In the interim

Last November one Ruth Bamford and several other ones, including James Green from NASA, mooted how to shield Mars and its lower orbit from radiation. The solution with the lowest power, assembly and mass is to create an artificial charged particle ring (similar in form to a "radiation belt"), around the planet possibly formed by ejecting matter from one of the moons of Mars. Presumably Phobos.

Brian Koberlien is telling me he'd noticed the Bamford study last November. I... missed that. But anyway, Bamford is being more widely disseminated this week.

Some journalismer now calls this "jumpstarting" the field, implying pushing on the Martian core which is exactly what Bamford's crew did NOT recommend. Elsewhere her-their paper although looking at ringing the equator with a solenoid didn't even cite DuPont-Murphy ... perhaps because that paper was just that ill-calculated. But: whatever.

I like the Bamford plan mainly because I don't like Phobos and want rid of it.

Long-term I still want an orbital ring which would, I think, run beneath Phobos. It's not all about shielding; it's also about interplanetary trade and travel. The lower the ring, the less tensile strength (meaning: sheer mass) we need for the areosynch cables it's holding up, per mass of cargo.

The Bamford ring would work great to protect the builders of the Ring Of Iron itself, while building it.