Originally Posted by Hondo6

Depends on the size of the impacting object and the impact location. Bigger ones would be like getting hit with a rifle bullet or worse. Since there are zero aerodynamic forces in space and no gravity to speak of, the structure might or might not survive the impact relatively intact and continue to function. But these would be exceedingly rare, and I'm guessing that risk is considered acceptable and not a major design consideration.

Dust and micrometeoroids are a different story. NASA has rather extensively studied damage from space debris, including dust/micrometeorioid impact effects and risk. The damage to spacecraft from the latter category has been found to be akin to sandblasting. And it's apparently a very slow sandblast process - outside the asteroid belt and the immediate vicinity of planets, interplanetary space is apparently quite empty. (smile)

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/188970main_...ace_Debris.pdf

Effectively, it appears that the small stuff normally causes only surface pitting. I'm no expert in spacecraft design, but it seems it would be easy to account for that threat by overbuilding the mast to include a sacrificial outer layer of sufficient thickness to account for the expected damage plus a safety factor. Using carbon fiber composite, I'm fairly that wouldn't be weight-prohibitive. And there may be even more effective ways to protect an object from such damage in space; dunno.

Or in other words: consider the possible shortcomings of the material being used and design accordingly - just like good bike frame makers do. (smile)