Comment on How can we get to Mars faster

• verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They did that in the novel “Seveneves”, used a massive chunk of ice as the bow of their ship on a one-way, twenty year plus trip. It didn’t stop all the radiation, though. Just enough to keep a minimum number of crew alive to complete their mission. They all developed different types of cancers, anyways,but the kinds that could be treated along the way and extend their chances.

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• unlawfulbooger@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  But then they’re drinking irradiated water, no?

  Unless it’s really easy to remove the radiation safely, this doesn’t seem like the right solution.

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  • knightly@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Irradiated water is fine.

    You’re thinking of radioactive water, which is water with radioactive stuff in it.

    Subjecting regular water to regular amounts of radiation is fine, even if it’s high-energy gamma rays. If there’s enough radiation to make water itself radioactive then you have bigger problems than radioactive water.

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    • unlawfulbooger@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Ah yes, that’s the difference. Thanks!

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  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    “remove” what exactly? water is not alive so it’s okay to irradiate it en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

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    • just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Dude…wut.

      Can’t tell if you’re joking or not.

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      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        i don’t get what you fail to understand, water doesn’t became radioactive or harmful in any other way after irradiation, and irradiation of food is routinely used for extending its shelf life

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  • SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    You wouldn’t want to drink reactor coolant water (mostly because of the chemistry additives) but water in a tank that just stays between the people and the hot stuff would mostly just get warm.

    Most of what you’d get at that kind of distance is neutrons, and they are more likely to bounce off the hydrogen than to do something like activate the oxygen into N16 which dies off pretty fast anyway.

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  • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I don’t think it works that way. The water slows down the neutrons so that when and if they get to you they don’t have enough energy to hurt you. The radiation doesn’t contaminate the water anymore than a microwave oven does.

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  • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    They used the ice for everything, including cooling and heating the ship as needed. They got the bad effects from the cosmic radiation pinging in from all other directions, not from using the water. The volume of ice was larger than that of the ship, I think it also absorbed physical damage from micrometeorites. Let’s hope someone in the Big Green Machine reads the novel.

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    • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I mean, they put nuclear waste at the bottom of miles deep water wells, because it absorbs alpha, gamma and beta particles and it’s cheap.

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  • Bezier@suppo.fi ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It doesn’t make it radioactive or something, if that was your thought.

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• Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  You would need a pretty good thickness of water and it becomes complicated shipping it up into space.

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  • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Well, the water is necessary for for life support and needs to be sourced somehow anyway. It kind of sets a minimum crew and passenger capacity if you want to make the most use of your shielding water.

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• just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Liquid and rockets is a death sentence.

  Liquid and space vessels is worse.

  Liquids on reentry is never going to happen.

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  • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Water doesn’t have to be a liquid, but don’t actual spacecraft typically contain liquids during wall of those cases? What do you mean?

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    • just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      You can freeze it before launch, but you’d have to freeze it again before reentry. Not possible, especially if you’re talking about lining a craft with it.

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      • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Why can’t it stay liquid?

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      • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Build the hypothetical ship in space and you never have to deal with it except as ice, which is easier to move around and shape into what you need. The ISS has a lot of liquids on board in all sorts of forms, from chicken soup, to ink pens, to the urine inside astronaut bladders. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

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