Star Trek-style deflector shield to fend off harmful radiation

When you've got folks dreaming up such things as a $2.5 trillion "space sunshade," we reckon a Star Trek-style deflector shield isn't too far-fetched. Apparently, a team of British scientists are looking into the possibility of crafting such a device in order to " protect astronauts from radiation" when they venture beyond the Earth's protective magnetic envelope, or "magnetosphere." Reportedly, the team is hoping to "to mimic the magnetic field which protects the Earth" and deploy the shields "around spacecraft and on the surfaces of planets to deflect harmful energetic particles." As nation's begin to revive plans of space exploration, the homegrown shield should look mighty attractive at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting, but details concerning a proposed launch date, and moreover, the presumably lofty pricetag, have yet to emerge.

[Via Slashdot]

[WTangoFoxtrot @ Apr 19th 2007 2:07PM]

saw this on BBC 2 days ago, i think its about time researchers got serious about ideas using field manipulations( these can be used for crazy number of things, like making nanobots - the IBM logo made of 30'ish xenon atoms for example was made using magnetic fields, nuclear fusion reactors require powerful fields to suspend the plasma to prevent it from touching the reactor chamber, the list goes on )

[surfwax95 @ Apr 19th 2007 2:31PM]

*In the year two thousaaaaaaand*

[Ate @ Apr 19th 2007 2:37PM]

Mr. Crusher, full speed ahead!

I can't wait to see where this takes us.

[zacksonneborn @ Apr 19th 2007 3:12PM]

enGAYge

[Maxx @ Apr 19th 2007 3:19PM]

Mabey they can use this to keep peoples cell phones from working in certain places like the theater !

[Drew @ Apr 19th 2007 3:56PM]

How do you get a price tag that's $2.5 trillion? Really... What is really required to build it be worth that much. It seems like they just throw a dart at a board and add a few zeros to the end of it.

[Gil @ Apr 19th 2007 4:47PM]

Throw enough money at a project and something is bound to happen ;)

[Matt E. @ Apr 19th 2007 4:26PM]

So, does this mean we'll finally be able to get to the moon? [...ducks shoe being thrown...]

[Stephen Yuan @ Apr 19th 2007 5:50PM]

How did we get on the moon in the first place without hurting the astronauts and cosmonaunts in the 1970s? Hmm something going on~! Can someone answer that one for me?

[Hazen @ Apr 19th 2007 6:06PM]

Feild manipulations are just the start, but the largest chunk of the 2.5 Trillion would go to developing the fusion reactor required to power the damn thing.

Think about it, the Earth is a few hundred billion metric tonnes of molten magnetized iron to produce our magnetosphere, doing that without all that gravity requires a gargantuan amount of power and electromagnets capable of withstanding fields into the giga and tera gauss range.

And we don't have anything that comes close to that kind of tech, so it might take a few hundred trillion man hours to do, which will cost more money than anything else, Regan must be having a field day as this harkens back to SDI.

[rafal1000 @ Apr 19th 2007 7:00PM]

Seems similar to the shield they used in Sunshine. I just came back from the theater. Really good movie.

[paul34 @ Apr 19th 2007 8:47PM]

But, can it repel Borg?

[Murc @ Apr 19th 2007 10:05PM]

For the guy with the moon question, first of all, they didn't stay on the moon very long, the longest stay was only 2 weeks, plus when they were there wasn't any solar flares, and the craft that they had had a little radiation protection as well...its the shiny tin foil looking stuff, its not actually tin foil though...I cant remember its real name.

I hope they fund this...its gonna be needed in the future...with 6 month long stays on the moon...and then to Mars. The 2 year long Mars excursion is where this is vital...since lead weights to much.

Its not so urgent for the moon...but would be nice. On the moon you could build downward...underground...the soil will stop the vast majority of the suns radiation.

[Jayhawk @ Apr 19th 2007 11:56PM]

That diagram is a mistake. It doesn't depict the shields. It is a Subspace Field Geometry diagram. I looked it up in the ST:TNG Tech manual. What can I say...I am hardcore.

Jayhawk

[Leo @ Apr 20th 2007 2:12AM]

As far a feasibility goes, It would require a ridiculous amount of energy to re-create earth's field, but that wouldn't be the goal; you would need to protect a much smaller object and just enough to reduce the radiation to tolerable levels. You wouldn't be able to stop neutrons or gamma rays anyway. Additionally, the spin-off technologies like high-efficiency superconductors, could be useful for other applications like electricity transmission and storage.

[ftlum @ Apr 20th 2007 10:22AM]

"That diagram is a mistake. It doesn't depict the shields. It is a Subspace Field Geometry diagram."

That's exactly what I thought when I saw the picture. Boy, am I a geek :).


- Frank

[MadCow @ Apr 21st 2007 1:22PM]

Holy CRAP. Okay, does anyone watch the TV show Stargate Atlantis? Te picture is almost EXACTLY like a scene in the show last night, where they used a spaceship's shield to repel a solar flare from hitting a planet. I thought this article was a joke when I first saw it.

[Tom Dagres @ Apr 24th 2007 8:20AM]

Just saw this in Stargate Atlantis last night, the flew thier ship close ot the sun and deflected a solar flare from reaching the planet. Cool stuff man!!!

[Lernin2Herf @ Sep 25th 2007 2:52PM]

Take a look at the January/February 2007 edition of Analog - Science Fiction Science Fact.

The article "SCIENCE FACT: Shielding a Polar Lunar Base", by Franklin Cocks, is a great explanation of this concept that most people can understand.

He does address the Apollo question (no cosmonauts went to the moon). This "was evaluated in detail", but the weight was too much. Because of the physics of magnetic fields, which I won't pretend to understand, the smaller the unit the stronger the magnetic field must be to make it work. So, the power requirements for the field would have been more than they could bring along. Also, this requires super-conductors, which at that time would have had to be submerged in liquid helium to work. That has all kinds of other weight, space, and power restrictions.

Check out the article, you'll get your mind expanded!