June 20, 2012
Mission to Mars: The Radiation Problem
No one is going to Mars until scientists figure out how to shield travelers from deadly radiation. (Source: NASA/NSSDC)
Would you go on a mission to Mars? The Dutch startup company Mars One is planning to establish the first Mars colony in 2023, starting with four individuals and adding more people every two years, funded by turning the whole endeavor into a reality TV show.
It’s just the latest plan to colonize the Red Planet, but I’m doubtful it will happen. There’s the expense, for sure, and the trials of trying to convince anyone to go on a one-way journey with just a few other strangers (what if you don’t get along? It’s not like you can leave). And then there’s the radiation problem.
Out in space, there are gamma rays from black holes, high-energy protons from the Sun, and cosmic rays from exploding stars. Earth’s atmosphere largely protects us from these types of radiation, but that wouldn’t help anyone traveling to Mars. They would be exposed to dangers that include neurological problems, loss of fertility and an increased risk of cancer.
NASA scientists calculated in 2001 that a 1,000-day Mars mission would increase the risk of cancer somewhere between 1 and 19 percent. If the risk is on the lower end, then the outlook for Mars might be pretty good, but if it’s higher, then NASA, at least, wouldn’t send people (there’s no telling what a reality TV show might do). A 2005 study found even more to worry about—the radiation would be high enough to cause cancer in 10 percent of men and 17 percent of women aged 25 to 34 if they were to go to Mars and back.
The easy solution would seem to be to shield the vessel that carries the humans to Mars, but no one has figured out how to do that. When the thin aluminum currently used to build spacecraft is hit with cosmic rays, it generates secondary radiation that is even more deadly. Plastic might work—the shields on the International Space Station are made of plastic—but it’s not 100-percent effective. One scientist has suggested using asteroids to shield a vessel traveling between Earth and Mars. But somehow I don’t think Mars One is going to make that one work within a decade.
Or they could just send old people—a solution proposed a couple of years ago by Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and Paul Davies of Arizona State University. “This is not a suicide mission. The astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony,” Schulze-Makuch and Davies wrote in the Journal of Cosmology. Loss of fertility wouldn’t be an issue for older astronauts and the radiation wouldn’t increase their lifetime cancer risk too much (since they’re already near the end of their lives).
That may be a solution more suited to NASA than Mars One, however, since television casting departments would probably want someone more like Snooki than Snooki’s grandma.
Editor’s note: In other Mars news, NASA is preparing for the August 5 landing of its massive unmanned science laboratory, Curiosity. The seven minutes between when the rover hits the top of the atmosphere and when it touches ground are the riskiest moments of the whole mission. The video below shows a few of the hundreds of things that need to go just right:
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Okay. Risks aside, I’m 54 and in fairly good shape for my age. I’m well educated with masters in network engineering and currently retired. I would go in a heartbeat. Paving the way for education and furthering the human experience- YES! Yes, I would go. Yes I would stay. Yes I would be burried on Mars. Great topic for my great grandchildren around the dinner table at Thanksgiving…. I remember Papa Cliff blasting off to Mars…
As usual, just not thinking hard enough. What can they do inside the craft to create an earth-like layer of atmosphere to protect flyers? They need to start building in high space so they have a greater size potential on ships. Then, they can use many more options – - – won’t need so much to push out of our gravity well. They are starting with the wrong end of the horse.
I’m all for learning off-the-grid living, and wouldn’t roughing it on Mars be the ultimate test (for now) for the human condition? Of course, even in 2023 I’ll be in my ’50′s, so I don’t really think that qualifies as old, more like oldish. Anyway, I’d go if the opportunity presents itself. There’s always the bragging rights, too! LOL
Why would they worry about radiation? Haven’t we been to the moon and back several times? Why don’t we do what we did then? Why reinvent the wheel?
This author appears most ignorant on the subject of radiation risk. The probable dose for a three year round trip to Mars and back is about 1.0 to 1.5 Sievert, half of it while in transit, and half while on the planet. That will push the nominal limits of lifetime dose for young women, but barely make to the limit for old men. What is no surprise is that there is a spectrum of risk across age and gender.
Yes, there are good shielding plans for the spacecraft, and there are safer or riskier places to set up camp on Mars. On balance however the great preponderance of risk vs dose research has been done with high dose rate events. Honest scientists will admit that we really don’t know how the risk varies with dose rate.
Yet we are supposed to believe that the Apollo astronauts walked on the moon. In fact, they never left Earth orbit, and the moon walk sequences were faked on a massive soundstage beforehand with the help of director Stanley Kubrick.
There are better ways. The United States needs to resume its research in antigravity. In the 1950s this was not a joke. The effort was taken very seriously by very influential people. See “United States gravity control propulsion research”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_gravity_control_propulsion_initiative and “Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.”, New York Herald-Tribune, Sunday, November 20, 1955, http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects/project048.htm .
What is needed currently, is not necessarily funding, but simple scientific curiosity about several unexplained effects noted by various researchers over several decades that have a bearing on this topic. Many of these can be investigated by hobbyists.
Here are some links for those adventurous innovators with the “right stuff”:
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#MotionCancellers
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#Biefeld-BrownEffect
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#GeometrySpaceTimeMotion
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/CapacitorTests/CapacitorTests.html
Why make it so difficult. You create an electromagnetic shield. Just like the Earth magnetic field protects us, it will protect those inside the spaceship. Radiations particles will be curved around the spaceship and not go through. Experiments are already taking place!
I agree with Cliff… :) I doubt there’ll be any shortage of people wanting to go.
Secondly, we all KNOW how NASA lies and STILL lies to us about many things begining with the moon missions and what they really found and saw there. So… why should I believe ANYTHING coming form them? For all I know, they just don’t want us going there to discover what they’re trying to keep secret.
Ironically, with what is pouring out of Fukishima, space travel and Mars colonization would represent an exposure downgrade.
More than 1 billion people would be ok for the one way trip. Retired, but also a lot of people dying in misery in the world,and keen to get a correct life sponsorized by trash TV, NASA, Scientologists, you name it, they’ll dont care…
I’ll be 86. If I can take my Kindle and lap-top (and if they function in space and on Mars) I’m going!
i agree with bobcat..we have been to the moon and would not the astronauts been exposed to radiation since the moon has no atmosphere and therefore cannot protect people from the radiation hitting it…seems like the government does not want anyone going to Mars without their consent or them getting there first..they want all the glory of being there first
The “increased cancer likehood” is really the big problem to be solved before colonizing Mars? :-D
I agree with Daniel; an electromagnetic shielding would definitely be the way to go. However, I would add layering the hull of the ship and the Mars habitat with glass-ceramic and a gaseous mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, argon with trace amounts of carbon dioxide, ozone, any helium, all in a pressurized liquid state to help to resist the heat of planetary entry. Having a properly composed glass-ceramic layered shell can also help to diffuse the heat more than ceramic alone.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
I hope that nasa could make this difficult task easier and in a systematic manner!!!!!!!!!
yeah, just film it in Nevada, like NASA did.
Well,what US does or doesn’t do will soon not matter. The Chinese will take over in a few years from now and show us all how to do things. US will still be debating their proposals in the senate and remembering the good old days. One thinks of Nokia, once the largest phone manufacturer and now….
Your wrong about the travel time radiation exposure as they have improved engines (34 days) and wrong about the volunteer rate for the so-called suicide mission (1/3 of 1000 polled people in 1 survey). Oh and recently lichen did well adapting to simulated Mars atmosphere.
Maybe ask the Americans if we can borrow the walt disney studio where the moonlandings where filmed.
People’s knowledge of space has been so distorted by Hollywood, it is difficult for them to grasp the immense challenges of traveling to Mars. Look at the money perspective. It cost $100 billion in today’s dollars for the entire Apollo program in the 1960′s. The recent X challenge that paid $10 million dollars for a privately funded space flight, cost investor Paul Allen $25 million to actually make happen. Right now, everyone wants their mother taken care with social security, free healthcare for themselves, and a healthy dose of food stamps every month. And don’t forget to throw in unending unemployment benefits. The U.S. owes $121 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The American people are cannabilizing their children’s and grandchildren’s futures. Even if the government was flush with cash, the costs would so beyond what it costs in the 60′s due to union pensions and environmental requirements. So financially, we ain’t going to Mars. Sorry, all of you Star Wars fan boys. “This is not the planet you are looking for.”
It’s like RadX from the video game Fallout http://terapio.com/
We need to develop the technology to allow for the development of systems and protection outside of the gravity of earth to be able to produce fixes for anticipated problems. These fixes could be automated and sent from out of earth orbit to Mars, to work the magic. I refer to matters involving protection from radiation, the production of water, the processing of CO2 systems, and energy that would allow for a zero gravity send off to use automation to put these live and operating systems on Mars way prior to our arrival. The simple act of moving enough cargo and water from earth would use so much energy that it will be impossible if we are thinking of putting a system together on earth and moving it out of gravity towards mars. We have been messing around with sealed systems for keeping humans alive and safe based on earth technology on a venture like this….it simply will not work when you have to move a lot of mass away from the g forces of the earth. It doesn’t take a lot of energy to move systems and infrastructure to mars when it is planned, developed, and implemented in space. In our current state of technology it is my opinion that we would need to do a lot of moving of goods in small amounts to an out of earth orbit. We could then build the life sustaining technology in space and then use much less energy in getting them in individual packages to the planet. Once the automated systems did enough work where we could arrive and put it all together in a sustainable architecture then we would be able to survive. I am not saying that this technology is in place right know, I do think that it is within mans intellectual ability to do this. Shelter from radiation, and the temperature within the range for human survival, water systems brought from earth that are self generating, a food source that would be self sustainable in that environment, the tools and equipment to do research and development of improving the ability to understand the environment, and develop a long range plan to reform the planet from external forces that are faster than terraforming to make it more easily inhabitable.
You can’t produce a several millions of tons of technology and expect to be able to have the energy available on earth to get it off the gravitational field of earth and send it to mars.
Once we get a foothold on that planet, and in time, we will find ways of exploiting what we find to ensure our ability to exist there and develop our new frontier.
I am trained in the Humanities and fully admit that I have no credentials in Physics etc.
Just the thoughts of a dreamer!
Kind regards!