Location
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Start Date
30-4-2004 8:00 AM
Description
Particle radiation remains a significant obstacle to human exploration of space. Passive (materials-based) shielding technology has made significant progress but continues to be a costly in-flight option due to the required mass. Magnetic shielding has not come of age because it requires superconducting coils that are not only heavier than passive shields but contain single-point failure mechanisms and remain a technological challenge. Electrostatic shielding has been largely rejected because repulsion of the protons would attract a cloud of electrons, neutralizing the shield, whereas concentric shells of shielding to repel both electrons and protons would be heavy and would require large voltages over short radial distances, exceeding our current technology.
This paper provides a non-technical initroduction to the radiation problem and a brief review of the various shielding strategies. Then it advocates an overlooked alternative: a multipole expansion of the electrostatic fields, which leverage the asymmetries inherent in the physics so that isotropic protection may be obtained without the limitations of concentric shells. This has the potential to dramatically reduce the mass of passive shielding while increasing the shielding effectiveness.
Paper Session II-B - Progress Toward Electrostatic Radiation Shielding of Interplanetary Spacecraft
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Particle radiation remains a significant obstacle to human exploration of space. Passive (materials-based) shielding technology has made significant progress but continues to be a costly in-flight option due to the required mass. Magnetic shielding has not come of age because it requires superconducting coils that are not only heavier than passive shields but contain single-point failure mechanisms and remain a technological challenge. Electrostatic shielding has been largely rejected because repulsion of the protons would attract a cloud of electrons, neutralizing the shield, whereas concentric shells of shielding to repel both electrons and protons would be heavy and would require large voltages over short radial distances, exceeding our current technology.
This paper provides a non-technical initroduction to the radiation problem and a brief review of the various shielding strategies. Then it advocates an overlooked alternative: a multipole expansion of the electrostatic fields, which leverage the asymmetries inherent in the physics so that isotropic protection may be obtained without the limitations of concentric shells. This has the potential to dramatically reduce the mass of passive shielding while increasing the shielding effectiveness.
