I've always wondered whether the orientation of the memory chips in your computer made a difference for cosmic ray errors. That is to say, if their face is to the sky vs. their edge, will it affect the error rate?
It's also a really good random number generator, for those Hackers/crypto people that would like a true source of randomness.
I think (but have no reference) that the amount of cosmic rays the planet blocks by being in the way is dwarfed by the effects of the magnetosphere and solar rays.