Sztejnberg M. et al. Radiation shielding aspects for long manned mission to space 2006

Scientific Paper. — Nuclear Technology & Radiation Protection, 2006. — 20 p.Authors: Manuel Sztejnberg, Shanjie Xiao, Nader Satvat, Felisa Limón, John Hopkins and Tatjana Jevremovic.
Survey Study, Criteria and Preliminary Model. The prospect of manned space missions outside Earth’s orbit is limited by the travel time and shielding against cosmic radiation. The chemical rockets currently used in the space program have no hope of propelling a manned vehicle to a far away location such as Mars due to the enormous mass of fuel that would be required. The specific energy available from nuclear fuel is a factor of 106 higher than chemical fuel; it is there fore obvious that nuclear power production in space is a must. The Laboratory for Neutronics and Geometry Computation in the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University led by Prof. Tatjana Jevremovic began in 2004 the analytical evaluations of different lightweight materials. The preliminary results of the design survey study are presented in this paper.
Key words: NASA, long mission to space, cosmic radiation, shielding, Monte Carlo method, radiation transport.