How Deadly Are The Van Allen Radiation Belts?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- The radiation belts around the Earth were discovered by James Van Allen in the late 1950's using data from the earliest US satellites, and very quickly he concluded that the radiation levels were high enough to cause concern for human spaceflight. The belts have been well studied, but they're still not perfectly understood, for example the source of the low frequency radio waves that clear out the slot region between the inner and outer belts.
Using models of the belts and radiation analysis tools we show just how much radiation crew would be exposed to when flying through the belts and show that there are ways to reduce the exposure to safe levels.
The modelling of the exposure and dose levels uses ESA's Space ENVironment Information System
www.spenvis.om...
Some clips created with Universe Sandbox
universesandbox..."
While flying through Van Allen belts, the most important thing is of course avoiding collision with the buckles.
Latest scientific discovery: Van Allen belt buckles. You, sir, are on the cutting edge of science jokery.
@@javaman4584 perfect mission for some enterprising hacker to photoshop suspenders on every image of Mr. Van Allen. ;-)
Don't let the truthers figure out this 😂
@@javaman4584 Somehow Van Allen suspenders or Van Allen braces just don't have the same cachet. However, since there are two of them, perhaps it should be suspenders AND belt.
They're more like cummerbunds.
His name was Van Allen? What a coincidence, just like the belts!
Joakim Kanon Haha!! 😂❤️
Just too big a coincidence I think!
🤔
They changed his name after he discovered them. His original name was Jerry Dorsey.
The obvious answer here is that he was responsible for putting them there in the first place. Why else would they have the same name? I looked up his wiki page and you don't even need to look at anything other than the contents list because right there it says world war II. This is likely the same WW2 that dropped those atomic bombs... which do what? Yeah you guessed it also put out radiation. His initials are JVA: joint venture agreement.
*Given this evidence I can only conclude that the radiation was a joint venture agreement between the US government and nuclear power plants to dump atomic landmines into space to protect us from aliens.*
That was THE most sinister "fly safe" I've ever heard
I had exactly the same thought! 😳🤔
But the most enthusiastic ever "Hello! it's Scott Manley here! and I want to talk to you today about..."
(What?!! the most famous p0rnstar in history? FasterThanLightTravel proved and demonstrated?! Elon Musk unmasked as an alien???)
...Van Allen belts!!"
Fly Safe (this is a threat)
Seemed more concerned than menacing.
May I join this Karen thread? lol
Radiation: Something very few people really understand, but nearly everyone is deathly afraid of it because of how popular media describes it.
It’s often barely even deadly, or even a problem
Mad scientist: ahahahaha, you will never survive the power of my ALPHA RADIATION GUN! PREPARE TO DIE!
Hero: *holds up sheet of paper*
Mad scientist: *starts screaming as his high-power alpha emitter does nothing*
Do you prefer the inverse when people were so unafraid of radiation that they put radium in chocolate?
@@Edax_Royeaux We had that whole "radiation is good for you and cures all illnesses" bullshit, then we got the "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE FROM FLASHLIGHTS" bullshit, I hope we land in the middle in the end.
And a lot of them are afraid of the wrong things, like those who think frequency is what kills. You then have to explain to them that visible light is a lot higher frequency than 5G
@@spetsnatzlegion3366 A neutron gun and/or gamma gun however, that'd be pretty terrifying. Criticality is scary stuff.
Todays "fly safe!" held a lot more power considering the subject. Great content as usual mr. Manley!
I was about to mention the ominous tone in his voice.
"Fly safe"...or glow in the dark.
Seconded
And his eyes telling « did not forgot it this time »
Add more boosters, check the staging, plan your trajectory, and fly safe.
Everybody dies after minutes...a very large number of minutes.
about 28 thousand days
It's usually implied that if your lifespan is measured in minutes, it'll be less then 2 hours.
@@Edax_Royeaux usually, but not in this case.
Actually... the entire universe will die in nanoseconds.
Little girl: "Am I going to die?"
Doc Martin: "Everybody will die, but not today." :-D
The principals of radiation safety: Time, Distance and Shielding.
Also awareness. If you don't know where the source is, you are going to have a bad time.
And lead underwear.
Cockroaches: "what's radiation?"
@@Jona69 That would fall under "shielding".
And being a species that's really good at DNA repair.
"I guess, you can sit and watch Chernobyl" LOL
"3.6 rad, not bad"
@@diesistkeinname795
Double it as you'll need to come back through the belt.
OMG that ... I spilled all my water. * sit onto Elephant's foot watching Scott Manley talking about Van Allen Belts *
Not the show one should learn about radiation from.
@@julese7790 Hopefully the plastic kind, not the hot kind.
In the 1990s I lived in Iowa City (U. of Iowa where James Van Allen taught) I got to know professor Van Allen as an acquaintance in the physics department there. One day there was a radio show out of Los Angeles that was discussing the possibility or impossibility of astronauts having landed on the moon, and part of the discussion had to do with their assumption that astronauts could never have survived moving through the Van Allen Radiation Belts. I knew professor Van Allen well enough to call him, which I did and put the radio show in contact with him. Professor Van Allen was a very kind man, and ever the patient professor, he dispelled the notion that people could not pass through the belts. According to him, a person might get the equivalent of a very mild sunburn, if that. There is just so much nonsense constructed around the moon landings...and let's remember that there were 6 actual moon landings by astronauts, not just one. Maybe somebody could have faked one, but 6 missions in which humans actually landed on the moon...strains credulity to think that it did not happen.
what's the name of the show, what date did it air so that we could verify your claim.
Scott
Radiation physicist here: just spotted this item of yours> Fantastic job! Your reputation for accuracy is well earned and I would have no compunctions about sending any of my students here for an entertaining piece of scientific history. Many thanks for your presence on the web. Domenico
Radiation physicist is only a medical technician, not proper nuclear physicist. Lol
@@M25Republic I am a particle physicist who now does a lot of simulation of radiation fields in detector design for industry and academia - did not want to complicate the discusion for the lay person...lol..lol.
Have you ever had a look at what astrophysicist Jarrah White published about the Van Allen belts and the rate of radiation the Apollo astronauts must have gone through (calculated from official Van Allen data model AE8/AP8) and concluded that they could not have gone through?
@@jflaplaylistchannelunoffic3951 Good God! that fellow again. There is someone who needn't have bothered trying so hard for his sad degrees. Sorry for the ad hominum approach, but this one is just dying for attention and should seek psychiatric help. Otherwise, back in the 1980's, while teaching a radiation effects course for graduate nuclear people, this would be the type of question I might post on an exam to see what the class would come up with - both for quiescent and active Sun phases. It is particularly important to distinguish electron from proton contributions, as we as build-up effect from the cabin shell material (aluminum alloy)
best regards, DKB
@@domenicobarillari2046 But still, I find it hard to believe that Apollo moon landing and coming back worked on the first attempt. Even Gus Grissom said (shortly before he died in that suspicious fire) that Apollo needs at least 10 more years of development. Further there are whistleblowers who say that the moon movies were filmed in an airforce base hangar.
Van Allen has been and always will be a local celebrity for his achievements at the University of Iowa. An emeritus professor for many years with many things named after him including a school. Many instruments have been designed and traveling out in space to this day with his and his students help😀
According to "Moon Hoaxers", Van Allen belt is the most deadliest place in the whole universe.
It is pretty deadly if you’re naked
@@scottmanley But then again, so is the ocean
Actually the Earth is the most deadly place in the Universe. Every person who ever lived has died on the Earth.
@@my3dviews Except a few Russian cosmonauts we won't talk about. ;)
@@LordFalconsword I think that they died while re-entering the atmosphere, but I could be wrong.
Exploder One? That was far from the first American exploder! :)
Obviously, Scott's next project is a crossover with Jive Turkey discussing the Explorer, a British submarine with experimental peroxide motors. Yes, they called her the Exploder.
I wonder if Exploder 1 was related to Microsoft’s Internet Exploder?
My physics teacher asked us to turn up for a lesson with conspiracy theories about the moon landings and I found these belts but never actually spent time reading about, well, exactly the title of this video. Nice to finally get it answered after quite a few years now
"So if you add a few meters of aluminium..." :D dying of laughter
especially the face-palm
My prediction is that verbal error and that he says astronauts would die relatively quickly (albeit with zero protection) will be used as evidence by conspiracy theorists. They will ignore the rest of the video.
@@RichardCasto At that point they are being disingenuous.
@Sonnenrad I like to consider people in their better light
@Pronto would there even be an interior?
Brings back memories of doing dose analysis for the vulnerable electronics on a spacecraft stuck in the belt region at the beginning of orbit raising due to a malfunction. Ultimately managed to raise to operational orbit where it continues to operate to this day.
As a challenge question - can you guess which spacecraft this was?
there's also possibly another point to make about the belts - most launches are geographically equatorial. which means that naturally most launches will be at an inclination that avoids the most dangerous region of the belts.
I'm guessing there's at least one "not" missing somewhere in your comment.
One of my uncles worked with Dr Van Allen. Used to go and visit him at the University as a little kid without realizing how important Dr Van Allen was to the space Race.
As someone who has worked in high-energy physics... I appreciate how much complexity and reasonable averaging/assumption had to go in to this!
Really good video, Scott. I remember reading Van Allen's work, decades ago when I was a teenage space geek. We had a great university library FULL of NASA Technical Notes.
I think you do a great job of explaining complex topics while keeping them interesting. I would be OK with longer videos if the subject warrants, just in case you were wondering.
Thank you for the info Scott! I'll try to avoid the Van Allen belts if I ever get to Space to study the Scott Manley asteroid!👍👍👍
You should!
10:28 it brings the rads down to 3.6, huh? I've heard that's not great. But not terrible, either.
Basically goes down from inside Chernobyl to inside a microwave.....yum, yum...billy.
There had to be one about the 3.6.
Jot: US industry standard is 5 Rem per year maximum. So 3.6 Rad/Rem is quite acceptable.
That's only if you go through the very center of the belts. Apollo didn't. Dosage was much, much less.
While I hate to be 'that guy' I'm pretty sure that was 3.6 Roentgens that was "not great, but not terrible either" not Rads ;o)
What's funny is i know someone who claims both we didn't go to the Moon and the Earth is flat. He told me the Apollo astronauts would have been killed by Van Allen Belt radiation. I asked him why doesn't Van Allen Belt radiation kill the giant space turtle?
Because the Elephants are between the turtle and the flat earth, hence shielding him. :o)
Aren't turtles unusually resistant to radiation? I thought that was one of the reasons the Soviets sent them around the Moon. Or am I thinking of high Gs during a ballistic reentry from cislunar space?
@@JohnWilliamNowak Clearly cosmic space turtles and their elephant companions are very radiation resistant :)
Everybody knows that the magnetic field of the discworld shield the whole turtle. Thats why she take it with her.
@Pronto I think the answer to your question is already present in the question - they can't rationalize fullstop!
rationalize
/ˈraʃ(ə)n(ə)lʌɪz/
verb
1.attempt to explain or justify (behaviour or an attitude) with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate.
Flerfers always fail on the Logical reasons part of that ;o)
I believe in the pilot of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" the Van Allen belt caught fire and they used an ICBM to blow it out. Ah, 60's TV shows!
i remember that. I am old enough that I watched it when it originally aired. Even then the idea of the Van Allen belt catching fire seemed like the typical Hollywood "science" nonsense.
Actually that is based on "real story": Nasa devised a plan to clear Van Alen belts before moon missions by blowing them up by the nuke :)
@@randomnickifywell that's reassuring
That's the one where they are travelling under the polar ice when it breaks up and large chunks of ice crash down onto the sub.
Tbf the movie 2012 came out on our watch, so let's not judge them too harshly.
8:47
"That is unshielded. No space suit so they're gonna die even faster just due to asphyxiation."
Thanks Scott. This is the top quality scientific content I subscribe for 😂
That's about as funny as a fart in a spacesuit.
Reminds me of the bit from "What If?" where Randall Munroe talks about people swimming in a research facility's spent nuclear fuel pool dying in a matter of seconds, from the bullets fired by the guards.
"but the sun is active"
Hopefully because if the sun is dead we are in deep shit
Hey Scott, you should do a video about ASTHROS and whether or not the balloon will be at risk of space debris/meteorites because of its size.
I had a lengthy discussion with an old family friend and she seemed worried about it.
And lighting!
Low, low risk of impacts.
@@bozo5632 That's what I told her, and I told her that they track space junk already so it would probably be fine, but it would be an interesting video for Scott either way.
About as much risk as a football field getting hit. It may be flying high, but it's still a fraction of the height of the ISS which is in low Earth orbit and needs an occasional boost. So it's still well within the atmosphere at a height well below what is required for orbit, and it should have most of the protection the atmosphere offers.
@@DamianReloaded ASTHROS is going to be launched in Antarctica, to a high altitude (40 km), and with a mission lasting a month, so the risk from lightning is very low. Also the gondola where the instruments will be mounted will have a parachute to refurbish them in other missions.
It just blows my mind that there are people who just don't accept reality.
James Michener's novel, Space, had just such an event during the fictional Apollo 18 mission. A massive solar storm during a lunar EVA.
I miss his books. So good.
Exploder 1 would have been a great name for some of the early US rockets.
Especially the ones in their national Anthem, although those were British rockets buzzing the tower,
Better yet, the Soviet N1.
Scott Manley, the manly Scot.
The Manlyest Scott I've ever seen.
He jokes that with his name, he never had to prove his manliness.
Manley is a Lothian name, and therefore is Sassanach. He's Scottish, but he's no Scot. (p.s. neither was Protector Wallace)
I have to chuckle at his accent whenever he says "Exploder 1."
Double it because they "have" to come home? Have to is a strong statement for a man with so many hours in KSP ;)
Yes, round trip tickets are highly recommended.
When asked the "purpose of the Van Allen Belts" Van Allen is said to have replied "The purpose pf the Van Allen Belts is to hold up the Van Allen Pants." There was a story a couple years ago about there maybe being a lot of antimatter trapped in the belts. Please comment!
The only thing you might see are some positrons being generated from some of the decays, but those would immediately combine with an electron in such an electro-rich environment, yielding some 1.022 MEv gamma rays.
@@nathanwahl9224 It is not about seeing them, it is about harvesting them!
Ha well, my intuition finally confirmed by someone else doing the math : a solar flare can kill you during your Lunar weekly golf party. Enven in space, weather prediction are important before playing golf.
Just play at night!
6:35 “I’m gonna use Rads because it’s easier to say”
I use Rads because of Fallout
Should have done the calculations for Jupiter's radiation belts as well, because those belts are no joke lol.
I've looked at Jupiter's belts. They looked small to me.
@@FlatOutFE Hey man, I hope you and your family are doing well in these not so flat times.
Hopefully this curve gets flattened and all goes back to normal quick.
Take care and keep it flat my man.
There are models in SPENVIS for such a calculation. And yes, they are an engineering challenge.
The way I could describe it, it's like a barbed wire fence in a maximum prison system. It keeps MOST humans in.
But it also stop zombies from coming in.
Great video Scott! The unshielded asphyxiation joke got me haha
There are active researches into making lightweight superconducting magnets (the same kind used in MRI machines) to put on spacecrafts for long-term manned interplanetary space missions. From some of the papers I've read, things look rather promising.
20 years ago, in a Nuclear Engineering class at Univ of Tn, I asked my professor if strategic positioning of high strength magnets could deflect radiation away from spacecraft. He laughed at me and said that wasn’t the scope of the course.
NOTE to WIN: Never let our industry discourage you from thinking out of the box.
Lise Meitner, a woman, discovered fission.
These analysis videos are some of your best. This was so awesome. I get really tired of these pie in the sky "lets go to Mars!!!" videos so its nice to have yours where we break down the realities and the physics behind it all.....from someone who actually has a degree in.....physics. Thank you Scott!
Edit: And I am not being negative towards other TH-camrs who make those pie-in-the-sky videos. They're nice as well. These videos you produce though, for me at least. Tick all the boxes, or at least most of them.
The "camp" t-shirt suits you real good 😂
Your cheeky humor made this video golden to watch.
Now I wonder whether in the future we could use Van Allen belts as particle accelerators/colliders to do science
Of those who walked on the moon, more are dead than alive. 4 out of 12 still kicking in January 2021, I think. And Jim Lovell, biggest NASA legend ever.
Jim? Agreed. Next is Young for me lol
Thank you for this Great explanation.
As a radiologist, I appreciate the confusion over units. Using rads, particularly when you are comparing US research data from early projects to modern projects is easier than converting to modern SI units.
But... Do you still advise clinical correlation?
@@jshepard152 This made my day. Thanks for that. Actually, I assume if you ordered a study then you are going to pool my interpretation of the study with other clinical, serologic, and laboratory data to determine the next best management step for your patient. Just clinically correlating would be missing the mark.
@@texastaterbug5395
LOL. Good to know. And, glad you enjoyed it.
Excellent video. Great handling of complex subject. Thank you.
10:30 "It brings the dose down to 3.6 which is actually pretty great."
Shame on you, your line was "not great, not terrible."
Scott, I can also recommend using NASA OLTARIS for radiation simulations if it interests you! It even allows you to simullate complex geometries of habitats on the surface of Mars (you define the geometries by a list of concentric rays and encountered shielding thicknesses). I used it for my MA thesis on the feasibility of building a Martian base out of water ice.
I saw a study a while back where they had built concepts of miniature directional, portable (essentially) magnetospheres that future spacecrafts could carry on board to use as radiation protection.
@@rdizzy1 Way too much energy needed. This is sci-fi so far.
Hi Scott -- great video, as always.
Interestingly, when Apollo 8 went to the Moon, Frank Borman came down with vomiting and diarrhoea a day after launch, after the TLI. (Dear god, diarrhoea in a tiny tin can, weightless, with two other crewmen... hope the sticky seal on the bag held it in place...)
There was enough concern about potential radiation effects -- the crew were the first to have flown through the belts -- that the crew reported his illness only on the private downlink recording. Fortunately, after a day or so, Borman recovered. Must have been a funky cabin atmosphere for the rest of the trip, though.
Not only that, they were 3 men locked up together in a tiny space for up to 10 days with no shower. Multiple Apollo astronauts mentioned how they didn't want to make the trip again, based on hygienic reasons alone. Current human spaceflight technology puts a much larger emphasis on quality of life.
I came to this video from one claiming that we never went to the moon. It included a compilation of videos of astronauts and NASA scientists claiming that we do not yet have the technology to go to the moon due to the Van Allen Radiation Belt. One scientist claimed the original technology had been destroyed.
This video and your video confirmed one of my hypotheses. The astronauts of the past were subjected to radiation levels that would not be accepted today, and NASA does not want that dirty little secret to become widespread knowledge. NASA prefers to pretend that they lost technology rather than admit that the early attempts at space travel were crude and that we need much better technology before trying again.
Awesome video. Manley vids are a absolute staple...but some of his best vids are the ones that allow us to have a succinct explanation to share with others contextually.
As a young reader I discovered science fiction in the mid 1950s. Many short stories dealt with the terrors that awaited the first spacemen (the term astronaut was not used then) when they left the safety of Earth's atmosphere. I can remember tales in which spacewalkers were punctured by innumerable micrometeors, rocket pilots whose physiology went fatally awry in zero g, others who bodies could not endure the lowered atmospheric pressure in the spacecraft. I do not remember if anything I read specifically warned of the dangers of radiation in space. Sputnik awakened me to the possibility of learning the reality of these threats in my lifetime. It has been interesting to be a witness to the successes of man's first ventures into space.
These comments are fascinating! People with rubber band powered airplane expertise giving their opinions about rocket science and orbital mechanics.
In astronomical systems, it's very rare to have large-scale charge separation. Most macroscopic objects are electrically neutral because, if they were the charged, oppositely charged regions would attract and neutralize each other. At 2:27 Scott mentions "The inner belt is dominated by protons." Does this mean that the population of very energetic particles beyond some energy cutoff is mostly made up of protons?
I've had people in comments tell me I'm stupid for believing in the moon landings because "the Van Allen belt would fry you". Thanks for giving me better arguments than "shut up you idiot"...
But let’s be clear. They are idiots who should shut up.
@@scottmanley lol very true.
Thanks, easy to understand.
When you said 'fly safe' that time, you really meant it!
Wow, one of the most satisfying vids, thanks!
"I guess you could sit there and watch Chernobyl"
That'd be an amusing thing to do.
"Exploder I" indeed....=b
So I'm not the only one who heard that...😊
I love your background! My son loves the Kerbal Space Program!
Given the subject matter:
"I'm Scott Manley, Fry safe"
Answer: Artificial magnetosphere using superconductors and argon plasma.
And a 20 Megaton rocket to lift all that stuff up !
Flerfs love the van allen belts
They are rad!
Damn you South Atlantic Anomaly! Shaky fist!
The mini-magnetosphere concept for spacecraft protection seems to be interesting because it has the potential to be very lightweight.
Hey Scott. I really like your videos and all the research you put into them.
TL;DR Rocket scientists know more about space than TH-cam nutters.
Who knew?
Don't forget the many twitter clown scientists.
We don't hear the word 'nutters' nearly enough. Damn you, political correctness!
shocking
Not scientists but Directors...
Stanley Kubrick's lunar moon landing... Is surprising...
10:35
"3.6" 😂 "not good, not terrible" as Diatlov said.
Speaking about shielding, roughly how much shielding would starship provide while passing through these belts?
S HD depends on the starship. Unless you mean the SpaceX Starship that doesn’t actually exist yet? In which case, anywhere between none and lots because we don’t have a final spec sheet for it yet, much less a working prototype.
Generally speaking, Stainless Steel is probably a somewhat better shielding material than the aluminum of other spacecraft (it's denser.) That said, neither are particularly good radiation shields in comparison to other materials. Good radiation shields tend to be either _very_ dense (lead, gold, tungsten) or have a high proportion of _hydrogen_ in their composition. It turns out that polyethylene is a pretty good lightweight radiation shield due to its hydrogen content. One of the best radiation shields is simply water, which is 2/3 hydrogen. That said, by that measure an even _better_ radiation shield might be _methane,_ which is 4/5s hydrogen. Guess what fuels Starship? Yup. Liquid Methane. If they can figure a way to surround the passenger compartment with the liquid methane fuel that _might_ be a very effective radiation shield indeed. Just a thought.
Most radiation shielding involves multiple layers of different materials that all provide better protection against various different kinds of radiation.
@@tarmaque For protection against solar bursts during flight all you have to do is to align the tank between the crew and the sun. Having extra tanks all around inside the hull could give all-round coverage. If I remember correctly the ISS is doing this with water or something in that direction.
@@benbaselet2026 The ISS is protected by earths magnetic field. Last time I saw a lecture on it, it seemed to be quite a tricky topic but who knows with what they might come up.
One of the great things for shielding is water and food, hence a lot of it on the ISS is stashed around the walls of the station.
Thank you for the quick aside on the reason for using rads!
Great video as always!
Unrelated, I got a good chuckle every time you said “Explorer,” which I heard as “Exploder” due to your Scottish accent.
Conspiracy theorists are Khan.
Apollo defenders are Kirk.
I kinda like that. ;-)
I'm pretty sure your number for shielding is off by a factor of 10. The complex walls of the command module contained not only aluminium, but also stainless steel, phenolic resin, not to add the various structures in the hull, like various stored items and fuel. Normally, the structure is said to be equal to 7 centimeters of stuff, not 7 millimeters for the hull alone.
On the outgoing trip, the astronauts were shielded from the front by the LM and the back by the SM. That is a LOT of mass to stop radiation. So basically, the CM was open to radiation from the sides only on the outgoing trip.
Indeed, I'm just using the reference that NASA used when designing the mission.
Open to radiation? And none of them have cáncer... lol
@@MrAmisto Would you like to research that claim, and perhaps CHANGE IT?
First of all, "open" in this context means "Not shielded by an extraordinary large and bulky and heavy structure". The walls and stores of the command module still attentuated the majority of the radiation. Which wasn't that much to begin with.
Quote-mining is not a valid argument.
You mention the levels being below safety limits for works who work around radioactive materials. Just curious what are are those limits and can you compare to radiation exposure in a trans-Atlantic flight or chest X-ray or CT scan?
Really enjoy your content. Growing up near Oak Ridge Tennessee with family and extended family working at ORNL, one develops a very healthy respect for radiation. My father , and all employees , wore radiation monitors in their badges.
I can try and learn as much as I can for the the rest of my life and still feel like Scott is light years away.
I enjoy every single video that you make. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your fabulous useful reporting. I really enjoy your channel. Could you discuss the moon landings 1. Did NASA harden and create a skin on the ship to protect the Astronauts and electronics? 2. How much fuel did they have? Elon said it will take 8 refill stations to make it to the moon? Also Joe Rogan wants to debate if the moon landing really happened. I must say you would be great to support that it did really happen.
Elon was not talking about Apollo. You can easily look up how much fuel they had.
8:02 every time I see German words used in highly complicated English diagrams cracks me up 😙🎶
English is technically a Germanic language
@@scottmanley yeah, but English doesn't know the concept of combining two words to one new with a different meaning.
@@RubenKelevra Bawbag
Which words are German?
@@Kyle-gw6qp Bremsstrahlung is a German word. Braking radiation is the literal translation
All I know about the Van Allen belts is in "The Day The Earth Caught Fire" 🌍 🔥 😱
When the American scientists detonated the first fission weapon one of their real concerns was that it would ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on the surface. In retrospect this sounds silly, but they were traveling in uncharted waters at the time. The idea that a nuclear weapon could instigate a chain reaction in the atmosphere was unlikely, but still a frightening unknown. I believe there have been a couple science fiction stories written on the same concept, presupposing some kind of aerosol catalyst that would cause worldwide atmospheric combustion. Scary stuff.
@ Seen it. Love it.
Great show !
Conspiracy freaks are spooking in the internet about 5G-antennas and nuclear power danger and VanAllen belts and then, they take off the t-shirt and hang outside in the garden all day long into sunshine !
People are afraid of what they don’t understand. Sadly, people aren’t always afraid of things they think they understand. Besides all that though, people like to complain, but don’t want to go so far as to have to make changes in their day to day life.
“The Sun? That’s not dangerous, it’s just a risk of skin cancer. I don’t want to inconvenience my life because of a threat to my life.”
“The Van Allen belt? That’s dangerous! It poses no risk but I think it does and want to complain about it because the consequences of complaining don’t affect me at all”
Mind you my quoted statements are hyperbolic, but make the point
@@KinreeveNaku Are you sure that they aren't parabolic? :-)
@@KinreeveNaku There is also always a desire to seem smarter than one actually is without having to understand the subject matter. Everyone knows about skin cancer and UV, some may even remember UVA, UVB and UVC ranges, but non-enthusiasts rarely hear the term "Van Allen belts" or know what it means.
There's also something to be said about fear of "radiation", not helped by media almost never using the "ionizing" part that leads people to wear their old dusty tin foil hats and fear the 3G/4G/5G/whatever else comes along and sound even remotely suspicious.
As I put it elsewhere, if you're frightened of 5G you had better not go outside in daylight hours.
I love watching videos like this because the subject matter is so interesting to me but the technical and mathematical aspects I don't fully understand but it makes me do some research so I can understand!
Same here when it comes to the math. However it comforts me because other people (that are much smarter than me) watch these videos too and understand the math. If anything was wrong, they would point it out in the comments. And since no one is doing that, I believe his math is correct 😄
Fascinating that the system you're describing has a remarkable number of similarities to atomic structure. The outer belts are basically electron clouds, and there even seem to be energy hierarchies to delineate the levels.
I wonder how much shielding will be provided with starship's steel hull?
I’m not too sure on the specifics, but I believe that the steel hull would most likely act as a faraday cage.
How much difference in shielding is ther between Al and say 7mm of 304L stainless steal?
Please don't steal the stainless.
@@benbaselet2026 not nearly as bad as stealing the silverware
@Just Looking Density is definitely not everything. You need a material with a good absobtion effectiveness for the kind of stuff you want to catch.
I can see a little problem with that lead spacecraft you're building, sir.
To a first approximation, the shielding effectiveness scales with the material density, so in this case 7 mm of stainless steel (8 g/cm3) equates to 21 mm of aluminium (2.7 g/cm3).
As I get older I find I just don't have the patience to argue with moon hoaxers or flerfers. A lifetime of studying science and engineering have given me the ability to sus out facts in most cases and the ability to do math and make observations which clearly confirm things like how a rocket works or the fact that the planet is round, orbits the sun, etc. I can't convey all of this to someone who has so completely bought into conspiracy theories such that they cannot admit their theory is wrong without suffering some form of embarrassment. You're not just fighting ignorance and bad science; you're fighting human nature and the human tendency to dig in one's heels and defend a position based on fear or ego or other emotions. Someone has to keep arguing the side of reason, of course, but it tires you out after a while and feels so futile at times.
Those conspiracy groups are very similar to religions or cults (same to me). Once they are hooked it is hard to get them back out or to listen to basic reasoning. Also, you see much overlap with extreme religious beliefs and conspiracy theory believers, believing in one makes your more likely to believe many.
It’s the good old fashioned “Dunning-Kruger effect” leading to “cognitive dissonance” resulting in incomprehensibly, mind-numbingly, willfully obtuse intellectual muppets whose bottomless ignorance can cause a feeling of radiation sickness when normal minds are subjected to high doses of stupidity.
A 1mm thick window in space is a terrifying idea 😨
A study came out that showed for interplanetary missions, that it would actually be better to go during solar maximum because the Sun's high energy proton flux will actually deflect GCRs. So it's a trade off, design a ship that can block proton flux or design one that can block GCR and time your trip accordingly.
Instead of rads, how bad are they measured in bananas? Like how many bananas give the same dosages of radiation?
I avoid radiation with a wavelength between 380 and 700nm at a high enough power radiation in that range can cause blindness
Good call! IDK about other countries but in the US it's actually still legal to sell products that emit that sort of radiation.
@@DecidedlyNinja it makes me sick to the stomach to think they allow dangerous radiation producing devices to be sold imagine if you were in come in contact with it the consequences could be awful
Hey Scott. Great video as usual. It got me thinking something and I wanted to ask you. Are there any records for activation occurring in Van Allen belts? Can a vessel become radioactive itself? Are there any records stating that the bombardment of the vessel with charged particles in the belts produces radionuclides? From watching your videos I got the idea that aluminium based alloys are frequently used materials for spacecrafts but there are stuff made of steel as well. Aluminium has only one stable isotope but iron, which is the basis of steel, has 4 stable isotopes with Fe56 being the most abundant. Bombardment of Fe56 with protons produces Co56 with half-life of 77 days which decays back into Fe56 emitting two gamma rays one with energy of 846 keV with 99% intensity and second with energy of 1238 keV with 66% intensity. The highest probability for this reaction to occur is when the protons have energy of around 12 MeV. Bombardment of Al-27, which is the only stable isotope of aluminium, with protons should produce Si-27 whose half-life is only few seconds.
If the the space capsule is shielded, it is also a vessel that can concentrate the gathering particles that do enter... would that be correct?
NASA's plan for a solar storm on Orion is actually pretty terrifying when you think about invisible radiation...
1. Unload the storage locker.
2. Crew gets in the storage locker.
3. Crew packs what they can around their body in the storage locker to put as much mass as possible between them and space.
4. Wait for the storm to pass.
@Dirk Knight I guess they have thought about that, and probably, the low energy particles will be stopped by the locker where they are hiding.
Water is one of the best shielding agents. A jacket of water surrounding the crew area would provide the best shield from all forms of radiation. And sense we need to take water anyways this works out great.
“Khan the konspiracy theorist”
Kaaaahn!!!!!
Maldus Alver from hells heart I stab at Scott Manley....
A moon lander deniest worst nightmare video
Don’t think that have nightmares about their narcissism, or their cognitive dissonance, or their dishonesty. All of that is invisible to them and so untreatable. They might have nightmares about someone winning against them IRL, but the Internet will never be that place.
It's healthy to question things, that's how you build critical thinking
@@Kaienishere It’s very healthy to question things, the problem is with most deniers/conspiracy-theorists is that they very often don’t question anything. They just adopt a position and make claims _disguised_ as questions. they don’t question their own denial nor question the stuff they parrot. Neither do they question their own ‘evidence’, neither do they seek nor question the evidence that they’re questioning. it’s all too often, just a simple matter of belief for them, masquerading as ‘scepticism.’. and I say masquerading because what they’re instead doing is being credulous, incredulous, belief-driven and cynical, which is quite the OPPOSITE of sceptical. Sceptical, on the other hand, can be healthy, and _healthy scepticism_ is in my opinion an imperative. A bare minimum.
@@Kaienisherenot healthy to ignore everything that goes against what you say. Which is what moon landing deniers are 99.99% of the time.
8:54 Burst out laughing, luckily no coffee in my mouth :-)
Wow...you are the first person to explain it all! Thank you...
Nope. Many other channels and tv stuff explained it ... With different words.
Radiation is also why any permanent Mars colony would have to move quickly to get underground. Mars doesn't have a magnetic field (or much of one anyway) and the thin atmosphere there can only do so much.
Great video and very detailed.
I'm guessing they weren't bad enough to stop Apollo missions
They reportedly saw blinding flashes as they passed through the belts, and as to why China hasn't launched humans, they don't have any decent human-rated rockets ,let alone any capable of sending a decent vehicle to land on the moon and return.
@Brian Landers China question- Cheaper, easier, way less risky, no need for a return mission. Scott's credentials- I don't really know but he at least seems like a guy that really knows his stuff and can research well. Surviving radiation- he literally explains it in the video.
@Brian Landers watching flerf TH-cam videos doesn't count as doing your research. I think we need a citation on the NDT claim please.
@Brian Landers Scott is literally an astrophysicist. His primary study at university was physics and astronomy. Also Neil DeGrasse Tyson has said that the moon landings happened, and I can't find any evidence for you claim that he said the Van Allen belts would kill anyone passing through them.
it's rad what he said