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The worse-case scenario is that if you radiate a crew sufficiently, they'd all succumb to radiation sickness within a few days and essentially vomit and diarrhoea themselves to death within an enclosed capsule

The Moon missions were just blind lucky,” explains Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at University College, London. “The astronauts would have experienced radiation sickness and a higher risk of future cancer if they'd been hit,” he adds.

Hapgood and colleagues are currently working on an alternative technique that involves surrounding the spacecraft with a plasma shield to deflect incoming protons without creating secondary radiation