[ExI] L5 society and infections

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2020 at 8:03 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] L5 society and infections
>
> > Presumably space habitats would be built with enough radiation shielding
> to bring total radiation exposure down to approximately Earth surface
> levels.
>
>
>
> That problem turns out to be far more difficult than it sounds.  An
> atmosphere is a great way to filter some kinds of particularly harmful
> radiation.  A sheet of metal creates a bunch of secondary particles when
> struck by high-energy particles.  To filter out the bad stuff requires a
> lot of material.  This makes me think we must have a way to use material
> already out there, such as from the asteroid belt.
>

Well yeah, you wouldn't use just a single thin sheet of metal.  For
instance, you'd put the primary water supply outside the habitable area -
but inside the outermost hull, of course - as part of radiation shielding.
It does require mass, but having that mass there in the first place is not
"difficult", it's just a design constraint.
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