[ExI] Radiation damage could stop manned trips to Mars

[Stephen Van Sickle]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 12:40 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11 October 2016 at 19:57, Stephen Van Sickle wrote:



>
> This lab is part of NASA’s Human
> Research Program
>

So what?  NASA is as capable of bad science as anyone.


> The rate of
> dosage doesn't matter.


Yes, it does.  It matters quite a bit.  If you live in Denver for 80 years,
your total background dose is abut 1 Sv.  Any effect of that won't be
measurable.  If you get that dose in one hour, you will show symptoms of
Acute Radiation Syndrome and have about a 5% chance of dying from it in a
month.  Rate likely will have a different effect with cosmic radiation than
with gamma, but a blanket statement that "rate of dosage doesn't matter" is
just plain wrong.

I also said "take with a big grain of salt", not "disregard entirely".
Heavy ion radiation is one of the two biggest medical concerns (the other
being .38 g gravity effects).  It is a serious issue, but like .38 g just
about impossible to experiment with on earth.  Even if there is an
accelerator that can create cosmic ray energies (and there isn't), no one
would tie it up for 2 or 3 years for one experiment.  So they do the
experiment that they can, not the one which they need.  Very common, but
the results are rarely definitive.

s
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