Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
Based on the science, we've only just created shielding to get humans past the Van Allen Belt;
Oh yeah, that old walnut. It's false logic, though: Radiation is bad + There is radiation in space = Space is bad.
People who say this sort of thing, however, basically don't understand radiation.
It'd be like saying fire burns, so fire is bad, so we must avoid all use of fire. And thus hail in a fireless world.
Now it's true that the radiation of the belt will kill you if you sit in it all day long. It's true that the MeV of the belt is destructive to human life (as well as other assorted things).
It's also true that from 1961 to 1968 the question of the Van Allen belt was a huge problem for the Apollo Mission. Nobody could figure out how to get pas it and even Van Allen himself said 'Don't do that, mkay?'
So it's all true. You can't cross the Van Allen belt in complete safety. But you can cross it with relative safety.
See, Apollo 11 was moving at about 24,791mph. And that's pretty damn quick. And so you're travelling through the Belt at such as speed that your exposure to the radiation is nominal at best. I believe tests on the astronaust on their return to earth (at this point having crossed the belt twice) revealed that they only received about 1REM of radiation damage in total. Pretty harmless.
As a relative example, going back to the fire: If you put your finger in the flame of a candle and keep it there it burns your finger pretty badly. Fire is bad, mkay? But if you move your finger through the fire very quickly, you don't feel a thing. And even if you move your hand across the flame quite slowly, you just feel a pleasant warmth at best.
This is why we live in a world with fire. And why astronauts were able to cross the van allen belt: sheer speed.
otherwise with the weight of the fuel, the weight of the original ship it is mathematically impossible.
The launching weight of Apollo 11 was 100,756lbs - that's factoring in every single part of the craft including fuel and crew. This is around 45 tonnes.
In that same year (1969) another piece of machinery was taking flight for the first time, the Boeing 747. It took it's first flight with a takeoff weight of around 735,000lbs (333) tonnes. And it took of using only around 120lbs of thrust.
So bear this in mind:
Apollo 11: 45 tonnes.
Boeing 747: 333 tonnes (including payload, passengers, etc)
Thrust of 747: (roughly) 120lbs
Thrust of apollo 11: 7, 500,000,000lbs.
High school mathematics shows us that Apollo 11 had more than enough thrust for its weight to get into space.