Empirical Earth · We Went to the Moon — the Landings Were Real
Through the Van Allen belts — fast, and shielded
The claim
“The Van Allen belts would kill them and fog the film.”
What is measured
Apollo crossed the thin outer belts in under an hour. The highest crew dose (Apollo 14) was 1.14 rad, about one CT scan, far below harm, and far below what fogs film in its metal magazines. The ‘lethal belts’ claim relies on an unshielded worst case the dosimeters flatly contradict.
What would show this is wrong
Apollo dosimeter records showing lethal or film-fogging doses, or a physical reason a fast, shielded belt transit must deliver them.
Sources
- Apollo crew radiation & the Van Allen transit. The highest mission-average Apollo crew dose (Apollo 14) was 1.14 rad (≈ 0.02 Sv, about one abdominal CT); trajectories crossed the thinner upp link
- Van Allen belts: geometry, and the discoverer’s own verdict. The belts span roughly 1,000–60,000 km (the ISS orbits at ~400 km, below them); Apollo crossed them quickly on an angled trajecto link
- Apollo belt-transit dose, worked out. NASA’s figures give an astronaut even outside the spacecraft ~11.4 rad over the ~53-minute belt transit — about 13 rad/hour, far below the ~300 rad in o link
- Apollo radiation dose in context. NASA’s Biomedical Results of Apollo records the highest crew dose, on Apollo 14, as 1.14 rad (~0.02 Sv) for the whole mission — roughly two abdominal CT sca link
- The August 1972 solar particle event. One of the strongest solar storms on record fell between Apollo 16 and 17; analyzes conclude that a crew outside Earth’s magnetosphere could have suffer link
- Space-radiation measurements during Artemis I. Orion’s detectors and the Helga/Zohar phantom mannequins measured dose through the Van Allen belts and deep space; shielding gave up to a fourf link
The full entry, with the working →