TIL Landing humans on the Moon required the most sudden burst of technological creativity and the largest commitment of resources ever made by any nation in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.

Radiation is not that big of deal.

There are people in Japan who survived the atomic blasts and within that population there was only a 10% increase in cancer incidence. The dosage necessary to die immediately is extremely high. You'd literally have to stand next to the melted down reactor for 5 minutes or more.

The Apollo astronauts radiation dose was measured to be 1.14 rads at most during their mission. Anything less than 5 per year is acceptable for safety reasons.

Radiation exposure involves 2 factors: dose level and dose duration. Higher level source is worse than low level, and being in there a long time is worse than a short time.

Well, the Van Allen belts are less radioactive than nuclear material on Earth, and they flew threw them very quickly.

There was a greater fear of sensitive electronics being damaged than there was for the astronauts lives. In fact, modern electronics are more susceptible to bombardment by electrons because chips are smaller and can thus be fried by a smaller voltage.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - en.wikipedia.org