Question: Has anyone been to the outer planets before in life ?

Edward Bovill answered on 12 Mar 2013:

So far people have only made it so far as the Moon, but with improvements in spaceship technology trips to the other planets in the solar system could well be possible.

One thing that makes these trips difficult however, is harmful radiation from out Sun (if you’ve seen the Fantastic Four you’ll know what I mean). The Sun is constantly producing a huge quantity of radiation, some of which we can see as visible light and feel as heat. The Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from the other, harmful types of radiation that the Sun produces (X-rays, gamma radiation and microwave radiation). The Moon is just about protected by the Earth’s magnetic field but further away we would not be so lucky.

If we wanted to travel to other planets, such as Mars, we would have to build a ship that had enough shielding to protect us from the Sun’s harmful radiation. This means a lot of lead surrounding the spacecraft, which would make it very heavy and expensive to build. Until we solve this problem of solar radiation we will not be able to safely travel to other planets.