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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
Radiation is (and has been) a concern for spaceflight, and becomes even more so as you leave Earth orbit. (The Earth's magnetic field absorbs and/or redirects much of the harmful radiation from the Sun when you're close). This poses a risk to both people and to hardware. Computers, to pull one example, are generally both more expensive and slower for space applications than terrestrial ones due to the need for radiation hardening.
For manned missions outside of Earth orbit, limiting radiation exposure is a main objective of the vehicle design. There have been some novel solutions, such as using Lunar regolith to build structures to shield from radiation or hiding in magma tunnels. For spacecraft, radiation shielding is difficult because of the mass required. In short, you need a lot of *stuff* to block the radiation (water is a common one), and that stuff is heavy. As far as I know, this is still an open question, and a major limitation on long-duration human spaceflight outside of Earth orbit.
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