Anticipating the Dangers of Space Radiation (utexas.edu)

aarondubrow writes: Astronauts and future space tourists face risks from radiation, which can cause illness and injure organs. Researchers from Texas A&M, NASA, and the University of Texas Medical Branch used supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center to investigate the radiation exposure related to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory mission, planned for the 1960s and 1970s [but never actually flown], during which a dangerous solar storm occurred. They also explored the historical limitations of radiation research and how such limitations could be addressed in future endeavors.
Supercomputers could be "a game-changer" when it comes to predicting the risks of space radiation, allowing NASA to make life-saving decisions in real-time, argues one of the researchers. During that 1972 solar storm, skin and organs would've risked being exposed to radiation in excess of NASA limits, though one of the study's co-authors believes that rather than risking harm to the astronauts, NASA would've promptly terminated that mission.

"Though the study explored the historical missions, the researchers had in mind future commercial space flights, like those proposed by SpaceX or Virgin Galactic, that will likely travel a similar orbit to best show off the beauty of Earth from space."

Comments

Tinpot space-station designs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do away with them. Big, 1G-simulating spinning space-wheels with nuclear-powered magnetic field generators to redirect all of that solar-shit to enormous lead-lined shields at either end.

Sure, it'll cost a couple of trillion, but just take it from your war-fund. You don't need any more of those.

Mars mission?

[b0s0z0ku]

How will this be dealt with on a Mars mission where trajectory can't be changed much, and abort isn't a practical option? Will surrounding a part of the spacecraft with water tanks for shielding be enough? Will NASA just hope for no solar storms during the mission?

Re:Mars mission?

[tquasar]

Will my lead underwear protect me?

Re:Mars mission?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It will be dealt with probabilistically. As in, you'll hope the probability of a high exposure event will be reasonably small. Once you're on site, you can burrow into the surface.

Trump should be anticipating dangers of prison

[Anonymous Coward]

for his bitch beta traitor sons and retarded lawyers.

We're here on the Earth.

[Anonymous Coward]

One possible solution is to cancel the journey to the deep space: everybody will be live.

I think that a superior being did pick the best planet of the Milky Galaxy (it's the Earth) and did cultivate our DNA here until that the population did grow.

Water shield

[AlanObject]

I have wondered about this and haven't found a definitive answer: if you use water for a radiation shield, does it become contaminated and unusable after it absorbs the output of a solar storm?

Even if it does it seems to me the best option.

Re:Water shield

[Anonymous Coward]

if you use water for a radiation shield, does it become contaminated and unusable after it absorbs the output of a solar storm?

There's nothing to contaminate it with, in the end the electromagnetic radiation might break a few chemical bonds, which can be really bad for DNA strands (i.e. cause cancer), but in the case of water it'll just recombine and warm up a bit. It's conceivable that if the trip is long enough and if there's enough radiation that a shuttle might heat up too much as most materials radiate quite badly when in a vacuum, but heat-disipating materials have long been studied by a number of institutions.

Re:Water shield

[Anonymous Coward]

Deposits contaminate, the wave doesn't.

It's common for post-event debris/residue to contain radioactive material. That material emits radiation. It gets in the air and soil. It gets in the food. It gets in your body. The deposits are deadly.

But it's impossible for something to directly contain the EM wave itself. The water warms up (a lot?). That's it.

http://www.sciencephoto.com/me...

Putting emissive material into strawberries (soil) = very bad. But only-exposed strawberries (or water) will *contain no emissive deposits*.

Note: Other exposed elements can escalate into being emissive (eg an ore isn't "contaminated" by EM wave, but "activated")

Note: A shield exposed to cosmic radiation may not be emissive, but still compromised (eg weakened metal)

Re:Water shield

[rtb61]

Probably needs to be more high tech. You are not trying to 'stop' radiation. You are trying to convert high frequency photons into lower frequency photons ie gamma down to infra red. Likely method involving crystalline structures and electron flows, fancy molecular engineering to force that change, rather than simply intervening mass. Even better if you can convert it into electron energy flows, as high frequency photovoltaic panel ie converting a negative into a positive, heh heh.

Re:Water shield

[Anonymous Coward]

Few items here.

Any material you shove enough neutrons into is going to emit neutrons. Some materials are very good at absorbing them, others are not, and some materials, like Asphault, can, if sufficiently bombarded with neutrons, become radioactive for decades. This is the reason why material from nuclear plants is often buried. It isn't that the nuclear material somehow escapes the chamber and embeds itself into everything, or that the emitted radiation leaks into and slowly out of stuff (although that is true to an extent) it's that the entire structure is being constantly irradiated for decades on end and is going absorb enough neutrons to begin putting out low-level radiation for a long time. Otherwise they'd recycle the materials. Asphault is a good example of a material that does this.

With that said, the simple solution to ElectroMagnetic radiation is to find surfaces that act like a mirror or a crystal at the wavelength we're talking about. We have materials that do well into the X-Ray range right now.

Re:Water shield

[Rei]

There's nothing to contaminate it with, in the end the electromagnetic radiation might break a few chemical bonds, which can be really bad for DNA strands (i.e. cause cancer), but in the case of water it'll just recombine and warm up a bit

Which is why nuclear reactor core coolant doesn't become radioactive, right? ;)

3H (effectively) doesn't capture neutrons, but both 1H and 2H do. 1H has a pretty high cross section for them, so readily breeds 2H, although 2H has a rather small cross section, 3 orders of magnitude less than 1H (but you still get some tritium over time). 16O has a rather low cross section (similar to deuterium) and only becomes stable 17O, which can capture to stable 18O, so it's not a major threat concerning low-energy neutron capture. Minor water contaminants can have much larger cross sections (overwhelming their low abundances) and/or create hazardous byproducts. For example, the (n, alpha) cross section of 10B is 4 orders of magnitude higher than 1H (minor boron contamination led the Germans in World War II to incorrectly conclude that graphite had too high of an absorption cross section to be used as a moderator). As a general (but not universal) rule, the heavier the isotope, the more likely that neutron capture will lead to dangerous daughter products.

So don't get me wrong, water is excellent from the perspective of not breeding hazardous isotopes. But it's not immune to it

And the short of it is, no, your water supply is not going to get contaminated. But water alone doesn't really make up an optimal shield; an optimal shield is layered. For example, hydrogen-rich materials, while superb neutron moderators and "decent" neutron absorbers in their own right, tend not to be good shields of EM radiation (high-Z materials work best for that). And there are far better candidates for neutron absorbers than water (for example, heavily borated plastics). But with layering you can create a more effective net whole.

Lastly: the heating of water from GCR or solar radiation is utterly irrelevant.

Re:Water shield

[cjameshuff]

"the heating of water from GCR or solar radiation is utterly irrelevant"

Neutron capture is nearly so, as there's no cosmic or solar neutrons to capture. Solar radiation and cosmic rays are composed of charged particle radiation and EM. Only GCRs are capable of inducing radioactivity, and that's by spallation, not neutron capture. The only free neutrons are those produced by spallation, and the contribution is minor.

Your primary concern is bremsstrahlung, electromagnetic secondary radiation, which can be significant from solar protons and electrons striking high-z materials. Water's pretty good at blocking charged particles while limiting bremsstrahlung, as are things like polyethylene.

Radiation is dangerous

[Mister Liberty]

Yeah, we knew that already, in and out of space.
What's the story here anyway, radiaton, supercomputers, NASA's budget, or the ubiquitous Elon Musk?

I'm Surprised

[grep -v '.*' *]

Supercomputers could be "a game-changer" when it comes to predicting the risks of space radiation ... During that 1972 solar storm, skin and organs would've risked being exposed to radiation in excess of NASA limits,

So using a big enough one as a shield would stop the radiation? Supercomputers -- what CAN'T they do? That ECC stuff is actually good for something!

And then really, you've got a timing problem. You discover high incoming radiation but don't have time to get the astronauts back home / out of the way. At some point you've got to block the rays, deflect them, dance between them, outrun them, or suck it up.

Re:I'm Surprised

[groundstone]

I agree your point

The robots wont care

[aberglas]

Humans are already obsolete technology for space travel.

Re: The robots wont care

[Anonymous Coward]

https://ip.voidsec.com

Re:The robots wont care

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are already obsolete technology for space travel.

I'm sure computers could do a better job at taking pictures and observing as much as possible if they replace me for my trip to Spain as well, but you're kind of missing the point.

Radiophobia is dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

At typical levels found on earth, radiation ranges from benign to beneficial. The fear however, causes real damage to both lives and the environment. The resulting hysteria and gross overreaction, needlessly displaced 150,000 people during the Fukushima accident, and the evacuation killed some 1600. The economic losses from the absurdly excessive cleanup efforts and the replacement of nuclear energy by imported fossil fuels, will be felt for decades. Worldwide, clean energy is slipping; despite our best efforts, the growth of fossil energy still outstrips that from all clean sources.

Unfortunately, the organizations which are responsible for protecting and informing the public have been complicit in propagating the lie that all radiation is dangerous, no matter how small the exposure. The evidence and science do not support this, yet 50 years later, it remains firmly entrenched as the foundation of policy. The disturbing means by which the establishment defends it, are covered in this excellent paper:
Epidemiology Without Biology: False Paradigms, Unfounded Assumptions, and Specious Statistics in Radiation Science.

Glowing dogs

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran my dog through an airport X-ray machine. He came out glowing green. Then died before I got to gate A12.