Richard Garwin discusses informing President Kennedy of the issues associated with safely sending a man to the moon.

Garwin:

On July 4, I think, was the shot. Within days I was in Washington and put in charge of finding out what was going on and what could be done about this. Among other things, President Kennedy had made a commitment to put an American on the moon within the decade and bring him back safely, and here we had these radiation belts which were very much enhanced. The question was, could we launch through them? What would be their duration? The radio astronomers were up in arms, about the radio noise from these electrons. Satellites were dying here and there. It was just awful. The Russians had a space mission up, with astronauts, and the question was, would those astronauts be killed by our trapped electrons? So it was as rather hectic heady time. Jerry Wiesner, who was Science Advisor, took me in to see President Kennedy. I had to tell him, could we launch through this? What were the options? I had ways of sweeping the Belts, and of course we knew that they were decaying. We didn't know exactly how long it would take. We could also launch from the North Pole, but it is not a very happy thought to have to move your space launching facilities up to the North Magnetic Pole, or South Magnetic Pole.