The paper’s conclusion:
Accountability and Responsibility
The confusion between the Apollo record accounts, the various measuring systems of both time and distance – and when it comes to crewed space flights beyond LEO, the sheer avoidance of this region by all the space agencies to date, is proof enough that crewed Apollo missions were not sent through these belts. For had they done so, the agencies would be quite happy to send astronauts through them now.
The excuse that modern technology requires more stringent measures might have some relevance when it comes to hardware, but it does not stand up to scrutiny when it comes to human crews. Bio-organisms are as vulnerable today as they were in the 1960s. And to repeat, the radiation belts are as difficult to negotiate today as they were in the 1960s. Ignorance is not bliss in this particular instance, a fact with which Lockheed Martin would concur.
Lockheed Martin has ostensibly set out three levels of consideration when it comes to protecting human crews from space radiation.15 On Earth and in LEO where the ISS orbits, the protection is required to produce as low a risk as is reasonably achievable. And then deep space is referred to separately from the intended crewed visits to Mars and the Moon (cislunar space is the distance from LEO to the Moon’s orbit) and once again, the time factor used to differentiate these two expeditions and environments.
Fig. 18
Fig 18. Lockheed Martin’s banner associated with its research into radiation protection for astronauts. The acronym ALARA could just as well be ALARM – since even LEO is not entirely safe for the ISS when it travels through the South Atlantic Anomaly, image: Lockheed Martin.
If there is no level of exposure to radiation considered safe now, as the conditions of space remain the same, there certainly wasn’t any additional safety for astronauts during the Apollo period. Nor would it be necessary to differentiate between similar environments using the length of voyage as the excuse. The length of voyage certainly increases the risks for the bio organism but those risks are extant from the start of any voyage beyond LEO. And If as many would assert, it was simply a matter of ‘going very fast through the Van Allen belts avoiding the dangerous bits’, crewed exploration of space would be much further along today, and none of Braeunig’s data mix-ups, and other inaccurate and deliberately confusing statements concerning the Apollo record would be necessary.
Former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe, attempted to retain Apollo mythology while making statements about Elon Musk’s Starship ‘enterprise’ when he noted:
“I remain cautious about Starship’s deeper-space capabilities for humans, despite its size and innovation, given that it relies on the same chemical propulsion systems used in spaceflight since Yuri Gagarin took the first trip and Alan Shepard was right behind him in 1961.
Mars is 65m miles away… Cutting the distance can only be achieved if you add space propulsion and right now we have none of that. We have no means to achieve it. No one on this rock knows how to do that.
“The second thing we don’t have is the means to provide shielding sufficient to preserve human life. As it stands, the radioactivity is so extraordinary you wouldn’t make it, much less get back. Those are the two fundamental limitations I see to anyone being able to achieve anything much beyond the lunar objective at this stage.” 16
O’Keefe surely knows that ‘deeper space’ is a misleading description. Deep space is everywhere beyond LEO and that includes Earth’s protective region of the Van Allen belts with their unpredictable accelerated particle activity – and the totally unprotected surface of the Moon. As Lockheed Martin clearly states:
“There is currently no level of exposure considered safe.”
Xavier Pascal and Aulis Editors
Additional input from Jarrah White
Aulis Online, January 2022