Active radiation shielding for the proposed space elevator using magnetic coils
- Paper number
IAC-06-D4.2.03
- Author
Dr. Anders M. Jorgensen, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Blaise Gassend, Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), United States
- Coauthor
Dr. Steven Patamia, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The proposed space elevator extends through a region of the Earth’s magnetosphere where there are high levels of high-energy protons. Because the climber in the Space Elevator proposed by Edwards (Acta Astronautica, 2000) ascend the cable at a relatively slow pace of 200 km/hr, the climber cabin and it’s cargo or occupants spend a significant amount of time in the most intense regions of the radiation belts. We have previously demonstrated (e.g. Jorgensen et al., Proc. IAC 2004) that without proper shielding a deadly dose could be delivered to any passengers and live cargo on the climber. We used the NASA AP8 (Sawyer and Vette, 1976) and AE8 (Vette, 1991) models in combination with the SHIELDOSE-2 package for computing radiation penetration through Aluminum and absorption in human tissue. We found that more than 50 g/cm 2 was needed in order to shield the radiation to acceptable levels. This shielding would result in an unreasonably large mass for the early space elevators. We briefly explored electro-magnetic shielding and concluded that a current of approximately 1 MA would be necessary to shield the climber cabin to acceptable levels. In this paper we intend to investigate further the idea of electro-magnetic shielding with realistic shielding configurations, including those proposed by Fisher et al. (APS/46th meeting of Div. Plasma Phys., 2004). We will look at the various shielding alternatives in order to better understand what will be necessary to shield against the various radiation environments encountered along the space elevator cable.
- Abstract document