In "(1197) A question..." Chris Bartlett (Mouser) [email removed] writes:
> I was thinking about the relative merits of gas giant refueling yesterday,
> relative to dipping from a world's ocean. Now, as I understand it, in
> "real" life a gas giant, say, Jupiter, has a region of intense radiation
> around it. Now what I want to know is how this affects refueling operations
> around a gas giant. Can a starship with a hull armor factor of 40 withstand
> this radiation long enough to skim enough fuel, or is it and its crew going
> to get fried real quick? Can some of the physics or astronomy types help
> out?
I don't claim to be either a physics or astronomy major, but here is what
stands in the Radiation rules in TD#15 on the subject of cosmic radiation and
radiation belts.
The hull of a standard starship (Factor 40 Bonded superdense) has a shielding
factor of around 2000 (1000 if you go exactle by the book and 2000 if you do
it mathematically :-) (For those interested I can mention that a factor 40
bonded superdense hull is about 1 inch thick (2.31 cm))
Cosmic radiation is given as up to 3000 units per day in a radiation-belt
(I guess that this implies earth-type radiation belts like the Van Allen. I'm
not sure whether the belts around major GG's are stronger than this, but I
guess that they are. Here I have guessed that they are a factor 10 stronger.)
30000 units per day means 1250 units per hour (dead within 15 minutes).
But a hull will decrease this by 2000 times to 15 units per day. That is no
*immediate* health threat, but it will be bad news for the descendants of the
crew...
But remember that this is the *maximum* value in the radiation belts.
And if they are shaped like the Van Allen belts this will occur somewhere
between 1 radius and 3 radiuses over the surface (wild guess). So any sane pilot
would go full throttle down to the atmosphere of the GG to avoid spending
too much time in the area of maximum radiation.
But beware of drifting in orbit around a GG in a disabled ship for longer
periods...
- -bertil-
- --
Bertil K K Jonell @ Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg
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