Effective shielding against cosmic radiation is possibly an even greater problem in interplanetary travel than propulsion.
The solution will probably come from materials science, but at the moment I don't think there's enough effort being concentrated on this problem to solve it in my lifetime.
Would placing the spaceships crew behind its black hole engine provide adequate shielding from cosmic radiation and blue-shifted photons/particles? Killing two birds with one black hole, so to speak.
Also, wouldn't being in such proximity to a black hole negate the need for time dilation effects of speed anyway? If you can build black holes, speed is meaningless as you essentially have a stasis machine. You could travel at .1c, reach Alpha Centauri in 40+ years and never even age a day if you can get close enough to the event horizon.
Actually space is ~130,000 degrees (slightly less, disappointing I know) because it's 3 dimensional, not 2D.
However I was talking about a vehicles design here, and suggesting an engine-in-front design rather than an engine-behind. Like the humble car, an engine-in-front design may protect the driver from nasty impacts, in this case blue-shifted gamma rays and microscopic particles that have been blue-shifted to the point that your ship is in a giant particle collider. If you could hide the crew in a sort of eclipsed position behind (in relation to the direction of momentum) the event horizon would act as a shield. This would mean you only had to harden equipment against radiation, rather than find a way to protect the crew themselves.
IMO though, if you've built a black hole, you might as well be moving something big, as in either a planet, small moon, or giant colony. On these scales the need to travel fast would become redundant, your colony ship could be so big it could literally house a world. Then an organisation like NASA would essentially become a planetary bus-driver association.
> Actually space is ~130,000 degrees (slightly less, disappointing I know) because it's 3 dimensional, not 2D.
That's what I was thinking, but it came out in a 2D manner. How embarrassing. ^^;;
> an engine-in-front design may protect the driver from nasty impacts, in this case blue-shifted gamma rays and microscopic particles that have been blue-shifted to the point that your ship is in a giant particle collider.
Ah, I thought that we were talking about other radiation (solar,background,gamma,etc) in space. In that case, you can't really hide 'behind' something because there isn't necessarily a single source to hide from. Even if only nearby solar radiation was a problem, if you ended up in a binary star system, you would have two sources to 'hide' from.
> IMO though, if you've built a black hole, you might as well be moving something big, as in either a planet, small moon, or giant colony.
I thought that the LHC was supposed to create miniature black holes. Though they're supposed to immediately dissipate, I don't think we've necessarily crossed the boundary of 'able to move whole planets' just because we're able to create a black hole.
Comments
Effective shielding against cosmic radiation is possibly an even greater problem in interplanetary travel than propulsion.
The solution will probably come from materials science, but at the moment I don't think there's enough effort being concentrated on this problem to solve it in my lifetime.
Would placing the spaceships crew behind its black hole engine provide adequate shielding from cosmic radiation and blue-shifted photons/particles? Killing two birds with one black hole, so to speak.
Also, wouldn't being in such proximity to a black hole negate the need for time dilation effects of speed anyway? If you can build black holes, speed is meaningless as you essentially have a stasis machine. You could travel at .1c, reach Alpha Centauri in 40+ years and never even age a day if you can get close enough to the event horizon.
How do you place the crew 'behind' the black hole? Space is 360 degrees.
Actually space is ~130,000 degrees (slightly less, disappointing I know) because it's 3 dimensional, not 2D.
However I was talking about a vehicles design here, and suggesting an engine-in-front design rather than an engine-behind. Like the humble car, an engine-in-front design may protect the driver from nasty impacts, in this case blue-shifted gamma rays and microscopic particles that have been blue-shifted to the point that your ship is in a giant particle collider. If you could hide the crew in a sort of eclipsed position behind (in relation to the direction of momentum) the event horizon would act as a shield. This would mean you only had to harden equipment against radiation, rather than find a way to protect the crew themselves.
IMO though, if you've built a black hole, you might as well be moving something big, as in either a planet, small moon, or giant colony. On these scales the need to travel fast would become redundant, your colony ship could be so big it could literally house a world. Then an organisation like NASA would essentially become a planetary bus-driver association.
> Actually space is ~130,000 degrees (slightly less, disappointing I know) because it's 3 dimensional, not 2D.
That's what I was thinking, but it came out in a 2D manner. How embarrassing. ^^;; > an engine-in-front design may protect the driver from nasty impacts, in this case blue-shifted gamma rays and microscopic particles that have been blue-shifted to the point that your ship is in a giant particle collider.
Ah, I thought that we were talking about other radiation (solar,background,gamma,etc) in space. In that case, you can't really hide 'behind' something because there isn't necessarily a single source to hide from. Even if only nearby solar radiation was a problem, if you ended up in a binary star system, you would have two sources to 'hide' from.
> IMO though, if you've built a black hole, you might as well be moving something big, as in either a planet, small moon, or giant colony.
I thought that the LHC was supposed to create miniature black holes. Though they're supposed to immediately dissipate, I don't think we've necessarily crossed the boundary of 'able to move whole planets' just because we're able to create a black hole.
Getting an asteroid-sized mass to lase gamma rays all at once is probably much harder than preserving the quantum state of a 100kg person.