[Ground-station] Radiation meeting today - notes + and are we in the right ballpark?

[Michelle Thompson]

Radiation Test Talk meetup with Mark KF6WTN was today.

As you can tell from the earlier email about this, radiation effects are
multifaceted and complex.

Here's what we discussed and learned.

We know a lot of people with a lot of equipment and they're all
enthusiastic. If the task of radiation testing can be done with, say,
scanning electron microscopes modified in some way and/or industrial
irradiation equipment, then we are in great shape. If these are not the
right machines to make the right waves to give at least a rudimentary test
then we need a redirect.

We're making progress in understanding the environment at GEO (lots of
reading of lots of documents), but don't yet have a confident elevator
pitch version. This is something we need to improve. We graphs that show
electrons are the main contributor at GEO.

If you or someone you know can summarize the fundamental problem statement,
please give us some guidance. Tribal lore, foundational study or
measurements, some particular standard - we are confronted with a large
amount of undifferentiated and sometimes conflicting literature. If they
exist, what are the "lighthouse documents" for this field?

We have people that can kitbash or find or uncover or borrow or even
purchase some interesting equipment, but neither Mark nor I are radiation
experts and we don't want to document a path that doesn't give traction on
at least one type of failure that we need to test for.

The overall gist here is that the landscape of available equipment has
changed. We have access to a variety of equipment that can produce various
types of radiation. Access to some types of equipment is much easier and
less expensive than it used to be. Access to certain other types is harder
and more expensive.

Which type and how dense and what energy? If we know this, then we can make
some progress. Even if the answer is "can't be done with what you have
available", then we still have to know these answers in order to complete a
reasonable design.

CC to Mark for corrections and expansions.

-Michelle W5NYV
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