Twenty years of space radiation physics at the BNL AGS and NASA Space Radiation Laboratory

Highly ionizing atomic nuclei HZE in the GCR will be a significant source of radiation exposure for humans on extended missions outside low Earth orbit. Accelerators such as the LBNL Bevalac and the BNL AGS, designed decades ago for fundamental nuclear and particle physics research, subsequently found use as sources of GCR-like particles for ground-based physics and biology research relevant to space flight. The NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at BNL was constructed specifically for space radiation research. Here we review some of the space-related physics results obtained over the first 20 years of NASA-sponsored research at Brookhaven.