4. Some people believe that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax because astronauts would have
been instantly killed in the radiation belts. According to the US Occupation Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) a lethal radiation dosage is 300 Rads in one hour. What is your answer to the 'moon landing hoax' believers?

Note: According to radiation dosimeters carried by Apollo astronauts, their total dosage for the entire trip to the moon and return was not more than 2 Rads over 6 days

But to the question of the impossibility of humans surviving a pass throught the Van Allen Belts, is the following not a good explanation?

NASA has done many, many things with all that money in the last 50+ years. Among them unmanned probes to Mars, deep space probes which just shoot off until they are out of range (sending back data in the meantime), building a space station (which is your "halfway house" you want to put on the moon. It's easier and more practical to put it in orbit for a variety of reasons)... Heck the European equivalent landed a probe on a comet, which is a mindbogglingly impressive feat. Oh there's also the Hubble telescope and other things like it. Again, they probably could've stuck it on the moon, but it's easier to maintain if you have it in low orbit, and it achieves the same effect (getting above the atmosphere for clearer vision).

Hahaha you gotta be kidding. You call that a rebuttal?

Sure, 300 rads/hour is probably lethal. I'll concede that point. But how do we know how much radiation is REALLY in the Van Allen belt? The next sentence "Note: during the (disputed) Apollo missions, their total dosage..." that's a logical fallacy, I don't know the exact name (perhaps begging the question? circular reasoning?) but I know it's ridiculous.

Matthew: I am king
Joe: No you are not!
Matthew: Yes, I am king. Because I just issued a royal decree and I can't issue a royal decree without being king, now, can I?

The fact is that ALL COUNTRIES have avoided the Van Allen belts like the plague OFFICIALLY for almost 50 years -- and probably longer than that in actuality. Why? They have no good reason.

I just looked at both your links. The link about Von Braun saying we would need a rocket the span of the empire state building to get straight to the moon ...

Yes, the amount of fuel required to achieve escape velocity from the earth would not have fit on any rocket that we had at the time.  These guys went into low earth orbit, went around for a few days, sending fake telemetry back to Mission Control, and some pre-taped videos ... and then came back down.  There's no doubt about it.

If Armstrong had done what he claimed to have done his hero status would have been far greater than that of Charles Lindbergh.  He'd probably be on par with Christopher Colombus.  But instead of one of mankind's greatest cult heros, he acts like the cat who ate the canary or the schoolboy called to the principal's office.  His emotions seem so flat as if he had been given some tranquilizing drug to help him lie with a straight face.

Too bad we couldn't have subjected all three of these individuals to the best polygraph experts in the country.  Not that the results would necessarily be perfect, but I bet they would be fairlly interesting.

You can only wonder why this "incredible hero"  goes off into semi-oblivion as a semi-recluse on a farm in Ohio.   Aside from all the other major problems in trying to prove a manned moon landing, just the human element alone seems so highly questionable.  And, of course, you may have seen the extreme negative reaction (and downright refusal) of these and other moon astronauts when asked to swear on a bible that they had landed on the moon.  Not a pretty sight!