I'm writing a sci-fi story involving a lot of asteroid mining and things like that. A major character is a 'development scout' for a large company and has a backstory in which they apparently made a bad call and got a lot of people killed, but they are adamant that it's because of equipment failure on the part of the company and they were forced to take the blame. I'm trying to hammer out the details.

The scenario I was imagining for this was imagining a crew on an asteroid or the lunar surface during a CME. When they realize it's approaching, they send the other crew to the habitat modules, which are supposed to have radiation shielding, and go out in one of the rovers to try and power down a piece of key equipment to avoid damage by the storm. it is too far away to not risk exposure while going out to fix this thing, so the scout says something like 'oh, I have the best chance, I'll do it, stay in the modules'. but it turns out the company had cut costs on the habitat modules, considering a CME event of that magnitude too unlikely to prepare for, and the crew in them end up injured and/or die. the scout waits out the storm meanwhile in a rover, trapped outside, but is wearing a spacesuit and the vehicle has its own (functioning) shielding, and so manages to survive. (I was also considering including a moment where one of the engineers stripping out shielding from other vehicles and puts it into the scout's but I honestly don't know how realistic this is unless it's like, literal sheets of lead or something).

My question is:

• where in the solar system would be a reasonable possibility for this to happen? is the asteroid belt too far? would a CME cause lethal radiation exposure at that distance? this should be a freak event but not beyond the pale of possibility

• with current or near-future technology, how much shielding do you really need to prevent being irradiated from CMEs?

• what would an unshielded or poorly shielded astronaut experience through this?

• if there's an active shielding system (I'm not knowledgeable about this at all btw) and it's say, malfunctioning or poorly functioning, would the astronauts in the habitat potentially see oxygen ionizing or anything like that?

• is there a more reasonable scenario I should use instead to achieve the same outcome? I picked this specifically because of the invisible horror of radiation and also the potential for the astronauts to be trapped together for several days, knowing they were potentially fatally irradiated, but still alive. That said I realize there's loads of other options to die horrible in space (lol) especially involving faulty equipment, so any suggestions would be great! Thank you so much

I'm writing a sci-fi story involving a lot of asteroid mining and things like that. A major character is a 'development scout' for a large company and has a backstory in which they apparently made a bad call and got a lot of people killed, but they are adamant that it's because of equipment failure on the part of the company and they were forced to take the blame. I'm trying to hammer out the details.

The scenario I was imagining for this was imagining a crew on an asteroid or the lunar surface during a CME. When they realize it's approaching, they send the other crew to the habitat modules, which are supposed to have radiation shielding, and go out in one of the rovers to try and power down a piece of key equipment to avoid damage by the storm. It's too far away to not risk exposure while going out to fix this thing, so the scout says something like 'oh, I have the best chance, I'll do it, stay in the modules'. But it turns out the company had cut costs on the habitat modules, considering a CME event of that magnitude too unlikely to prepare for, and the crew in them end up injured and/or die. The scout waits out the storm meanwhile in a rover, trapped outside, but is wearing a spacesuit and the vehicle has its own (functioning) shielding, and so manages to survive. (I was also considering including a moment where one of the engineers stripping out shielding from other vehicles and puts it into the scout's but I honestly don't know how realistic this is unless it's like, literal sheets of lead or something).

My question is:

• where in the solar system would be a reasonable possibility for this to happen? is the asteroid belt too far? would a CME cause lethal radiation exposure at that distance? this should be a freak event but not beyond the pale of possibility

• with current or near-future technology, how much shielding do you really need to prevent being irradiated from CMEs?

• what would an unshielded or poorly shielded astronaut experience through this?

• if there's an active magnetic shielding system (I'm not knowledgeable about this at all btw) - a poorly functioning one, say - would the astronauts in the habitat potentially see oxygen ionizing or anything like that?

• is there a more reasonable scenario I should use instead to achieve the same outcome? I picked this specifically because of the invisible horror of radiation and also the potential for the astronauts to be trapped together for several days, knowing they were potentially fatally irradiated, but still alive. That said I realize there's loads of other options to die horrible in space (lol) especially involving faulty equipment, so any suggestions would be great! Thank you so much

I'm writing a sci-fi story involving a lot of asteroid mining and things like that. A major character is a 'development scout' for a large company and has a backstory in which they apparently made a bad call and got a lot of people killed, but they are adamant that it's because of equipment failure on the part of the company and they were forced to take the blame. I'm trying to hammer out the details.

The scenario I was imagining for this was imagining a crew on an asteroid or the lunar surface during a CME. When they realize it's approaching, they send the other crew to the habitat modules, which are supposed to have radiation shielding, and go out in one of the rovers to try and power down a piece of key equipment to avoid damage by the storm. it is too far away to not risk exposure while going out to fix this thing, so the scout says something like 'oh, I have the best chance, I'll do it, stay in the modules'. but it turns out the company had cut costs on the habitat modules, considering a CME event of that magnitude too unlikely to prepare for, and the crew in them end up injured and/or die. the scout waits out the storm meanwhile in a rover, trapped outside, but is wearing a spacesuit and the vehicle has its own (functioning) shielding, and so manages to survive. (I was also considering including a moment where one of the engineers stripping out shielding from other vehicles and puts it into the scout's but I honestly don't know how realistic this is unless it's like, literal sheets of lead or something).

My question is:

• where in the solar system would be a reasonable possibility for this to happen? is the asteroid belt too far? would a CME cause lethal radiation exposure at that distance? this should be a freak event but not beyond the pale of possibility

• with current or near-future technology, how much shielding do you really need to prevent being irradiated from CMEs?

• what would an unshielded or poorly shielded astronaut experience through this?

• if there's an active shielding system (I'm not knowledgeable about this at all btw) and it's say, malfunctioning or poorly functioning, would the astronauts in the habitat potentially see oxygen ionizing or anything like that?

-is there a more reasonable scenario I should use instead to achieve the same outcome? I picked this specifically because of the invisible horror of radiation and also the potential for the astronauts to be trapped together for several days, knowing they were potentially fatally irradiated, but I realize there's loads of other options to die horrible in space (lol) especially involving faulty equipment. any suggestions would be great! thank you so much

I'm writing a sci-fi story involving a lot of asteroid mining and things like that. A major character is a 'development scout' for a large company and has a backstory in which they apparently made a bad call and got a lot of people killed, but they are adamant that it's because of equipment failure on the part of the company and they were forced to take the blame. I'm trying to hammer out the details.

The scenario I was imagining for this was imagining a crew on an asteroid or the lunar surface during a CME. When they realize it's approaching, they send the other crew to the habitat modules, which are supposed to have radiation shielding, and go out in one of the rovers to try and power down a piece of key equipment to avoid damage by the storm. it is too far away to not risk exposure while going out to fix this thing, so the scout says something like 'oh, I have the best chance, I'll do it, stay in the modules'. but it turns out the company had cut costs on the habitat modules, considering a CME event of that magnitude too unlikely to prepare for, and the crew in them end up injured and/or die. the scout waits out the storm meanwhile in a rover, trapped outside, but is wearing a spacesuit and the vehicle has its own (functioning) shielding, and so manages to survive. (I was also considering including a moment where one of the engineers stripping out shielding from other vehicles and puts it into the scout's but I honestly don't know how realistic this is unless it's like, literal sheets of lead or something).

My question is:

• where in the solar system would be a reasonable possibility for this to happen? is the asteroid belt too far? would a CME cause lethal radiation exposure at that distance? this should be a freak event but not beyond the pale of possibility

• with current or near-future technology, how much shielding do you really need to prevent being irradiated from CMEs?

• what would an unshielded or poorly shielded astronaut experience through this?

• if there's an active shielding system (I'm not knowledgeable about this at all btw) and it's say, malfunctioning or poorly functioning, would the astronauts in the habitat potentially see oxygen ionizing or anything like that?

• is there a more reasonable scenario I should use instead to achieve the same outcome? I picked this specifically because of the invisible horror of radiation and also the potential for the astronauts to be trapped together for several days, knowing they were potentially fatally irradiated, but still alive. That said I realize there's loads of other options to die horrible in space (lol) especially involving faulty equipment, so any suggestions would be great! Thank you so much