Note, however, that at least one well-known manufacturer of HD camcorders currently does not ship their product by air (surface/ship transportation only) specifically because of cosmic ray damage to the CCD and CMOS image chips while in transit. NASA has announced similar cosmic ray problems with their HD camcorders on the International Space Station. Source: IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics 2007.

No, it says what's been known for some time: solid-state electronics aren't that much better at tolerating ionizing radiation than living things are. The faster the components, the more sensitive.

BOTH will require adequate shielding.

I remember a story when the first automobiles were engineered, there were serious concerns that going over 30 miles/hr would cause the driver to pass out due to lack of oxygen! They based this on the fact that turbulent eddies and pockets of vacuum will be created inside the cab. Yes, we have turbulent eddies, but they are far from dangerous, and besides, car designs are now highly aerodynamic, reducing the drag caused by eddies.

So it goes to show that the initial fear of a potential problem is often sensationalised, only to find the problem isn't that great a risk in reality. And besides, should there be a problem, we often find a solution very quickly. There is very little between *problem* and *solution* when us humans stand to gain from *progress*.

Cheers, Ian

The comments and the article above also reminds of another rediculous scenario that Bob Zubrin likes to talk about- when airplanes first started taking passengers, people suffered the problem of altitude sickness. Naysayers started talking about how fast and high-flying airplanes will never be practical because humans cannot be comfortable in high-flying planes.

A whole lobby of researches doing research on altitude sickness wanted their funding by the government for developing antidote for this problem kept harping about for decades about the relevance of their work for aeroplane companies and why the government should keep funding them- they will one day develop medicines which people flying planes could then take, ameliorating the low-pressure problem.

Then one day, the private industry decided to just get rid of this rubbish- and decided to pressurize the cabins. Problem solved!

The same is happeing today with the naysayers for manned space flight. It's all about protecting the funding of people and groups who want to keep NASA flying in circles around Earth- and who want the money to keep coming in- for all sorts of frivolous reasons- researching effect of zero-gravity on humans and how to develop medicine for the same, effect of radiation on humans and computer chips and how to develop antidotes for those too.

Soon, if companies such as Space-X succeed- they are literally going to suck the life out on such wastefulness and circus that has existed over the past 50 years and has hijacked humanity's destiny beyond Earth. With a spinning spacecraft in space, and a spinning colony on Mars and Moon, they will get the gravity back, rather than support useless medicine-men, and put sheilding around spacecrafts and chips where needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening

The issues talked about in this article are generally only valid for Earth-based computers that do not make design allowances for the fact that radiation strikes can occur and mess with computational equipment.