Asteroid use

From: Marcel Williams [mailto:newpapyrus@...]

MW: Of course, living on a 1G space station would mean
that you would have to provide cosmic ray protection
for your workers. Doing this by mass shielding would
dramatically increase the weight of your rotation
habitat and stress on your cables.

Not necessarily. There are habitat designs where the radiation shield does
not rotate with the rest of the habitat. Both the Stanford Torus and the
Bernal Sphere use this approach.

Alternatively, you could provide cosmic ray protection
by positively charging the metalic exterior of of the
rotating habitat to repel ionizing protons while
beneath the metalic exterior, providing a small
magnetic field by internal coils to deflect the
significantly less massive electrons.

Maybe, but the Ames study looked at this option and concluded that passive
shielding was a better solution. I'd see more of a case for active
shielding on a ship or a mobile habitat than a stationary habitat.

Regards,
Mike Combs

From:
Marcel Williams [mailto:newpapyrus@...]
MW: Of course, living on a 1G space station would mean
that you would have to provide cosmic ray protection
for your workers. Doing this by mass shielding would
dramatically increase the weight of your rotation
habitat and stress on your cables.

Not necessarily. There are habitat designs where the radiation shield does not rotate with the rest of the habitat. Both the Stanford Torus and the Bernal Sphere use this approach.
Alternatively, you could provide cosmic ray protection
by positively charging the metalic exterior of of the
rotating habitat to repel ionizing protons while
beneath the metalic exterior, providing a small
magnetic field by internal coils to deflect the
significantly less massive electrons.

Maybe, but the Ames study looked at this option and concluded that passive shielding was a better solution. I'd see more of a case for active shielding on a ship or a mobile habitat than a stationary habitat.
Regards,
Mike Combs