The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation

Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by cozzyd on Thursday March 08, 2018 @01:50AM (#16542799)

Mars has no magnetic field and very little atmosphere, which makes it a terrible place to avoid cosmic rays.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by Grasshoppeh on Thursday March 08, 2018 @08:05AM (#16544065)

This is true and possibly one reason I think moons are a better bet for cosmic colonization.

Mars, venus, and mercury have next to no field, earth has a moderate field, and all our gas giants have very strong fields.

Some of the gas giant moons are attractive since the gravitational effects on the moons can create geo-thermal energy. Pair a large planet with a strong magnetic field and energy created from gravity and we might have something interesting worth exploring.

I do not think this is perfect though, due to the size of our atmosphere we are shielded from meteorites,, this might not be the case of these moons. We would need to consider making some way to protect ourselves like harvesting ore from surrounding areas. Even then this might not stop large collisions.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by bap on Thursday March 08, 2018 @02:24AM (#16542917)

So... you're saying Elon needs to colonize Venus too.. ?

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by greglindahl on Thursday March 08, 2018 @02:21AM (#16542905)

... and because of these first 2 facts will probably have living quarters underground. Which is a good way to avoid cosmic rays.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by Scarblac on Thursday March 08, 2018 @03:38AM (#16543168)

Then it seems slightly easier to just have some people living underground here on earth.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by gambiting on Thursday March 08, 2018 @03:45AM (#16543193)

You know what's even better than dirt at stopping radiation? Water. And we have lots of it. 10km of water at the bottom of the Mariana trench should stop any amount of radiation that could hit Earth.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by thaumasiotes on Thursday March 08, 2018 @04:00AM (#16543238)

On the other hand, we can live underground, but we can't live underwater.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by gambiting on Thursday March 08, 2018 @04:02AM (#16543242)

Both require living in some sort of pressurized container, unless you assume we could live in underground caves(but those can't be very deep so probably not good enough). Obviously the underwater one would require more engineering, but probably still less than one needed for Mars.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by thaumasiotes on Thursday March 08, 2018 @04:32AM (#16543340)

That depends on your perspective. We have the technology to go to Mars right now; we do not have the technology to go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. It is a much more hostile environment than Mars is.

However, if you assumed that we were able to go the bottom of the ocean, transporting supplies there would be much easier than transporting supplies to Mars.

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Re:The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation by jylam on Thursday March 08, 2018 @05:00AM (#16543435)

we do not have the technology to go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Except we reached it four times since 1960 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Descents

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