Martian simnauts emerge from spaceship outside Moscow Six men who have spent the last 520 days sealed up inside a mock spacecraft outside Moscow simulating a mission to Mars have finally completed their task and emerged once more. “Thank you very much for your outstanding effort,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency (ESA) after the crew …
China is also a prospect?
They may not have the prestigious history of NASA, but China is booming right now, everything is developing at a rapid pace and the Chinese have their eyes on the stars now.
They have the money, if the desire is there then they're a real contender to the cash strapped yanks.
(didn't someone ask this question on another thread? was it you?)
Todays example of why this isn't entirely practical will be: the Aurora. I don't believe anyone knows how to make a magnetic shield that will repulse all the constituents of a neutral plasma, like the solar wind. Some of those incoming ions are going to hit the shielded object. On earth, we're relatively protected by a hell of a lot of atmosphere (and get pretty auroral displays as a side effect), but that's a tricky thing to fit on a spacecraft.
Ultimately, radiation shielding requires lots of mass, and that's exactly what you don't want to be adding to a spacecraft.
get directed to the poles by the Earth's magnetic field, leaving most of the surface un-bombarded by nasty ions. So, build a spaceship with a similar design:
Long cylinder, wrapped with big magnetic coil (superconducting, for preference). All the ions are streaming in from the ends, so block each end with a thick plate, say steel, to absorb them. And you should get quite a useful current between the two plates.
Only downside I can see is if the struts between the steel plates fail, and they slam together, crushing the occupants. It's only a minor design flaw.
Beerglass physics.
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