ToughSf has a link to this from October. Wish I'd seen it yesterday, in which case I might have had something to poast about . . . but, anyway.
The focus here is electronics to survive for half a year. That's a ship on a Hohmann trajectory to Mars. Over that time, solar flares might hit it; cosmic rays WILL hit it.
Pritpal S. Kanhaiya et al. work with carbon nanotubes, which apparently can do everything. (These rods were even mooted for a geosync space-elevator at one point.) They were going for field-effect transistors, which I don't understand; toward a RAM chip, which I do. Static RAM, to be specific, at which point I don't know anymore.
Although the transistors can take more of a beating, the overall chip doesn't seem to have improved overall. Unless it's double-shielded. Which for whatever reason the researchers didn't test... yet.
I think we are unready for Mars by Hohmann. Starship needs to refocus to delivering cargo to our own Moon. Including cargo fit for a NERVA mission, to drive down travel-time.
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