Could easier space travel be in sight

[Ice fyre]

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Magnetic shield for spacefarers

A fascinating article. Seems setting up a magnetic field to protect space travelers from Solar radiation is easier than first thought. I wonder if they could do something like this to protect from all forms of radiation?

[mosaix]

Thanks for this IF - very interesting.

[chrispenycate]

The magnetic shield (which you will find in my last year's 'big ship' story in critiques, using superconducting wire woven into the spacesuit) will protect against reasonably low energy charged particles, mainly alpha and beta, as would be found in solar wind, or the average solar flare. This is the majority of the problem, and it should even make it possible to navigate the Van Allen radiation belts.

They will be more or less useless against cosmic rays, which are generally uncharged, and anyway are too energetic to be easily deflected, or electro- magnetics, like X-rays and gamma rays.

[Nik]

IIRC, a magnetic field will only deflect charged particles of low to moderate energies...

Even with this restriction, it should reduce the amount of 'storm shelter' shielding...

Um, IIRC, one of the Apollo missions missed being 'taken out' by a solar flare by a matter of days. This may have been a powerful political incentive to pull the lunar program 'until the next solar minimum'. Deferral being the deadliest form of denial, that meant for ever...

[skeptical]

In the long run, the best way to protect against radiation, of all kinds, is genetic modification. There are any number of animals that can tolerate massively higher doses than humans can, and even a bacterium that lives inside the cooling water surrounding nuclear piles. They do this by having better DNA repair mechanisms, which are potentially transferrable by gene insertion.

Imagine a whole population of humans able to travel interstellar and laugh at hard sleeting radiation. While we are at it, we can make them tolerant of zero G as well.