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James A. Van Allen - Dies at 91
Diamonddavej writes "The New York Times reports that the respected astrophysicist, James A. Van Allen, died yesterday at the age of 91. Apparently the fellow regularly worked at his office/laboratory up until a month ago. Prof. Van Allen team designed the Geiger counter that flew aboard Americas first orbiting satellite, Explorer 1. It detected unexpectedly intense levels of radiation caused by energetic particles trapped in the Earth magnetic field, the magnetosphere. The belts of radiation were mapped and characterised by later missions and were named the Van Allen belts in honour of their discoverer."
Dr. Van Allen was a staunch advocate of planetary exploration with robotic spacecraft and a critic of big-budget programs for human space flight. Describing himself as "a member of the loyal opposition," he argued that space science could be done better and less expensively when left to remote-controlled vehicles.
Actually, NASA tapped Van Allen to spearhead further research into the belts he had discovered. The result of his further research was the conclusion that organisms could in fact safely traverse the belts. His research was a critical source of information for determining the velocities and trajectories necessary for such safe traversal.
So while it's true that he initially believe the belts would be impassable, his opinion changed as a result of his own careful study of the belts.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Dr. Van Allen made so many more contributions to space science than just his discovery of the radiation belts. He was one of the founding fathers of the field of magnetospheric physics. He was also involved in the first satellite missions to visit Venus and Mars, as well as the Pioneer missions to the outer planets. Much of his opposition to manned space flight was motivated by the success of these early satellite missions and the enormous scientific return from them. He believed that unmanned missions like Pioneer could contribute much more to our scientific knowledge than manned missions. He also argued that unmanned missions were more cost effective than manned missions. For more information, I suggest reading his autobiography.