RE: Solar power's "bright future"

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 10:08:41 -0700 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2014 2:39 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Solar power's "bright future"

 

Five months is still quite a time to have heavy nuclei cutting up your DNA.

 

Other suggestions include drugs which boost the body's repair mechanisms, 
drinking water and human waste as shielding (hmm, where did the glamour of 
space exploration go?), and the wonderful idea of charging the spaceship's hull 
to repel cosmic rays (which would unfortunately attract stuff out of the solar 
wind in a massive lightning strike, or so I'm told!)

 

Yeah – we probably read the same sources J Perhaps a combination of magnetic 
and electric fields can be made to work – with one cancelling out the 
undesirable effect of the other.

One idea I had is to use the rocket fuel itself as a shielding material – 
imagine a thermos bottle with the a shell of say kerosene around the capsule. 
Large payload delivered to Martian orbit would probably need considerable 
retro-rocket firing for orbital insertion (as opposed to slamming into the 
Martian atmosphere at very high speeds)

What if only the sleeping pods of the space vehicle capsule were shielded – in 
this manner limiting the number of hours of total exposure to the cosmic 
radiation, by say 35% or 40%. I can imagine a dual capsule design that has an 
inner radiation protected area just large enough for the sleeping pods with the 
rest of the capsule not being protected (but in this manner being very much 
less massive than a fully shielded capsule would need to be)

By the way here is an in depth article on the new Raptor engine spaceX is 
apparently building to power their rockets to Mars: 
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/03/spacex-advances-drive-mars-rocket-raptor-power/

It is an innovative design that is advancing the art of rocket engine design – 
IMO. I am pretty much convinced that the LNG/LOX rocket is the way to go (if 
using chemical rockets… still like the idea of electric rockets principally the 
VASMIR though)

To get to Mars it seems to me we need to use the moon for a resource base (to 
get the rocket fuel from the moon instead of needing to lift it all out from 
the relatively deep gravity well of planet earth).

Chris

 

 

 

On 20 June 2014 17:30, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 9:20 PM


To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Solar power's "bright future"

 

On 20 June 2014 14:24, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 7:09 PM


To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Solar power's "bright future"

 

Wow. I hope he has plans to protect those Marsnauts from cosmic rays.

 

Once on Mars, Mars dirt (piled a few meters thick on top of the habitat) can do 
the job. it is on the way there and on the way back that is hard to see how 
they could be shielded. 

 

Yes, I realise that. I was thinking of the journey. The only viable method 
known at present is to find an asteroid that crosses Earth's and Mars' orbits 
and burrow into that (for both journeys - so you spend more or less the entire 
trip underground, one way or another!)

Interesting idea. It could also be done with electric rockets (such as the 
VASIMIR) that could cut the travel times down to around five months, which is 
doable in terms of accumulated radiation dosage (from the cosmic rays and solar 
flux)… especially if the astronauts are older. The big problem with these 
rockets – besides the power they need, is how to get rid of the waste heat. 
With a chemical (or nuclear thermal) rocket the heat is removed in the hot gas 
thrust; electric rockets (from what I have heard) require large radiator 
systems in order to radiate away excess waste heat.

Nothing is easy in space.

 

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