Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Fisking "Moon Landing Hoax- NASA Scientist Admits We CANNOT Go Through Van Allen Belts!"

A flat-earther posted this video, by someone who only identifies himself as Agent S.  It's only five minutes long, so let's take a look.


The title mentions "NASA Scientist" - will we get to hear from this scientist?  Well, it opens with an image of Wikipedia's entry on Van Allen Radiation belt. He didn't include a link to this or anything else, because he doesn't want you to read the article.  If you did, you might notice section 7, implications for space travel, that discusses how the Apollo missions did travel through the belts.



He then switches to this image  (from that same Wikipedia entry) and describes the belts as "impenetrable layers" and then displays an article, NASA's Van Allen Probes Spot an Impenetrable Barrier in Space



But if you look at the text right after the title, right there in his image, this "nearly impenetrable barrier" stops "the fastest, most energetic electrons", not spaceships or astronauts.  Oops!

Well he moves on to discussing Orion missions to Mars, and a scientist (the one from his title?) says something he doesn't understand.  He shows an unsourced video, with an unnamed person (that scientist from the title?  ETA: his name is Kelly Smith, see photo at bottom, from another video.  But I don't see any identification, perhaps this is a spokesperson.) speaking "We are headed 3,600 miles above Earth.  Fifteen times higher from the planet than the International Space Station.  As we get further away from Earth, we';ll pass through the Van Allen belts".  And a screenshot from this other video shows the words "high radiation", he stops it to make sure you saw it



Resuming (and rewinding a bit), the NASA speaker says "It will pass through the Van Allen belts, an area of dangerous radiation.  Radiation like this can harm the guidance systems, onboard computers, or other electronics on it".  He pauses the video again, because he wants us to really pay attention.  Resuming again, "Naturally we have to pass through this danger zone twice, once up and once back.  But Orion has protection. Shielding will be put to the test as the vehicle cuts through the waves of radiation.  Sensors aboard  will record radiation levels for scientists to study.  We must solve these challenges  before we send  people through this region of space".

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute" he interjects.  Kudos to scriptwriter.  He replays it twice and repeats it himself.   But didn't we already do that with Apollo 11 and enumerates each mission?  Yes, but evidentially he didn't read the Wikipedia entry with which he opened his video - "The astronauts had low exposure in the Van Allen belts due to the short period of time spent flying through them," with two footnotes. Oops again.

  1. "Apollo Rocketed Through the Van Allen Belts". 7 January 2019.
  2. "Apollo 14 Mission Report, Chapter 10"www.hq.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2019-08-07

Well why do we need to redesign shielding for a new spacecraft?  For one thing, even if nothing else had changed, we still would want to test it.  But transistors have gotten a lot smaller since the 1960's and 1970's which while on the one hand makes computers more powerful, increases their sensitivity to radiation.  And if we can further reduce exposure of astronauts to radiation, that would be good, too. 

In another video, cherry-picking from the same clip, I found a frame identifying the scientist.

 




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