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"Christian Ramos" wrote in message ...
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. Ok, why hasnt anybody put lab rats on any of the mars-bound orbiters yet, just to monitor the effects on health ? Eventually some living organism is going to have to take the trip, and it would be kinda stupid to have the first human crew as test subjects. -kert |
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On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:38:18 GMT, Christian Ramos
wrote: "John Thingstad" wrote in message news ...snipped comment from John Schilling erroneously attributed to me... I might add that the best shielding for a nuclear reactor would be to place it far away from the crew quarters. Radiation follows the inverse square distance law, yes. So put it on a boom far away from the crew quarters. Shape is of little relevance to a spacecraft as long as it is symmetric around the axis of thrust. VASIMR is a true space drive not designed for use in a atmosphere. -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/ |
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"Kaido Kert" wrote in message om... "Christian Ramos" wrote in message ... 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. Ok, why hasnt anybody put lab rats on any of the mars-bound orbiters yet, just to monitor the effects on health ? There appears little room for payload now, so placing biologicals and associated life support on those payloads seems a bit ridiculous, let alone the fact that you would have to go to mars to actually retreive the rats.. Additionally, rats arent really going to cut it in determining the effect on humans, plants and other species. Eventually some living organism is going to have to take the trip, and it would be kinda stupid to have the first human crew as test subjects. Why..I dont remember Nasa sending rats to the moon before the Apollo landing. Alot of current radiation data comes from the Japanese population exposed to US Nuclear weapons not rats. The reality is, Space is a dangerous environment, and like any other dangerous environment, much of the survival techniques are going to be developed from people living in that environment, not by running simulations in the comfort of someones lab outside that environment. I dont think anyone is suggesting using humans as test subjects. I'm suggesting maximising the medical data gathered from those initial pioneers. And picking those pioneers to minimise any suffering etc etc. Example, elderly people who have no requirement to procreate and who are unlikely to live long enough statistically to develop full blown tumours and cancers. |
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"John Thingstad" wrote in message news On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:38:18 GMT, Christian Ramos wrote: "John Thingstad" wrote in message news ...snipped comment from John Schilling erroneously attributed to me... I might add that the best shielding for a nuclear reactor would be to place it far away from the crew quarters. Radiation follows the inverse square distance law, yes. So put it on a boom far away from the crew quarters. Shape is of little relevance to a spacecraft as long as it is symmetric around the axis of thrust. VASIMR is a true space drive not designed for use in a atmosphere. I'm a proponent of nuclear power (when done right) and a supporter of nuclear reactors for planetary power and for space transport tugs. What I cant bring myself to support is the use of Nuclear reactors in a atmosphere given aerobrake requirements. Wouldnt such a design as you propose make a aerobrake maneuver even more dangerous if not structurally impossible. VASIMR, seems to me like a technology toy looking for a real life solution. How would you envisage VASIMR being used. Although, given a space based research program that furthers our understanding into magnetics and plasmas things could change, but the benefits are more likely to flow through to technologies such as the Russian MPD thrusters. |
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"Christian Ramos" wrote in message
... "Kaido Kert" wrote in message om... "Christian Ramos" wrote in message ... 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. Ok, why hasnt anybody put lab rats on any of the mars-bound orbiters yet, just to monitor the effects on health ? There appears little room for payload now, so placing biologicals and associated life support on those payloads seems a bit ridiculous, let alone the fact that you would have to go to mars to actually retreive the rats.. Additionally, rats arent really going to cut it in determining the effect on humans, plants and other species. A test such as this would not go all the way to mars much less be extra payload. you would put a variety of plants, small creatures and some bugs in a self sustained environment and see what the effects are. Would be a good way to test different types of shielding as well. this test would also have to be done away from earth to have the full effect of a long term trip. Eventually some living organism is going to have to take the trip, and it would be kinda stupid to have the first human crew as test subjects. Why..I dont remember Nasa sending rats to the moon before the Apollo landing. Alot of current radiation data comes from the Japanese population exposed to US Nuclear weapons not rats. The reality is, Space is a dangerous environment, and like any other dangerous environment, much of the survival techniques are going to be developed from people living in that environment, not by running simulations in the comfort of someones lab outside that environment. I dont think anyone is suggesting using humans as test subjects. I'm suggesting maximising the medical data gathered from those initial pioneers. And picking those pioneers to minimise any suffering etc etc. Example, elderly people who have no requirement to procreate and who are unlikely to live long enough statistically to develop full blown tumours and cancers. Umm but you are saying use uman test subjects. and telling them to suck it up and drive on untill they get cancer and have to return. Not to mention the whole point of this is to make it safer for humans and whatever else we wish to invite up into space. I do believe everyone here understands space is a dangerous space...the umm point is....to make it less dangerous. -Matthew H. |
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"John Thingstad" wrote in message
news On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:38:18 GMT, Christian Ramos wrote: "John Thingstad" wrote in message news ...snipped comment from John Schilling erroneously attributed to me... I might add that the best shielding for a nuclear reactor would be to place it far away from the crew quarters. Radiation follows the inverse square distance law, yes. So put it on a boom far away from the crew quarters. Shape is of little relevance to a spacecraft as long as it is symmetric around the axis of thrust. VASIMR is a true space drive not designed for use in a atmosphere. If your going to use a nuclear reactor yes. i would think best way to do it would be on a boom as well. Not to mention it makes it possible to dump the whole reactor modual 'just in case'. Would make large upgrades easier as well with the ability to just add a new modual. |
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"Christian Ramos" wrote in message
... wrote in message news:PXekd.12$N95.0@lakeread01... In the famous works of Joey Tribiani the protective shielding of the space station is a "Moo Point". Havent heard of Joey Tribiani nor "Moo Point" before in this context, who/what are they? Joey was a charecter on friends. Just one of the episodes I remember and enjoyed. ;-) (note: my wife makes me watch them.) They have less radiation to consider due to the fact that it is close to the protective embrace of mother Earth. Agreed. They also have different types and abundances of various particles to deal with, plus very different environments thermally, particulate, etc etc. 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. I believe that this is more a "suck it and see" type thing. It's probably something that no matter how many studies are done is going to require real data from the real environment to get a good handle on it. It's more than identifying what types of radiation are present, but what types are harmful to biologicals and in what doses. My personal preference would be to make those initial pioneers 50+ and incorporate a good euthanasia program combined with medical followup pre and post death to get such data. Of course this isn't a suck it up and see attitude. You build tests first, see how they go, if positive, proceed. and as far as the pre and post death goes, means we wait another 60+ years before venturing into space towards mars? I doubt humans will wait that long. 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. Your original message isnt in my newsreader, although I would think that relying on a power and technology based solution for such a fundamental survival feature may be a high risk strategy. The question I always ask is how do you maintain it. That is, if you need to turn it off to repair, how do you protect yourself. If the answer is passive shielding, then you may as well remove the active shielding to begin with. This also makes me wonder if using your food and water stores as protection if they themselves become contaminated by space radiation? I'm always doubtful on such solutions. Too narrow a focus. eg: does this mean that we cant ship cargo without food and water being present due to the risk of electronic failure. Although, I'm all for utilising it as a tertiary or even secondary protection, using food and water as primary protection seems like abit of a copout with highly variable results. Does this mean only certain types of foods, and what damage to the nutrients will occur by being exposed to radiation etc etc. 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. In my experience this is not always the case and can be misleading. Example, I know of a recent productisation whereby the mass market enabled them to produce the product 8 times cheaper. However, this was driven by them being able to get a cheaper price on the larger volumes of raw matierials. It should also be noted that it was more expensive to actually produce the product mass market (due to wastage, plant, capital costs etc) but the scale of savings on materials more than made up for it. No such economies of scale will really be available for space based enterprises per se as logistics rather than sourcing is likely to be a higher part of the cost. My point here was towards superconductors. there are many earth applications for these, not just space. transportation, increased energy efficiance, loss-less power transportation and such. 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. .My 2 euros are we already have materials that are superconductive in the temperature envrionment of space and even the moon and as such a good envrionment for further research. I believe superconductivity could have a significant role to play in energy storage in space, but thats personal opinion. aye, agree with ya there. my 17 american pennies worth (dang inflation and gas prices now adays). |
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wrote in message newskCkd.773$N95.53@lakeread01... "Christian Ramos" wrote in message I believe that this is more a "suck it and see" type thing. It's probably something that no matter how many studies are done is going to require real data from the real environment to get a good handle on it. It's more than identifying what types of radiation are present, but what types are harmful to biologicals and in what doses. My personal preference would be to make those initial pioneers 50+ and incorporate a good euthanasia program combined with medical followup pre and post death to get such data. Of course this isn't a suck it up and see attitude. You build tests first, see how they go, if positive, proceed. and as far as the pre and post death goes, means we wait another 60+ years before venturing into space towards mars? I doubt humans will wait that long. Unfortunately, it would probably be 60+ years if we do tests, and even at the end of that it would still be a case of "suck and see". My scenario, would be along the lines of, evaluate likely shielding based on the work of Nasa and the Russian Space Agency, use it and carefully measure the effects on personnel. My own personal preference although not yet in concrete, is to have people 45/50+ do the initial pioneering, as given a full life they will unlikely live long enough to develop nasty radiation complications but can provide valuable data for the next generation. Then again, I guess it depends whether we are talking about a PR stunt ala Apollo or a more permanent human presence, I'm referring to the later. At this point we dont know the environment that well and we dont know the effect on humans that well, so all the simulations in the world wont help until we get real human beings up there. |
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wrote in message news:KbCkd.727$N95.295@lakeread01... "Christian Ramos" wrote in message ... There appears little room for payload now, so placing biologicals and associated life support on those payloads seems a bit ridiculous, let alone the fact that you would have to go to mars to actually retreive the rats.. Additionally, rats arent really going to cut it in determining the effect on humans, plants and other species. A test such as this would not go all the way to mars much less be extra payload. So your talking a seperate mission. Without getting political, I think this would be long way down the current priority list and achieve little. you would put a variety of plants, small creatures and some bugs in a self sustained environment and see what the effects are. Would be a good way to test different types of shielding as well. this test would also have to be done away from earth to have the full effect of a long term trip. The radiation environment doesnt appear to be uniform in space so you would want to test in all possible environments which are currently unknown. How would you measure the damage remotely, how would you identify the damage from the various forms of radiation, and how would this apply to humans. How would you identify flux versus accumlative damage etc etc.The project would probably be more complex than actually sending humans and still need to be verified by long term human exposure. Umm but you are saying use uman test subjects. and telling them to suck it up and drive on untill they get cancer and have to return. Not to mention the whole point of this is to make it safer for humans and whatever else we wish to invite up into space. No I'm saying that the initial pioneers will be aware that what they have is the best we can give them and that as time goes on things will be improved, much the way it was handled with the Apollo astronauts although with better medical followup in this case. Given we dont know the what the actual radiation environment is and we dont know what the short/medium or long term effects are in such an environment let alone the reaction of biologicals in such an environment it will need to be modified as experience is gained. You cant model something you dont actually know about, only take best guesses and incorporate real data when it becomes available. I do believe everyone here understands space is a dangerous space...the umm point is....to make it less dangerous. And this is the crux of the argument. You cant make it less dangerous, we cant change the space environment to that degree, if we take that approach we will never go into space. The only methodology available is one of reducing or removing the impacts to the people in it. Therefore, we need to know the impacts and know the causes, something we do not currently know nor will we know until we have experience in the actual environment. Sure we cant make a best guess but at some point it needs to be validated in the real world. A personal observation not an accusation, some countries primarily america have taken the attitude in the last few decades that everything has to be safe before anything dangerous can be attempted (probably started when all the lawyers starting getting into it). This will only lead to us permanently being grounded on earth or dickering around in LEO. At some point all the models and simulations in the world will need to be validated by someone living in space. |
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"Christian Ramos" wrote in message ...
There appears little room for payload now, so placing biologicals and associated life support on those payloads seems a bit ridiculous, I asked the same question in another online discussion, and got the number of around 50kg for one rat and its consumables for a six-month cruise, including associated equipment. I suspect its closer to 100 but still not prohibitely high. let alone the fact that you would have to go to mars to actually retreive the rats.. Additionally, rats arent really going to cut it in determining the effect on humans, plants and other species. Its not absolutely necessary to retrieve them, is it ? We could simply pack sufficient health monitoring equipment along. Of course, returning it back to earth and monitoring the long-term effects would be even better, so if you have a mars sample return mission, it would be perhaps possible to return biological experiments from martian orbit along with surface sample. Obivously effects on humans would be far from certain with rat experiment, but we could be a lot more confident, after all we have used rats for such purposes for centuries. But packing a couple plants along would be a good idea of course, especially because those wouldnt cost much in a payload. Eventually some living organism is going to have to take the trip, and it would be kinda stupid to have the first human crew as test subjects. Why..I dont remember Nasa sending rats to the moon before the Apollo landing. But they put chimps in Mercury capsules, didnt they. US was in a race then and didnt have enough time to do it. Were there never plans to put animals on Surveyors ? -kert |
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