Comment by morcus
2 months ago
The Moon doesn't have a magnetic field, though, so the second half of the article discussing difficulties due to radiation would still apply, right?
2 months ago
The Moon doesn't have a magnetic field, though, so the second half of the article discussing difficulties due to radiation would still apply, right?
Not if you bury it in regolith. That’s an idea for a Lunar base too. The design is called “Hobbit holes.” Bury the occupied structures in piles of basically any local mass you can bury them in.
It’s another huge problem for orbit though. Shielding would add a ton of mass and destroy the economics.
Lunar regolith is so abrasive that digging holes or tunnels isn't going to be cost effective.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250000687
We will need to develop very robust, space-worthy electronics eventually. We can't rely on natural magnetic fields forever.
We have them. The RAD750 for example (on the JWST and Curiosity rovers https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/08/mars_probe_cpu/ ) costs about $350k, has the architecture of a PowerPC 750 (the blue and white PowerMac G3), and runs at up to 200 MHz.
We have robust, space-worthy electronics. They're discussed in the article. You just can't get SOTA performance from them, because of fundamental physics-driven compromises.
We have been relying on natural magnetic fields for over a billion years, so we can probably continue doing so for a while.