warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
How do they deal with radiation issues? I guess the outer shell must be fairly complex in terms of how it is composed.
The thread for space cadets!
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hobbsyoyo
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On radiation issues: Currently, they don't and they never really have. It was a pure stroke of luck that one of the Apollo Moon landings happened a week before a massive solar eruption that would have killed them all if it had happened while they were beyond LEO.
In low orbit, astronauts are protected from the worst radiation that comes from coronal mass ejections by being within Earth's magnetic field. Traveling beyond that puts you at risk and currently the only viable mitigation strategies they have are to stack supplies next to the walls, creating a radiation bunker inside the space craft or storing water and waste products in a space between the outer and inner walls.
These stations would orbit in LEO, so this kind of radiation wouldn't be a huge issue.
However, there is the constant influx of radiation that isn't affected by the Earth's magnetic fields such as X- and gamma-rays from the sun and extrasolar sources. While these usually aren't high in dose, you can never rule out a freak outburst at any given moment that could kill the astronauts in space as they aren't under the protective layers of the Earth's atmosphere the way we are on the surface.
Interestingly, astronauts do actually see the radiation sometimes; when a cosmic ray travels through their eyes, it creates a blue flash in their field of vision. It is a pretty frequent occurence. (I don't think cosmic rays are affected too much by the Earth's magnetosphere at the altitude of LEO despite being [IIRC] charged particles. They are too massive and traveling too fast [.99c] to be deflected much)
I do think the composition of the walls of inflatable modules is pretty complicated but I'm unfamiliar with the details. It turns out though that the walls, despite being essentially balloons, are very resistant to micrometeroid punctures. The surface tension or something or other makes them really strong, much stronger than the thin (to save weight) walls of rigid space constructions.
In low orbit, astronauts are protected from the worst radiation that comes from coronal mass ejections by being within Earth's magnetic field. Traveling beyond that puts you at risk and currently the only viable mitigation strategies they have are to stack supplies next to the walls, creating a radiation bunker inside the space craft or storing water and waste products in a space between the outer and inner walls.
These stations would orbit in LEO, so this kind of radiation wouldn't be a huge issue.
However, there is the constant influx of radiation that isn't affected by the Earth's magnetic fields such as X- and gamma-rays from the sun and extrasolar sources. While these usually aren't high in dose, you can never rule out a freak outburst at any given moment that could kill the astronauts in space as they aren't under the protective layers of the Earth's atmosphere the way we are on the surface.
Interestingly, astronauts do actually see the radiation sometimes; when a cosmic ray travels through their eyes, it creates a blue flash in their field of vision. It is a pretty frequent occurence. (I don't think cosmic rays are affected too much by the Earth's magnetosphere at the altitude of LEO despite being [IIRC] charged particles. They are too massive and traveling too fast [.99c] to be deflected much)
I do think the composition of the walls of inflatable modules is pretty complicated but I'm unfamiliar with the details. It turns out though that the walls, despite being essentially balloons, are very resistant to micrometeroid punctures. The surface tension or something or other makes them really strong, much stronger than the thin (to save weight) walls of rigid space constructions.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Interesting. I was going to mention punctures next.
KSP is really making me read way more in terms of space related stuff than previously
KSP is really making me read way more in terms of space related stuff than previously
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Don't professors tend to be huge snobs? Especially the ones in the sciences?Yeah it really makes you think about stuff. I bet you've already learned more about orbital mechanics than you ever thought you would.
I am going to suggest this game to my orbital mechanics professor next I see him.
I know one of the members on the Celestia forum is an actual professor, and is, well, a huge snob.
And has a bit of a temper to boot.
hobbsyoyo
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It really depends PlutoniumEmpire. Some are, some are not. Some are just awkward little weirdos. You can't really categorize them along such lines as a class of people in my experience; they're all different.
My Orbital Mechanics professor is not a snob by any stretch, but I have had a few that were.
My Orbital Mechanics professor is not a snob by any stretch, but I have had a few that were.
So... speaking of Orbital Mechanics...
I read ArmsControlWonk pretty regularly, and there was a lively discussion there when that old USSR Cosmos satellite collided with an Iridium bird. Or maybe the Iridium satellite collided with a Cosmos bird?
The engineering required to clear space debris will be, in my oh-so-humble-opinion, the field of the next great waste management
I know there are some extremely clever and smart people already working on this, but if I had 10k to invest in a start up today, it would be in a space debris management firm.
Their hook?
Insurance.
On both the delivery to LEO, safety for the duration, and the retrival of any bits thence.
And, to secure your market, there must be a spacefaring nation treaty that essentially cements your business model as industry best-practice.
Where' Jolly Roger when you need a patent filed and a LLP drawn up?
hobbsyoyo
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Most insurance companies won't touch anything related to space launches and the few who do are exhorbitantly expensive. Why? Because they often lose their shirts on the deal.
Space junk is a huge issue but some companies and governments are already looking into it. I think I posted some cool links a few pages back.
Edit: Guess not, couldn't find it.
Space junk is a huge issue but some companies and governments are already looking into it. I think I posted some cool links a few pages back.
Edit: Guess not, couldn't find it.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
I am afraid you're mixing two issues here.
Solar Proton Events, also known as 'solar storms', are a common occurrence and indeed pose a serious threat to people who aren't protected by Earth's magnetosphere. Such an event could easily have killed any of the Apollo crews. These are bursts of charged particles launched from the Sun by an eruption (usually). They are only dangerous if the ship is in the direction of the eruption. Since we now have means of monitoring the Sun and since charged particles travel much slower than the speed of light, the crew of a ship in interplanetary space can be warned in advance and they can move into their radiation shelter, where they ride out the storm-
Galactic Cosmic Radiation is constant, omnidirectional bombardment by high-energy particles of mass and, more often, high-energy photons. The bad thing is there is no practical way to shield against it on a spaceship, you can only mitigate the impact by constructing the ship using composites instead of metals, which, when hit by particles of GCR, produce dangerous secondary radiation. It seems easier to just let GCR pass through you, leaving little damage. The good thing is that GCR is very low level and unless you plan to spend years and years in interplanetary space, it isn't lethal nor extremely unhealthy.
---
Of course, if we were EXTREMELY unlucky, we'd get hit by a gamma-ray burst from deep space, but in that event, not even Earth would help us. (The article provides speculative evidence that Earth might have been hit by a weak one in the early Middle Ages.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Another company wants to mine asteroids, BBC reports.
-> I still don't get how they want to turn profit, but hey, the more the merrier.
-> I still don't get how they want to turn profit, but hey, the more the merrier.
The ships are called "Firefly"! 
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Ahmadinejad has been to space before Poland?
Winner
Diverse in Unity
South Koreans have successfully launched a satellite:
Link to video.
And Spaceflightnow.com article on this
Link to video.
And Spaceflightnow.com article on this
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
hobbsyoyo
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The Japanese launched a rocket as well, and they openly admitted it carried spy satellites to snoop on the North Koreans.
So they applied their model to our solar system and it shows we're near the inner edge of the HZ? Hmm, you'd think that with so much ice cover and such a low average temp, we could stand to be closer than .99 AU.
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Well, we already dip into .99 AU on an annual basis, but with a few extra 9's attached to it after the decimal point.
Anyways, they left out clouds, as they said, and the hz estimates would probably be wider with clouds factored in.
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
If you'd have actually clicked the link, you'd have read that they used cloud-free models
, so I guess that "cloud-free" means they left out clouds. 
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