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Post by Vincent McConnell on Aug 10, 2011 23:22:21 GMT -4
I'm going to put the end to the record. I plan on calling a real expert and proving once and for all that you can survive the trip to the moon. I've searched EVERYWHERE and I can't find any doctors specializing in radiation aside from one who hasn't answered his phone or emails in 4 days.
I need SOMEONE to give me the number of a doctor who knows about radiation. I'm going to end the hoax theory and put it on youtube.
But I need your help!
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Post by gillianren on Aug 10, 2011 23:52:23 GMT -4
You figure someone might be on vacation in August and take longer than four days to answer a call about a subject they might not be interested in anyway?
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Post by chrlz on Aug 11, 2011 6:51:59 GMT -4
So what research have you done on the topic?
How did you find this one doctor, and exactly how did you approach him? Why not post a copy of the emails you sent?
Because if I was such a doctor, I would be unwilling to spend much time answering you unless it was clear to me that you were putting in the effort. (Especially if I googled you, and saw your initial posts here at this forum....)
The radiation issue isn't that difficult to research, but it does require that you understand the types of radiation, and the effects on our biology. Do you think that a professional in the field will have the time to 'walk you through' all that, before he even begins to discuss Apollo?
If you have specific questions, why not just ask them here?
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Post by banjomd on Aug 11, 2011 7:29:12 GMT -4
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Post by twik on Aug 11, 2011 9:45:31 GMT -4
Vince, you'd probably have more luck calling a local university and finding a professor of physics or biology. Doctors tend to charge for their expertise, and may be treating you as a patient ("What, no referral") rather than someone with an enquiry. Also, GPs will probably not have a lot of experience with radiation (it's not a very common sort of complaint to family physicians).
You need to think outside the box here for sources. You might also contact local hazmat teams - they'd have a lot more training in radiation than your average GP.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 11, 2011 10:55:16 GMT -4
Health physics is the profession dealing with the biological effects of occupational radiation exposure.
And true, few experts in any field are motivated to conduct personal tutoring.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Aug 11, 2011 11:39:44 GMT -4
My father was a health physicist and worked at a NASA research reactor in the 1960s and 70s. He’s now 91 years old and I have no intention of bothering him with any of this stuff. Nonetheless, I know he has always scoffed at the idea of the Apollo hoax theory.
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Post by lukepemberton on Aug 11, 2011 13:57:11 GMT -4
I repeat Chriz's post. What specific questions do you have Vincent?
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Post by Vincent McConnell on Aug 11, 2011 14:51:53 GMT -4
I repeat Chriz's post. What specific questions do you have Vincent? Basically, I'm filming this for youtube. I plan on asking him if he believes the shielding on the Apollo Missions was enough to protect the astronauts from radiation. I have some more detail that I included in my email so we'll just have to see. |
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Post by ka9q on Aug 11, 2011 18:01:27 GMT -4
Vincent, you don't really need a doctor to explore this subject.
If there were open questions about the short-term effects of a given amount of acute ionizing radiation on humans then yes, you'd want to talk to a doctor or biologist doing research on the subject.
But while there are many open research questions about the long term effects of ionizing radiation on humans, particularly at very small doses, this isn't relevant to Apollo. You simply want to know two things: first, how much radiation it would take to sicken the crew during or shortly after the mission, and second, how much radiation they would actually experience. Then you can put them together and draw your conclusions.
For the first part you really want to consult a health physicist, not a doctor. The job of a health physicist is the protection of human health wherever natural or artificial ionizing radiation is likely to be present: nuclear power stations, high energy physics labs, nuclear medicine facilities in hospitals, etc. They'll tell you that the amount of ionizing radiation that will cause acute radiation sickness in an otherwise healthy adult human is well known: roughly 100 rem or 1 Sievert. As you go above this, the sickness worsens and the probability of death increases. A doctor who specializes in treating radiation sickness could give you the details of those treatments, but that's getting off the subject.
Then you want to know whether the radiation levels likely to be experienced within an Apollo spacecraft during a lunar mission can reach those doses known to cause illness. For this you want someone who understands the space radiation environment and how the Apollo spacecraft behaves in that environment (i.e., how well it shields its occupants).
You'd want a scientist - a nuclear physicist or space scientist - who specializes in the near-earth space radiation environment. And you'd want an engineer who can analyze the Apollo structure and how its materials behave in the radiation environment described by the space scientist. This could be a nuclear engineer or a spacecraft engineer with an understanding of the subject.
Many problems in space flight tend to be interdisciplinary, i.e., they span more than one traditional field. This is one of those cases. Ideally you'd find a spacecraft engineer who specializes in the radiation hardening of spacecraft as he would likely have all the information you need. It really depends on how deeply you want to explore any particular aspect of the problem.
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Post by ka9q on Aug 11, 2011 19:27:55 GMT -4
Vincent, I'd echo what Jay and Bob said: you're probably not going to find experts in the fields I mentioned to give you in-depth tutorials on these subject. But you might get lucky.
You really should consider doing the research yourself. Not only can you get much if not all of the information you need, but you'll also get some valuable experience in performing library research.
Most of the job is simply knowing where to start looking, and I don't have to tell you that the Internet has made this a lot easier than it was "back in my day". NASA has done an excellent job with their NASA Technical Reports Server, ntrs.nasa.gov. They provide full pdf copies of most of their papers for free, although some of the really obscure ones still have to be ordered on paper for a fee.
Anybody at all interested in biology and medicine should use Pub Med (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), a free service of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Although Pub Med is only an indexing and abstracting service, you can usually tell from the abstract if you want a copy of the full paper. Unfortunately, most medical and technical journals charge absurd amounts for full papers online.
Are you near a university that teaches science, engineering and/or medicine? If so, visit their library. Most university libraries are open to the public, although you won't be able to check out books. You can still read until your heart's content and photocopy the interesting stuff.
Good luck on your research!
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Post by lukepemberton on Aug 11, 2011 20:27:23 GMT -4
I repeat Chriz's post. What specific questions do you have Vincent? Basically, I'm filming this for youtube. I plan on asking him if he believes the shielding on the Apollo Missions was enough to protect the astronauts from radiation. I have some more detail that I included in my email so we'll just have to see. You don't really need to ask a health physicist. It's a complex problem, so not a trivial one to understand. It takes more than the few pages Ralph Rene offers in his pamphlet 'NASA mooned America' to understand the radiation issue. Don't get suckered by his solar flare argument. If I were to boil it down to a simple statement, then the major problem for astronauts would have been Solar Proton Events (SPEs), and NOT solar flares. There were no SPEs during the Apollo flights. At least non that I am aware of. I understand the the radiation monitors aboard Apollo 16 began to register higher levels than other flights, but it was not enough to cause the astronauts concern. It is possible that Apollo 16 might have been grazed by an event, but nothing of concern. Others may correct my understanding and memory. The SPE versus solar flare problem is probably a good starting point. Once you being to understand that, then you can peel back the layers regarding the solar flare claim. I and others would be happy to discuss this with you, but can I suggest you ask some specific questions. Several bullet points would be a good start. |
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Post by capricorn1 on Aug 12, 2011 7:48:01 GMT -4
Basically, I'm filming this for youtube. I plan on asking him if he believes the shielding on the Apollo Missions was enough to protect the astronauts from radiation. I have some more detail that I included in my email so we'll just have to see. You don't really need to ask a health physicist. It's a complex problem, so not a trivial one to understand. It takes more than the few pages Ralph Rene offers in his pamphlet 'NASA mooned America' to understand the radiation issue. Don't get suckered by his solar flare argument. If I were to boil it down to a simple statement, then the major problem for astronauts would have been Solar Proton Events (SPEs), and NOT solar flares. There were no SPEs during the Apollo flights. At least non that I am aware of. I understand the the radiation monitors aboard Apollo 16 began to register higher levels than other flights, but it was not enough to cause the astronauts concern. It is possible that Apollo 16 might have been grazed by an event, but nothing of concern. Others may correct my understanding and memory. The SPE versus solar flare problem is probably a good starting point. Once you being to understand that, then you can peel back the layers regarding the solar flare claim. I and others would be happy to discuss this with you, but can I suggest you ask some specific questions. Several bullet points would be a good start. Is there a thread that explains all this? If not, it would be great to here some expert analysis on this  |
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Post by lukepemberton on Aug 12, 2011 17:40:48 GMT -4
Is there a thread that explains all this? If not, it would be great to here some expert analysis on this I'm not aware of a thread that discusses the radiation issue in detail. At least not all aspects of it. Since it such a central tenet of the hoax theory, it tends to get discussed every so often and gets lost amongst many of the threads here. I've asked Vincent to stump up some questions so maybe we can discuss them with him. He started this thread, and has not come back to it. If he still has some outstanding questions following his 'conversion', then I suggested he creates a few bullet points. We can then discuss each one in turn. I'd be happy to answer his questions, at least over the next few weeks. After that I have much less time on my hands. |
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Post by ka9q on Aug 12, 2011 20:38:19 GMT -4
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) it'd be hard to top the person who discovered the radiation belts!
