Elon Musk's Neuralink says this monkey is playing Pong with its mind

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

That list does show the expected radiation for a typical round-trip to Mars - around 600 mSv.

 

That's not good, and definitely at the upper range of what a person would want to be exposed to, but for most people, that number won't be lethal (though there could still potentially be long term health consequences).

 

At the end of the trip after they return to Earth, they'd likely be prohibited from any activity with a high radiation risk though.

 

Depending on some factors, they could also probably modify Starship's interior design to implement a water radiation shield (route water around the exterior of the habitation section of the Starship and it acts as a radiation shield - how strong depends on how thick the water wall) - this would obviously cut down on payload capacity and how many passengers it could carry, but certainly for more frequent missions this is probably worth the cost.

 

For the first mission or two, especially if it's Orbital and not a landing mission (or it's a short landing mission), then they can likely proceed without the radiation shield and the astronauts likely won't suffer any serious illness.

 

Future missions might eventually use a different, permanently routed ship (or series of ships) that are constantly just going back and fourth between Earth and Mars, which can be purpose built with that large scale in mind needed for maximum habitation and comfort.

I’ve seen ice suggested as shielding.  Apparently a chest X-ray is 3 mSv so a trip to Mars is 200 chest X-rays. 

[CarlBar]

9 hours ago, Beskamir said:

Pretty sure radiation is a major concern once you're away from earth's magnetic field. This seems to list the amount of radiation that an unshielded interplanetary trip would receive but I don't really know how to make sense of the data and don't feel like looking it up right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(radiation)

 

If safety was taken into account, starship would use smaller and spherical tanks for their fuel rather than 2 really large tanks where 1 isn't even spherical.

 

the year limit for nuclear workers on that scale is 50mSv. the total for a year long, (the year long part is the key here, that much in one short dose is a big issue), interplanetary trip is 400-900. Like i said not nice, (it's going to have long term effects), but perfectly survivable overall.

 

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

All I’ve got is an apocryphal story about an astronaut on the ISS closing his eyes and still seeing light flashes so he attempted to cram his front (because it contained his junk) into a lead lined structure till it stopped.  Ionizing  Radiation is the gift that keeps on giving. Cancer can take a long time to form.  There is a minimum level below which radiation more or less doesn’t matter because it’s not ionizing.  I don’t know how hard radiation is outside the magnetosphere. I suspect it’s been pretty well measured.  My understanding is radiation is only one of the things that makes a trip to Mars one-way only.  It takes a whole lot of radiation to actually cause necrosis, and I would be very unsurprised to learn that the radiation level was below that.  There is a pretty big middle ground below that but above ionization level though.  Part of the issue with cancer is it’s a statistical thing.  You’ve got to roll boxcars a bunch of times.  It becomes a question of how many dice do you roll.

 

Radiation is messy because there's a lot of different types, and they each have different effects. Thats why a scale like the Sv where created, to give a way of working out approximate short term negetive effects, (long term is a whole other matter and we still don't have a great handle on that, but the scales still useful for that, just much less precise).

 

The real killer potential is if a big solar flare hits the crew, that can deliver an instantly fatal dose in just a few minutes. And shielding from it is really hard, (particle energies of 11Gev are no joke to stop).

[StDragon]

Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey.

[StDragon]

31 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

Radiation is messy because there's a lot of different types

Gamma, that's always the real danger.

 

Alpha and Beta not so much unless you've ingested radioactive material.

 

https://xkcd.com/radiation/ 

[CarlBar]

12 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Gamma, that's always the real danger.

 

Alpha and Beta not so much unless you've ingested radioactive material.

 

https://xkcd.com/radiation/ 

 

In space you have to worry about  penetrating particle radiation which is completely seperate from traditional alpha/beta/gamma definitions.

 

 Alpha and beta are non-penetrating particle radiation whilst gamma is EM.

 

Seriously i didn't post that link earlier for just one person.

[StDragon]

8 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

In space you have to worry about particle radiation which is completely seperate from traditional alpha/beta/gamma definitions.

While not gamma, it requires the same amount of caution because it's ionizing.

 

About the only thing you can practically use for shielding in space is water. So a base on Mars would be no problem there. But in space, a craft with mass isn't ideal.

Interplanetary trips would probably use ice shielding (because keeping water in liquid form requires energy), then shed the weight upon arrival. How you go about melting and transporting water in liquid form would be an engineering challenge to say the least. Prior to leaving, water would be pumped into jackets/bladders. But once frozen into outer jackets, they can be shed at the destination of the trip.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey.

Negative reinforcement isn’t mentioned but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t used.  Playing Peter Gabriel to a monkey though. That’s... just...

[thechinchinsong]

Haven't found comments relevant to neuralink at all in this thread. All I got was deep, informative discussion on all things NOT Neuralink lol.

[FakeNSA]

1 minute ago, thechinchinsong said:

Haven't found comments relevant to neuralink at all in this thread. All I got was deep, informative discussion on all things NOT Neuralink lol.

Honestly, that's because we know very little about neuralink, and anything elon musk related always brings out.... shall we say, people who aren't fans of Elon. Which is fine, but results in discussions of things that aren't necessarily on topic.

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Haven't found comments relevant to neuralink at all in this thread. All I got was deep, informative discussion on all things NOT Neuralink lol.

I think it’s a fantastic industry that needs further research. 
 

I’m not sure whether Nuralink itself is exaggerated or not, but sooner or later the tech is gonna be able to do exactly like the kinds of things Musk describes. 

[StDragon]

52 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I think it’s a fantastic industry that needs further research. 
 

I’m not sure whether Nuralink itself is exaggerated or not, but sooner or later the tech is gonna be able to do exactly like the kinds of things Musk describes. 

The only thing fascinating about Nuralink is the robot that can bore a hole into the head like a coconut followed by the ultra-precision of stabbing the brain with 1024 pins near the visual cortex. 

 

The brain is very compartmentalized, at best this will give new insight as to how the brain functions, but as an I/O device, I think it will be extremely limited in capability.

[Bombastinator]

6 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Haven't found comments relevant to neuralink at all in this thread. All I got was deep, informative discussion on all things NOT Neuralink lol.

I was pretty heartened by this because the last time nuralink news popped up here it was about use of the technology to involuntarily “cure” autistic people.  This at least wasn’t about that.