Re: Unobtanium Radiation Shielding?

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 08:35:26 -0800 (PST), CharlesRCaplan@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

One of the problems with using nuclear powerplants in your spacecraft
is that they tend to kill the crews if you don't put them at a safe
distance outside the hull or put adequate shielding between them and
your crew. To a lesser degree you also need shielding for cosmic rays
too. (Electromagnetic shielding protects against most everything else,
except stray masses that might punch holes in your nifty ship.)

So the problem is that the only scientifically sound way I know of to
protect crews from gamma radiation is either distance (putting your
reactor outside your ship, far outside your ship) or physical
shielding made up of heavy elements. (Lead, Gold, etc...)

So what can we do to protect our valiant spacers except sticking a lot
of massive lead around them? I remember a few years back there was a
company that was saying that they had a cloth-like material that was
better protection from radiation than current protective suits (which
are made of led impregnated plastics or something similar) but I don't
remember anything coming of that.

Is there some sort of unobtanium material that could be used?

I favor Thomasite, myself.

However, note that if the question starts with, "Is there some sort of
unobtanium...", the answer to the question is "No, there isn't". That's
what "unobtanium" means.

This being rec.arts.sf.science, we can talk about the consequences if
someone were to imagine up such a material as the One Impossible Thing
allowed in their SF story, or we can explain why it actually is an
impossible thing. Which would you prefer?

And note that when someone in real life says, "I've invented a much
better sort of radiation protection", odds are that somewhere in the
fine print is, "...so long as the radiation isn't hard gamma". For
that, there really isn't much you can do except put lots of charge
in the way, and charge tends to come with an irreduceable ammount of
mass attached.

Especially if you want *stable* radiation shielding. Reasons why
positronium or muonium are not ideal for this purpose, are left as
an exercise for the student...


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