Space travel is hazardous to the brain

Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"bob haller" wrote:

http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=39650
This is yet another reason to concentrate on ROBOTIC exploration

This is something known since the 1960s. Cosmic ray primaries that pass
through the brain sometimes kill brain cells. That eventually adds up
and likely eventually causes dementia.

A problem, yes. A showstopper no.

It is a showstopper *today* but not the only one. Just getting humans
outside of the Van Allen belts is a show stopper today. So it adds to
the number of problems to be solved int he long run.

Hell, explorers on Earth risked much worse.

Hell scurvy was an issue for centuries, yet didn't stop the British Empire
(among others).

Exactly. And colonies were built in spite of the scurvy problem. Thus
planets and asteriods can be colonized as long as the people going there
do not make a habit out of round trips. Some number of full time
astronauts are going to exist who suffer the problem.

And the honest truth is, this is an "easy" problem to solve. Mass.

The dirty little secret to Mars or anyplace else is simply "throw enough
mass at the problem".

And once there the mass is supplied by the target body. It doesn't take
a large asteriod to live underground deep enough to be shielded.

The limiting factor then becomes cost. Which SpaceX and others are working
on solving.

So, yeah, most likely we won't be going to Mars in a tin can like Apollo
went to the Moon. So if it requires 6' of "concrete" the solution is...
ship up 6' of concrete. (though most likely you'd solve the problem with
food stores and water and the like. An already suggested possible
solution.)

Interpanetary trips need some combination of faster one way trips and
shielding during the one way trips. Multiple possible approaches to
that.

Thanks for the sky is falling tidbit today though.

As robots can be made radiation hardened robotic exploration can and
does continue. It's not a showstoper for robots today the way it is for
humans today. Tomorrow is another day. More correctly next year is
another year and next decade is another decade.

Lightly shielded craft to orbit. Medium shielded craft within orbit.
Outside orbit some craft that have a floating pint combination of speed
and/or shielding. At destination heavily shielded habitat colonies.

Until the shilding issue is well solved there are going to be very few
round trips, but that doesn't matter at this point. Until the delta-V
issue is well solved there are going to be very few round trips.

Patience. All things come to he who waits - As long as he works hard
and works intensely towards his goals during the wait.

On 1/1/2013 2:13 PM, bob haller wrote:
http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=39650

This is yet another reason to concentrate on ROBOTIC exploration


Another reason to focus on building out a solar excursion vehicle as a
space station in LEO that can be refitted as needed and experiments
performed for items such as shielding while it's (relatively) cheap to
reach. Like the Nautilus-X proposal.

Any work being done in "active" shielding? For example how powerful an
electromagnet would you have to build to provide ample shielding for
flights to the inner planets? That will take care of the charged
particles, mass takes care of others. If you figure you are taking along
significant supplies of water it helps to place that tank-age around the
inhabited parts of your station/vehicle.

I think the Van Allen belt issue is interesting. Apollo worked around
that problem via speed. It was moving through the Van Allen belts fast
enough to minimize the astronaut's exposure time. Larger exploration
vehicles might not have that capability.

Dave

On Jan 1, 2:51*pm, (Wayne Throop) wrote:
Just one example paragraph out of a post teeming with similar:

: Brad Guth
: Also, there was not one official image that ever managed to record any
: portion of a frame including the extremely bluish planetshine upon
: that physically dark lunar surface, or upon any of their highly
: reflective Apollo equipment wherever shaded from direct sunlight which
: should have been depicted as having a measurable bluish amount of
: secondary illumination.

Extremely *faint* (compared to the sunshine, and all the images
were in lundar day... making the earth less than full). *Even the
famous picture of earth near the lunar horizon (which again would
make the total illumination per square meter low) has the earth
only a bit beyond half-full.

"Physically dark moon" and similar are nonsense-phrases Guth likes to use..
It actually refers to reflectance. *And the reflectance doesn't matter,
since it's failing-to-reflect both sunshine and earthshine. *It's not like
sunshine doesn't get reflected in to the camera and earthshine does. *And since the
sunshine would fade out any earthshine, the only chance you'd have is if
a) you had a spot that was in shadow from sunshine but not earthshine,
and b) you for some bizarre reason exposed the picture to make the
shadow the center of the grey scale, and severely overexpose all the
rest of the picture. *And even THEN, since when you print photos,
the color balance is most often calculated wrt the ambient light, you
wouldn't see it if the shadow was photographed up close, which is the
only reason you'd expose it for earthshine.

Further, of course, why should the earth be all *that* blue?
There are such things as clouds, you know.

Basically, there's no particular rationale by which a reasonable
person would expect blue illumination should be apparent in that
situation. *Not even "it should have shown up in some of them",
since in fact they'd be taking pictures of well-illuminated objects,
and setting exposure for them, rather than trying to photograph shadows.

The rest of the paragraphs, of course, are no better.

Your total lack of Kodak film and of photography expertise is noted,
not to mention your ongoing obfuscation as to whatever amateurs have
long since been capable of objectively demonstrating in spite of the
badly polluted atmosphere their equipment has to look through.

Next time, offer us examples of your very own mainstream class of
photographic expertise and thus demonstrating the sort of results that
supports everything as officially published by and/or on behalf of our
NASA/Apollo era, without ever doctoring a damn thing, because the very
best independent photographic expertise on Earth sure as hell can not.

: Brad Guth
: Your total lack of Kodak film and of photography expertise is noted,

Yes, you do like to note lots of incorrect things.

: not to mention your ongoing obfuscation as to whatever amateurs have
: long since been capable of objectively demonstrating in spite of the
: badly polluted atmosphere their equipment has to look through.

It would indeed have been better not to mention it, since I never said
it couldn't be done (indeed, I said it *could* be done), just that it'd
have to be looked for specifically, and they had no reason to do so.

On Jan 2, 11:23*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
bob haller wrote:
On Jan 1, 9:28*pm, Nun Giver wrote:
On Tuesday, January 1, 2013 11:13:32 AM UTC-8, bob haller wrote:
http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=39650

This is yet another reason to concentrate on ROBOTIC exploration

CAT scans of the brain are harmful. The issue does bring to mind
the issue of shielding. Not only passive and also active shielding.
Clearly a huge battle ship sized vessel would the ultimate'
fix, IMO. Perhaps robots could build the vessel from asteroid
materials?

Who stole the ship? Self aware robots, of course...........Trig

I like the idea that floated around awhile ago where a rugged transhab
would inflate and act to slow a incoming vehicle. picture a HUGE
ballon trailing the ship.

You know how thin the Martian atmosphere is, right?



of course you will laugh but then again you laughed at air launch of
spacecraft, but strato launcher is being built today

You're taking your own delusions as fact again.

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
*only stupid."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * -- Heinrich Heine

Fred are you a DOD astronaut who has spent lots of time in Deep space?
Your postings make that a possiblity

of course you will laugh but then again you laughed at air launch of
spacecraft, but strato launcher is being built today

You're taking your own delusions as fact again.


go back and look at this groups archives, I have posted about the
advantages of air launched for most of the time I have been here, plus
air launch probably already exists for DOD...

it would make launching personell easier..no big booster necessary

In article 3f0ea925-411f-46d4-a37c-
, says...


of course you will laugh but then again you laughed at air launch of
spacecraft, but strato launcher is being built today

You're taking your own delusions as fact again.


go back and look at this groups archives, I have posted about the
advantages of air launched for most of the time I have been here, plus
air launch probably already exists for DOD...

it would make launching personell easier..no big booster necessary

Fred's point is you don't know what you're talking about when it comes
to Mars, but I see you snipped all of that to evade his point.


As to air launch, a big upper stage(s) is still needed. This is why the
payload of such an air launched vehicle is severely limited if you
constrain the carrier aircraft to existing aircraft.

Stratolauncher needs to build a huge, new, carrier aircraft because of
this. It's not yet clear if this approach will be better than, say, the
VTVL approach being pursued by SpaceX.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

Fred's point is you don't know what you're talking about when it comes
to Mars, but I see you snipped all of that to evade his point.

As to air launch, a big upper stage(s) is still needed. *This is why the
payload of such an air launched vehicle is severely limited if you
constrain the carrier aircraft to existing aircraft.

Stratolauncher needs to build a huge, new, carrier aircraft because of
this. *It's not yet clear if this approach will be better than, say, the
VTVL approach being pursued by SpaceX.

Jeff

I have posted about air launch here forever, although a large carrier
aircraft is needed, they found a affordable way to build it.

On mars a LARGE transhab type ballon of say kevlar, should slow a
manned descent capsule just fine. even at high rate of entry.

You needent land a huge manned vehicle, and controlled dipping of
probes in the atmospehere have been used in the past to obtain a lower
orbit with minimal fuel consumption. The large transit vehicle would
return to earth less passengers for the next outgoing trip after
refurb. The return from mars ship would already be in mars orbit for
later use. The mars base would already be established by remote
controlled vehcles, and the habitats buried for radiation protection

Something like this out of the box plan could cut transit time
dramatically, and cutting time minimises radiation exposure and
consumables. Plus it should also lessen hazards of life threatening
breakdowns

On Jan 3, 11:29*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
bob haller wrote:

of course you will laugh but then again you laughed at air launch of
spacecraft, but strato launcher is being built today

You're taking your own delusions as fact again.

go back and look at this groups archives, I have posted about the
advantages of air launched for most of the time I have been here,

And you've been wrong virtually every time you've posted. *This time
is no exception.



plus air launch probably already exists for DOD...

And your brain PROBABLY exists, although current evidence would say it
doesn't.



it would make launching personell easier..no big booster necessary

Preposterous comment. *Please explain just how that would work, again,
keeping in mind that it's not ALTITUDE that buys you that much, but
rather VELOCITY.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
*territory."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * --G. Behn

oh private industry is spending millions / billions just to prove it
cant work..

the launch vehicle gets attached to the carrier aircraft and flown to
anywhere forb release, removing many launch constraints

the booster will not need to push the payloadfrom sea level to release
altitude and all the fuel can be from the ground and nothing has to go
to orbit, plus airliner operations are routine

On Jan 3, 11:40*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
bob haller wrote:

Fred's point is you don't know what you're talking about when it comes
to Mars, but I see you snipped all of that to evade his point.

As to air launch, a big upper stage(s) is still needed. *This is why the
payload of such an air launched vehicle is severely limited if you
constrain the carrier aircraft to existing aircraft.

Stratolauncher needs to build a huge, new, carrier aircraft because of
this. *It's not yet clear if this approach will be better than, say, the
VTVL approach being pursued by SpaceX.

I have posted about air launch here forever, although a large carrier
aircraft is needed, they found a affordable way to build it.

So you're now backing away from your original (preposterous) statement
that air launch obviates the need for a big rocket?



On mars a LARGE transhab type ballon of say kevlar, should slow a
manned descent capsule just fine. even at high rate of entry.

Again, do you have ANY clue how thin the air on Mars is and how
ineffectively it slows things down. *There's a reason we don't try to
use parachutes on even moderately sized probes.



You needent land a huge manned vehicle, and controlled dipping of
probes in the atmospehere have been used in the past to obtain a lower
orbit with minimal fuel consumption. The large transit vehicle would
return to earth less passengers for the next outgoing trip after
refurb. The return from mars ship would already be in mars orbit for
later use. *The mars base would already be established by remote
controlled vehcles, and the habitats buried for radiation protection

Something like this out of the box plan could cut transit time
dramatically, and cutting time minimises radiation exposure and
consumables. Plus it should also lessen hazards of life threatening
breakdowns

Nothing in your 'plan' cuts transit time, which is solely based on how
much delta-V you can muster for a fast trajectory.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
*territory."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * --G. Behn

obviously transit time must be cut using a nuclear rocket.