In which I post about a TL9 solar system

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Yeah, NASA has been going back and forth about the costs-benefits of 'active' shielding forever and a day, but they inevitably find that it ends up costing much more mass to supply the power and/or fuel.

Well, some of that has to do with scale. Mass requirements for mass shielding vary with surface area, mass requirement for electromagnetic shielding (applies to both magnetic shields and electrostatic shields) vary with diameter, so electromagnetic shielding wins for sufficiently large scale vessels and habitats.