Colonies on Mars?
Voice of Apollo 7 Mission Control: Mark T minus 60 seconds and counting. We are go for Apollo 7 at this time.
Years ago, the Apollo astronauts reported seeing mysterious flashes of light. Strangely enough, it turns out that this phenomenon relates to whether or not we’ll ever be able to colonize Mars. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Bob Berman author of the book The Sun’s Heartbeat.
Bob Berman: It would be very difficult to colonize Mars, not just because the air is only 1 percent as thick as it is here, but because of the radiation hazard. There’s no atmosphere to speak of that blocks radiation the way our atmosphere does, and it has no magnetic field, which also blocks radiation. It’s been estimated that a two-year mission on Mars, an astronaut would lose between 15 and 40 percent of their brain cells.
The radiation flux on Mars, we think, is so significant that people will never be able to spend significant time on Mars because the radiation will kill them.
Berman: The radiation is mostly cosmic radiation that comes from the sun and also comes from supernovae and black holes. Some of these are protons, and to show you how dangerous it is, the Apollo astronauts all experience what, to them, looked like a a comet or meteor flashing across their visual field once a minute. And it was discovered that these are protons high-speed protons that is, the heavy nucleus of atoms, ripping through their brains and actually disturbing their vision at the rate of once a minute.
Voice of Mission Control: Apollo 7, Houston. Ready to copy.
Berman: They experienced that because they are above our magnetic field. They were the only astronauts to go beyond our magnetosphere.
More on cosmic radiation in future programs. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.