Research work is underway to protect a future settlement on Mars from cosmic rays. Artificial magnetic fields can be created through a series of high voltage electric cables arranged in a toroidal geometry around the inhabited environment.
These cables are able to generate an external magnetic field of 4/5 Tesla of intensity, enough to reject cosmic rays, and, at the same time, helps to null a magnetic field inside the settlement to avoid biological damage to future Mars dwellers.
Cable frame
Italian civil engineer, Marco Peroni, has drawn upon his earlier research work on an artificial magnetic field used as a shield for a lunar base, protected from solar wind by a huge toroidal-arranged cable frame, placed vertically and partially emerging from the lunar surface.
Peroni has also designed innovative spaceships that utilize artificial magnetic fields. Both types of ships are protected during the voyage to Mars from Earth, thwarting dangerous cosmic rays with an artificial magnetic shield, generated by a series of electric cables that envelop the ship’s structure.
Modular units
A spaceship made of modular habitable units that, once entering Mars orbit, disassembles, with segments landing on the planet to form a modular settlement on the surface of the Red Planet.
On Mars, following positioning of the modules and hooking them together, the settlement will be completed by installing the electrical cables above the ground. Earlier, a group of first settlers will have prepared the site, including the positioning of underground cables the complete the toroid. By flowing electricity in the circuit, the magnetic shield against cosmic rays will be generated.
Visual plus
Peroni’s approach offers a visual plus: No need to live underground in lava tubes or having a base buried underneath large amounts of Martian soil and rock. The modular community can have large windows for insiders to peer out onto the landscape. That mitigates psychological effects of crews living long-term on Mars…far away from Earth.
Peroni told Inside Outer Space that office experiments are helping to verify his thesis about the presence of the magnetic field outside the cable toroid, “and that the same field is null inside (the compass sign the north pole) in order to allow the construction of inhabited areas.”
Both Moon and Mars scenarios advanced by Peroni have been presented at recent technical conferences of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Hi
What about passing through the field itself, either to leave the colony or enter it? The field’s strength, after all, is rated at between 4 and 5 tesla – about the same as an MRI machine.