"Space weather forcasters?" LOL I smell a new con coming on!
It's for real. Apollo 17's (December 1972) crew would have perished due to the solar flares that occurred in August ...and fortunately waned..just earlier than their trip. As reported by NASA:
To die, you'd need to absorb, suddenly, 300 rem or more.The key word is suddenly. You can get 300 rem spread out over a number of days or weeks with little effect. Spreading the dose gives the body time to repair and replace its own damaged cells. But if that 300 rem comes all at once ... "we estimate that 50% of people exposed would die within 60 days without medical care," says Cucinotta.
Such doses from a solar flare are possible. To wit: the legendary solar storm of August 1972.
It's legendary (at NASA) because it happened during the Apollo program when astronauts were going back and forth to the Moon regularly. At the time, the crew of Apollo 16 had just returned to Earth in April while the crew of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon-landing in December. Luckily, everyone was safely on Earth when the sun went haywire.
"A large sunspot appeared on August 2, 1972, and for the next 10 days it erupted again and again," recalls Hathaway. The spate of explosions caused, "a proton storm much worse than the one we've just experienced," adds Cucinotta. Researchers have been studying it ever since.
Cucinotta estimates that a moonwalker caught in the August 1972 storm might have absorbed 400 rem.