[Campion]

Why would anyone bother to send monkeys up that high? 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.

[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.