Long term space travel and the human brain..

Not very encouraging but thank you for all that. I guess there's no easy way to build an outer shell for a spacecraft that would be thick enough by the kilometer to diffuse the rays enough before they get to the habitable part of the ship. You sure an umbrella won't work, right?

 

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And yet NASA, ESA, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Indians continue in their efforts to land a man on Mars and even further missions involving asteroids etc.

 

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No one is yet making any effort to land a man on Mars. Even aside from the main issue in this thread, they have a very long way to go solving other problems with such a trip.
I am not convinced you can foretell the future.
This seems as impossible as FTL. I do not know it is impossible and you do not know it is possible. I hope we solve it yet until we do, the default position obviously is we cannot do it and supposedly positive thinking will not make it otherwise and claiming to know is silly.

 

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No I can't tell the future. But really being silly isn't me claiming we will in time go to Mars, and beyond to the stars, it's those suggesting or doubting or denying we will not go any further in our space endeavours.
To suggest space exploration will not progress over time is beyond belief.
Reminds me of the otherwise great Lord Kelvin, expressing his doubt in powered flight only 9 years before the Wright Brothers.
And to say we are not making plans to go to Mars is even sillier.

 

Or one might more honestly say, NASA, etc. has learned that the public (and funding) is mainly interested and available for manned space activities. Sad as un manned exploration gets more useful information at less than 5% of the cost plus has already greatly advanced artificial intelligence.

 

Unmanned/robotic exploration is a forerunner to manned exploration. Both are totally necessary and both work hand in glove.

 

When the race to the moon was happening in the 1960's, astronauts were daredevils and would take calculated risks that would speed up the program and save money. If you get it right, once, it was off to the next step. John Glenn flew a modified intercontinental ballistic missile into space. They had this thing hanging around the garage, and used that.

You would not be allowed to use this approach today, because the programmed got PC, due to the need to accommodate special needs. It is easier and cheaper to send unmanned mission, than to accommodate special needs.

When I was a child there were no bicycle helmets or pads. These came about, because the uncoordinated kids also wanted to ride and their mother was afraid they would get hurt. Now cultural assumes, all are uncoordinated so even the John Glens are not allowed to take the risks.

This has to do with the change from a masculine culture, to the needs of the ladies; cost goes way up. The way NASA gets the ladies out of the picture (so to speak) is go to the man's cave; robots. If robots even get feelings all bets are off. The cost will skyrocket once again.

 

Sheesh, you make it sound as though they basically did a bodged job from the outset.
The Atlas-D might have basically been a modified intercontinental missile, but was used as a first stage for satellite launches for half a century. They didn't just find one in a garage, stick a pod on top and launch it, on a whim, but used it because it was proven reliable and a sufficiently powerful means of launching sub-orbital payloads. The difference between an explosive and a manned capsule is, to the rocket, just a matter of weight.

Seriously??? The need to accommodate special needs??? Rather than just a far greater focus on accountability to the tax-paying public, on health and safety???
I suppose you can support this seemingly outlandish and ridiculous claim of yours... but given your penchant for posting and rarely responding to subsequent criticisms, I doubt you will.
Furthermore, they would happily reuse old equipment for new means if technology wasn't advancing so fast that "old equipment" is often insufficient for means.
As for taking "calculated risks that would speed up the program and save money" - that was ultimately exactly what caused the two shuttle accidents. Such activity still goes on in all walks of life.

And yet another seemingly utterly ridiculous claim, which I sincerely hope you will support???
Laying apparent blame, as you do, for the need to wear them on the parents of "uncoordinated kids" suggests you think that only "uncoordinated kids" have accidents?
Even highly coordinated professional cyclists have died through head injuries in cycling accidents - one death (Andrey Kivilev in 1992) even prompting the UCI to enforce helmet wearing.
Not every jurisdiction has laws, and it is true the debate as to beneficial effect of wearing even exists, and if it does whether it outweighs the risk, but in New Zealand, for example, the trend of wearing helmets has risen, and the incident of head injury has dropped.
But I don't deny that health & safety concerns have gone mad in many regards... in the UK we refer to it as the "nanny state". It is your laying blame on "uncoordinated kids" and their parents that I have issue with.

WTF????
Why do you think the cost goes up as a result of the rise of equality? Where is your evidence that the rise in equality has even raised costs? Do you think it somehow costs more to send a male astronaut into orbit than it does a female one??
You also seem to be conflating the rise of health & safety concerns with a move to cater to "the needs of the ladies".

Why? Even if we accept that "feeelings increase costs", why would they not just use robots without feelings? Or do you think, for whatever reason, that if one robot develops feelings/emotions that suddenly all robots of all types will develop them??

Just a warning, wellwisher: even if it was not your intention, your post smacks of sexism and ridicule of the less-able. Please be careful of the line you tread, and the tone you adopt in this regard.

 

And any non-US launched mission to Mars has a 5 in 6 chance of failing. That's playing Russian Roulette with 1 empty chamber instead of 1 live round. Add US missions to the equation and you still have a 1 in 4 chance of a failed mission. These "Sci-Fi" missions are more likely to be funded over more realistic and more needed research.

NASA managers said the Space Shuttle was safe, that a "failure" would occur 1 in 100,000 launches. The engineers said 1 in 50-200. Can you guess which group is right?

The technology exists today to provide shielding against cosmic rays for the Mars flight and for life on Mars. The major problem is it is heavy and not cost effective to use. You have to pay for every single pound you take. They estimate on Mars they will have to cover any human habitat with 16ft of Martial soil to provide protection.

Our atmosphere doesn't provide protection against the cosmic rays. It's the magnetic field and Mars has none.

No bike helmets when I was a kid: 197o, the world population was ~3.7 billion. Today it's ~7 billion. I could ride my bike for miles without ever seeing a car. I didn't have to worry about somebody pulling out in front of me I didn't have to worry about many of the things that happen today. The county road I grew up on used to have one car pass by our house house every few hours. You knew every car that drove by. That road has become a very heavy trafficked road because of all the subdivisions built in the area.

 

So?
What's your point?
Anything worth achieving is difficult and dangerous, and we are still in the infancy of space travel. In time, we should learn to overcome all the dangers...In time, we should be able to have far better success rates....In time we will most certainly be exploring all our solar system, and creating bases and outposts for further ventures onto the stars.
We were not born to stagnate on this fart arse little blue Orb.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill:

Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be.
Paul Harvey:

 

Some clever bods have put together some models that suggest otherwise:

"On Earth if you measure the radiation dose on the surface and then remove the magnetic field, the radiation dose we get will be doubled," says Atri.

"But if we keep the same magnetic field and instead reduce the atmosphere by 50 per cent, the radiation dose increases by a factor of ten. So the main shielding is provided by the atmosphere, and the magnetic field is a secondary factor."​

- http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/11/15/3886100.htm

Not sure how reputable the website is, or how accurate the models are, though, but it's interesting nonetheless.

 

That's pretty silly. The odds of failure depend on the engineering that goes into the ship, not what race designed it or what country it was launched from. (Keep in mind that the person who started the program that got us to the Moon and back several times safely came from Germany.)

It is indeed heavier than taking nothing. It would not make such a mission impossible, just more expensive. (And no Mars mission will be cost-effective. There's no money to be made.)

To provide the same radiation levels you get in your home, yes. To provide the same protection you get on some beaches here on Earth, you'd need a single sheet of aluminum. Not too expensive.

Our atmosphere provides most of the protection we get.

 

What special needs people have been to space?

 

Two earlier post have already corrected this, but a thin atmosphere like Mars has, can increase the risk too. I. e. when a high energy cosmic ray hits the upper atmosphere, it produces many generations of "daughters" and they still have ionizing energy levels. If there were no atmosphere, your chance of having a high energy cosmic ray pass thru your body would be greatly reduced - I guess by at least a factor of 1000.

To produce "daughters" it needs to basically make nearly a "head-on" collision with a nucleus, which is less than 1000 the size of the atoms in your body. I.e. the high energy cosmic ray passing thru an atom has less than one chance in a million of hitting the nucleus of that atom. Thus, when there is no atmosphere for it to interact with, it may go thru your body (and the pressurized space suit you are wearing) with only ionization of many atoms, but no production of "daughters" which being typically less than a dozen in the "first generation" will only increase the ionization taking place in your body by an order of magnitude.

SUMMARY: With no atmosphere making a "cosmic ray shower" (5 + or - 2 generations of daughters for Earth's ~ 14.7 pounds / square inch mater density, and the top 10% of energy cosmic rays ), the chance of zero damage is much greater (primary ray misses you), on order of 1000 times less risk, I would guess. If you were below 147 pounds / square inch shielding you would very likely not receive any damage unless a very-rare, extremely-high-energy, cosmic ray passed thru no atmosphere and hit your shield and it daughters thru you. If that did happen, I think you would be dead with in a day.

This is because the daughters all (except the final generation) travel along the primary ray's trajectory with very little angular dispersion. In the center of mass's "rest frame" of the primary ray and the nucleus it hits the, the angular dispersion is great but when you transform to the frame you are at rest in there is very small angular dispersion. I.e. if the primary ray is coming at you, so are almost all its daughter if the shield in near you. Our atmosphere is 100 or so Km thick, so by time the daughters get down to the surface the typical separation between them is at least dozens of meters - only one will hit you below Earth's thick atmosphere.

 

Why do people claim to know what they cannot possibly know?

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The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be.
Paul Harvey

4 lies from 2 jerks.

< >

 

What material could deflect cosmic radiation ?

 

A high energy particle in a collisons with nuclear mater will reduce its energy and produce many more particles that have essentially the same total energy. If the collison is with an electron and the incident particle is charged the incident particle will lose insignificant energy but the electron may be ejected from the neutral atom it was bond to with great speed. How much will depend upon the distance of the electron from the essentially straight line trajectory of the cosmic ray.

If cosmic ray is not charged, then essentially nothing happens in collision with an electron - they are more like clouds than the classical particle. - A reasonable analogy is a rifle bullet passing thru a water fog - there is a very tiny loss of energy.

 

Cosmic rays also destroy DNA by altering them when they are bombarded by them.

Cosmic raysCharged atomic particles moving in space with very high energies (the particles travel close to the speed of light); most originate beyond the solar system, but some of low energy are produced in solar flares. can seriously damage DNA. If DNA damage cannot be repaired by the cell, the cell could die. If the damage is copied into more cells, then a mutation could occur. Exposure to large amounts of cosmic rays could increase the risks for cancer, cataracts and neurological disorders. Long term exposure to cosmic rays, or short intense bursts, could affect the evolution of life on Earth.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...2IP4Dg&usg=AFQjCNEq5OnG0nBDfaZ9bxlf8xFPXn-hKg

 

Nothing has been found as yet.