Radiation

[Anonymous No.2124237]

Okay Sci, let's gather our thoughts together and think up a way to deal with radiation in space.

My proposal is radiation resistant plating, coupled with what amounts to surface covering lcd's.

In other words, from the inside, it looks like whatever you want it to on the 'outside'; while providing protection against radiation.

Another one is genetic engineering to make radiation not a problem; but I thought this one was a little bit 'out there'.

So, solutions to the problem of radiation in space?

[Anonymous No.2124260]

>>2124237
Or we just paint the ceiling sky blue... I just saved you ten million dollars.

[Anonymous No.2124276]

>>2124237
>So, solutions to the problem of radiation in space?

Learn about radiation. In short, there are different types. Let's pretend there's no ionizing radiation to worry about, since those only come from exciting things and nuclear weapons.

Radio waves don't matter much.
Light isn't much problem.
UV requires a bit of planning but is easily foiled (that's one way to stop it)
Gamma rays also usually stop for foil, but higher energy requires thicker foil.
X-rays fuck shit up around metal. The photon hits the metal and causes spalling, nuking things behind the metal.
Cosmic rays don't stop very much at all.

To shield against radiation, you need mass. Consider at least a meter of packed dirt or rock to get a reasonably-small-risk-of-cancer habitat. Fortunately it's then trivial to protect against meteor impacts.

Bonus points if you can figure out what's horribly wrong with your picture.

[Anonymous No.2124303]

>>2124276

What's wrong with it?

[Anonymous No.2124309]

>>2124276
>Gamma rays also usually stop for foil
stopped reading

[Anonymous No.2124333]

>Build spaceship
>Radiation proof the tits off it
>Launch mission
>1 year in microgravity
>Return to Earth with tons of great stories about space
>Experience planet gravity
>Fall to the ground, tiny heart explodes

;______;

[Anonymous No.2124338]

>>2124303

Those shadows look a bit questionable

[Anonymous No.2124341]

>>2124303
>What's wrong with it?
Since trees are there, and presumably people, let's assume that the air is at 50 kPa. That's NASA's most-used number for life support air pressure.

As a first-order approximation, assume the dome is 1000m across, with a footprint of 3.14*10^6 m^2. What is the upward force the dome's footing (perimeter and central column) must resist? 1.57*10^8 kN.

This is kind of a lot. If we presume to examine a 1cm wide strip of this dome (an arch with pressure across it) we can approximate it to have equal force along it. What is its tension?

Next post

[Anonymous No.2124354]

>>2124309
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
yes I suck. Thanks for correcting that. The conclusion is right though. Generally to survive radiation, get out your shovel and start burying. Electromagnets probably won't ever be practical for shielding.

[Anonymous No.2124356]

>>2124341
The weight of the dome would have been tuned to the air pressure. The dome would in effect be weightless because of the very air pressure you are talking about.

May I suggest the Mars Trilogy for future reading...

[Anonymous No.2124384]

>>2124276
I got it, its because the shadow of the dome is facing the wrong way.

[Anonymous No.2124390]

How about put a very strong magnet above you to diverge cosmic rays?

[Anonymous No.2124403]

>>2124356
Already read them. Do you know how thick that is for the dome? You finally named a planet. Mars, 1/3d gravity.
5.2*10^10 kg of dirt.
Call dirt 1700 kg/m^3
That's 3.08*10^7 m^3 of dirt.
It's a bitch and a half to approximate the surface area of an elliptical dome, but you'll get something in the neighborhood of a 5m thick layer of dirt.

How in the fuck damn balls do you plan to get that much up there? PS: Mars' soil is mostly gravel anyway.

[Anonymous No.2124411]

>>2124390
>How about put a very strong magnet above you to diverge cosmic rays?

You need a magnet so powerful that you need a magnet to shield you from the magnet or it kills you instantly. And it takes superconductors AND huge power.

>http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~Simon_G_Shepherd/research/Shielding/index.html

[Anonymous No.2124418]

>>2124356
>May I suggest the Mars Trilogy for future reading...

Robinson makes some strange assumptions that aren't helpful for actually getting shit done.

[Anonymous No.2124491]

>>2124411
In this case forget this shit! Let's do things in underground!

[Anonymous No.2124499]

Why shield from radiation. Just teach people how to be immune to radiation poison.

I spent the last few years building up an immunity to radiation.

[Anonymous No.2124503]

>>2124411
What if you put it on a geostationary satelite?

[Anonymous No.2124524]

Thanks for the image op. now all i can think about is minecraft needing a space colony mod..

[Anonymous No.2124538]

>>2124403
I am 99% certain you did your math wrong. Let me see if I can double check it.

[Mad Scientist !!Q11PG81nz2n No.2124558]

>>2124524

>>Thanks for the image op. now all i can think about is minecraft needing a space colony mod..

I've been working on space stations, with the rationale that everything above the clouds counts as space. But it only really looks right at night time.

[Anonymous No.2124562]

>>2124538
I think I stated the horrible rounding errors I made. Getting the thickness over the dome is tricky so I half-assed it given the nearly-2-to-1 ratio I've found in models I've done in the past, given large volume to thickness relation.

[Anonymous No.2124565]

>>2124503
>What if you put it on a geostationary satelite?

That's not leaving Earth, is it?

[Anonymous No.2124580]

>>2124558
>>2124558
how do you produce mass? ,
dam maybe a mod where you just float amongs asteroids should be made

[Anonymous No.2124598]

>>2124276
>trivial to protect against meteor impacts.
lolwut

[Anonymous No.2124626]

>>2124598
5m of dirt is a goddamn good whipple shield, bro.

[Anonymous No.2124665]

>>2124562
Given 50kN/m^2 air pressure, assuming negligible outer air pressure, using the Martian surface gravity of 3.7 m/s^2, and assuming a regolith density of about 3 kg/m^3 (the Moon's regolith density)...

That gives me a 5 meter depth without the actual frame of the dome.

[Nukefag No.2124679]

>>2124276
Mass isn't the only thing to consider when looking at shielding.
High speed neutrons, for example, are best shielded by hydrogen. So you get yourself a lump of dense plastic ('cos more hydrogen is good) and use that.
For charged particles, there's another option: magnets. /sci/entists know that if you have a magnetic field, charged particles will change their path. So you can have a lightweight shield by deflecting the charged particles that make up most of the cosmic radiation

[Anonymous No.2124684]

>>2124665
So yeah, you were right. I misread your post.

[Anonymous No.2124687]

>>2124565
I mean, If you want it protecting a base on Mars you could put a the magnetic device on a stationary orbit above the base.

[Anonymous No.2124690]

Radiation shielding isn't a problem. We just need to bury our habitats.

[Anonymous No.2124695]

>>2124626
5m of dirt isn't a Whipple shield.

[Anonymous No.2124701]

>>2124665
>3 kg/m^3
That's not so much less than air, dude.

>>2124679
>High speed neutrons, for example, are best shielded by hydrogen. So you get yourself a lump of dense plastic ('cos more hydrogen is good) and use that.

It's the number of protons. But bringing shit-tons of plastic is far more expensive than using dirt. Making plastic there is harder than using dirt, although you might encase dirt in plastic so it is immobile.

>For charged particles, there's another option: magnets
I already addressed this. Read the papers discussing it and you'll see why it's valid to dismiss actually doing so.

[Anonymous No.2124705]

>>2124687
Why don't we just build a giant iron sheath around Mars! Amirite?

For fuck's sake, just bury the habitats. We don't need a giant ass dynamo in orbit!

[Anonymous No.2124720]

>>2124695
But 5m of dirt will shrug off most meteor impacts.

>>2124687
>on a stationary orbit above the base.
How will this protect the base against high-energy things? The entire sky emits cosmic rays, and the other ones generally come from the sun. A stationary orbit is really goddamned high, so you need a large shield. That's hard as hell. How will you cover a hemisphere of sky with 100 tesla of magnetic field?

[Anonymous No.2124728]

>>2124720
>5m of dirt will shrug off most meteor impacts.
It's also heavy as fuck.

[Anonymous No.2124730]

>>2124701
>That's not so much less than air, dude.
Mistype, I meant 3E3 kg/m^3

[Anonymous No.2124734]

>>2124720
Because magnetic fields are much bigger than their sources?

[Anonymous No.2124739]

>>2124728
It will be held up by air pressure from the dome.

[Anonymous No.2124748]

>>2124739
No it won't. The dome would have to be incredibly strong to hold that up.

[Anonymous No.2124759]

>>2124748
The math has been done by two different people in this thread. It will work.
The regolith density in the math is actually 3E3 kg/m^2 despite mistype >>2124665
>>2124403

[Anonymous No.2124767]

>>2124728
>It's also heavy as fuck.
It'll be held up easily, but getting it there is a bitch. That's a shit-ton of dirt to move.

>>2124748
It's doable. We have 2.5mm thick mats that support 1000kg/cm in tension. The weight of the vectran is pretty nearly negligible compared to that.

[Anonymous No.2124770]

>>2124759
I'm working on a small scale of this for a project so I won't say too much more.

Yes, it would work.

[Anonymous No.2124785]

>>2124767
>getting it there is a bitch
If one is constructing such a dome on Mars then there will most definitely already be bulldozers there.

[Anonymous No.2124788]

>>2124499
Goddamnit Farmboy, is there anything you can't do?

[Anonymous No.2124894]

>>2124785
>If one is constructing such a dome on Mars then there will most definitely already be bulldozers there.

Putting ten million metric tons of dirt on an elevated inflated structure. Bulldozers? Lol.

[Anonymous No.2124928]

>>2124237
You cant really genetically engineer someone to be immune to radiation. the reason radiation causes cancer is because it fucks up your cell's dna and makes it replicate uncontrollably. So changing the dna doenst do much when the radiation changes it to cancer anyway

[Anonymous No.2124936]

>>2124894
>implying it wouldn't simply be a cover over a crater

[Anonymous No.2124987]

>>2124936
Implying a crater is airtight.

[Anonymous No.2124999]

>>2124987
Are you dense? Nobody said one would simply lay saran rap over the canyon.

[Anonymous No.2125005]

There is a microbe that is crazy resistant to radiation. They have duplicate genomes to combat errors, slow cell reproduction to discourage irradiated cells, and a whole slew of enzymes to facilitate gene repair. The name escapes me now, sorry.

It would take a lot of effort, but these genes could theoretically be incorporated into humans.

[Anonymous No.2125049]

>>2124928

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

[Anonymous No.2125062]

>>2124999
I'd like to see you uild a structure in a crater. Fractured rock sucks bro.

[Anonymous No.2125069]

>>2125049

>In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated that D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song It's a Small World into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later

[Anonymous No.2125081]

>>2125062
There would be barely any weight on the rock face; plus there is no reason why it couldn't be fortified with a few i-beams and concrete. I'm 95% sure you are either an idiot or underage.

[Anonymous No.2125090]

>>2125062


hoover dam how does it work

[Anonymous No.2125100]

>>2125069
>>2125049
Badass bacteria is badass
Also, more of that blue girl please.

[Anonymous No.2125108]

>>2125090
Massive amounts of concrete. Not fractured rock. Also, gravity.

[Anonymous No.2125178]

>>2125081
So you'd just build critical infrastructure on bad rock just to avoid digging? Why? The air pressure spreads the weight of the dome out over much of the footprint of the dome. But!

I suspect you have not calculated the tension in that short segment I mentioned. Consider a 1-cm segment of the dome, going from one side across the top to the other. What is this tension? Model it like a distributed load over a chain, it's close enough. Here are the conclusions one can draw from this:

1) The flatter the dome, the greater the forces attempting to close the crater rim. In any case, these forces are great. There is a way around this that raises its own problems, of course.
2) The ability to resist these forces requires large amounts of rebuilding the crater rim
3) Mixing concrete takes water.

>>2125090
That wasn't built on fractured rock, just bad rock. Fractured foundation is bad bad news for a building.

[Anonymous No.2125210]

>>2125178
It doesn't hurt my feelings when you assume I'm ignorant, but it's rude.


Related:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Spherical_vessel

Stress = pr/2d.
Mars' atmosphere is nearly 0. Gage pressure is 50 kPa.
r is 1000m
Let d be approximately 10cm; that's pretty damned thick right? Holds 40000kg/cm tension.

( [50000 N/m^2] * [1000m] ) / (2*0.1m)

Our 1cm thick band (arch shape) of dome experiences 250000000N per meter. We have 1/100th of that, so a cm-thick strip must hold 2.5*10^6 N in tension. This tension must be held at the rim of the crater. It's fucked.

[Anonymous No.2125218]

>>2125210
Now, there's a self-obvious way around THAT problem (stapling the edge of the dome out there against the hoop stress) but it raises still further problems. I'd like to mention that on the one hand, meter-thick Vectran is sufficient for that stress. On the other, no feasible anchor can be made trivially. You'll have to account for that to call this practical.

[Anonymous No.2127045]

Bump for complex structures.

[Anonymous No.2127057]

Deflect the radiation, don't try and absorb it.

The few reply's I glanced over minimially address the problem you describe while at the same time introducing incredibly inefficient and impractical design types.

Next question.

[Anonymous No.2127061]

>>2127057
>Deflect the radiation, don't try and absorb it.

Will you pay attention? How much magnet does it take to deflect charged particles? And then what about uncharged ones?

[Anonymous No.2127129]

God dammit. Every few posts someone brings up magnetic shielding without replying to questions about how hard that is. Fucking trolls, how do they work?