How does SpaceX tackle this with both the rockets, and the thousand of Starlinks.
NASA is overpaying for underperforming "hardened" hardware that performs no better than non-hardened. You can see this yourself with the mars helicopter ingenuity.
If you are desperate for extra safety then just include multiple computers, literally what spacex does.
The errors caused by radiation are extremely frequent and you definitely must guard against them, otherwise anything will fail immediately in space.
However that does not necessarily require hardware measures. It may be more efficient if instead of a slow antique CPU with hardware redundancy you use a fast modern CPU, even if it is more sensitive to radiation and even when it lacks hardware redundancy, but you do each computation several times, verifying that every time you get the same result, and if possible you use different algorithms or verification methods, to be able to detect some permanent errors.
This is what the Mars helicopter did. If it had used standard smartphone software, the helicopter would have failed instantly.
I asked this in another thread but I will repeat it here - how come that their bog standard iPhones that they use for taking pictures with are still operating fine then? If like you said, "anything will fail immediately" - doesn't sound like that's the case? They have electronic watches with no radiation hardening, they have regular laptops with no radiation hardening.....I'm not saying that it's not a problem, but it definitely doesn't seem to be in the area of "immediately failing in space" if you don't have that.
A bit flip in an index variable, a pointers or in native code can send the CPU on a wild goose chase around memory.
To add insult to injury, applications like browsers use JITs, which generate and execute large amounts of native code on the fly, making them even more vulnerable for this kind of fault.
There's an old story where a professor quizzes his physics class about how to most-safely distribute different kinds of radiation sources. A common variation involves three baked cookies, emitting alpha particles, beta, and gamma respectively. One must be eaten, one must be held in your hand, and one must be placed in a pocket.
A hint, and what I think is the interesting part of the answer, involves the idea that a victim is a lot like shielding. Things which are difficult to block are also things that are less-likely to stop and ruin your day.
Alpha: In the hand held away from the body would be reasonably safe. In a pocket of a lab coat might provide a little more shielding from the body with the coat material, but it is physically closer. Eaten would be very bad for the user, but protect the outside world the best
Beta: Medium penetration, would likely not be safe in any of these three situations
Gamma: High penetration, definitely not safe in any of these situations, best would be to get it as far away from you as possible, so held at arms length would mean you might only get high radiation exposure in your hand. Hospital visit is probably needed in any of these three situations
* Alpha in hand. Eaten, the "shielding" that blocks it will actually be very active living cells, leading to severe health outcomes. Your external layers of dead skin cells will be be fine, putting it in your pocket would be excessive.
* Gamma in hand, because whether it's in your hand or in your pocket, it's roughly the same risk, and most of it is actually going through you without stopping to have an effect. (Compared to other two.)
* Beta in pocket, where the additional clothing layer(s) offer some meaningful protection compared to your hand.
The "twist" behind the exercise involves how people often assume penetrative power is proportional to danger, when in some ways it's really the opposite. (Consider the danger profile of neutrinos.)
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/22-01-introduction-to-nuclear-en...