TransHab as storm shelter

In article ,
Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Travis P wrote:
...center of the ship is the water storage tanks, but the tanks have
storage rooms in the centers that are surrounded by the water. When
needed, the entire crew can fit in there for days at a time.
Uncomfortable, but it's good dual use. One problem would be the
diminished quantity of water towards the end of the mission.

Fortunately, both food -- even dehydrated -- and human wastes have
plenty of water content, so you can use them for storm-shelter
shielding.

So, in the event of an interplanetary solar storm, you WANT to be in
deep ****.

--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."
-- George Herbert

You contradict yourself here, for certain values of "box".

--
Tim McDaniel,

(Tony Rusi) wrote in message . com...
A group of engineers including David Cavalieri were granted a patent
on this very idea a few years ago. That patent is owned by Bigelow
Aerospace. Anthony Zupperro had an idea for a PBO bag that would be a
nuclear powered steam rocket "ice ship" even earlier. The existence of
prior art and the previously mentioned problems, (That much water is
heavy and it won't stop all cosmic rays) is all true, making the value
of the patent very dubious indeed.

Excellent! Thanks for the info, I've been looking over the Bigelow
patents on uspto.gov. Some of the proposals are very interesting,
including an inflatable hab that is mounted asymetrically from it's
solid core, leaving a large open space for building out.

NASA had a very small storm shelter baselined inside the transhab for
use during the infrequent and unpredictable solar proton storms from
the sun for long duration missions like the 9 month chemical rocket
transit from earth to mars.

I was describing a more medium-sized one, from Henry's response it
sounds like the water-shielding would only be useful for HEEO orbits -
storm shelters would be used everywhere else.

Josh

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Josh Gigantino wrote:
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...

20cm is enough for shelter from solar storms?

Probably, yes -- it depends a little bit on what assumptions you make and
how conservative you are.

OK. Crew survival is paramount. 8) Is there a decent layman's source
about space radiation and the Van Allen Belts?

For LEO, it depends a little on which LEO you're in, but by and large you
don't need a lot of shielding. For an orbit passing through the belts
with any regularity, you'd need a bunch, but I don't have numbers on hand.
Out in deep space, you want either complete shielding (5-10t/m^2,
impossibly heavy for near-future vehicles) or else a small shielded storm
shelter and relatively little shielding on the rest.

My own use for this idea is mostly as a HEEO tank farm for my stories.
The setup would be on a large double truss, with inflatable tanks and
the manned sections having zip-together water layers. Would the
shielding required while going through the Belts then pose a danger on
the long loop away from Earth?

...Waste heat and available water could be used for humidity control.

Humidity control in a manned spacecraft with a recirculating air system
generally means dehumidification, not humidification. Human bodies put
out substantial amounts of water vapor.

I was wondering if there might be a way to create
temperature-controlled panels (or a hydrophilic plastic) that could
transfer atmospheric moisture into hull-graywater tanks? Similarly,
would there be ways to use the waste heat, probably as tubes in the
radiator, to heat potable water?

Would the water (plus several layers of kevlar, bladders, etc) provide
enough meteorite/impact protection?

The way to protect against micrometeorites (and in LEO, space debris) is
with multiple thin "bumper" shields spaced well out from the main hull.
...
Wider gaps are more effective than
more mass, and multiple thin walls are more effective than one thick wall.

It seems like inflatable barriers in general are the answer to this,
vs metal hulls. Much more bumper space can be achieved by adding
baggier outer layers.

Would it be correct that a HEEO application might be the only
reasonable use of this type of inflatable? Would it actually be more
...
Right, you *don't* want to live inside 20cm of shielding in deep space,

Do you have any other thoughts on designing a HEEO tankfarm using
modules like this? This would be mostly a water station - sending
filtered water, H and O (plus some other volatiles) to LEO and the
moon.

Josh