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Originally Posted by Anaraxes
At least according to Striker, even an "unarmored" starship has an armor rating of 40, which was 33 cm of steel equivalent as far as penetration goes. That's about 33 halving thicknesses, depending on what sort of radiation you're talking about, if the material absorbed radiation as well as steel.
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I am immediately concerned with natural-source radiation from solar storms and radiation belts, which means mostly charged particle radiation: beta rays and protons, some high-energy ions.
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Nuclear dampers (and enhancers) exist. They were only described as anti-nuke weapons, as I recall, but the same tech might be pressed into service as a radiation "shield" to reduce Bremsstrahlung in the armor.
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That's the issue with charged particles, isn't it? They aren't very penetrating themselves, but braking radiation when they stop amounts to some pretty hard x-rays.
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Higher tech medicine might presumably allow you to better recover from radiation exposure, thus allowing more exposure over long time intervals (as opposed to combat). I don't recall any mention of that in particular, but it could be another reason the routine exposure is neglected.
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Well, I'm considering radiation levels like those in the radiation belts of a large gas giant like Jupiter. And those will probably kill you too fast for medicine to fix you up, besides which they fry hardware.