A spacecraft shielding model for calculating exposures to radiation

A spacecraft shielding model for calculating exposure to radiation is proposed. This model is based on the concept of the randomly inhomogeneous character of the material thickness distribution both in separate equipment units and the spacecraft as a whole. This concept has made it possible to obtain the shielding function of an arbitrary point in a spacecraft necessary to calculate the radiation exposure using its mean density, geometry and the ratio of the shielding function dispersion to its mean. This is constant for the spacecraft. This conclusion was verified for several Soviet and U.S.A. spacecraft, including the Space Shuttle. (author)