I would love to know what is going on, but first let me explain what I am talking about. The earth is surrounded by the Van Allen Belts. A NASA engineer is saying he is very worried about the Van Allen radiation belt which surrounds the earth. The cause of his worry he states, is he hopes spacecraft used for the Orion Deep Space Mission to the planet Mars can make it through the belt without any damage. Hey wait a second, didn’t we launch many Apollo Missions to the moon and wasn’t the Van Allen Belt present then? The answer is the belt was present and NASA used a trajectory which allowed the Apollo mission to take the route through the belt which gave the least amount of exposure to radiation. All the Apollo Mission flew similar trajectories.

When Van Allen discovered the belts which bear his name, he said living organisms cannot survive this level of radiation damage and if we are going to launch humans into space, adequate safeguards had to be developed. He wasn’t referring to passing through the radiation belts as many believe he was, but he was talking about long term missions which would have astronauts orbiting around the earth and passing through the belts. No one takes the Van Allen Belts for granted. They certainly are a hazard, but they may have some purpose and in recent years it has been found ironically that these very belts protect us from radiation. Tests have shown they stop high-energy particles heading to our planet dead in their tracks, thus even though we find them a hindrance for space travel, they are a protective shield for the earth.

The year was 1962 and the United States and the Soviet Union were going nuts with nuclear tests. They were like children playing with matches, they knew they shouldn’t, but just couldn’t resist it. That year we launched a 2,200 pound nuclear bomb into space and exploded it about 248 miles above the Pacific Ocean. This was the most powerful and highest space nuclear test ever conducted and we named it Starfish Prime. The blast could be seen over most of the Pacific Ocean and an artificial red aurora was visible in the skies over many island groups such as Hawaii, Samoa and Tonga. Electrical systems on Oahu were damaged and that area was over 800 miles from the blast. We were actually trying to expand the Van Allen Belts. One might ask why in the world would we do this, are we stupid? Well yes, but the idea was to create a barrier to Soviet intercontinental missiles. Never mind the fact it could have irradiated us all and then there would have been no need to worry about missiles.

A scientist stated we had expanded the lower limit of the Van Allen belt down to 600 miles from the surface of the earth. One scientist determined there was an anomaly in the South Atlantic known as you would expect, the South Atlantic Anomaly and in this area the Van Allen Belt dipped down to only 100 miles above the earth. The scientists stated that another nuclear explosions with a bomb packed with Uranium-238 would increase the radiation in the belts over 100 fold. There are gaps over the poles where the Van Allen Belts do not cover. This area is inconvenient for launches for many reasons and not the smallest reason being we do not have launch facilities there. Some say we could still have launched rockets through these gaps from the present launch sites, but these people do not take into consideration the fact we would have to fly our rockets over cities and other countries to do this. It is said it took years, but eventually the Van Allen Belts returned to their prior form and radiation levels. Is this true? I have no way of knowing for sure, do you?

If anyone thinks this was the only nuclear test in 1962 they couldn’t be more wrong. The Soviet Union conducted 78 that year. The United States had several nuclear tests that year and we are told the number was 4.  

When we exploded our high altitude nukes we created artificial radiation belts which had nothing to do with the Van Allen Belts. The U.S. created 6 of them and the U.S.S.R. created 3. The 3 biggest by far were created by American nuclear explosions. The explosions were Hardtack Teak in 1958 with a yield of 3.8 megatons, Hardtack Orange in 1958 with a yield also of 3.9 megatons and Starfish Prime in 1962 with a yield of 1.4 megatons. Hardtack Orange was set off only 43 miles above our heads over Johnston Island in the Pacific. Keep in mind these facts do not include any classified explosions which of course we would know nothing about. When Starfish Prime was set off it damaged several satellites, including Cosmos V.

Before we knew about the Van Allen Belts it had been suggested creating radiation belts would be a good idea and the project was named Operation Argus. Operation Argus was composed of a series of secret nuclear weapons test conducted over the South Atlantic Ocean in 1958 which included the ones spoken about above. It was felt if radiation belts were created in space they would have a tactical use in war. Imagine how surprised scientists were to find they already existed in the form of the Van Allen Belts. I can’t help but feel Operation Argus showed not only stupidity, but utter contempt for the well-being of the human race and it was just another dumb idea by second rate scientists working for the government. Not to say all scientists working there are second rate, far from it, but anyone who would propose setting off nukes above our heads must have been last in their class.