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I recently saw a clip online of the fabrication of the moon landings. They claim the Van Allen Radiation belt is impossible to traverse with the technology we had and have. It would kill any living organism that attempted to pass through it. So did we land on the moon?

2007-06-18 09:46:06 · 17 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics Astronomy & Space

17 answers

I prefer the VanHalen CDs. With David Lee of course

2007-06-18 09:49:55 · answer #1 · answered by marf 4 · 3 2

That claim is wrong. It is not impossible to transverse the Van Allen Belt, in fact, astronauts on the space shuttle clock up eight hours a day in the belt in regular 30 minute stretches.

The main danger of the Van Allen Belt is hight energy protons, which are not that difficult to shield against. And the Apollo navigators plotted a course through the thinnest, weakest points of the belt and arranged for the craft to pass through them quickly, limiting exposure. Because, yes, radiation is dangerous, but it is very different from the fictitious image that is popularised in the public realm. Radiation is not an inescapably deadly force.

The Van Allen belts span about 40 degrees of the Earth's latitude, 20 degrees above and below the magnetic equator. The published diagrams of Apollo's translunar trajectory tend to show only a two-dimensional version of the actual trajectory, and though the three-dimensional charts are available, they are highly technical and not easily understood by the general public. Essentially, though each mission took a different path to their various landing sites, the trajectory was always in the region of 30 degrees to the magnetic equator, evading all but the very edges of the Van Allen Belt.

Passage through the belt would indeed be dangerous, which is why NASA conducted several experiments to determine their nature, including the passage of the Gemini 10 astronauts through the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly, a particularly strong low-hanging area of the Van Allen Belt. The Apollos also made ventures into stronger parts of the belt, to obtain hard data that would later validate their models and to see that the hull would attenuate the radiation as predicted.

Often the "fact" is stated that it would take six feet of lead to protect the Apollo astronauts from the radiation. This is actually the worst way to protect them. Lead is far to heavy to be used at all in the spacecraft (Aluminium is preferred, but is less effective at radiation insulation). Today the choice of particle shielding is polyethyene, and in the 60s there were various substances available. The fibrous insulation between the inner and outer hulls of the command module were the most effective form of shielding available at all at the time, for spacecraft or otherwise. "Shielding" does not always mean incredibly thick slabs of dense metal, and what was provided was adequate for the exposure that the astronauts were calculated to receive in the trajectory they took.

2007-06-18 21:37:53 · answer #2 · answered by Bullet Magnet 4 · 1 1

Dr James van Allen himself specifically stated that the belts provided no barrier to manned spaceflight.

The van Allen belts are zones of high energy protons and electrons trapped by the Earth's magnetic field. The best shield against such radiation is aluminium, plastic and water, all abundant on the Apollo spacecraft. In addition, the shuttle and ISS routinely traverse a section called the South Atlantic Anomaly, which is a region where the belt dips down to a lower altitude. Despite passing through this region every ninety minutes for months at a time, none of the crews so far from the ISS have noticeable radiation-related illnesses.

But perhaps more significant from the point of view of Apollo, the Russians sent the probe Zond 5 round the Moon. It contained living specimens including worms, turtles and moss, and none of them showed any ill effects from passing through the belts. The Russian lunar lander and spacecraft were not designed with any more shielding than the Apollo spacecraft, and they seemed to think they'd be quite capable of carrying a man or two through the belts without killing him.

Bottom line: those who say the van Allen belts are impossible to pass through know nothing about radiation, its effects, or how best to shield against the different types.

2007-06-18 10:23:49 · answer #3 · answered by Jason T 7 · 4 2

The reason that the conspiracy theorists like to fall back on the Van Allen Belts as their last stand in the fight against the debunking of their theories is that the VAST majority of people know NOTHING about radiation.

To the uninformed, radiation is one of today's boogiemen, to replace ogres, witches, and dragons of yore. Radiation kills, it's powerful, unstoppable, and very very scary to most people. So it's easy for naysayers to say that astronauts couldn't have gone.... because there's radiation in space! (spoooookey!)

Particle radiation is stopped quite readily by physical materials. Imagine a bowling ball as a particle of radiation, and the pins as other materials - now imagine the pins are all connected by metal bars gripping them at the necks, and the bars are connected to all pins on all lanes... now the bowling ball would bounce right off of them, or maybe damage a pin or two, but not break on through except over repeated shots. This is basically how particle radiation works.

Alpha radiation can actually be stopped by a piece of paper! The big bad wolf wasn't there to stop the Apollo missions; they went to the Moon and back, and accomplished one of the greatest feats in the history of human kind. Let naysayers live in their miserable little holes and pay them no mind.

2007-06-18 11:01:29 · answer #4 · answered by ZeroByte 5 · 3 3

The astronauts passed through the belts very quickly, limiting their exposure time to the intense radiation to about an hour or two. Most of the charged particle radiation is unable to penetrate even a thin layer of metal, so they received plenty of protection from their spacecraft. In fact the exposure the astronauts received during their entire mission, including travel through the Van Allen Belts and lunar excursions, was about 2 rem or less, which is less than 1% of the exposure needed to kill a person.

2016-05-18 23:28:10 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

Oh brother, that old chestnut again.
Perhaps you should do some research of your own on the Van Allen belts to find out what they really are.
The astronauts were only in the belts for about an hour, with the shielding they had that's less radiation than you get from xrays for a broken bone.

2007-06-18 15:58:02 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0 3

Yes, we did land on the moon. You would have to sit in the radiation belts for several hours in order to get a lethal does. If we hadn't landed on the moon, the Soviets would certainly have found out.

2007-06-18 09:53:57 · answer #7 · answered by lxhawkins 1 · 5 1

We went, and the Van Allen Radiation belts are navigable. I can debunk every argument the conspiracy theorists come up with, some of their arguments are really silly once you understand some basic science. But the theorists never want to be talked out of their delusions. They always claim if they could see photos of the landing sites they'd believe, but if you got photos and showed them they'd just claim those were fake, too.

2007-06-18 09:58:46 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 3 2

This is the kind of question I expect from a guy in a tinfoil helmet. Yes, we went to the moon, six times, twelve men walked on it, all Americans, and no, passing through the Van Allen belt didn't kill them. Don't believe every single thing you see on the net, or on TV, because you'll end up believing some very stupid things.

2007-06-18 11:03:35 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0 4

No! Not through the Apollo manned missions. Besides the Van Allen Radiation belts, astronauts would also have had to deal with Solar Particle Events (solar flares) and Galactic Cosmic Radiation that is ever present in the Cosmos. The thin aluminum shielding of the Lunar Module would hardly protect the astronauts let alone the film which is far more sensitive to radiation. The film would have fogged, just like the pictures taken at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility. As for the astronauts moving through the Van Allen Belts very quickly; you'll have to take NASA's word that the 2 rems would be low enough for the astronaut's survival. NASA has the dubious honor of their agency being tagged as Never A Straight Answer. Get the book "Dark Moon, Apollo And The Whistle-Blowers" by Percy and Bennett. If you would really like to know whether we went to the moon or not, don't rely strictly on the Internet. Do the hard research using books so that you won't fall prey to "strawman" arguments such as the answers above. There are so many anomalies to the moon hoax that it would take a book just to broach what NASA doesn't want us to know.

Addendum: Jason T. Again, we have to take NASA's word and the Russian Space Agency's word that radiation doesn't effect living organisms. NASA and the Russians have a mutual agreement not to snitch on each other when it comes to the moon. Percy and Bennett's book goes into great detail how both space agencies cooperate. As for the manned shuttle missions below the Van Allen Belts being of no consequence, think again. One of the shuttle missions in the early to mid 90s had to drop in orbit because the astronauts were experiencing the effects of solar particles penetrating their hull and their skulls. They were seeing streaks of light when awake and when asleep. NASA ordered the Shuttle to drop its altitude some in order to stave off the solar particles on the astronauts.

Addendum: Notice, that not one of these so-called experts addressed Solar Particle Events or Galactic Cosmic Radiation! Notice, how I received more thumbs down than any of the people who answered. Notice, not one person debunked Percy & Bennett's book! Notice, that not one person refuted the effects from the Van Allen Belts as it pertains to the shuttle mission I described above. This was even aired on CNN. Please, read the book before you make up your mind.

2007-06-18 10:19:06 · answer #10 · answered by ? 3 · 4 8

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