Comment 2TMX Re: Should be fine...

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Future manned Mars exploration at risk due to lowered solar activity

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Should be fine... (Score: 2, Insightful)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-23 15:04 (#2TMF)

Nobody is lined-up and waiting to blast-off to Mars right now, so I think we're good. In a few years, when people are ready to go, solar weather will be swinging the other way. It's an extreme case right now, but still part of a cycle that has been observed going for several centuries, so it's only a matter of a bit more time before things get back to normal:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png

Re: Should be fine... (Score: 1)

by tanuki64@pipedot.org on 2014-10-23 18:49 (#2TMX)

Nobody is lined-up and waiting to blast-off to Mars right now
This might be true. But it still is sad. More and more hurdles against human space flights are discovered. Faster than light... good chances that it will never happen. Manned interstellar flights?
At speeds above 0.3c, which is for all its worth far too slow to get anywhere, the space dust turns into deadly and hard to shield radiation:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0610030
When a ship accelerates to a relativistic velocity above 0.3c, interstellar gas becomes a flow of relativistic nucleons, which, in itself, is nothing less than hard radiation bombarding the starship, its travelers, and all of the electronic equipment aboard.
And now even flying around within the solar system is no really reliable possible.

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