And, of course Soviet Russia – those guys we were in the moon race with – bought those same lies and didn’t expose the FAKE MOON LANDINGS!!!1!! for the fraud they were, even to this day. That’s some indoctrination.
Leidenfrost effect - if your hand is wet, the water will instantly vaporize on contact with something as hot as molten lead and create a temporary shield, both from the heat transfer and the metal actually sticking to your skin. You do have to pull your hand out sooner rather than later though, that gas layer doesn’t stay for long.
That’s also how people walk on beds of hot coals without getting their little piggies charred, or why a chunk of butter will remain solid and “dance” for a while on a sufficiently hot plate instead of immediately melting in one big blubbery pile of delicious goop.
Legendary physics teacher Jearl Walker even used it to put liquid nitrogen in his mouth, to the delight of his students. The lead thing was even on Mythbusters.
The thing is, you’re comparing apples and oranges. The missions using non-manned vehicles were not set on a trajectory carefully navigating the Van Allen Belts in such a way as to minimize radiation exposure, since such a flight path costs lots of energy. So that they should show a higher exposure is exactly what would be expected, and hence, confirmatory evidence towards the official story.
Furthermore, you’re comparing average quantities with single measurements. That’s a fallacious thing to do: just because, on average, a die roll yields a value of 3.5, that I roll ten ones in a row is not in itself evidence that the die isn’t fair.
Finally, the sort of logic you’re using is this: (1) NASA engaged in a conspiracy involving thousands of people, some of which (e. g. the USSR) were actively opposing their goals, carefully designing everything such that it would seem as if Americans had reached the moon, up to blowing people up in alleged ‘tests’, manufacturing hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence, including pictures of the landing sites after pretty much the whole administration, political climate, and every other reason for perpetrating the ‘hoax’ in the first place has changed, yet (2) they openly and truthfully report on the one piece of evidence that exposes their hoax to everybody who can compare a couple of numbers (not to mention presumably every radiation expert in the world, whose silence then probably means that they’re in on the conspiracy).
That means you must pick and choose what to believe from NASA; but this cherry-picking already invalidates your claim. After all, I could equally well cherry pick in the opposing direction: choose to believe everything NASA says about the moon missions, but discard the VAB radiation readings that you, somewhat flawedly (see above), allege don’t fit, as part of a NASA-conspiracy to keep anyone else from trying. (Perhaps they discovered something on the moon they are unwilling to share with the public at large!)
The fact that both these contradictory positions are in agreement with your methodology hence means that your methodology is flawed.
So you trust these radiation reports released by NASA? If I understand you right, then that means that NASA sent the Apollo craft into low earth orbit yet was foolish enough to collect actual data from these flights? Who would do that when trying to perpetrate a hoax?
It would be like me having an affair and trying to convince my wife I was at work while at the same time knowingly sending her real time GPS that shows I’m at my girlfriend’s house.
Couple of errors here.
First, it is not true that radiation on Earth is less than .24mgy/day. On average it certainly is, but even in, say, 1950 there were spots where it was considerably higher. Even before Marie Curie started refining uranium, radium, and polonium there were spots where the radiation on Earth exceeded the norm. Radiation is spotty, and it’s spotty everywhere, on Earth or in space.
Second, there is a difference between what the *outside *of an Apollo spaceship received and the dose received on the inside. Despite your dismissal of the admittedly thin shielding on the Apollo capsules, there really was some effectiveness to the shielding. Aluminum will stop both alpha and beta rays, which will lower the overall dose hitting the astronauts. I would, in fact, expect the dose inside the Apollo capsule to be a little lower than on outside. Your figures confirm this.
Again, untrue. Some cosmic rays do penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere and reach the ground. That is how we found out about them before attempting to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.
Then there’s neutrino radiation - the entire bulk of the planet Earth is no barrier to them, so there’s plenty of them sleeting through you even as you read this. Fortunately, neutrinos don’t interact much with other matter so we can pretty much ignore them.
Actually, reading your side of this thread, I think perhaps you need to improve your understanding of radiation. It is a complicated subject and I certainly am no expert, but I think you’re making some basic errors.
Provide evidence that enduring 1mrem/hour for two weeks is “impossible”. (Also, it would help if you used consistent units. Can you pick one and stick with it?)
There are 336 hours in 14 days, the approximate duration of an Apollo Moon mission. Using your figures, that’s 336 mrem using the dose given in this paragraph. Or 3.36 mGy given the figure in your OP. Playing fast and loose with the unit conversion, normal yearly background radiation exposure on the surface of planet Earth is about 4 mGy or 400 mrem. In other words, the astronauts doubled their typical annual radiation exposure during one trip.
(Note: as I mentioned, radiation varies - background radiation in (most) of the UK is about 200 mrem, in Finland around 700 mrem. In other words, just by existing in Finland you get a radiation dose as high as going to the Moon and back. Probably even higher in Nepal, as mountainous areas get more radiation from space, and anywhere there are natural uranium deposits you’ll get a higher background radiation.)
People have survived much higher doses. A quick google would indicate that nuclear industry workers legal limit in a year in normal conditions is 50 mGy or 5000 mrem (it’s higher for emergencies). Fukashima plant workers dealing with the post-earthquake-and-tsunami emergency received an average of 180 mGy, or 18,000 mrem and none of them have dropped dead of it as of yet. Usually takes around 400 mGy or 40,000 mrem in a short period of time to induce acute radiation sickness.
Let’s review: the astronauts received (let’s round up) about 4 mGy for the trip. You need 100 times that to show signs of radiation sickness. Even if the radiation records for the Apollo trip were off by an order of magnitude, and the astronauts got 40 mGy for the trip, there is no reason to think they’d show any signs of harm from it.
Which is why we’re all dismissing your claims that there was too much radiation to survive the trip. We have people on Earth who have been exposed to more than that who haven’t gotten sick from it. Yes, ALL of those people, nuclear industry workers and astronauts, have a higher lifetime risk of cancer from that exposure, but the notion that venturing past the Van Allen Belts is somehow Instant Death is bogus.
I don’t dispute there is cosmic radiation in space. I dispute your assertion that it is a lethal hazard.
What confuses you about the concept that metal plating shields against alpha and beta rays, which would in fact lower the amount of radiation detected inside the capsule vs. outside of it?
In summation: I don’t dispute your radiation exposure numbers, I dispute your assertion that they would cause problems. Also, I’m a bit annoyed at you using multiple units when talking about radiation, it would be very helpful if you pick one unit and stick to it.
Two questions: First, what the heck is “galactic cosmic radiation”? In all of my decades working in astronomy and physics, I’ve never heard of it.
Second, what motive did the USSR have for faking an American moon landing?
That’ll earn you a warning, chargerrich. It’s against the rules to accuse another poster of trolling. Please don’t do so again. If you believe a poster is trolling, simply report it to the moderation staff for review.
Lord Foul,
It is against the rules to insult other posters in Great Debates. I’m giving you a warning for this post. Please don’t do so again.
If you feel you must insult others, you may do so in our forum ‘The BBQ Pit’ where the rules are substantially looser.
Now, to EVERYONE.
This thread has a high ‘go off the rails’ factor. I want everyone on their best behavior. I hope that’s clear.