Irish Experiment on Atlantis.

Radiation will be the greatest hazard for future manned inter-planetary flights.
This is from today's Irish Times:

The space shuttle Atlantis blasts off later today, carrying with it two Irish experiments that will measure radiation exposure risks faced by orbiting astronauts. Ireland plays a major role in this research thanks to several decades of work by scientists at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Emeritus professor Denis O'Sullivan has years of experience in studying ionising radiation exposures for flight crews and astronauts caused by naturally occurring cosmic rays. He has conducted studies for the EU and also a number of experiments for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

"I have been at this for 39 years. I am one of the few survivors of the Apollo [ spacecraft] era," says Prof O'Sullivan. "We are considered world experts on this issue," he says of the Institute (Dias) and his work there.

Cosmic rays come streaming in from beyond our solar system, high energy particles that have the potential to do harm. They pose no health risk for those of us on the ground because the atmosphere dissipates all their energy.

Yet flight crews flying at high altitudes receive significant radiation doses and orbiting astronauts face still higher exposures because there is no atmosphere to protect them.

Prof O'Sullivan led an EU study that showed flight crews received as much radiation as nuclear power plant workers.

Prof O'Sullivan led an EU study that showed flight crews received as much radiation as nuclear power plant workers.[/i]

So pretty much negligible amounts then.

I presume the dose of radiation that would be experienced in space flight would be relative to the amount of time that person was exposed. I don't know what a nuclear power worker is exposed too. or which workers in the plant are at greatest risk, or suffer greatest eposure.?

space travel times could be years - meaning years of exposure

I Know that lead aprons is used in x-ray departments by staff, but it would hardly be a solution in a spacecraft

declan

I Know that lead aprons is used in x-ray departments by staff, but it would hardly be a solution in a spacecraft

Quote from Scientific American Magazine:
“Even surrounding the spacecraft with 10 feet thick solid lead only worsens the problem, instead of being clipped by a single proton you are riddled with a shower of subatomic debris”

The radiation levels are acceptable if you keep cocooned within the Van Allen Belts which deflect cosmic rays (mainly protons.)

(Incidentally this is the fiftieth anniversary of the accidental discovery by James A. Van Allen of the radiation belts named after him. He was actually studying cosmic rays, using “Cosmic Ray Counters” on board Vanguard 1, the first American satellite. So the Irish experiment is a “birthday follow-up” study.)

Outside the Van Allen Belts the situation is more...lethal!

Some individual cosmic rays have been recorded with the kinetic energy of a well hit tennis ball.
Where a single proton can acquire such colossal energy is still a source of speculation, to put it mildly.