I was curious to see if they did any projection on whether the ISS is shielded enough for a storm of that scale. This article from 2005 (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/27jan_solarflares.htm) seems to indicate ISS is heavily shielded. There was nothing in the OP's articles that indicated if the modeled storm would be strong enough to cause serious radiation damage to the residents.

There's nothing wrong about "going back" to the original editions. I've left a comment previous about the retroclones and the availability of the older versions. They definitely fit all 3 of your characteristics without reinventing the wheel - and the newer retroclones do organize things a bit better than the originals.

You'll be happy to hear that there's a lot of great games that aren't driven by the Hasbro/WotC machine and many of them hew faithfully to what made the old games so great - rules-light (compared to today's versions), tool-kit approach, "imagine the hell out of it" attitude. It's been mainly a niche of a niche, but in the last year or so, interest in the "Old School Renaissance" has really taken off.

If you liked AD&D 1e, the books are very easy to get off of Ebay/Craigslist, but OSRIC (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/) is a retroclone that is free to download, and has promoted a few small publishers to continue releasing new 1e content.

If you liked Basic/Expert (the two book set from the early 80s) or the BECMI (the 5 "basic" books from the mid 80s) then Labyrinth Lord would be your thing: http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.html - also free.

If you really want to go old school, back to the original 3 "Little Brown Books" printed in 1974, then Swords & Wizardry is a retroclone that simplifies an already simple game. http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/ - the Core Rules are the 3LBBs and the Greyhawk supplement (uses all the dice for HD and damage), while the "Whitebox" is a toolkit game that is strictly just the 3 books (d6s only for HD/damage)

There is a lot out there and there are tons of blogs, forums and groups that try to keep the flames alive on the old games. One of them is TARGA - http://www.traditionalgaming.org/ and in interest of full disclosure, I run an "old school" blog myself http://oldguyrpg.blogspot.com/ - I currently run a 3 group AD&D campaign setting and a solo OD&D campaign with my wife.

the invasion from the Hive will be delayed a few more months. Good! We can look for the Tunnel-Makers' signal a while longer... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_Bridge_(book))