Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by buddyzen

as much as you would love to live on mars you are forgetting we would have already went their for discovery but there is extreme radiation on mars we would die just going near it......

Check your sources on this, buddyzen – I think your claim is unsupported.

Like the other inner planets such as Earth, and unlike giant planets like Jupiter, nearly all of the radiation near and on the surface of Mars comes from the Sun. Since Mars is further from the Sun than the Moon is, and has an atmosphere, though a very thin one, it’s expected that you’d get significantly less radiation on the Martian than on the Lunar surface, which its certain people don’t die just from going near.

We have about 18 months of accurate data about medically significant radiation levels for satellites of Mars via MARIE (which stopped sending data 28 October 2003) and from the ISS, so we’re able to tell that the average human radiation dose rate around Mars is about 2.5 times what it is at the ISS. The reason that it is higher, rather than lower as we would expect given the greater distance from the Sun, is that the ISS is protected by the Earths magnetosphere, while Mars has effectively no magnetosphere

From this data and data and theory about the Martian atmosphere, it’s estimated that the occupant of an unshielded habitat on the Martian surface would get about the same dose rate as an occupant of the ISS. Though not enough to quickly kill a person, this is higher than healthy, which is the reason that nearly all plans for long-term human habitation of Mars, such as those behind the Mars Foundation graphics in the previous post, call for a lot of shielding. In the case of fixed habitats, this is usually accomplished with a thick layer of dirt – ie: by burying the habitat, or putting it in a natural or artificial cave. For vehicles, putting large water tanks in the roof is a common design solution.

For walking around on the Martian surface, the only practical solution appears to be not doing it too much, especially during solar storms, when incoming radiation levels can be hundreds of times usual.