Continuation of the Aldrin Cycler series of posts

8/28/25:

Not too much more to say on this, but I'm still playing around with the numbers.  You may be able to transport a much smaller number of people, and with great protection.  How many people?  I'm thinking at least 3k per trip. 

How do you get 1 million on Mars, then?  You'd have to find another way.  It will likely take longer than 20 years.  I think that is pretty much baked into the cake.

If you do it Elon Musk's way, you're going to get a lot of dead people.  That's why I ran this thought experiment.  There's no protection on the Starship.  No artificial gravity.  Those folks are going to be in rough shape when they get there.  That's assuming that they make it.

8/26/25, 10:10 AM:

Began on the other blog, but should've been here. Just one thing to mention is that denser materials give better radiation protection, but there doesn't appear to be much literature available about HOW much better. Generally speaking, lead is preferred. But lead doesn't have the structural strength you'd like, and it is toxic. That's all for now.

3:30 PM:

I haven't run the numbers, but lead might need less mass in order to shield half the energy of gamma rays as opposed to iron.

This gave me an idea.  It turns out that you can synthesize gold, which would be a better shield than lead.  If the same pattern held, then less gold mass would be needed than lead, as less lead mass is needed than iron.

If you synthesized the gold, you could plate it on the outside of the iron, which would be needed for structural strength.  The synthesized gold would be radioactive, though.  What form of radioactivity would need to be determined.  For example, does it emit, alpha, beta, or gamma radiation?  That would be important in terms of shielding.  Gold may decay to normal gold eventually, and could be harvested.

At the moment, this is just an idea.