Replies

He never said they ‘cannot get past the Van Allen Belts’, that I heard.

Back in the Apollo days, radiation was not the Big Deal that it has become since. Guys were tough and just did it. They were men and knew they were - unlike today’s pencil necked soy boys, snowflakes, wusses, and general layabouts, always needing assurances that everything is safe before they lift a finger.

Long before the Apollo, the Russians processed plutonium by hand. The workers were issued paper suits and brooms to clean out the slush tubes, as I recall. Some workers died, but most did not. The survivors were very proud of the work they did for the Motherland and would do it again.

And of those that died, there were other causes like lack of medical support, food, sanitation - the usual for gulag workers. There was a long article about this and was quite moving, but that was 15- 20 years ago and likely no longer on the internet, like the one where the Russians admitted wiping out most whales as part of one of their 5 year Plans.