The radiation is not a problem if you use cruise engines or thrusters.
What's fatal is when you are sitting more or less inside {censored} happily firing away at it with your pea shooters and then you get found by a Valkyrie just a moment before {censored} blows up and thus no longer absorbs all the gun fire and missiles that the gunboats and the battleship have been throwing your way for the last minute or two (which probably did more damage to {censored} than you with your pea shooters). But that was my last fireball of the Starflier campaign (the first was in mission 8, and then four at Tekagi's Arch).
What's fatal is when you are sitting more or less inside {censored} happily firing away at it with your pea shooters and then you get found by a Valkyrie just a moment before {censored} blows up and thus no longer absorbs all the gun fire and missiles that the gunboats and the battleship have been throwing your way for the last minute or two (which probably did more damage to {censored} than you with your pea shooters). But that was my last fireball of the Starflier campaign (the first was in mission 8, and then four at Tekagi's Arch).