Galactic Cosmic Radiation Shielding Utilizing Active and Passive Methods

Radiation shielding is essential to future missions of space exploration due to increased exposure to radiation harmful to humans. One of the most damaging and hardest types of radiation to stop consists of High Atomic Number and Energy (HZE) particles in Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR). These particles are fully ionized and travel at near light speeds. The most dangerous of these is iron nuclei. Many shielding options have been proposed in both active and passive categories of shielding. This research explores several previously proposed methods of both active and passive shielding and seeks to demonstrate why active shielding is more advantageous than passive shielding. Active shielding, however, cannot fully protect against all types of radiation, so a combination of active and passive shielding must be used. A combination of active and passive shielding is proposed in an attempt to maximize the deflection of radiation, minimize the produced secondary radiation, create a net thrust from the redirected particles, and account for space being a diffuse plasma.