How Deadly Are The Van Allen Radiation Belts?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ค. 2020
- 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.oma.be/
Some clips created with Universe Sandbox
universesandbox.com/" - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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.*
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.
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
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.
"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.
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
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.
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.
"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
With a few meters of aluminum, the interior of Apollo was the size of a sardine can.
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?
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.
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.
As someone who has worked in high-energy physics... I appreciate how much complexity and reasonable averaging/assumption had to go in to this!
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.
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😀
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
"but the sun is active"
Hopefully because if the sun is dead we are in deep shit
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
@@BeerRepublic 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.
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?
Not sure how a flerfer who believed in space travel could rationalize those two beliefs.
@@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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
Hey Scott. I really like your videos and all the research you put into them.
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)
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.
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.
Excellent video. Great handling of complex subject. Thank you.
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.
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."
Another awesome video, such a pleasure to watch and learn - thank you Scott!
Quality. Thanks Scott.
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!
Wow, one of the most satisfying vids, thanks!
Great video Scott! The unshielded asphyxiation joke got me haha
Thanks, easy to understand.
6:35 “I’m gonna use Rads because it’s easier to say”
I use Rads because of Fallout
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.
Thank you for the quick aside on the reason for using rads!
Another very informative episode, thank you. Look forward to the next one. Btw where did you source your SpaceX Starship model...on the shelf behind you? I've been looking for a while now ...thank you!
Thank you for this Great explanation.
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.
Thank you for this one. Gave me a solid understanding about this issue that was always in the back burner of my thoughts.
Very interesting. Thank you.
I knew a little bit of this but always good to learn more.
I especially enjoyed this one, thanks very much! 😎
"I'm Scott Manley, fry safe."
Scott. Thank you! The Van Allen Belts have always peaked my curiosity. Good info.
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!
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.
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
Your cheeky humor made this video golden to watch.
Love the clear analyses, thank you sir
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.
10:35
"3.6" 😂 "not good, not terrible" as Diatlov said.
I love your background! My son loves the Kerbal Space Program!
Great video, Scott.
Now I wonder whether in the future we could use Van Allen belts as particle accelerators/colliders to do science
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?
Thank you, that was informative and useful.
Thank you, Scott! I learned a lot today.
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.
The "camp" t-shirt suits you real good 😂
learned a lot, thanks scott!
Awesome vid as usual! Thank you sir!
It just blows my mind that there are people who just don't accept reality.
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.
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 😄
Thank you, sir for such informative videos.
Damn you South Atlantic Anomaly! Shaky fist!
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.
Great factual explanation - and cool visuals. Straight from an early 1970s record album cover!
Great video. It's wonderful to see all this information in one place.
I _was_ one of those moon landing skeptics back in the day, and you more commonly came across information by those that chose to provide it. I found out about the Van Allen belts from a conspiracy TV program, and it was difficult enough to find out more information on them from the library; even then, all I could really find was what they _are_ and not how their danger was addressed. You can't ask a book questions. I didn't get an answer (similar to this video) to the Apollo question until I spoke with an engineer at the Kennedy Space Center.
Some skeptics are idiots that want to feel special, but some are just stuck with a lack of information. Though, honestly, in this day and age that problem should be rectified, so I think it mostly falls back to the "feelings special" bit.
Conspiracy theorists are Khan.
Apollo defenders are Kirk.
I kinda like that. ;-)
"I guess you could sit there and watch Chernobyl"
That'd be an amusing thing to do.
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.
Wow...you are the first person to explain it all! Thank you...
Nope. Many other channels and tv stuff explained it ... With different words.
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?
These comments are fascinating! People with rubber band powered airplane expertise giving their opinions about rocket science and orbital mechanics.
So THAT's why you tweeted about this. Great video
Thank you Sir keep up the good work I enjoy your content
Flerfs love the van allen belts
They are rad!
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.
When you said 'fly safe' that time, you really meant it!
Instead of rads, how bad are they measured in bananas? Like how many bananas give the same dosages of radiation?
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...
Good info here. Thank you!
Scott 🖖... Thank you sir 👍 I love your chanel and your hands on explanations
"Exploder I" indeed....=b
So I'm not the only one who heard that...😊
You are forgetting that conspiracy theorists hate math.
I am not a conspiracy theorist and I hate math. (I accept math, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.)
Oh, they absolutely love "8 inches per mile squared."
They don't know how to derive or apply it. But it's sacred to them.
And facts. And well-founded arguments. And anything that actually works.
They prefer to think math hates them, and that it is a plot invented by the illuminati.
Is hating math racism ?
It sounds like you're saying Exploder, and I love it.
Very informative scott
Answer: Artificial magnetosphere using superconductors and argon plasma.
And a 20 Megaton rocket to lift all that stuff up !
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.
The mini-magnetosphere concept for spacecraft protection seems to be interesting because it has the potential to be very lightweight.
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.
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.