Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
Robotbeat | on: The Shape of a Mars Mission
Note that Mars’ surface has a similar radiation dose as ISS, as measured by the Curiosity rover. (This includes the quality factor.)
idlewords | parent | next
It does not; see the paper cited in my other reply to you. GCR dose is 1.5-2x on Mars compared to ISS.

The mention of "quality factor" here just begs the question. The reason we need research on biological effects of high-Z ion exposure is that it has a different mechanism of damage, not captured by that paradigm.

Robotbeat | root | parent
GCR /alone/, maybe, but it’s, um, strange to pretend the substantial trapped radiation dose on ISS doesn’t exist, as you’re doing here (Table 2 in your linked paper shows the trapped dose at ISS is about equal to the GCR dose at ISS, so ignoring trapped dose makes your estimate off by approximately a factor of 2). It is the total effective dose (including quality factor) which matters, not cherry picking one particular source.
idlewords | root | parent
The 2-3x uncertainty in tumor risk comes entirely from the heavy ion component of GCR. Please go back and re-read that section of my post if you need to.
Robotbeat | root | parent
You are again picking one part of the risk to cherry pick to exaggerate the difference. There’s a risk in non-solid-tumor cancers as well. You have to take the whole value.
Qem | root | parent
It's because of this I like the concept for a one-way mission crewed by volunteer elderly astronauts. Why worry about developing a cancer 20 years down the line due to cumulative space radiation exposure, if your remaining life expectancy is lower than that, and you fully expect dying of old age in Mars anyway: https://web.archive.org/web/20101023054414/http://journalofc...

With the current worldwide ageing demographics, it would have the added benefit of providing an awesome feat to inspire seniors across the world to not go gentle into that good night, showing old age should burn and rave at close of day.

Retric | parent
A significant part of that is because it’s much further from the sun.

A hypothetical 500 day mars mission is ~1 Sv optimistically which is something like 5% fatal cancer risk. A 3 year mission you’re well above that even before considering solar storms etc.

I think many would sign up for a mars mission especially as treatment improves, but there’s only so much wiggle room here.