Re: RE. Re. Shielding
Presumably anything inside that magnetic field risks being ripped out as well. So any life support kit and other electronics, a lot of which would probably fail. I'm guessing it may be more practical if the field was generated outside the ship where it may help with shielding.
But there'd be the mass/energy budget to consider, and redundancy. So if the field generator failed, the ship would still need enough shielding to protect the crew and any organics like seeds that it may be carrying. Mass seems to be the general enemy of space exploration though. So the more complex we make a vehicle, the more it'd mass, plus the need to carry spares to fix anything that may go wrong. I guess some of the risk could be offset by sending stuff to Mars ahead of any manned ship so there'd be emergency supplies & spares for the return trip. Or sending those to Phobos and using that as a staging post.
It's fun to think about though, ie the practicality of making a Spud-o-Matic greenhouse module that could be sent to Mars so there'd be food for any future Matt Damons.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
