In article ,
Josh Gigantino wrote:
While building out a TransHab-type inflatable station module, fill one
of the outer layers with up to a meter depth of water. Even 20cm of
H2O should help for day-to-day radiation shielding. This should
provide a very good shelter against solar storms...

20cm or so of water is a good storm shelter for interplanetary space or
high orbit. (There's no point in having it in LEO, which is largely
shielded by the magnetosphere.)

However, you *don't* want it around your entire living quarters. For one
thing, it's very heavy. For another, even 1m of water is not enough to
stop heavy cosmic rays and all their secondary particles, which means you
quite possibly get a higher radiation dose that way than with no
shielding. Unless you can provide complete shielding -- which is probably
more like 10t/m^2 than 1t/m^2 -- you want just a compact "storm shelter"
area shielded.

...Several layers of water bladders could
provide a frozen outer layer and liquids closer to the users - both
more comfortable and warmer...

Uh, there's no reason why the outer layer would be frozen. In fact, it
would probably be difficult to arrange for it to stay frozen. Manned
modules generate a lot of heat. (Thermal insulation goes *outside* the
pressure shell, for several reasons including the fact that it helps
provide micrometeorite protection.)

...For use as a storm shelter, assuming the 1m average
shielding, would the hatches/ends need to be blocked off with more
shielding? Would bags of water covering the hatches be enough to block
the omni-directional solar storm particles?

You would want to block the openings of a storm shelter unless they were
bent enough that there was no line of sight from interior to exterior.

...Would equpiment
inside such a module be able to survive repeated passes (in a highly
eccentric orbit) through the Van Allen belts?

That's one environment where shielding along these lines might be useful,
although I can't quote numbers off the top of my head.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |