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DividedQuantum
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Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure
#23742402 - 10/16/16 12:31 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Mars-bound astronauts face brain damage from galactic cosmic ray exposure, says NASA-funded study
May encounter Alzheimer's-like long-term memory deficits, anxiety, depression and impaired decision-making --- will they even remember the trip?
A NASA-funded study of rodents exposed to highly energetic charged particles — similar to the galactic cosmic rays that will bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights — found that the rodents developed long-term memory deficits, anxiety, depression, and impaired decision-making (not to mention long-term cancer risk).
The study by University of California, Irvine (UCI) scientists appeared Oct. 10 in Nature’s open-access Scientific Reports. It follows one last year that appeared in the May issue of open-access Science Advances, showing somewhat shorter-term brain effects of galactic cosmic rays.
The rodents were subjected to charged particle irradiation (ionized charged atomic nuclei from oxygen and titanium) at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Six months after exposure, the researchers still found significant levels of brain inflammation and damage to neurons, poor performance on behavioral tasks designed to test learning and memory, and reduced “fear extinction” (an active process in which the brain suppresses prior unpleasant and stressful associations) — leading to elevated anxiety.
Similar types of more severe cognitive dysfunction (“chemo brain”) are common in brain cancer patients who have received high-dose, photon-based radiation treatments.
“The space environment poses unique hazards to astronauts,” said Charles Limoli, a professor of radiation oncology in UCI’s School of Medicine. “Exposure to these particles can lead to a range of potential central nervous system complications that can occur during and persist long after actual space travel. Many of these adverse consequences to cognition may continue and progress throughout life.”
NASA health hazards advisory
“During a 360-day round trip [to Mars], an astronaut would receive a dose of about 662 millisieverts (0.662 Gy) [twice the highest amount of radiation used in the UCI experiment with rodents] according to data from the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) … piggybacking on Curiosity,” said Cary Zeitlin, PhD, a principal scientist in Southwest Research Institute Space Science and Engineering Division and lead author of an article published in the journal Science in 2013. “In terms of accumulated dose, it’s like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days [for a year],” he said in a NASA press release. There’s also the risk from increased radiation during periodic solar storms.
In addition, as dramatized in the movie The Martian (and explained in this analysis), there’s a risk on the surface of Mars, although less than in space, thanks to the atmosphere, and thanks to nighttime shielding of solar radiation by the planet.
In October 2015, the NASA Office of Inspector General issued a health hazards report related to space exploration, including a human mission to Mars.
“There’s going to be some risk of radiation, but it’s not deadly,” claimed SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Sept. 27 in an announcement of plans to establish a permanent, self-sustaining civilization of a million people on Mars (with an initial flight as soon as 2024). “There will be some slightly increased risk of cancer, but I think it’s relatively minor. … Are you prepared to die? If that’s OK, you’re a candidate for going.”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/mars-bound-astronauts-face-brain-damage-from-galactic-cosmic-ray-exposure-says-nasa-funded-study
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imachavel
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: DividedQuantum]
#23819837 - 11/10/16 01:26 PM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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No kidding. I figured a thin atmosphere planet wouldn't have a strong magnetosphere that would deflect radiation.
How about sanity? I've driven on long road trips by myself where after being by myself for long periods of time my sanity comes into question. I'm just speaking of my trip across the US in June. I started out in Miami and made my way to Seattle. It took only 7 driving days, I stopped quite a bit though to see people, but slept by myself the entire month minus two days I stayed with a friend. This little amount of time being by myself where I would drive from Fl to Louisiana, Louisiana to Texas, Texas to Utah, etc all the way to Washington really questioned my sanity.
What's the relevance? The relevance is the idea that sending astronauts into space to charter a planet that takes 3 years to get there and 3 years to get back may be an extremely cruel process. Perhaps serving two years in solitary confinement for each astronaut prior to departing on their journey may prove the candidate and which candidate qualifies and which doesn't for an extreme long journey to a place with little value and the unnecessary use of resources it will take to brave such an adventure.
Now also you have pointed out, radiation exposure.
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Kryptos
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: imachavel] 1
#23821354 - 11/10/16 10:13 PM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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I'd still take a one-way ticket to mars. Life is bad for your health, and I'm pretty sure I can still function in my profession as a chemist after being driven insane over three years of solitary and having my brain cooked by solar radiation.
Im'ma end up as one weird(er) dude though.
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mndfreeze 
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: Kryptos]
#23824875 - 11/12/16 04:04 AM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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I would imagine a battery of tests would be done on the subjects psychiatric health as we already have a decent understanding of the mind when it comes to stress and dealing with things like long term social deprivation and what not. They already put astronauts through rigorous testing to weed out people who have the wrong type of mental attitude and aptitude for much shorter missions, so I would HOPE that for something much longer and with far higher risk that they would be weeding out even further and testing more in depth.
Radiation exposure has been one of man kinds biggest and well known roadblocks to space since we started off on that journey. It's one of those areas that we have been waiting for further eureka moments in science and technology to hopefully break through to make these sort of missions more viable.
The other big one is actually the lack of gravity. It does horrific things to the body over long periods of time. Your body has evolved over history very specifically to work in way with gravity in mind. A lot of body functions do not work well in zero G, and unlike the radiation problem which can be defeated with technology, this one is a problem with our bodies base design. There has been some speculation that short of some sci-fi level discovery like creating artificial gravity on a ship somehow, that we will need to do something extreme like DNA modification to alter the way the body does major functions like digestion, to be able to tolerate living in space or long space travel.
That of course is a whole OTHER can of technoworms.
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: mndfreeze]
#23825275 - 11/12/16 08:58 AM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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Great points. We have a long way to go.
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laughingdog
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: DividedQuantum]
#23853963 - 11/21/16 11:10 AM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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thats under "normal" conditions -- right? it can always get worse and the longer the journey the more chance for the unexpected the moon trip was much shorter and now years later some bad effects are surfacing in those who went
as regards solar events:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161103125930.htm
"Date: November 3, 2016 Source: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Summary: The GRAPES-3 muon telescope recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays of about 20 GeV, on 22 June 2015 lasting for two hours. The burst occurred when a giant cloud of plasma ejected from the solar corona, and moving with a speed of about 2.5 million kilometers per hour struck our planet, causing a severe compression of Earth's magnetosphere from 11 to 4 times the radius of Earth. It triggered a severe geomagnetic storm that generated aurora borealis, and radio signal blackouts in many high latitude countries. ....
Earth's magnetosphere extends over a radius of a million kilometers, which acts as the first line of defence, shielding us from the continuous flow of solar and galactic cosmic rays, thus protecting life on our planet from these high intensity energetic radiations. Numerical simulations performed by the GRAPES-3 collaboration on this event indicate that the Earth's magnetic shield temporarily cracked due to the occurrence of magnetic reconnection, allowing the lower energy galactic cosmic ray particles to enter our atmosphere. Earth's magnetic field bent these particles about 180 degree, from the day-side to the night-side of the Earth where it was detected as a burst by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope around mid-night on 22 June 2015. The data was analyzed and interpreted through extensive simulation over several weeks by using the 1280-core computing farm that was built in-house by the GRAPES-3 team of physicists and engineers at the Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty.
This work has recently been published in Physical Review Letters.
Solar storms can cause major disruption to human civilization by crippling large electrical power grids, global positioning systems (GPS), satellite operations and communications.
The GRAPES-3 muon telescope, the largest and most sensitive cosmic ray monitor operating on Earth is playing a very significant role in the study of such events. This recent finding has generated widespread excitement in the international scientific community, as well as electronic and print media."
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Crumist
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: DividedQuantum]
#23885353 - 12/01/16 06:05 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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Get more shielding. problem solved?
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: Crumist]
#23885378 - 12/01/16 06:18 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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I imagine the only way to block radiation is with lead, and that's probably way too heavy to have in significant amounts on a spacecraft. That's just my guess.
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Crumist
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: DividedQuantum]
#23885437 - 12/01/16 06:38 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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I've seen proposals to use water as shielding since is effective and you need a bunch of it anyway. There is concerns about gigantic, unpredictable bursts that would kill on contact, requiring some "radiation shelter" of thick lead (also some method of forecasting these rays to provide time enough to reach it). I wonder if humans would fare in close proximity to a electromagnet of sufficient power to approximate the ionosphere?
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Mars-bound astronauts to face severe radiation exposure [Re: Crumist]
#23885449 - 12/01/16 06:42 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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I wish they had gone into this.
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