“I'll be honest with you, radiation confuses me. I shouldn't say that as a professional spaceflight researcher… Depending on who you talk to… deep space radiation is either the single biggest problem and a potential showstopper and a real major concern… or it's almost of no consequence at all. And really, I cannot figure out who's right.”
Blue Dot · October 2026
The guest, a former chief scientist of NASA's Human Research Program and author of "Are We Ready for Mars?", was asked about radiation on the trip to Mars. He went on to separate acute solar-storm risk, which crews can shelter from, from galactic cosmic rays, which raise lifetime cancer risk.
Transcript
…to each other at all. So, this idea of autonomy, we term it resilience. The idea that the crew is really going to have to have the tools, tangible tools, and intangible tools like knowledge and a mindset to solve problems that arise without a lot of help from anybody or any help from anybody.
…in a radiation environment that humans have never been in beyond the moon, really, except for Artemis II is probably the farthest people, it is the farthest people have ever gone. But on the way to Mars, talk a bit about the radiation problems they would be facing, because that is of concern.
…confuses me. I shouldn't say that as a professional spaceflight researcher, but it confuses me partly because I know many of the radiation researchers, the space radiation people, people who look at the biological effects of radiation. And depending on who you talk to, radiation, space radiation, deep space radiation, right, from between here and Mars, here and the moon too, but definitely Mars. Deep space radiation is either the single biggest problem and a potential showstopper and a real major concern. We dare not venture there until we really have a handle on it, or it's almost of no consequence at all. And really, I cannot figure out who's right. And we don't know. We won't know for sure. Definitely, we don't want to be cavalier about this. Definitely the radiation environment in deep space on the way to Mars is dramatically more intense than it is in low Earth orbit. So radiation effects…
I think the main takeaway is that there are these multiple stressors on the human body when you're talking about any kind of space mission. We're going to take a short break, but stay with us as we continue our look at the challenges of human spaceflight and how hard it would be to send astronauts…
Ah, yes, you're putting, you're coming to one of my favorite topics because space motion sickness paid my way through graduate school in the 1980s with the research grants for studying. Frank
Borman barfed on the way to the moon to put you through school.
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