NASA seeking Ideas to safeguard human on Mars journey - Polidicks

[QUOTE] NASA is offering an award of up to USD 30,000 to space enthusiasts for innovative design ideas to protect crews on long-duration space missions such as the journey to Mars. Everyone can take part in the challenge, that’ll be open from April 29 to June 29, 2015, NASA said. Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), high energy radiation that originates outside the solar system are a major problem facing future space travellers venturing beyond low-Earth orbit. These charged particles permeate the universe and exposure to them is unavoidable during space exploration. Because missions to Mars will require crews to remain past the protection of Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere for about 500 days and possibly more than 1,000 days, learning how to protect human explorers from the is an effect of exposure to GCRs high precedence. [/QUOTE] [url]http://www.themarketbusiness.com/2015-04-20-nasa-seeking-ideas-to-safeguard-human-on-mars-journey[/url]

How much foil can we use before NASA just says its a tin foil hat for a rocket?

how many blocks of lead are we allowed to use?

Disassemble the person, send them in bits and reassemble them back on Mars.

[QUOTE=AJ10017;47562073]how many blocks of lead are we allowed to use?[/QUOTE] 3 blocks of lead and a small pot of tea.

Is giving the ship its own magnetic field out of the question?

This makes me wonder how the molecular structure of a material effects its cross section with regards to high energy particles. Most cosmic rays are high energy protons and helium nuclei, so I imagine materials with a high neutron cross section would also have a high cross section for high energy protons. Pretty much all cosmic rays are either negatively charged in the case of electrons or positively charged in the case of the high energy nuclei of several elements. Gadolinium is not radioactive and it has a very high neutron cross section, however it is rather dense. Possibly some kind of barrier with a high number of cations could filter the anions from cosmic rays with greater efficiency?

[QUOTE=ScottyWired;47562131]Is giving the ship its own magnetic field out of the question?[/QUOTE] That would require outrageous amounts of energy

[QUOTE=Cmx;47562143]That would require outrageous amounts of energy[/QUOTE] Can't just cover the ship in spines that have rare earth magnets on the tips? Halfway to a bubble shield, and high energy particles get thrown off course so they don't hit the ship straight on.

Magnets wont work too well, they would need to be very strong, and even then they would only deflect some of the particles cosmic rays consist of because they are charged in both directions.

[QUOTE=Cmx;47562143]That would require outrageous amounts of energy[/QUOTE] How outrageous are we talking about, like more then a Nuclear Reactor?

[QUOTE=Deng;47562081]Disassemble the person, send them in bits and reassemble them back on Mars.[/QUOTE] Suddenly [i]get your ass to mars[/i] has a whole new meaning. :v:

Could you not create some sort of magnetised cage that spins at high RPM around the craft or something to generate a magnetic field? I'm completely talking out of my ass here, fucking magnets, how do they work.

What about creating a thick Faraway Cage around the ship and have the holes significantly smaller than the wavelength of the radiation the astronauts will be exposed to? It's like being inside an elevator, and you being unable to get reception on your phone in an elevator is like being shielded from radiation.

Water stops radiation fairly quickly right? Perhaps a layer of water in the walls of the crew module. That'd be heavy as fuck tho

The problem is not of sheilding its of power, put a big nuclear reactor you can run xenon or some electric thrusters for the length of the entire trip and have a heavier ship which allows for more shielding. It has to be assembled in sections because it would be impossible to launch it all on one rocket

Water is surprisingly good at shielding against most kinds of radiation, and they will want to take a lot of water with them anyway. At least as partial solution, I would definitely try to make the walls of the long term occupied areas two layer and store all the water in the walls, so it could help as shielding that way. Even if it's not enough to make it safe, it could help to drop the radiation levels at least a bit, with minimal mass costs as it's water you will be taking with you anyway.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47562463]Water is surprisingly good at shielding against most kinds of radiation, and they will want to take a lot of water with them anyway. At least as partial solution, I would definitely try to make the walls of the long term occupied areas two layer and store all the water in the walls, so it could help as shielding that way. Even if it's not enough to make it safe, it could help to drop the radiation levels at least a bit, with minimal mass costs as it's water you will be taking with you anyway.[/QUOTE] Exactly. I mean, wouldn't you only need 3-4 feet of water to be mostly safe? Because that's why pools do in nuclear reactors.

Welp, I'm out of ideas guys... [thumb] http://i.imgur.com/XrWQ5GK.jpg [/thumb]

Instead of going to Mars, why not bring Mars to us?

Take the shit and piss from astronauts and fill the walls with it. Once it reaches Mars the ship it's more or less a big lump of shit, which is perfect because it can be used to grow stuff in. After spending a year on Mars, flowers and potatoes are growing all over the ship both inside and outside. It'll be amazing.

[QUOTE=Cmx;47562143]That would require outrageous amounts of energy[/QUOTE] Couldn't we have an actually nuclear reactor on a manned spacecraft? Have a reactor module to power everything on the mission.

I always thought that in the future the spaceships would be filled with server racks instead of people. We would upload our minds and digitalize our bodies and the moment we reached our destination our bodies would be rebuilt from cloning/3d printing machines. That way we could insert hundreds of people into a relatively small ship and they wouldn't age. Maybe one day...

[QUOTE=OvB;47562533]Couldn't we have an actually nuclear reactor on a manned spacecraft? Have a reactor module to power everything on the mission.[/QUOTE] Sure could, wouldn't be surprising if a real manned mission to Mars at least have some form of nuclear reactor. We got quite a lot of stuff powered by nuclear reactors in space. [editline]20th April 2015[/editline] I think the problem is just how to shield ppl from the nuclear reactor.

[QUOTE=Swebonny;47562550]Sure could, wouldn't be surprising if a real manned mission to Mars at least have some form of nuclear reactor. We got quite a lot of stuff powered by nuclear reactors in space. [editline]20th April 2015[/editline] I think the problem is just how to shield ppl from the nuclear reactor.[/QUOTE] I guess the hardest part is storing and maintaining water.

[QUOTE=spiritlol;47562495]Instead of going to Mars, why not bring Mars to us?[/QUOTE] Brilliant, with a few altercations to my previous experiment we will have the 30,000 in the bag [img]http://s3.postimg.org/4dj4g0atf/marsray.png[/img]

Put all the water they need in the walls. Water is good at absorbing radiation. If the water would be too thin then have a smaller panick room for solar storms. They did this in the novel red mars.

I swear that water/shit/piss in walls idea for radiation shielding has been done before. I'm 100% I remember reading about that somewhere.

Wonder if Graphene can become useful in this situation.

I have a great solution. Lets genetically modify our space explorers with the DNA of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans]Deinococcus radiodurans[/url]. [quote]D. radiodurans is capable of withstanding an acute dose of 5,000 Gy (500,000 rad) of ionizing radiation with almost no loss of viability, and an acute dose of 15,000 Gy with 37% viability.[10][11][12] A dose of 5,000 Gy is estimated to introduce several hundred double-strand breaks (DSBs) into the organism's DNA (~0.005 DSB/Gy/Mbp (haploid genome)). For comparison, a chest X-ray or Apollo mission involves about 1 mGy, 5 Gy can kill a human, 200-800 Gy will kill E. coli, and over 4,000 Gy will kill the radiation-resistant tardigrade. Several bacteria of comparable radioresistance are now known, including some species of the genus Chroococcidiopsis (phylum cyanobacteria) and some species of Rubrobacter (phylum actinobacteria); among the archaea, the species Thermococcus gammatolerans shows comparable radioresistance.[5] Deinococcus radiodurans also has a unique ability to repair damaged DNA. It isolates the damaged segments in a controlled area and repairs it. This bacteria can also repair many small fragments from an entire chromosome.[13][/quote] And there won't be any reason to shield them at all whatsoever, they will just chill there, catching that sick gamma ray tan and be all fine. I mean, we might have to look into the compatibility of how would the entire "multiple copies of DNA per cell" deal work in eukaryotic beings like humans, but as a long term deal it sounds like a pretty damn amazing prospect to me. Imagine people being extremely resistant to all kinds of ionizing radiation, as well as random cancer. It would be like IRL superpower.