The moon landing faking theory keeps getting the radiation belts wrong

I got into a debate last week with a guy at a diner who swore the Apollo missions were faked because the Van Allen belts would have fried the astronauts. He kept saying the radiation levels were lethal and NASA just ignored it. But I actually looked up the NASA data from the Apollo 11 mission logs, and the spacecraft passed through the thinnest part of the belts in under 2 hours. The total radiation dose for the whole trip was about 1.16 millisieverts, which is less than a chest x-ray. Why do people always forget that the belts aren't a solid wall of death?

2 comments

2 Comments

paige33151m ago

Man, I didn't realize diner debates came with peer-reviewed sources now. But sure, let's just trust the instruments that apparently "maxed out" while conveniently ignoring the actual measurements from later missions. It's almost like the radiation risk was calculated ahead of time by people who knew what they were doing.

william_harris7h ago

Hold on a minute. You're quoting the total dose for the whole trip, but that ignores the fact they went right through the inner belt where the proton radiation spikes. Those readings came from instruments that weren't even designed for that environment, they maxed out. A lot of the data we have from those passes was extrapolated, not directly measured, and the margin of error on those old radiation models is huge.