If you’ve got any interest in future spacecraft design – real design, not the stuff of fantasy and science fiction – then Icarus Interstellar is a great source of information.
As an example of the sort of thing you can expect to read why not take a look at this article on Materials in High Radiation Environments which explains the sort of building materials and shielding you’d need with near-future fusion drive systems:
The use of controlled defects is the other important aspect of radiation resistance, since radiation can actually “cure” defects in certain types of materials (radiation hardening phenomena and radiation annealing effects). If we choose materials that can only be manufactured with a large number of defects in the first place, the basic properties of the material are known and the design can be done. Radiation then interacts with these defects and, if the materials are well chosen, these interactions can actually reduce the influence of the defects, increasing, rather than decreasing, the strength of the materials. […] If we instead started from perfect materials, the radiation would introduce defects that break down this perfection, making the materials weaker. The defects would be random, and might lead to catastrophic failure. By controlling the flaws in our materials and in designing for them, we have controlled and reliable properties: reliable mid range materials, rather than unreliable high strength materials.
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