There's no one smoking gun with the moon landings. The belts deflect radiation from the sun that would otherwise have hit the earth, but you can't know with certainty the impact of passing through it on a space shuttle.

It's the big picture stuff that makes me skeptical. That NASA never had an unmanned craft do a round trip first, but skipped that step to beat the USSR to the punch. That they did it 7 times in a very short period, and in the 50 years since, no other space program has even seriously planned manned space missions outside of earth's orbit because it is so difficult.

What swayed me that the apollo missions were not at all as reported and broadcast was the media campaign a couple years ago to keep other space programs away from all Apollo sites on the moon. I saw articles in National Geographic and Time arguing that no one should go near our moon landing sites, as well as a piece of bipartisan legislation which would forbid access to all Apollo sites in law. They said it was all to preserve lunar history, but that doesn't seem reasonable to me.

The timing of the space race as part of the Cold War makes it seem all the more likely that Apollo was bogus. It wasn't just scientific exploration, it was part of the military effort against the USSR, and there are countless examples of official lies when they relate to matters of war.

But surely the Soviets would know if the landings were fake? They knew about the nukes which wasn't public knowledge so surely they would have nasa infiltrated?

Even if the Soviets have proof the landings were faked, it's possible the U.S. has equivalent "dirt" on the Soviets and the blackmail doesn't occur in public because of a sort of detente.

But surely the Soviets would know if the landings were fake?

Two ways to look at this.

We can start with your view: America and Russia were enemies. Now, if you have an enemy capable of launching a missle from across the planet and landing it squarely in your lap at a time you were frantically competing to see who could kill who first, would you let them know you were unable to track their launches?

Or we could take NASA's point of view and realize that the US and USSR were in cooperation through the vast majority of the "space race" which in Cold War America/ USSR certainly requires government oversight; meaning the US and USSR governments were also cooperating throughout this time period.

So there are my two reasons why Russia wouldn't blow the whistle, why do you think they would?

The article has been updated since I last saw it, and for some reason insists cooperation didn't happen until the 80's at the top, then continuing to enumerate all the successful and failed cooperative attempts. Here is just one excerpt predating the apollo program:

Despite the continued space competition between the United States and U.S.S.R., Khrushchev sent Kennedy a letter raising the possibility of space cooperation on a modest level after John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on Feb. 20, 1962. That led to two rounds of discussions between NASA’s Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and Soviet academician Blagonravov. An agreement led to the opening of cooperation in three areas: 1) the exchange of weather data from satellites and the eventual coordinated launching of meteorological satellites; 2) a joint effort to map the geomagnetic field of Earth; and 3) cooperation in the experimental relay of communications. This link became a primary forum for subsequent U.S.-U.S.S.R. interaction on space.

Keep in mind that if the USSR was really our enemy this cooperation would be textbook treason.

I wouldn't say surely. And even if they knew, they wouldn't have been able to sway the minds of Americans about their own achievement. Great powers differ in their official stories of current events all the time.

Also, Apollo couldn't have been a complete hoax. Space shuttles left Earth's orbit for the moon. Maybe they just orbited the moon rather than landing and broadcast staged footage. That kind of film production would not be anywhere near as big as the Manhattan Project which produced the bomb, so we can't assume the Soviets would know for sure.

The landing footage looks a lot like film of training exercises. I don't think there had to be a famous director was involved! The oddest thing about the film footage is the lack of it. There seem to only be second hand TV broadcast recordings of the first men walking on the moon!

And you shouldn't defer you opinion of the moon landings to self-proclaimed experts. There are smart people believe and others who doubt the moon landings. They mostly argue about minor details which don't prove anything. Honestly I'd encourage anyone interested in the moon landings to more broadly learn about history and astronomy/cosmology rather than get bogged down in the details of a single event, on which the ink is already dry. Believe it or not, the moon landing is history.

Fact is that they said nothing, you would have thought that they would say something at least

I never said Apollo was fake

I'd also expect them to say it was fake even if it were real though.

Why though? The Soviets would have jumped on something that big being fake

Who ran the USSR? Who killed the Czar and his family? The Bolsheviks were primarily what? And how about the US?

Same rulers, manufactured enemies. Don't believe the lies that the USSR was your enemy in anything other than the news broadcasts.

Stalin was a raging anti semite. I know people here have a hard on for 'Jews being behind everything'

That's a great piece of disinformation.

Marx was Jewish as a zionist would define the term,meaning although he was not religious he was descended from persons who were,including a grandfather who was a rabbi. Lenin's wife was Jewish so their children would have been Jewish under Jewish religious law or again by Zionist standards. He was surrounded with jews at every level of his administration. Stalin had no marital or geneological roots of this nature but he too surrounded himself with Jewish henchmen,his right-hand man being Lazar Kaganovich,who committed the worst case of genocide in modern history,the murder-by-starvation of 7 million Ukrainians during what is known today as the Holodomar. At an executive level,the USSR was very heavily Jewish from it's inception right up to the early 1950's. Maxim Litvinoff was a British Jew who changed his name,went to Russia and went straight to the top, becoming first Foreign Minister throughout the 30's and later Ambassador to the U.S. during the war.

They make money off of this lie just as much

How so? Also Soviet union is past tense when discussing it

How so? Russia has a "space program " as well. Money hole

But surely the Soviets would know if the landings were fake?

They almost certainly suspected it, mainly because they were sure manned lunar explanation was beyond human technological capability at the time, but how would they prove their suspicions to the world without hard evidence? They astutely realised that denying the moon landings would make the USSR look ridiculous in the eyes of the world.

Also, it would be fair to assume that both the USA and USSR had dark secrets on each other (relating to individual politician's personal lives) which ensured that the ideological war-of-words between the powers remained within strict parameters.

Times have changed, however.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-calls-investigation-into-whether-us-moon-landings-happened-10327714.html

This isn't really what you asked for, but is related. This is astronaut Alan Bean explaining how he made it through the Van Allen belts in Apollo 12.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2FTZhyuJy8

Some interesting logic he uses in that explanation.

Unfortunately for the topic of Van Allen belts we are at the mercy of appointed experts in the field. We can't measure or test them directly ourselves. So while we can't really refute their statements, we can point out inconsistencies in them. Another one in this category is the shape of the earth vs 'photos' of the earth from space. Here, appointed propagandist for 'official science', Neil Degrasse Tyson tells us the shape of the earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoCKapivHGM Contradict that with the results of a google search for "photo of earth".

The effect Degrasse Tyson is talking about is a difference of a few kilometres, you can't see that in a photo showing the whole 12,000 km diameter of the Earth at once, it's not visible at that scale.

Some interesting logic he uses in that explanation.

He makes perfect sense. If I may summarize what he is saying:

1. They did notice the effects of radiation when they were outside the ionosphere.
2. The radiation phenomena they noticed were caused by cosmic rays.
3. The cosmic rays are not the same thing as the van Allen belt radiation.

Note that the ionosphere extends to as much as 600 miles, depending on conditions. It is well-known that the ionosphere shields the earth from most cosmic rays and ionizing solar radiation. The STS-32 mission, which reached 385 miles in part of its orbit, would have still been partly shielded by the ionosphere.

The best astronaut explanation I have seen on YouTube as to why the van Allen belts were not that hazardous is that the radiation found in the belts doesn't absorb that easily in the human body.

Listening to Alan Bean, it sounds like he was selected from a group of people who didn't give a shit about being exposed to radiation. When he was reminded of the radiation, he had stories about it. But he didn't even think of it as radiation, or try to tie it in to the question about the van Allen belts.

It's worth considering -- why don't anti-moon-landing theorists look into the additional radiation from being simply out of the earth's atmosphere, including the ionosphere? Flight attendants don't get anywhere near the ionosphere, but due to increased exposure to cosmic rays, they have an increased cancer risk. How much cosmic radiation, neglecting the van Allen belts, would astronauts be exposed to?

Being familiar with rad-hard electronics makes me think that the radiation situation is both exaggerated and underestimated by the anti-moon-landing theorists.

I don't dispute that there may have been a conspiracy. I remember in the Reagan years watching some ABM footage on NBC and later finding out that it was made in a Hollywood basement.

I find the concerns about radiation less convincing than the dissection of the photography and evidence that photos were taken on a soundstage. But I have never see any smoking gun regarding the moon landings, just a lot of circumstantial evidence. Everything from the "negligent" loss of the original video to the soundstage perspectives make me think so.

On the other hand, the govt people I talked to, who were down to kill JFK, believed in his moon landings. So I don't know what to think. If the moon landings were fake, I can't believe the components of the U.S. military and govt that killed JFK would seem so proud of the moon landings.

I suppose it's possible that the conservative faction in the CIA/CoG had the wool pulled over their eyes by the perpetrators of the moon landing fakes, but then who would have perpetrated the fakery? Is it possible that the liberal faction pulled the stunt and actually fooled the conservative faction even while the conservative faction pulled a different stunt and used a bullet in Dealy Plaza to remove the liberal faction from power? The mind reels just like the film reels.

It's beyond what I can believe to imagine there is a third, NASA/USAF faction that maintains itself as a splinter cell to hide from the two obvious CIA/CoG factions, and that the NASA faction pulled off a Stanley Kubrick filmfest that perhaps inadvertently resulted in a conservative-over-liberal coup d'etat...

I'm more inclined to believe that a lot of this stuff is classified, because I was alive during the shuttle program, and a lot of that stuff is classified. There are little vestigal glimpses, like SLC-6, but mostly people don't know. Even the star-tracker navigation system on the shuttle was classified equipment.

What classified equipment would have been an Apollo? Perhaps NASA inadvertently shielded the capsule with polyethylene. Maybe they had no clue and got lucky.

They didn't spend a very long time in them, and their trajectory generally avoided the highest flux area. But yeah, astronauts are exposed to more radiation than us plebes on earth. The higher exposure for the Apollo astronauts was actually more from solar particles than the Van Allen belts (because they spent much more time out of Earth's magnetic field than in the Van Allen region). We know that astronauts are more likely to get cataracts as they age, and likely have an increased. Personally, I'd gladly take a higher cancer and cataract risk for an opportunity to go to space.

Simple. A studio on earth. Tadaaaaaa

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/Algebra1/3Page7.pdf

As I understand, the Van Allen belt is a tubular ring surrounding the Earth's equator. Missions going beyond said belt do not launch near the equator, and are angled away, so that astronauts are only exposed to appreciable radiation for 20-30 minutes during launch.

I'll go dig up the source for this if you want to know more.

I haven't found the original source where I first read this, but it went into a lot of detail about the trajectory through the proton-rich inner part of the Van Allen belt. Here's a quote from another source, which looks less legit to me (less math that I can verify and fewer citations), but it's saying the same thing:

The Van Allen belts span only about forty degrees of earth's latitude -- twenty degrees above and below the magnetic equator. The diagrams of Apollo's translunar trajectory printed in various press releases are not entirely accurate. They tend to show only a two-dimensional version of the actual trajectory. The actual trajectory was three-dimensional. The highly technical reports of Apollo, accessible to but not generally understood by the public, give the three-dimensional details of the translunar trajectory.

Each mission flew a slightly different trajectory in order to access its landing site, but the orbital inclination of the translunar coast trajectory was always in the neighborhood of 30°. Stated another way, the geometric plane containing the translunar trajectory was inclined to the earth's equator by about 30°. A spacecraft following that trajectory would bypass all but the edges of the Van Allen belts.

http://www.clavius.org/envrad.html (some moon hoax debunking site, take it with as much salt as you want)

EDIT: found it: http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/apollo11-TLI.htm I can't verify that these were the Apollo mission trajectories, but it appears at least theoretically possible to mostly go around the van Allen belt, cutting only through the edge of the belt, thus exposing the astronauts to rather deadly radiation for a short period of time.

Here's the money shot showing the trajectory: http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/pics/AP001MeV.gif

Again, I have to ask why NASA hasn't provided a thorough explanation for how they overcame this obstacle.

Hey man, I don't know what Wernher Von Braun's NASA says about this stuff. I'm not entirely sure the Apollo missions actually got people to the moon. But at least going around the Van Allen belt seems to me entirely feasible.

That clavius link was one I provided in a link above. They just seem to say "believe us and if you don't then you're a dumb dumb".

The clavius link does indeed suck. I quoted it before I found the other one, only as a summary of the argument.

The stuff from braeunig.us, however, has a lot more data to chew through, and the guy cites his sources. (Though I have no idea who this Robert Braeunig guy is.) It helps if you have a physics background (which I do), but you can catch up to speed by reading up on high-energy particles and the variety of radiation carriers (gamma rays, alpha particles, high energy protons, electrons, etc.). You can check what the Van Allen belt is made of yourself -- it's protons and electrons -- particles with a charge. You can check the particle concentration (flux) studies coming from NASA as well as other independent sources, astronomers, and satellite operators. All that's left to verify is whether the Apollo missions really took the angled trajectory that is described.

. I would expect some explanation of the materials needed for shielding, measurements of the radiation, and the effects of exposure to those levels.

The braeunig.us link covers all that, and the math and science (and links to original sources) necessary to check their results.

Again, that link is http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/apollo11-TLI.htm , which deals with the trajectory taken through the Belts. the radiation exposure calculations are also there at http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/VABraddose.htm .

EDIT: one thing that keeps me skeptical is that there's no way to actually verify the Apollo trajectories today, as NASA has 'misplaced' the original magnetic reels storing transponder and communication data for the missions. Go figure.

I still have to question why we need to get this info from an outside source rather than NASA publishing this themselves.

I question the same thing. Although technically, this analysis is based on the data published by NASA, it's not their analysis.

this site seems to go out of its way to point out "conspiracy theories"... I find that if the truth is that self-evident, then you can just say what you have to say without trying to characterize any disbelief as "conspiracy" in a pejorative sense.

Agreed. On the other hand, the scientific method does not shield scientists from CIA culture creation propaganda that popularized the term 'conspiracy theory' as a pejorative. So basically, I'm mostly concerned with the data, and less with the attitude of the presenter -- at least in matters of scientific inquiry. Having said that, someone like Phil Plait still pisses me the fuck off.

Thanks again!

You're quite welcome. Please let me know if you find something fishy, as I haven't personally looked into the actual studies of the mapping of the Van Allen Belt (though so far I've found no dissenting informed opinion about it).

I still have to question why we need to get this info from an outside source rather than NASA publishing this themselves.

You mean this? http://history.nasa.gov/SP-368/s2ch3.htm

They have not only "misplaced" the tapes...they have misplaced 700 huge boxes of telemetry data, blueprints, film, documents, etc.

In fact, except for word of mouth, old articles, and second-gen (if that) footage the missions may as well have never happened at all.

Wernher Von Braun said it happened, and he's got a respectable hairdo. So I guess it happened.

The only escape from much of the belts is actually through the poles, and not the equator. Look at any visualization of the Van Allen's and you'll see this excuse doesn't hold water.

Some sad apologists have even attempted to state the craft DID go throuh the poles. They ABSOLUTELY DID NOT.

The only escape from much of the belts is actually through the poles, and not the equator. Look at any visualization of the Van Allen's and you'll see this excuse doesn't hold water.

I specifically said they did not launch from the equator, and the trajectory was angled away from the equator, and away from the Van Allen Belt, so the capsule only grazed the tip of the proton belt (and was there for 10-20 minutes), and about an hour in the proton belt. (or maybe it's the other way around?)

Anyway, this is of course all based on what NASA claims the trajectory was. They don't have any of the original data to back it up. But given what is known about the Van Allen belt, it seems quite plausible to me to launch somewhere from Florida, angle away from the belt, and with relatively light shielding the astronauts could theoretically overcome the Van Allen belt obstacle.

There are reports that people saw the translunar burn, so I think they did launch something. Whether or not it contained people is another question, but I don't think it can be resolved by an appeal to the impossibility of passage through the Van Allen belt.

There are zero verifiable third party visual confirmations. Zero.

Yep. It's just random people saying they saw it. They have no way to prove it, it's just their word. It's a weird world we live in.

I have researched this before and came back with more questions than answers. The explanation given always ends up being that it is alpha radiation that can easily be blocked by thin plastic.

But what I found more questionable than the radiation exposure side of it was the fact that it is a plasma with temperatures greater than any substance known to man can handle, except diamond.

Radiation so powerful, it FRIED lead shielded Geiger counters. Yet thin plastic can stop it. Great bs thought, bud.

You obviously know nothing about radiation. Your smoke detector contains a half gram of ionizing americium-241. Run from your house quick! LOL

Or maybe there are different types of ionizing radiation alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha radiation will actually be blocked by paper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsspFQn0mWM

I don't know what type of radiation is really out there, but it is said to be alpha.

Is said to be? As if it hasn't been fully tested. Tinfoil and tape doesn't protect for shit. As I stated, with Van Allen himself, after breaking many Geigers, he sent up heavily lead shielded geigers. All of which spiked to their max reportable (ed.) values then broke. Try using facts. Not speculation of what is "believed."

As I stated, with Van Allen himself, after breaking many Geigers, he sent up heavily lead shielded geigers. All of which spiked to their max reportable (ed.) values then broke.

I have researched this subject some at one point and have never seen anything about what you are saying (broken/fried geigers) I did see some stuff about test equipment sent up. That is why I had no idea what the hell you were talking about. Plus you gave very little context which really helped in not knowing what the hell you were talking about.

This one sentence is the full wikipedia section on the results of the Van Allen Probes, so forgive my ignorance.

Scientific results In February 2013, a third temporary Van Allen Radiation Belt was discovered by using data gathered by Van Allen Probes. The said third belt lasted a few weeks.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_Probes#Scientific_results

I'll keep it to the basics. Look into Explorer 1, 2 for info on the lead shielded geigers that were destroyed because of the massive doses of radiation that were well (ed.) above what they could even handle. Far more than a lethal dose for any human. And no, they didn't only spend minutes in the belts. It wasn't a quick transit.

These idiot assholes at NASA even tried to claim the Apollo astronauts weren't affected because the damage of the Van Allen's weren't known at the time. Space shuttles go up triple dig miles and see the radiation, yet the Apollo astronauts claim to have experienced nothing of the sort until they're really pressed, then spout some bullshit about how it wasn't that bad. Not to mention the film showing zero effects of the massive radiation they were exposed to. No shielding. It's all a sham.

Some interesting debunking : http://www.moonfaker.com/faqs.html

Well dang. My previous post was downvoted with no answer, so I want to try again. I meant this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one: what reason(s) do we have to believe that the Van Allen Belts would have been a problem for the Apollo program? Specifically?

Very short exposure and the craft had shielding.

The craft had NO shielding save 1/8" of aluminum.

So it had aluminum shielding then.

I'm curious why one would think it might be a problem to begin with. What sources fo you have one that? I know it's somewhat of a concern for some of our current microelectronics, but older, bulkier electronics were more robust in a lot of ways. What other concerns would there be?

They just flew through the damn' things. (There are two.)

The Van Allen belts are zones filled with charged particles which won't pass through metal but instead cause some ionizing radiation when they strike it. It took only about a half hour to pass through each one. One gets a lot more ionizing radiation from a CAT scan.

It wouldn't be advisable to set up housekeeping there, but going through twice, once going and once coming, won't kill anyone.

Ho, ho, ho!

It's an excellent explanation, and happens to be true, and happens to be why people and comsats seem to go right through the Van Allen belts with minimal damage.

No, I'm not making shit up. BTW, the "Aliens told them" quote is from 'shittyscience', and is meant as a joke.

Clues are plentiful.

Actually, this couldn't be further from true.

You are correct to a degree, but the action of particles striking the very thin aluminum craft body produces vast quantities of x-rays that go, of course, directly into the capsule.

"Vast quantities of x-rays"? Er, OK, for some values of the variable "vast". Low values.

A handful of people have passed through the Van Allen belts, as have numerous comsats. They all seem to be immune to "vast quantities of x-rays".

[sigh]

Unfortunately for the topic of Van Allen belts we are at the mercy of appointed experts in the field. We can't measure or test them directly ourselves. So while we can't really refute their statements, we can point out inconsistencies in them. Another one in this category is the shape of the earth vs 'photos' of the earth from space. Here, appointed propagandist for 'official science', Neil Degrasse Tyson tells us the shape of the earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoCKapivHGM Contradict that with the results of a google search for "photo of earth".

I wouldn't say surely. And even if they knew, they wouldn't have been able to sway the minds of Americans about their own achievement. Great powers differ in their official stories of current events all the time.

Also, Apollo couldn't have been a complete hoax. Space shuttles left Earth's orbit for the moon. Maybe they just orbited the moon rather than landing and broadcast staged footage. That kind of film production would not be anywhere near as big as the Manhattan Project which produced the bomb, so we can't assume the Soviets would know for sure.

They make money off of this lie just as much

Even if the Soviets have proof the landings were faked, it's possible the U.S. has equivalent "dirt" on the Soviets and the blackmail doesn't occur in public because of a sort of detente.

How so? Russia has a "space program " as well. Money hole

But surely the Soviets would know if the landings were fake?

Two ways to look at this.

We can start with your view: America and Russia were enemies. Now, if you have an enemy capable of launching a missle from across the planet and landing it squarely in your lap at a time you were frantically competing to see who could kill who first, would you let them know you were unable to track their launches?

Or we could take NASA's point of view and realize that the US and USSR were in cooperation through the vast majority of the "space race" which in Cold War America/ USSR certainly requires government oversight; meaning the US and USSR governments were also cooperating throughout this time period.

So there are my two reasons why Russia wouldn't blow the whistle, why do you think they would?

The article has been updated since I last saw it, and for some reason insists cooperation didn't happen until the 80's at the top, then continuing to enumerate all the successful and failed cooperative attempts. Here is just one excerpt predating the apollo program:

Despite the continued space competition between the United States and U.S.S.R., Khrushchev sent Kennedy a letter raising the possibility of space cooperation on a modest level after John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on Feb. 20, 1962. That led to two rounds of discussions between NASA’s Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and Soviet academician Blagonravov. An agreement led to the opening of cooperation in three areas: 1) the exchange of weather data from satellites and the eventual coordinated launching of meteorological satellites; 2) a joint effort to map the geomagnetic field of Earth; and 3) cooperation in the experimental relay of communications. This link became a primary forum for subsequent U.S.-U.S.S.R. interaction on space.

Keep in mind that if the USSR was really our enemy this cooperation would be textbook treason.

But surely the Soviets would know if the landings were fake?

They almost certainly suspected it, mainly because they were sure manned lunar explanation was beyond human technological capability at the time, but how would they prove their suspicions to the world without hard evidence? They astutely realised that denying the moon landings would make the USSR look ridiculous in the eyes of the world.

Also, it would be fair to assume that both the USA and USSR had dark secrets on each other (relating to individual politician's personal lives) which ensured that the ideological war-of-words between the powers remained within strict parameters.

Times have changed, however.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-calls-investigation-into-whether-us-moon-landings-happened-10327714.html

That's a great piece of disinformation.

Marx was Jewish as a zionist would define the term,meaning although he was not religious he was descended from persons who were,including a grandfather who was a rabbi. Lenin's wife was Jewish so their children would have been Jewish under Jewish religious law or again by Zionist standards. He was surrounded with jews at every level of his administration. Stalin had no marital or geneological roots of this nature but he too surrounded himself with Jewish henchmen,his right-hand man being Lazar Kaganovich,who committed the worst case of genocide in modern history,the murder-by-starvation of 7 million Ukrainians during what is known today as the Holodomar. At an executive level,the USSR was very heavily Jewish from it's inception right up to the early 1950's. Maxim Litvinoff was a British Jew who changed his name,went to Russia and went straight to the top, becoming first Foreign Minister throughout the 30's and later Ambassador to the U.S. during the war.

The only escape from much of the belts is actually through the poles, and not the equator. Look at any visualization of the Van Allen's and you'll see this excuse doesn't hold water.

I specifically said they did not launch from the equator, and the trajectory was angled away from the equator, and away from the Van Allen Belt, so the capsule only grazed the tip of the proton belt (and was there for 10-20 minutes), and about an hour in the proton belt. (or maybe it's the other way around?)

Anyway, this is of course all based on what NASA claims the trajectory was. They don't have any of the original data to back it up. But given what is known about the Van Allen belt, it seems quite plausible to me to launch somewhere from Florida, angle away from the belt, and with relatively light shielding the astronauts could theoretically overcome the Van Allen belt obstacle.

There are reports that people saw the translunar burn, so I think they did launch something. Whether or not it contained people is another question, but I don't think it can be resolved by an appeal to the impossibility of passage through the Van Allen belt.

Yep. It's just random people saying they saw it. They have no way to prove it, it's just their word. It's a weird world we live in.