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from the they-already-have-the-acronym-thing-down dept.
At the April 13th meeting of the American Physical Society, students from Drake University in Iowa presented their MISSFIT (Magneto-Ionization Spacecraft Shield for Interplanetary Travel) design that uses superconducting magnets to generate a magnetic shield protecting spacecraft against cosmic radiation while in transit.
The design incorporates both passive and active magnetic shielding similar to the Earth's ionosphere.
With help from a small NASA grant through the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, experiments are already underway on the passive shielding, which could protect astronauts from high-energy gamma-rays that a magnetic shield can’t stop. The hope, said Lorien MacEnulty, a junior at Drake and a member of the team, is to solve a key safety problem that's delayed an eventual NASA mission to Mars: long-term exposure to interplanetary radiation.
Right now, the students are experimenting with a number of radiation-blocking fabrics that might be light enough to mount on a spacecraft.
"We expose [the fabrics] to radiation," MacEnulty told Live Science. "Then we count how many particles make it through the layers of fabric."
The active shielding on the other hand assumes that any future spacecraft would be 'roughly cylindrical' with room at either end for a superconducting magnet ring powered by nuclear reactors.
Those magnets wouldn't divert gamma-rays. But they would cause charged alpha particles — another component of cosmic rays that could strike the spacecraft and emit X-rays — to move toward the ends of the spacecraft, which would be capped by two bubbles of material filled with a mixture of ionized gas that mimics Earth's ionosphere.
As the alpha particles zoom through this ionized gas, they would lose energy in a process similar to the one that produces auroras in the ionosphere near Earth's own North and South Poles.
Many questions remain unanswered in the design and the students are already showing their maturity as researchers by planning out what will require investigation and study over the next several years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by engblom on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:32AM (2 children)
I have been thinking that the best way to send humans to Mars would be to build a spaceship in space, in connection to ISS so the workers would have a place to live. Then one would not need a huge rocket for sending up a heavy spaceship and one can send up piece by piece a lead shields and other parts. Besides sending up the parts for building the ship they would also do several shipments of fuel, water etc. To protect the passengers from radiation the walls would be shielded both by lead and the water supply.
Once ready this spaceship could be docked and sent with passengers to a Mars orbit and they would land with a separate lander. At some point (with or without passengers) the space ship itself would return to an orbit around earth were it could be refueled again. It would be something like a heavy space bus between the two orbits.
Personally I think the MISSFIT system sounds dangerous as it got too many components for something as vital as a radiation shield. It is enough that one part (for example cooling of the super conductor) fails and the system is without protection. A static system where the walls themselves absorb the radiation would not have this problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:24AM
I understand your point, but space exploration is inherently dangerous. If man only does things that are perfectly safe then we are unlikely to survive long on this planet.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:44PM
That's not going to work very well unless you can build the thing using a crew of only 3-6 people (ISS capacity), and are willing to suspend all other ISS activities during the process.
The basic idea is sound though - at least in the long term, once we've mastered construction in space. Instead of using the ISS, send up a few Bigelow inflatable space station modules with associated life support systems. A lot more space available quickly, and the equipment and layout can be designed to facilitate construction work, rather than research.
We might want to master construction on less mobile projects like space stations though - you don't want some critical construction flaw to make itself urgently known while you're a month or two away from Earth. There's also the minor problem of the substantial radiation exposure, micrometeorite collisions, and other mechanical risks for the construction workers trying to do their job in space - construction is a lot more demanding than simple module assembly like the ISS involved. It'd be really nice to have nimble VR telepresence robots with humanish torsos and arms to perform work in vacuum - and if we have that, then most of the operators can even stay comfortably on Earth, the lag to low orbit is relatively low, unlike to the Moon or Mars.
In the meantime, something like the SpaceX Starship is likely to be a lot faster to build and deploy, and probably safer to boot. A bit small for a longish voyage, especially if you make the walls a foot thick like the ISS, but it's supposed to have more pressurized volume than the ISS, so a small crew shouldn't have problems.
For a long term solution, you might be interested in Mars Cyclers - put an asteroid on a orbit synchronized to regularly pass near both Earth and Mars, and then gradually turn it into a giant, extremely well shielded cruise ship/mining base that never sees any further acceleration other than minor orbital corrections. Then your landing ships ferry passengers to and from it when it passes near one planet, and it doesn't matter so much that it takes months or years to make the journey in near-perfect safety. (Most proposed orbits make the journey in one direction relatively quickly, and then spend most of the remainder of their orbit essentially waiting for everything to come into alignment again.)