Adventure Ausrama Blog

There is a stupid, idiotic "thing" going around the Internet at the moment. It is the selection process for the one-way journey to Mars. In my opinion this will not be allowed to go ahead. If and when a spaceship is built common sense will come to the fore and those wanting to commit suicide will be prevented from going. Let's ignore the moral perspective for the moment and think about the ship itself. A secure, life sustaining environment inside a space vehicle for such a long journey is not yet possible. Man reaching the moon was probably just a fluke. Alas, things did go wrong. Apart from the well known ballpoint pen in the circuit-breaker hole trick by Buzz Aldrin, there were dozens of problems that mysteriously were all solved - divine intervention? Well, we will never know. A trip to Mars will be a chain of continuous problems. For a start we do not know what the real space environment is like out there. Astronauts could die of radiation in a few months of ...

The state of the weather is a problem on Earth with predictions not always being correct. In space, however, there is a more serious weather problem. Solar storms can kill. Detectors at the South Pole measure neutrons. When the level reaches a certain point astronauts on the International Space Station shelter in a shielded capsule. Advances have been made in predicting solar storms which can destroy satellites. Unfortunately, little can be done to protect them, but the safety of astronauts is paramount. Storms move at different speeds. The faster the speed the more energy in particles, which makes them more intense and dangerous. Ironically, because there are more low-energy particles in a solar storm they do most overall damage. The early arrival of these low-energy particles does forewarn the onslaught of the high-energy neutrons. The number of solar flares gives an indication of future activity, though this is only a possibility at best. Neutron sensors at th...