronauts are still functioning, and are
routinely used to measure the precise distance of the Moon. In other words,
if you shine a bright enough laser at the Moon, you'll see six bright spots where
it is reflected right back at you: the six Apollo landing sites. Anyone who doubts
the reality of the moon landings is just ignoring facts.
1st instead of using a chemical rocket engine to get there after almost a year - use a much faster engine technology to get there in a couple of months or less. Then make sure you surround the living quarters (not command quarters) with the crew's water and other stores as well as long term propellent tanks and you'll get your shielding.
One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete.
Or... build it inside a per-existing asteroid. Something that solves numerous problems. These aren't problems that are a surprise to anyone that's spent any time at all researching the subject. It's like saying "researchers have found that prolonged activity underwater will lead to death my inhalation of water! And Pressures down deep get so extremely high, the only way to protect the diver would be to wrap them in a solid steel tube several inches thick!!!" Gasp! oh however will we do it?!?!
The trip to Mars is one-way anyway.
We already have the technology to stop cosmic radiation and it's compact enough to go onto a spacecraft. It's called an artificial magnetosphere and they use them to control plasma in fusion reactors. In fact, you don't even have to use one as powerful as the ones used in fusion reactors because the plasma from large solar flares isn't as intense as a nearby fusion reaction. It's a lightweight alternative to caking the ship in lead or concrete, and it astounds me that this wasn't postulated first. I think this is very embarrassing for O'Banion.
The sign of a true conspiracy theorist, you ignored the most important part of the GP's post... length of exposure.
If I'm in the sun for 30 minutes with no sunscreen, I will likely start to get a little pink but no major issues and by the next day I'll be fine.
However, if I decide to stay in the sun for 3 hours, I am going to get a severe sunburn that will be painful for many days. This behavior also increases my risk of skin cancer later in my life.
Isn't not a hard concept.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
....we have yet to be visited by any other intelligent alien life?
Notice, I said if it's true. I don't know that this makes any sense. I'm not a scientist. But taken together:
You can't go faster than light.
Long-term exposure to radiation does doubleplusungood things to the brain.
seem to suggest that travelling long distances in space is just not a good idea.
I hope that this is wrong, but I do think it'd explain a lot.
Lord Kelvin was quite an interesting guy, to say the least. The following quotes are also attributed to him by reliable sources: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement." "X-rays will prove to be a hoax." "Radio has no future".
Spaceships and aeroplanes are incomparable. We know of no greater existence than space itself. We need to forget this silly notion of space travel IF we want to survive. Otherwise, our own lack of attention to what is happening on (and to) THIS planet is going to kill us.
hate to break it to you guys but we never went to the moon for the same reasons
Three who've spent all at one time. I wonder if they've noticed any problems with those astronauts. I believe next year there will be two people who stay on the ISS for a full year to update medical knowledge.
Being on Earth is a death sentence too.
love is just extroverted narcissism
By definition, my magic wand will do exactly that.
meh
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Yes, but radiation dose is a cumulative dose. The effect may not be exactly the same as receiving it all at once in a microburst, but the chance for DNA mutation is probably statistically close to being the same.
Of course, if we come up with much more advanced gene therapy capabilities, we may not even have to worry about doses that are less than quickly lethal. Repairing the damage to DNA sequences in humans is definitely not here yet, but I think it would require only incremental refinements now, and not a revolution at this point. This issue could eventually resolve down to people who have been on space trips having to visit a clinic after any extended period outside of protected areas.
Totally agree. Even on Krypton my ancestors lived in a kryptonite crystalline dome to protect ourselves against the "highly charged iron particles". I do miss my homeland. :(
What makes you think nobody lives in the Gobi desert? There are lots of towns and roads there. Right smack in the middle is Sainshand, a city of 25000 with a railway station; have a look on Google Maps. An hour south is a centuries-old Buddhist monastery.
It's the same with the Sahara and deserts in the US. There is a ranch right in Death Valley in Furnace Creek (guess where that got its name). And just because you find it "ugly" doesn't mean everybody does.
A strong magnetic field is a lot better, than concrete.
Bring a small safe nuke reactor with you like that on subs.
And if the brain can be hurt, the computers must be as sensitive too.
Oh and make the sleeping quarters safer, or have some skull cap to protect the brain.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"Yes, but radiation dose is a cumulative dose. The effect may not be exactly the same as receiving it all at once in a microburst, but the chance for DNA mutation is probably statistically close to being the same."
You get the same damages, but you also have DNA repair mechanisms and other cellular repair mechanisms that can handle a certain amount of trouble. Yes, you might get unlucky and get a mutation that makes that cell go immediately cancerous (Think of it as a golden BB). But, what happens more often is the damage builds up faster in large numbers of cells than it can be repaired and causes a cascade of problems.
A fast dose acts differently than a cumulative one over time. (That's not saying either is good. They're just different.)
Also, there are a number of effects that could be happening. Alzheimers only becomes symptomatic after a fair bit of damage. You have a neuronal reserve capability that can deal with some damage and still keep working fine. This is why drinking alcohol doesn't immediately cause neurological deficits. Though some cells are killed, the brain is redundant and other cells can pick up the slack as it were. After many years of heavy drinking, enough damage has been done that problems start to show up.
Almost anything that depletes neuronal reserve would be expected to accelerate alzheimers as it thus takes less damage from alzheimers itself to become symptomatic. This is why things like mild brain injury or chronic alcoholism would be expected increase the risk of alzheimers. (That's definitely seen for mild brain injury. Alcoholic dementia is similar to alzheimers in some ways and is thus hard to separate and get good cause and effect data so it can only be said to "probably" increase thge risk.)
The mice are already prone to alzheimers, so they have a major head start and may well react far more to something that kille some brain cells.
This study is an indication that there may be trouble of this kind. Further work is needed to determine whether this is likely to happen in significant amounts to human astronauts exposed at lower rates over longer times.
There are nearly 10,000 known Near Earth Objects (NEOs), and another 10,000 Near Mars Objects (NMOs) are expected (2 of which are known to orbit Mars). We have not found as many NMOs yet because they are farther away, but there is every reason to expect them to exist, and likely even more since they are closer to the source in the Main Belt.
No matter what orbit you choose, there will be some of these objects in nearby orbits. So I propose setting up "Transfer Habitats" in convenient orbits to get to and from Mars. You would start with some pressurized modules brought from Earth, then bring in asteroid rocks from nearby. This has numerous advantages:
* Solves the radiation problem, if you wrap a layer of rock shielding around your modules.
* Solves the boredom problem for the crew. They have more living space, and can spend their time growing food and extracting fuel from the rock.
* Reduces mass from Earth, because of the previously mentioned food and fuel you make yourself
* Eventually you can produce pure metals, glass, and other products to expand the habitat, and later ship to the next location (Phobos) where you repeat the process. Once the first of these shielded habitats is set up - in Earth orbit, the rest of them can come naturally over time.
* Producing fuel in Earth Orbit and at Phobos makes it easier to land on the Moon and Mars. It totally changes the economics from "hauling lots of fuel with expensive rockets from Earth" to "making fuel and other supplies wherever I am".
All of this is laid out in more detail in the book I'm working on (Section 4.12 in particular):
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods
Dani Eder
(ex Boeing, now independent designer of self-supporting communities)
How exactly does one know a mouse has Alzheimer's disease? Does it start recounting its experience in the War? Thinking it's married to some ex?
Alzheimers will need to be cured in the next couple of decades anyway or first world nation states will go bankrupt looking after old folks. Once the cure is available: problem solved.
-Bob-
Or the government doesn't want astronauts or others who go that far into space to report what they *actually* see out there. Look at the moon landings for instance. It's a well known fact that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong got sick whenever they were personally asked to recollect their moon experiences. I don't think the 'Alzheimer Symptoms' they are describing are due to natural forces in space - rather they are induced by drugs and MKUltra type programs prior to their visitation to space, so that they are conditioned to react a certain way when they see actual evidence of life not on our planet. So yes, making someone appear to have 'Alzheimer' is a clever way of dealing with this 'problem' (government perspective)
This will protect us from cosmic rays: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/HateMail/Edam/ST2.jpg
Yes, until the colony becomes self-sufficient long enough to decide "fuck giving all our resources to stupid earth, we're our own planet now". Then at best we will form a trading deal with Mars based humans, and at worst they'll become completely at odds with us. Colonies tend to desire and fight for independence after a certain point.
Just send people who are already stupid. There's plenty of 'em.
Table-ized A.I.
Is that a pun? Can't tell.
Table-ized A.I.
Back in the 70s I read about GE testing the helmets from the lunar missions. Etch tracks in the Lexan helmets provided data about the degree of damage by cosmic ray particles. The researcher was quoted as saying that in a 6-month trip an astronaut would loose about one half brain capacity.
Spaceships and aeroplanes are incomparable. We know of no greater existence than space itself. We need to forget this silly notion of space travel IF we want to survive. Otherwise, our own lack of attention to what is happening on (and to) THIS planet is going to kill us.
Don't worry. We spend far far far more attention to what is happening in football than we do on space travel.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Someone else tackled the time dilation portion of the argument, so I'll go with some of the other arguments you make here:
... that means 200 years to get to the planet with the first explorer group and maybe it is simply uninhabitable for any number of reasons you can imagine: temp right, oxygen wrong, oxygen right water wrong, organisms which view us as yummy.
I am every bit in favor of sending unmanned craft in advance of any manned mission so that we might find out what resources are in the target system and what resources we'd need to take with us.
And if we don't find a nearby system -- say, one within 15 light-years -- that could support human life, then let's take an ecosystem with us. Imagine hollowing out a large asteroid like Ceres, supplying it with water from Jupiter's rings and moons, then boosting it out of Sol orbit on a multi-generational trip to Proxima Centauri. What you describe in your last paragraph is something that happens regularly on Earth anyway; the challenge would be scaling the ecosystem down to something that would fit inside a sphere with about the surface area of Alaska without scaling it down too much.
Of course, there are a lot of other challenges, too. A lot. But the reward would be a human settlement orbiting a star that will last trillions of years with little or no chance of being wiped out by external forces. That's a reward well worth the risks, isn't it?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
"Just send people who are already stupid. There's plenty of 'em"
C. M. Kornbluth already wrote a scifi story about that.
If the astronauts mostly stay in a confined area, then the shielding volume can be kept relatively small. Then problem is that they may go nuts in confined quarters for so long. Some kind of hibernation may need to be developed.
Table-ized A.I.
In space, presumably you could keep the coils cool with minimal energy cost, so you just spin up the fields once and then presumably pay a small cost in maintenance?
--PM
Okay, drinking it is out. But one of the advantages of water over other options is that you can dump it relatively easily if you need to lighten the load for an emergency, such as in the case of a fuel leak or the need to rush home (via less weight). Yes, you risk bodily damage from exposure if you yank the cord, but at least you get home.
Water may also be easier to incrementally fill up in orbit, since launching such a bulky ship in one shot is probably out.
Then again, a similar argument could be made for packing the sides with extra fuel, perhaps in a non-volatile form, such as the catalyst separated from the reactant. I imagine a combination of substances could be used to hedge the risk: water, fuel, food, spare parts, duct tape, etc. If you are going to have to bulk up, then bulk up on stuff that may serve different kinds of emergency needs.
Apollo 13 taught us you have to be flexible during unanticipated emergencies.
Table-ized A.I.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C Clarke.
Now I'll have to change my sig. Again.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I've been space out plenty of times and haven't suffered any ... uh.. what.. any er.... hmm.. why am I in congress pushing for for less taxes?
How do they solve this problem in Star Trek and Star Wars? Shouldn't we just wait for the movies to explain how this is done and then "make it so"?
"Radiation shielding is hard, its not impossible."
Good points. Freeman Dyson says much the same, and does some calculations showing that in one of his essays, where he says, adjusted for inflation, the costs to go from Europe to the Americas was on the order of what it would cost now to go into space. Remember, many people coming over to the "colonies" came as indentured servants who had to work off their travel for seven years. So, as a ballpark figure, let's guesstimate that person was giving up US$100K per year for inflation-adjusted wages (people typically worked six days a week and fourteen hours a day back then), and that's US$700,000 as an indenture. So, the move to North America was not that cheap for many.
On radiation shielding, see Marshall Savage's "The Millennial Project" where he suggests simply having two layers of transparent plastic with six feet of water between them. We could get the water in space from asteroids or comets (or launch the water from the earth or the moon via mass driver). Radiation problem solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Other ideas from the Carter Administration:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
Read James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" and "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" for some realistic hard sci-fi set in habitats.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm
More ideas:
http://www.openvirgle.net/
All that said though, I would point out that the same sorts of technologies we need to live in space (such as near 100% recycling, healthier materials to be around, improved agriculture, portable doctoring and a better understanding of human nutrition and health, flexible manufacturing, improved governing processes for small communities, accessible digital libraries, improved conflict resolution skills, and so on), are mostly the *same* things we need to make Spaceship Earth work for everybody. So, overall, there is no deep conflict between an interest in space habitats and trying to make the Earth a better place.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
... I've been involved with: http://oscomak.net/
http://www.openvirgle.net/
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
Maybe some ideas there might be useful in growing your efforts.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Solved long ago. Spherical hab unit, shell of H2O outside the hab portion, just as thick as it needs to be. That shell is drinking water, fish habitat, exercise area, possibly even propulsion mass.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
An excellent point and a good example of why 'accelerated ageing' tests found in other circumstances are an incomplete solution with the potential for creating a false sense of security.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
A physical shield only needs to be in the direction of the sun (for most of the journey anyway).
This "umbrella" shield only needs to be big enough to protect the living quarters.
If only we had a cheap, near-unlimited source of energy, we could wrap the spaceship in a strong magnetic field that would deflect the majority of ionized particles. Mimic how the Earth has been successfully doing it for billions of years to protect life.
I reckon NOT going to mars is more likely to do brain damage.
Literally every single 'mission to mars' themed sci-fi book answers this problem. You shield the hab module with water which is useful for all kinds of things and can be replenished (presumably) once you get there. You also have a small extra-shielded room in case of solar storm. Finally, astronauts would be the first to tell you that in order to travel in space you have to accept a certain amount of inherent risk. I doubt the possibility of alzheimer's keeps any of them up at night
...scientists are worried that Mars astronauts will develop superpowers due to increased galactic radiation.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Wow you have REALLY light skin... Takes me about 3hrs in the sun to start to get pink and 8 to get a severe sunburn and that's in bad conditions.
"Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts..." Think of the super powers you'd get when going to those cosmic radiation fields... That far outweighs the dangers.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
Just add more gravity and a magnetosphere and you can start terraforming and expect all that lovely breathable atmosphere to stay put without needing a lid on top.
What has happened to this place? It's a bit depressing to see people here that just got a keyword list from SF as if it was a list of magic spells instead of actually thinking about the concepts. "Just terraform" is like saying "just be John Malkovitch" - it's not going to happen to wildly dissimilar planets and there's other ways to do things other than a brute force approach depending on magical transformation.
what's that thing they use for radiation?
how many feet of tungsten would be needed or would the mass-equivalent be just the same as the same amount of lead or concrete ?
or is tungsten something that is wasted on iShit and tablets as well ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
The UID game is pointless here - like thousands of others I was here on day one, but didn't bother to get an account (Mandelbrute in my case, not a much lower UID than my current one) until years later when ACs got modded down (then lost the password and needed a new account - doh!).
Anyway to keep the air in you'd need something like a bigger planet with a magnetic field (bloody hard to even work out if it's possible at all, let alone do it with infinite resources) for the full terraform, but for colonies you just need a roof!.
I should have attached to one of SuperKendall's idiotic posts but I hit my boiling point after reading a pile of magical thinking then I read the first line of your post and saw that "terraform" word again - sorry about that.
I didn't realize that questioning the authenticity of our Moon Landing would result not only in a negative score, but also be perceived as flamebait. Of course, the US government has always been truthful throughout the ages to it's citizens and as such never deceived the American people or anyone else for that matter. Sheesh.