Page 184 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

[Source: What Happened on the Way to the Moon?]

Note that the Space Shuttle Discovery astronauts were still hundreds of miles away from the normal
boundary of the Van Allen Belts. Yet at this distance they were able to experience radiation
penetrating their bodies and causing flashes of light on the retinas of their closed eyes. During the
early Explorer missions, radiation levels inside the VARB were so unexpectedly high that they
saturated the measuring instruments causing them to fail. James Van Allen recounts the following
in the Scientific American article.

By early February, working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we had converted this apparatus
for use in the Explorer II satellite. The first attempt to get it into orbit failed. A second rocket placed
Explorer III, carrying identical apparatus, in orbit on March 26. This satellite fully confirmed the
anomalous results of Explorer 1. At altitudes of 200 to 300 miles the counting rate was low. When
the satellite went out to 500 to 600 miles, the apparent rate ascended rapidly and then dropped
almost to zero.

One day, as we were puzzling over the first tapes from Explorer III, McIlwain suggested the first
plausible explanation for their peculiar readings. He had just been calibrating his rocket
instruments, and called our attention to something that we all knew but had temporarily forgotten:
A sufficiently high level of radiation can jam the counter and send the apparent counting rate to
zero. We had discovered an enormously high level of radiation, not a lack of it. As Ernest Ray, a
member of our group, inaccurately but graphically exclaimed: “Space is radioactive!”

Very little was mentioned to the public about the dangers of space radiation during the Apollo era.
The spaceships NASA claims the astronauts used to traverse the VARB had walls constructed of two
thin layers of aluminum. In more recent years information has been published revealing that
aluminum is a poor choice for radiation shielding of spaceships. Not only does it not block enough
of the harmful radiation, but this type of passive shielding is prone to producing secondary radiation.
When a high-energy electron or proton smashes into the atoms of the aluminum shell, secondary
reactions occur. In an article on NASA’s website discussing the benefits of using non-metallic
material for shielding, specifically polyethylene, the material that trash bags are made from, the
following information is shared.

Protecting astronauts from deep-space radiation is a major unsolved problem. Consider a manned
mission to Mars: The round-trip could last as long as 30 months, and would require leaving the
protective bubble of Earth's magnetic field. Some scientists believe that materials such as aluminum,
which provide adequate shielding in Earth orbit or for short trips to the Moon, would be inadequate
for the trip to Mars.

Barghouty is one of the skeptics: "Going to Mars now with an aluminum spaceship is undoable,"
he believes.