space manufactuof acrylic vs. glass?

I'm sorry, Ed, but Gold is the best, then Lead. Lead is excellent for X-ray and Gamma radiation. Actually, you can use most anything. Earth has miles of atmosphere. You just, for example, can't put two meters of regolith between your fingers. It just doesn't work.

Gold is needed for practical reasons including making photovoltaic cells, although PGM (Platinum Group Metals) would work even better than Gold for that (also plentiful at asteroids). PGM is probably the closest single-item that could possibly cause a "Gold Rush" but I would want a huge space catalog - not just one product. Just in case.

In space, more valuable than Gold and PGM, or anything, is water.

George
cygo.com

Gold would be a very bad material to use as radiation
shielding, due to the secondary radiation that would
be induced. It would be much better to use lighter
elements like silicon, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Water, paraffin and plain old lunar regolith would
probably be the best materials to use in terms of
limiting secondary radiation.

However, gold would have its uses. I think that the
first discovery of large amounts of gold found on
asteroids would be sufficient to start a gold rush,
which would be the incentive to start large scale
space colonization.

Ed