Human and machine resilience toward radiation

[gigabytelord]

I've Recently found this article and it made me wonder about not only the long term survival of humans but also the machines that will keep us alive should we ever venture forth into deep space.
The machines is this article were clearly built specifically to withstand the immense radiation of such an environment but it clearly wasn't enough to keep them functioning.
In short: What are the realistic chances of extra solar settlement. How much will the radiation factor play in this possible colonization and what are our current best technological defenses against radiation hazards and how might we see these defenses advance in the near future. The current limitation to sub-light travel notwithstanding.

Edited for clarity.

[Broomstick]

Our current best defenses against radiation such as we would encounter in deep space, or, for example, a Mars colony is shielding - putting stuff between us and the radiation. Which, actually, is a reason to a live on a planet instead of a space station. You can burrow into a planet and have a radiation resistant hidey-hole to live in or take shelter during periods of increased radiation (solar ejection events, etc.) With space ships or space habitats you'd have to to put "stuff" between you and the outside, more so than just what is needed to keep atmosphere and pressure.

[Elheru Aran]

One reason, IIRC, for using asteroids as a way to travel through space-- tunnel into them and use the raw asteroid matter as shielding.

And then there's the ship Neal Stephenson depicted in Anathem-- though I don't think that particular concept was original to him but I could be wrong-- which was basically a giant cylinder of rubble held together by chicken wire. Cheap and effective.

[madd0ct0r]

Also a spaceship can afford to be redundant. With 500 versions of the main computer software doing circular crosschecks a lot of the radiation damage can be repaired as you go along, exactly the same way as our DNA but less likely to take damage and more likely to correctly repair it.

DNA biochemistry takes place in an environment with a huge amount of reacants after all.