The James Van Allen Belt Hoax

I am convinced all things NASA does are frauds. On a preceding post’s audio, I learned of rockoons. I am amused that while some question the Apo11o 11 hoax, they don’t mind using some of the NASA data as proof to refute the stuff they don’t like. How does one determine what lie to beLIEve? Isn’t it most prudent to toss all of it out?

James A. Van Allen first put rockoons to practical use when he and his group from the University of Iowa fired several from the Coast Guard Cutter East Wind during its cruise off Greenland in August and September 1952. 41 Van Allen was looking for high-altitude radiation near the magnetic poles and needed a vehicle that could reach well over 80 km (50 mi) with an 11-kg (25-lb) payload and yet still be launched easily from a small ship. The rockoon was the answer. With his rockoons, Van Allen detected considerable soft radiation at high altitudes – much more than scientists expected. This was one of the first hints that radiation might be trapped by the Earth’s magnetic field. One drawback to the rockoon was that it had to be fired before high-altitude winds carried it out of radio range.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4401/ch4.htm

I am convinced this is just another elaborate slice of science fiction masquerading as science. As usual, our favorite numbers pop up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt

The belts are confined to a volume which extends about 65°^[4] from the celestial equator.

That’s when the monster grew all encompassing. It appeared to surroundthe entire earth and extend out some 65,000 miles, maybe even 100,000miles.  The Geiger Counter confirmed that the region above the earth, and in the path of the rocket, was cooking with deadly radiation. That radiation was born from solar flares that would race through the universe and become trapped by the earth’s magnetic field. A deadly mixture of protons and electrons.

http://www.buzzcreek.com/grade-a/MOON/articles1.htm

Do these hoaxsters ever stop?

His research seems really simple: attach a toy  (masquerading as a scientific instrument) geiger counter (there’s a funny story I’m sure about its inventor), and launch it on a rockoon and then into space:

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Magnetosphere/radiation_belts_discovery.html

Dr. James Van Allen had already been exploring the upper atmosphere of the Earth with balloons that could measure radiation levels in the atmosphere. Van Allen and his team placed a Geiger counter and an altimeter on Explorer I, the first American spacecraft, to take radiation readings at different heights.

During the flight, radiation levels seemed to increase and then suddenly drop to zero and then again to increase, then suddenly drop to zero. What the team soon realized was that regions appearing as zero were really off the scale! These high-radiation regions were mapped and are now known as the Van Allen radiation belts.

As part of all lies, there is back tracking, recanting, doublespeak, and contradiction:

http://www.buzzcreek.com/grade-a/MOON/articles1.htm

Professor James A. Van Allen now 83, is Professor Emeritus in Geophysics at the University of Iowa. Our first question was why he didnot speak up after NASA’s claims and defend his original findings.Astonishingly, he told us that his seminal Scientific American article 
in 1959 was merely “popular science.”

 “Are you refuting your findings?” we asked.

 “Absolutely not,” he answered, “I stand by them.”  In the next breath, Van Allen again acquiesced to NASA’s point of view. He became positively mercurial in his answers. Basically he defended NASA’s position that any material, even aluminum without shielding, was adequate to protect the astronauts from the radiation he  once called deadly.  When we asked him the point of his original warning about rushing through the Belt, he said, “It must have been a sloppy statement.” So there we were, down the rabbit hole, chasing Van Allen through halls of mirrors. Was he taking the line of least resistance to government pressure? Was he trashing his own report in order not to be labeled a whistle blower? Could this renowned scientist actually be capable of a “sloppy statement” and blatant hyperbole published in a scientific journal?

In the end, it appears James Van Allen was at least honest about the scam: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/science/space/10vanallen.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In the early space age, Dr. Van Allen was often asked the value of space exploration. He sometimes replied with a impish smile, “I make a good living at it.”

I’ve asked top researcher Simon Shack to point his media fakery probe at the rockoon and geiger counter. You can be sure he’ll unearth some fantastic points on this chapter of NASA science fiction.