NASA Admits They Can't Send Humans Through The Van Allen Radiation Belts

The Moon Landing conspiracy theorists love to use this claim. It just doesn't hold up.

The Apollo missions marked the first event where humans traveled through the Van Allen belts, which was one of several radiation hazards known by mission planners.[30] The astronauts had low exposure in the Van Allen belts due to the short period of time spent flying through them. Apollo flight trajectories bypassed the inner belts completely to send spacecraft though only the thinner areas of the outer belts.[31][32] The command module's inner structure was an aluminum "sandwich" consisting of a welded aluminium inner skin, a thermally bonded honeycomb core, and a thin aluminium "face sheet". The steel honeycomb core and outer face sheets were thermally bonded to the inner skin.

Astronauts' overall exposure was actually dominated by solar particles once outside Earth's magnetic field. The total radiation received by the astronauts varied from mission to mission but was measured to be between 0.16 and 1.14 rads (1.6 and 11.4 mGy), much less than the standard of 5 rem (50 mSv) per year set by the United States Atomic Energy Commission for people who work with radioactivity.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt

SP-368 Biomedical Results of Apollo

CHAPTER 3

RADIATION PROTECTION AND INSTRUMENTATION

by

J. Vernon Bailey

Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-368/s2ch3.htm

APOLLO ROCKETED THROUGH THE VAN ALLEN BELTS

By Amy Shira Teitel

http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-rocketed-through-van-allen-belts

 
I wasn't really questioning the Apollo missions to the moon, but rather questioning what would prompt NASA employee's to assert that humans cannot yet pass through the Van Allen radiation belts. But perhaps more curiously, why would NASA permit these assertions to be broadcast?

 
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