Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

APPALLED AT APOLLO 161
These belts posed a problem. The radiation in them was pretty
fierce and could damage scientific instruments placed in orbit.
Worse, the radiation could seriously harm any humans in space as
well.
Any electronics placed on board satellites or probes need to be
“hardened” against this radiation. The delicate and sophisticated
computer parts must be able to withstand this bath of radiation or
they are rendered useless almost instantly, fried beyond repair. This
is an expensive and difficult process. It surprises most people to
learn that the typical computer in space is as much as a decade
behind the technology you can buy in a local store. That’s because
of the lengthy process involved in radiation-hardening equipment.
Your home computer may be faster than the one on board the
Hubble Space Telescope, but it would last perhaps 15 seconds in
space before turning into a heap of useless metal.
Shuttle astronauts stay below the Van Allen belts, and so they
do not get a lethal dose of radiation. The doses they do get are elevated
compared to staying on the ground, to be sure, but staying
below the belts greatly reduces their exposure.
Hoax-believers point to the Van Allen radiation belts as a second
line of evidence. No human could possibly go into that bath
of lethal radiation and live to tell the tale, they claim. The Moon
landings must have been faked.
We’ve seen once before that basic logic is not exactly the hoaxbelievers’
strong suit. It’s not surprising they’re way off base here,
too.
For one, they are vastly confused about the belts. They claim
that the belts “protect” the Earth from radiation, trapping it high
above us. Outside the belts, they go on, the radiation would kill a
human quickly.
That’s not true, at least not totally. There are actually two radiation
belts, an inner one and an outer one, both shaped like doughnuts.
The inner one is smaller, and has more intense—and therefore
more dangerous—radiation. The outer one is bigger but has
less dangerous properties. Both belts trap particles from the solar
wind, so the radiation is worst when an astronaut is actually inside
the belts. I talked with Professor Van Allen about this, and he told
me that the engineers at NASA were indeed concerned about the