[Jan_Sobieski]

We can send instruments that can accurately measure radiation and get actually data, rather than “monkey died,” “monkey threw up and lost hair”, “monkey seems fine but developed leukemia 6 months later”, and other useless datapoints. It’s also a lot cheaper to send the instruments. They don’t need life support.

We did not have the probe or sensor technology in 69. Heck, we just recently discovered ANOTHER BELT using the 2012 Van Allen probes. No way NASA would risk sending men through the belts and 237,000 miles further (previous was supposedly 800 miles) than we’d ever gone before without an expendable crew.

[NorthMountain]

We did not have the probe or sensor technology in 69.

ROFL!!!

We had it in 1958. James Van Allen's discovery of these trapped radiation zones was the first physical phenomenon discovered by space exploration.

BTW, that "third belt" appeared and disappeared over the course of a few weeks following a solar storm. It was more of an inward expansion of the outer belt, than a wholly separate belt.

We had sufficient understanding of the Van Allen BELTS in 1969-70 to navigate AROUND them ... AROUND being the important point that some people seem incapable of comprehending or unwilling to acknowledge. That isn't to say that we knew everything about them in 1970 or that we know it all today.