The curious chart found on the NASA Technical Report Server.
(Updated at: https://georgebailey.substack.com/p/nasa-document-implies-no-go-to-moon)
A curious chart found on the NASA Technical Report Server.
NASA’s server for technical reports sounds intimidating for us non astrophysics types but it really is not. Many documents are plans, projections, histories and so on. There are of course, the heavy mathematical documents but one can skim thru them to understand the overall concepts being presented. Well, what you suss out what the acronyms all mean. If you are a space flight researcher, it is a site to visit often. Surprises abound.
Space exploration has always been dogged by one major restraint—radiation. Radiation makes all of space a giant toxic zone that goes on forever. Even the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has to work around the dangers of radiation in low earth orbit (LEO) when they have laptops that need to be rebooted and cameras that fail from radiation damage.
But even the radiation experienced in LEO aboard the ISS is low compared to venturing farther out in space. The first hurdle for traveling to the moon is the Van Allen radiation belts, discovered by Dr. James Van Allen in 1958, is the earth’s force field from the incoming toxic soup of charged particles and trapped within the donut shape of the field. The two belts start at about 400 miles from the earth and extend to over 36,000 miles. Most science sites, such as Popular Science and others, state that to pass through this hazardous zone the Apollo spacecrafts used a trajectory that allowed them to pass thru the thinner parts of the belts. Sort of an arch instead of a straight line. That method is not mentioned in any of the astronaut’s books and certainly was not a viable action for Apollo 13 in its crisis situation with its limited fuel.
The trajectories from the earth and to the moon are called “free return trajectories” and also known as a “slingshot.” They use the gravitational field and a burn to slingshot to the target, in this case the moon and vise-versa. The limited fuel capacity is not there for any fancy maneuvering.
Mission Dose Chart
While researching radiation exposure in space and the lunar voyages I came across the, “Space Radiation Cancer Risk Projections and Uncertainties – 2010,” found on the NASA Technical Report Server. It features a large amount of data on how radiation effects internal organs, cancer risks, male and female dose variations and so on. Important information to know for future space missions.
On page 28 one can see the chart posted above. It charts the amount of radiation exposure for all of NASA’s manned missions from Mercury to the ISS. Notice where Apollo is placed—right beside the Space Shuttle in the middle of the chart! It is well known that the highest radiation levels are passing thru the Van Allen radiation belts, solar radiation in cislunar space and lastly, the nuclear hazard zone of the moon. The Shuttle never left low earth orbit. If Apollo traveled to and landed on the moon, it should be listed at the top of the chart. Instead, the International Space Station, the Russian Mir and Skylab are. They are equating the sum of Apollo’s moon journeys to only the radiation exposure one would experience in low earth orbit. How can this be?
Or rather, how could NASA allow these learned authors of this report, publish something like this?
In Closing
The Apollo moon missions traveled the farthest out. They went beyond the earth’s protective magnetosphere where the deadliest radiation from cosmic rays, gamma rays, x-rays and so forth exist. If they completed the moon missions then their radiation protection in the space crafts to the space suits, with this low of an exposure rate, must have been constructed of some classified technology never shared with the public. Or else, they did not complete the missions as presented to the public.
Once again, NASA is making the impossible, seem possible. And that is what wizards do.
Addendum, 9-5-18
Actually, the flights of Gemini should have been higher on the chart as well. According to Micheal Collins in is book, Catching The Fire, page 261, Gemini flight 11 reached a record altitude of 875 miles above earth in 1966. Collins, along with John Young in their Gemini 10 flight, set the previous record of 475 miles. Which would place both missions in the lower rung of the Van Allen belts. There is no report of radiation sickness at these altitudes despite being in the belts. The highest Space Shuttle flight occurred in 1990, STS-31 at an altitude of 380 nautical miles. There are stories of the crew getting mild radiation sickness but have not been able to verify this event.
Addendum, 8-15-18
Researcher Randy Walsh in his book The Apollo Moon Missions, on page 144 states that astronaut dosimeter readings are averages, with the specific readings classified. Maybe because they never went into cislunar space? (Please note the author does not source this allegation.)
Sources
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/
Space Radiation Cancer Risk Projections and Uncertainties – 2010
