"Christian Ramos" wrote in message
...

"John Thingstad" wrote in message
news

...snipped comment from John Schilling erroneously attributed to me...


There is no doubt that this is a real threat with long exposure.
Modern shielding uses segmented shielding. Multiple layers with
air/vacuum between them.

I'm familiar with this approach for thermal protection and some aspects of
meteorite protection. I would think this approach would be useless for
radiation though. Many of the studies seem to indicate a multi segmented
shield whereby different materials are used, but the gaps appear
irrelevant
in this case. Also, there is no real agreement/data on what the real
environment is like or acurate ways to measure the Biological impact of
radiation found in space given our lack of experience in such an
environment.

NASA has done extensive research on more effective
shielding for the space station. Look at NASA's web site.
(www.nasa.gov)

Sure they have, however, the radiation environment of outer space is not
the
same as that in LEO. Some would argue that it is totally irrelevant,
although that may be a stretch.


In the famous works of Joey Tribiani the protective shielding of the
space station is a
"Moo Point". They have less radiation to consider due to the fact that it is
close to
the protective embrace of mother Earth. Trying to think about the radiation
protection
we as humans would need in other star systems that may probably produce even
more
radiation than our own sun is a "Moo Point" as well. As we cannot yet travel
to other
stars there is little to no need to worry about this yet. Protection for
traveling to other
planets and asteroids for exploration and hopefully commercial use was my
only real
concern. Protection for humans, and for plants as the ability to grow our
own food
supplies in space.

A topographical type solution like the one I initially suggested seems
to me the only real viable solution. Though more expensive initially it
would in theory
offer a great amount of protection with little energy costs. Due to the cold
nature of space
this i would think this could be used to keep the super conductive 'sheath'
cold with little
need to draw excess power from the 'ship'. This could also be used to dump
the excess
power into this organized chaos of protective wiring for emergency usage.
This seems like
a better long-term solution to me instead of letting your water and food
stores protect you.
This also makes me wonder if using your food and water stores as protection
if they
themselves become contaminated by space radiation?

From a manufacturing standpoint it would be a good idea as well.
Anything when
you produce tiny amounts of it in limited areas is expensive. When you start
producing
greater amounts due to increased demand then cost in turn decreases. We have
many uses
for super conductive type materials and should not wait for the 0k mark to
produce them.
But would take the government investing money more in mass to get those
types of
factories jumpstarted.