wrote:
Not trolling, just wondering. One of the biggest problems with a mission
to mars or anywhere else is solar radiation. The earth is protected by the
van-allen belt.

The Earth is protected primarily by the atmosphere and
secondarily by the magnetic field. The interaction
between the Solar wind and the magnetic field creates the
Van Allen Belts, but they are just a side effect.


So best way I could thing of that would be light-weight
would be a magnetic-shield type generator on the ship itself. Would be very
huge so not really plausible. Then I thought, why couldn't you line the hull
of the ship with super-conductive wiring of sorts. each would generate a
small magnetic bubble around the wire, each wire re-enforcing the one next
to it. Problems of keeping it cool like on earth I would think would be
easier in space due to the fact that it's already pretty cold in space. A
nice side effect of using this as a shield as far as I can see would be the
fact that it could also be used as energy storage.

So, what you think? Just curious, I understand most people in this group
are probably smarter than me as far as this sort of thing goes. ;-)

This is workable but difficult. Perhaps in the future
it could be used. A proper radiation "storm shelter"
using water as shielding works well enough for the near
future. You're going to have water along anyway, by
simply arranging it appropriately you can create a
radiation shield.