[ExI] We Finally Know How Much Radiation There Is on The Moon, And It's Not Great News

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 1:21 PM John Grigg via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> "The radiation of the Moon is between two and three times higher than
> what you have on the ISS (International Space Station)," co-author
> Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, an astrophysicist at the University of
> Kiel told AFP.
>
> "So that limits your stay to approximately two months on the surface of
> the Moon," he added, once the radiation exposure from the roughly
> week-long journey there, and week back, is taken into account."
>
> https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-predict-how-long-humans-can-survive-radiation-on-the-moon

Chang'e 4 landed on the lunar farside, which has higher radiation than
the nearside because Earth isn't between it and many of the sources of
radiation. Think of how the farside gets a walloping dosing from the
Sun at noon that the nearside would because the latter would have the
Earth's magnitude field between it and the Sun even when there's no
eclipse. (It's also slightly farther from the Sun, on average at lunar
noon.)

That said, human long-term habitation would all involve shielding, no?
I think all serious proponents of lunar bases know this. And such
projects as I've seen almost always involve burying part or all of the
habitats under a meter or more of lunar regolith.* So this would seem
to be an engineering problem rather than an insurmountable obstacle,
no?

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst

* Of course, one would have to have good measurements of how
radioactive the lunar regolith is and what lunar subsurface radiation
is like. If it's like Earth, then it's probably low and acceptable
overall. Still, with stuff like CREEP, it probably demands choosing
habitat sites wisely. That is, if one is using local materials for
habitat protection.