Radiation shielding - is it necessary in the Outer Solar System?

Dr Omni,

Hello from Australia. The normal levels of radiation are not your
main problem. What you would have to guard against is a Mass Coronal
Ejection. This will spread as it moves but is more like a torch beam
than a candle flame. As such it can do more damage at a greater
distance. You would need to protect yourself out there.

Of course if you can get enough equipment out that far you have all
the mass you would need, sitting around in nice handy sized lumps.
In
fact with a large mirror, a big bomb and a lot of ice (pick it up
from
a passing comet) you have all you need to make your own habitat. You
just use the mirror to heat up a local rock to a soft half melt (
lots
of metal if you please), insert bomb and pack with ice, set off bomb
to boil ice and expand the rock. Wait to cool, insert dirt, people
and settle back to watch.

Darren Brown

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, "Dr. Omni" wrote:
> Radiation shielding is always considered in all projects of space
> settlements that I've ever seen. Sometimes it covers just the
"population
> sector" of the settlement, leaving agricultural and industrial parts
> unprotected; sometimes it covers the whole thing. However, it
always
impose
> severe engineering and architectural constraints in the project.
After all,
> shields - and I'm talking about *passive* shields, those that would
block
> radiation using a very thick wall - are *very* massive, and you
must
take
> that into account when you're designing a rotating space city.
Several tons
> of rock or water per square meter of outer hull...
>
> However, the most dangerous kind of radiation in space is the one
coming
> from the Sun - a solar flare strong enough can, indeed, hit a human
being
> with a lethal dose of radiation. Cosmic radiation, on the other
hand, is
> rather constant and somewhat much less harmful: being exposed to it
brings
> as much risk of getting cancer as smoking, according to a recent
article
> that I read in "Scientific American". Therefore, is radiation
shielding a
> necessity in the Outer Solar System? I think that the solar
radiation would
> be so feeble beyond Jupiter's orbit that "light" space colonies,
having
> nothing but an atmosphere-containing hull, would be perfectly
viable. Does
> anyone have data on how far from the sun solar radiation in space
would be