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1. Welcome back another great show, on the shielding to Mars , I believe it is very possible, we have the framework with the magnetosphere, Van Allen , belts, the ozone layer, and water vapor. Spend 18 months in the ionosphere your cancer rate goes up. So we are trying duplicate the atmospheres protection with hardly any mass, just millions of tons at best and Mars can’t do it with much more. So as an analog we need to be able to keep a gas from dispersing without Earth’s Mass. So we need to invoke some form of magnetism. To get rid of the chicken wire grid if we could project to two magnetic fields , say one with a diameter of 1,000′ and the second with a diameter of 1,010, we would have a 5′ thick bubble around the ship, into that we pump a gas, or more likely a mixture of gases, we don’t need to supply much energy to turn the gases into plasma the solar wind will do most of that work we just want to keep it caged. And if we use Xenon, neon, boron, and mercury vapor. These are very good at converting energy into light both visible and invisible . Also the Earths system don’t stop solar wind it diverts it around the earth. Yet like a lot of NASA’s thinking a bad fuse and the thing collapses. To go to Mars you need to move a lot of mass real fast so you need and acceleration platform that way you can keep the ship accelerating most of the way there you just keep sending mass to the ship in flight at faster and faster rates and Mr. Newton makes the ship speed up. Thank you Mr. Goddard the rocket is a great invention, yet we live in the 21st. Century. So if we used this genius way of sending people we build a multi- hulled ship the outer hull while in flight we pump full of mud, yes mud that technological breakthrough mud and you let it freeze, permafrost , then in the next layer in you pump the ships drinking water and also let it freeze. then you slowly spin the ship to give artificial gravity to the crew . and this rotisserie igloo will always be changing the side being bombarded by the solar wind and melting some mud and occasionally water which will rapidly cool as it passes into night side of ship. And in the crews sleeping quarters beds not close to hull yet raised up like bunk beds with no bottom sleeper. you can have layers of Mylar bags full of different gases, to protect from bursts. And igloos are relatively cheap to heat. Permafrost is close to the strength of concrete, and water ice is no slouch either, it will provide additional protection from those pesky micro meteors. Then you could use NASA’s plasma fence as additional protection on top if we work out the kinks.

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2. Ok Star Trek shields, as you discussed in the Iron Man show if we can make his repuslars something to convert electricity into a gravity beam, then if i shoot out a gravity beam when a projectile hits that force it would slow down if we slow it fast enough it breaks apart like a person at terminal velocity hitting soft water goes splat. So this kind of shield would be like Dune the faster something was coming the more effective. The other idea is the field is such high energy it atomizes anything it meets so if you shoot a phaser which is some king of energy plasma contained in some magnetic bubble or tube and when the plasma hits your hull it raises it to its melting point. When the phaser shot hits the shield the containment field is scattered and the energy also so the whole side of your ship gets hotter yet doesn’t melt. This next point pains me as a father it is a “light saber ” not a laser saber”. The idea of the light saber is that it forms a magnetic bubble the shape of the blade into that bubble is trapped plasma solid matter can thin the cutting edge of the magnetic bubble thus becoming subject to heat of the sun. Yet the magnetic bubble can’t contain all the light emitted by the plasma so the sword radiates light. Nerd 101

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