this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
-33 points (18.9% liked)
Technology
59756 readers
2800 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What a dumbass. If we send people in the quickest possible way (or any way at all, really) and they all die in the attempt, that will set the whole project back decades.
The answer to the radiation problem is better shielding, not a fundamentally unsafe mission.
btw it is not the nuclear propulsion that I'm calling unsafe. It is the idea that we could do without redundancy. That's just a monumentally stupid idea.
Since the astronauts need water to survive, why not line the spaceship with reservoirs of it to provide the shielding? Or does water not block space radiation well enough?
But then they’re drinking irradiated water, no?
Unless it’s really easy to remove the radiation safely, this doesn’t seem like the right solution.
Irradiated water is fine.
You're thinking of radioactive water, which is water with radioactive stuff in it.
Subjecting regular water to regular amounts of radiation is fine, even if it's high-energy gamma rays. If there's enough radiation to make water itself radioactive then you have bigger problems than radioactive water.
Ah yes, that’s the difference. Thanks!