Space radiation research has progressed rapidly in recent years, but there
remain large uncertainties in predicting and extrapolating biological responses
to humans. Exposure to cosmic radiation and Solar Particle Events may pose a
critical health risk to future spaceflight crews and can have a serious impact
to all biomedical aspects of space exploration. The relatively minimal
shielding of the cancelled 1960's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program's space
vehicle and the high inclination polar orbits would have left the crew
susceptible to high exposures of cosmic radiation and high dose-rate SPEs that
are mostly unpredictable in frequency and intensity. In this study, we have
modeled the nominal and off-nominal radiation environment that a MOL-like
spacecraft vehicle would be exposed to during a 30-day mission using high
performance, multi-core computers. Projected doses from a historically large
SPE (e.g. the August 1972 solar event) have been analyzed in the context of the
MOL orbit profile, providing an opportunity to study its impact to crew health
and subsequent contingencies.It is reasonable to presume that future
commercial, government, and military spaceflight missions in low-Earth orbit
will have vehicles with similar shielding and orbital profiles. Studying the
impact of cosmic radiation to the mission's operational integrity and the
health of MOL crewmembers provides an excellent surrogate and case-study for
future commercial and military spaceflight missions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 2 table