ah yes it’s reactionary to checks notes not support the righteous biggest bubble since dotcom era

you okay out there bud?

what neutrons? we’re talking about shielding of spacecraft moving out of earth’s magnetosphere, not a spacecraft travelling through core of active nuclear reactor

the kind of radiation that is relevant are high energy protons (and alphas and electrons, with a sprinkle of heavier nuclei) from sun, mostly. there’s no relevant source of neutrons

(and incidentally water is pretty good at absorbing neutrons too)

water does not expand upon irradiation, what the fuck are you talking about. you can’t reflect high energy protons (what would be important in radiation in interplanetary travel) you can only either absorb them or let them pass, there’s no third option, same for anything above uv and electrons

to a first approximation (rather good one at that) (for gammas) absorption is proportional to how much mass per area unit is used as a barrier. 1 g/cm^2 of water is just as good barrier as 1 g/cm^2 of lead or steel. this means that you can absolutely use completely normal, regular potable water as a radiation shield

Water in its purest form would have to take on mass to “absorb” radiation, expanding a hull and destroying it over time.

i’m not even sure what it’s supposed to mean, unless your understanding of ionizing radiation is uncut nonsense

chemically speaking, it’s completely fine to irradiate water because whatever is formed as a result of radiolysis would just most of the time form water back, with the rest becoming very weak solution of hydrogen peroxide. this is big part of the reason why water is used as a coolant in nuclear reactors

there are also specific nuances to stopping anything that is not gammas, like secondary x-rays, gammas from neutron absorption etc and this actually favours light element shields, like water or liquid hydrogen, for this kind of radiation shielding

i don’t get what you fail to understand, water doesn’t became radioactive or harmful in any other way after irradiation, and irradiation of food is routinely used for extending its shelf life

“remove” what exactly? water is not alive so it’s okay to irradiate it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

nvidia executive called saltman a podcasting bro