Tuesday, September 26, 2017

[xesqugtd] Flying in a suit of armor

Consider air travel wearing a medieval suit of metal armor, to protect against the increased radiation levels at the altitude planes fly.  How much does the armor help?  It might be worth it for people who fly a lot.  Can you get armor through TSA security (it will of course block body scanning X-ray machines)?  Are some parts of the body more important to protect against radiation than other parts?  Make less unwieldy garments concentrating on those areas.  Soft lead is probably better than steel when protecting against radiation and not swords.

What are the main sources of the harmful radiation that make it into the passenger compartment of an airplane?  I suspect it is cosmic rays and cosmic ray decay products.

It's kind of interesting that more research into astronomy, to understand cosmic rays, and high energy particle physics, to understand their decays may be directly applicable to health.  Radiation penetrating into the spacecraft will also be very relevant to astronauts on long missions beyond the Van Allen belts.

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