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Post by bazbear on May 6, 2006 22:52:38 GMT -4
Another point while I think of it. Sibrel interviewed Alan Bean, asking him about the VA belts. Bean said he didn't think they went high enough to have gone through them!?! I don't believe Bean said that, not to a direct question regarding Bean's Apollo mission. Sibrel's credibility is such that the only evidence I'd accept is an unedited audio and video recording of such a question followed by such a statement...and after independant experts reviewed it for authenticity. You hoax believers can believe the likes of Sibrel if you like...how or why you want to? Well that's another question. NASA can fake a trip to the moon, kill Grissom, Chaffee, and White (and the Challenger crew according to the late Kaysing)...but not deal with a journeyman TV cameraman *very negative epithets deleted* like Sibrel?....'Nuff said
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Post by gwiz on May 8, 2006 3:39:55 GMT -4
Another point while I think of it. Sibrel interviewed Alan Bean, asking him about the VA belts. Bean said he didn't think they went high enough to have gone through them!?! Possibly based on Bean referring to Apollo going to a high latitude to by-pass the main part of the belts? It wouldn't surprise me if BS can't tell latitude from altitude.
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Post by JayUtah on May 8, 2006 10:39:31 GMT -4
I'd like to begin with Van Allen's published documentation on the VA Belts.
Then we can end with Van Allen's clear and specific repudiation of the conspiracy theories on radiation grounds.
It doesn't matter how confidently you apply, interpret, or extrapolate Van Allen's statements to try to show that he studied a radiation environment that would preclude Apollo missions. He has been asked specifically the question whether cislunar radiation means the Apollo astronauts would not have been able to succeed, and he has called such an idea "nonsense".
I have yet to see any conspiracy theorist deal with this statement. In fact, I have yet to see any conspiracy theorist who can produce a qualified astrophysicist who agrees with him. Before you go off trying to play scientist, consider that.
...the Geiger-Mueller Counter used lead (and iron) shielding during the Explorer IV project, when the earlier, unprotected G-M Counters malfunctioned.
"Malfunctioned" is inappropriate. The counter simply became saturated because it had been calibrated for the expected low levels of solar wind and cosmic rays. Has your stereo "malfunctioned" simply because you had the volume turned up so high that the sound was distorted?
The shielded counters confirmed that the malfunction was due to extremely high radiation levels.
FUD -- "extremely high" compared to the expected levels for which the instrument had been calibrated. Not necessarily "extremely high" for some other contemplated purpose.
Keep in mind that Van Allen wished to receive information about the variance in radiation over the spacecraft's orbit. If the detector is saturated then any variance in levels that exceed the saturation point won't be measured. Imagine you have a speedometer that very accurately measures speeds up to 10 km/h. If you have a car that is going 20 km/h, the speedometer will be pegged high and you can't use that instrument to measure as the vehicle changes speed from 19.85 km/h to 22.37 km/h.
The second attempt to measure the radiation levels simply used known thicknesses of material with known absorptive properties in order to "filter" the radiation to the point where it fell within the dynamic range of the instrument. This is indeed how instruments of variable sensitivity are often designed.
"Their research showed that it would be impracticable to shield against the inner Van Allen belt radiation but possible to shield against the outer belt with a moderate amount of protection.
But you have to know the assumptions under and the purpose for which these gentlemen did their work. Were they talking about manned orbits inside the Van Allen belts? Were they talking about a certain spacecraft or launch vehicle? Were they talking about missions of specific durations?
"Impractical" is generally a subjective term that depends on certain arbitrary or specific circumstances. It may be "impractical" to take your invalid grandmother with you hiking in the Utah wilderness, but it would be perfectly appropriate to take her to a picnic in the park or to a symphony orchestra concert.
Keep in mind, Turbonium, that your typical error is one of interpretation. Since you decline to provide specific information on what these men studied, you can't assume their findings are applicable to your claims in the way you desire.
The research done by Van Allen and others in the late 1950's and onward...
Your survey of the research seems to have stopped in 1960. You've cherry-picked your way into FUD by presenting only early nascent research in which we expect a certain degree of surprise and inaccuracy. You apparently haven't studied any research done in the past 45 years! Yes, later you ask whether there is any "new" research that "invalidates" these findings, but frankly that's your job. If your argument is simply to stop your survey once the results become less supportive of your conclusion, then that is its own rebuttal.
...the realization that any manned spacecraft going through the belts would require significant shielding to protect astronauts from harmful radiation. The further problem was whether or not it was even possible.
Here is your interpretational leap. You've gone from a specific study that concluded radiation attenuation was "impractical" (for some unknown set of circumstances) to saying it's "impossible", which is an entirely different thing. Pure, absolute FUD.
All you've shown is that Van Allen's initial guess for the cislunar environment was wrong, so he sensor wasn't properly calibrated, and that some group of men studying an unknown problem under unknown constraints during the infancy of the space program concluded that there would be problems they weren't sure how to solve. You haven't made much of a case at all.
What do you mean by "significant" shielding? As I use the term in engineering, "significant" simply means I have to think about it seperately. If, for example, the normal casing on an electronics package were also sufficient to shield from radiation, I would consider that insignificant radiation. If, on the other hand, I had to specifically consider radiation attenuation in the design and ensure that the casing was appropriately thick for that purpose, then shielding becomes "significant" as we use the term. It does not mean that the shielding is now impossibly thick and heavy, nor that radiation concerns drive the design.
Why were there no animals used in test flights except within low Earth orbit?
Because biological specimens don't tell you much. It's essential to know qualitatively what would happen to an organism in the space environment, but you don't get hard numbers from animals that would be useful in an engineering or mission-planning context, and you have the additional problem of recovering the animals intact for study after the mission. To borrow your terminology, studying biological specimens is impractical.
When you use instruments you can send them to any altitude along any trajectory desired, you get objective numbers, and you don't have to worry about what happens to them when their mission is done. The typical mission profile used a sounding rocket -- a vehicle designed to go "up" as far as it can without going into orbit. These reached altitudes of thousands of miles above the Earth and telemetered data back.
Didn't 7 Apollo missions measure space radiation going to the Moon and back?
All Apollo missions took radiation measurements. The problem is one of mission profile. The aim of Apollo was to go to the moon and back. The aim of this new mission is to remain in lunar orbit and elsewhere in cislunar space to collect data more systematically.
If I drive from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, I can naturally take pictures out of the window of my car along the way. And I will have a nice photographic data set -- of the area immediately surrounding Interstate 15 on that day. It doesn't subsitute for a long-term study of the environment to see how things change with the seasons, nor does it presume to study important global aspects of Utah, Nevada, and California that would be important if we intend to settle there for a long time.
The models of cislunar radiation, generally referred to as AP8 and AE8, are constantly in a state of refinement as new data come in. Because they are global-behavior models, and not based on boundary conditions or constitutive relationships or anything that would give us confidence from short-term data, we need to have data from several geographic points between Earth and Moon, over a long period of time. Then we can assure ourselves that the models accurately preduct the behavior of the phenomenon both in space and in time,
Since short stay visits were no problem 35 years ago, why can't they at least just pick up where they left off?
They weren't "no problem" 35 years go. NASA and its crews were simply willing to accept that risk. The same is not true today. Today astronauts have occupational limits on what they are allowed to do. The lawmakers have caught up with the space race. And there is increased pressure on NASA to keep its crews safe.
There is a practical consideration as well. You don't want to train an astronaut for ten years, investing millions of dollars and producing non-transferrable value, only to have your astronaut grounded after a few missions because his health is in danger. The Apollo astronauts were never expected to fly more than two or three missions apiece. Today's astronauts train for entire careers in space, possibly comprising many missions. This ups the ante for keeping them safe from radiation. We simply cannot allow them to be exposed to even moderate levels that would be entirely safe as one-time exposures.
So which is worse for astronauts: cosmic rays from above or neutrons from below?
Neither, since the amounts in each case are negligible over three or four days, but become significant for long-term stays, or perhaps when there is a major solar event brewing.
More FUD. The fact that we don't yet know everything about the cislunar radiation environment doesn't mean anyone's trying to hide anything or that NASA was criminally reckless. We will continue to study these effects probably for a hundred more years or so and continue to learn more. You can't simply point to some arbitrary historical period and say that because we know more now than we once did, early work is entirely useless.
Why didn't the dosimeters worn by the astronauts measure neutron radiation emanating from the lunar surface?
Because they weren't on the astronauts' feet. The secondary effect you mention is limited to about a meter above the surface and is of extremely low flux. Someone walking around in a space suit for three days isn't going to get enough exposure in his feet from such an effect even to measure. However, if you have men and women walking around for months at a time, the effect becomes enough to measure and therefore enough to worry about.
And yes, the astronauts' personal dosimeters would have registered this kind of radiation, but it would not have been distinct from the effects of other kinds of radiation.
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Post by JayUtah on May 8, 2006 10:52:31 GMT -4
Another point while I think of it. Sibrel interviewed Alan Bean, asking him about the VA belts. Bean said he didn't think they went high enough to have gone through them!?!
Consider two points.
First, Sibrel -- as you well know -- makes his living by trying to make the Apollo astronauts look bad. He is singularly dishonest in representing what they say, the context in which they said it, and what is meant by it. For years Sibrel talked about Neil Armstrong's reticence to be interviewed. Sibrel, on his site, concludes his discussion of Armstrong by saying "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies." Sibrel writes it just as I have, using double quotes. Although he does not explicitly attribute the quote to Armstrong everyone who reads that statement has assumed Sibrel heard Armstrong say that. If you expect anyone here to take Sibrel's word for what Al Bean said, you're very sadly mistaken.
Second, Sibrel has no working concept of astrophysics, engineering, or astronautics. Further, he cannot demonstrate the ability to separate fact from interpretation. And so I have noted frequent occurrences in which Sibrel hears something from an astronaut or other expert and then works it into his own interpretational framework to arrive at what "must" be the implications of the expert's statement. And he has no qualms whatsoever passing off his interpreted version for what the expert really said or intended.
That's actually not an uncommon cognitive dysfunction; many people do the same thing. Unfortunately one will have zero legitimate success as an investigator until one learns to conquer that particular phenomenon.
I agree with my colleagues here: until we see the Al Bean statement shorn of Sibrel's dishonesty and ineptness, we have no obligation to respond to it.
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Post by Count Zero on May 8, 2006 20:54:24 GMT -4
Jay, what is FUD?
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Post by twinstead on May 8, 2006 21:08:24 GMT -4
Jay, what is FUD? oooo, ooooo, can I do it Jay? Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
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Post by 3onthetree on May 12, 2006 7:24:13 GMT -4
Just a question. When or if future manned missions to the moon take place will they be scheduled for minimum solar activity or maximum activity ? There seems to be an argument for both. On the one hand you have the searing Kentucky fried killer sun spasms and on the other the sneaky, in the pot with a carrot cosmic stuff. Which is best ?..
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on May 12, 2006 9:12:15 GMT -4
Just a question. When or if future manned missions to the moon take place will they be scheduled for minimum solar activity or maximum activity ? Solar maxima occur every eleven years on average with the last occurring in 2001. Therefore the next maxima will occur in 2012, 2023, 2034, etc. What is the current target date for the next US landing, 2018? This will be right near minimum, but if a sustained presence on the Moon is to be achieved, then astronauts will be there through the entire solar cycle. Apollo occurred just after maximum (1968), therefore the first missions took place while activity was high but declining.
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Post by JayUtah on May 12, 2006 10:57:41 GMT -4
I think the goal is a longer-term sustainable exploration infrastructure. That will unfortunately need to include protection against radiation that is less dependent on mission timing and duration. And that is currently a challenge to engineers. But there are lots of challenges to this new proposal, and frankly that's what we live for as engineers.
Keep in mind that the most dangerous solar flare during Apollo's operational period occurred between the last two missions, not during the early part where the solar cycle suggested the chances for one were higher. And let us not forget Black October in 2004, where two back-to-back X-class solar events swept through cislunar space -- again during a period of supposed quiescence. The challenge to astrophysicists is to develop better predictive models.
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Post by turbonium on May 13, 2006 3:49:35 GMT -4
First, Sibrel -- as you well know -- makes his living by trying to make the Apollo astronauts look bad.Agreed. As most here are aware, I'm no fan of Sibrel. His ambush tactics are a "gutter" type of journalism, imo. The "National Enquirer" and the "Star" specialize in this type of "reporting" in their tabloids with celebrities.. To me, it's not only disrespectful, but very unprofessional. But I will address the issue I mentioned..... .. until we see the Al Bean statement shorn of Sibrel's dishonesty and ineptness, we have no obligation to respond to it.The video is linked below. video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5774435062980328047&pl=trueThe interview of Bean regarding the VA belts begins at 13:41. The relevant dialogue as follows. I generally preserved most of the pauses ("uh's") and informal grammar ("kinda's"), etc. to maintain a fairly accurate transcription. Times within the video have been added in parentheses.... (13:41) BS: Any ill effects from the Van Allen radiation belts?
AB: No, now I'm not sure we went far enough out to..to encounter the Van Allen belt. Maybe we didn't. (13:53)
---breaks away from interview----
(14:28) AB: I don't know the distance to the Van Allen radiation belt, and if we did it wasn't a problem..if we were gonna encounter it then we would've have to build the spacecraft and the spacesuit to, uh...to..to..not give humans a problem. You, you don't just build something and hope it works, you study to see what, uh, the threats are, the environment is, and then you say, how thick do I have to make the metal on the spacecraft, so that going through this kind of radiation or these kind of meteorites, it won't get hurt. And so...and then we built it that way.
BS: The belts are one thousand miles to twenty-five thousand miles above the Earth.
AB: Well then, we went right out through 'em.
BS: No effects on yourselves..?
AB: Mm-mm (shakes head 'no') Didn't even know it. I don't think anybody, well maybe somebody said, "You went through the radiation belt", but we didn't feel it inside. We didn't get any, you know, added radiation... (15:22)
---breaks away from interview---
(16:46) BS: No strange, ah, occurrences..?
AB: Mm-mm (shakes head 'no') Nothing like that , uh...
BS: The Space Shuttle...
AB: Uh..go ahead.
BS: The Space Shuttle went to 365 miles a few years ago.
AB: Uh-huh (nods head 'yes')
BS: Because I.worked in news..
AB: Uh-huh.
BS: ..I saw CNN. They said that the radiation belts surrounding Earth are more dangerous than previously believed, because the astronauts saw shooting stars with their eyes closed, just when they got.within six hundred...
AB: Oh, now, that isn't from radiation belt. We saw shooting stars but they're not shooting stars...from...with your eyes closed, although they look like it. Uh..if you're out in space beyond the Van Allen belt, and probably within the Van Allen belt, and close your eyes,..and just...pay attention. You don't notice it unless you pay attention. Then all of a sudden you'll see a little flash, like a shooting star, except it's (snaps fingers) like that. There goes one this way. Then one just blossoms. And then not that fast, maybe you wait three minutes, or two minutes, an' one goes whshh. And what's happening is cosmic rays are hitting the, uh, back of your eye, and exciting those sensors in the back of your eye. So that's what you see. And they got high enough, apparently, to close...my guess is in Earth orbit if you closed your eyes and just paid attention, then you would see them.
BS: The first time they were seen was when they went to 365 miles...
AB: Yes.
BS: ..that's 650 miles below, or away, from the radiation.
AB: Yeah, see, it's below. My guess, if they just did it tonight . But see if you're not..if you're just going to sleep, or closing your eyes or it's dark, you don't notice 'em. But if you'll..close your eyes and pay attention..which we had an experiment to do, by the way...then you'll see 'em whistling by - not on our mission, by the way. They hadn't been discovered yet. I saw 'em one day on the Moon. It wasn't dark. And it was kinda dark, and I saw this flash of light, and it looked like it was on the Moon. But it wasn't, it was a flash of light in my eye. (18:52)Sibrel, up to this point, has not yet disclosed his true intentions to Bean, who is still answering questions under the impression that Sibrel is simply interviewing him about Apollo and so is recalling his experiences from that time. The ambush happens a few minutes later. Sibrel and his shoddy journalism aside, I do find the remarks from Bean fairly interesting and curious. From what I can see, the interview dialogue I've posted above hasn't been manipulated to make Bean's comments other than what they appear to be. Comments?
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Post by turbonium on May 13, 2006 4:00:29 GMT -4
Thanks for the post, turbonium. Be patient in return while I work on specific stuff.No problem, sts60. If you're short on the tar and feathers, there's sure to be some generous folks here that can help you out!
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reynoldbot
Jupiter
A paper-white mask of evil.
Posts: 790
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Post by reynoldbot on May 13, 2006 6:37:52 GMT -4
I'm sorry Turbonium but I don't really see that much incriminating evidence in that interview.
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Post by Kiwi on May 13, 2006 10:38:47 GMT -4
So Al Bean didn't know much about the Van Allen Belts. Did he need to? Do most people? Does it matter? What is curious about what he said? Wouldn't he have had much more important things on his mind during a flight to the moon?
Where's the problem? What is there to be suspicious about?
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Post by 3onthetree on May 13, 2006 11:12:20 GMT -4
As a neutral after watching the video my strongest impression was what a great punch that was by Aldrin. If there was anything dodgy about the Apollo missions Sibrel would be the last person I would look too for answers. He crosses the line in trying to set people up like that.
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Post by Jason Thompson on May 13, 2006 13:35:33 GMT -4
Things to remember about the Al Bean interview.
Alan Bean is in his seventies, so one might expect his memory not to be 100% accurate in all details.
Alan Bean was an astronaut, not a spacecraft designer. His training consisted of working out how to fly the spacecraft and work on the lunar surface. There would be no need to complicate his already packed training schedule with detailed info about the van Allen belts and the translunar trajectory. Asking him about the van Allen belts is like asking Dr James van Allen about the design of the Saturn V. It is not his field of expertise. There is a popular misconception that the astronauts had to know everything about everything on their flights. Well, no, that's why there was such a team effort behind the missions.
Note that Sibrel is completely clueless about the difference between cosmic rays and the radiation in the van Allen belts.
As Bean correcly points out, the design of the spacecraft would take the environment into account. That is someone else's responsibility, not his. Can you give a detailed account of the design philisophy and manufacturing methods of a car, or are you content simply with knowing how to drive one in all weather conditions?
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