The health threat from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions. Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) consist of high energy protons (85%), helium (14%) and other high energy nuclei HZE ions. Solar energetic particles consist primarily of protons accelerated by the sun to high energies via proximity to solar flares and coronal mass ejections. They are one of the most important barriers standing in the way of plans for interplanetary travel by crewed spacecraft.
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“Youth no less becomes
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Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today.... We’re all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Your mind was wrought in cosmic solitude,
Through which careered an undulous pageantry
Of fiends and suns, darkness and boiling sea,
All held in ordered sway by beauty’s mood.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they happen to strike me.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)