OK, so far no contemporaneous accounts...
Oh how sad: your clumsy straw man tactic didn't work as expected.
...(from NASA) is a 'broken link'
In case you haven't noticed, the U.S. government is presently shut down. I'll offer an apology for the clown of a senator from my state who seems principally responsible for it, but the fact remains that the historically easiest way to obtain materials from NASA is temporarily unavailable for reasons that have nothing to do with this debate.
However, the
sine qua non of investigative reporting is not "Can I click on it?" You might actually have to visit one of the many libraries that is a government document depository.
Why not just find the document/report/whatever I ask for made up out of thin air and be done with it?
There, fixed that for you.
Obligating your critics to provide some document requires more than idle speculation on your part that it exists in the form you imagine. As with most interesting historical questions, you may need to do more than just read the answer you seek directly from some primary source.
You have already stated that the mission trajectories were planned with the belts in mind. Surely you got this information somewhere...
Of course we did. Just not from the hypothetical One Authoritative Source you ignorantly insist must exist and be the only voice you will listen to. You're the one artificially restricting what evidence you will accept. Don't blame us if your narrow filter doesn't let in the evidence the way it actually exists, or if prepackaged historical tidbits for any arbitrary question are not quickly found.
You're presuming that there exists somewhere in the annals of NASA some brief document written in the 1960s that states succinctly in as many words the same summary answer you've been given today to your question by knowledgeable professionals. And you'll accept no substitute. I'll let the world marvel at how an "investigative reporter" -- or indeed any sort of an historian -- would think that way.
Where did I get this information? From the three feet of shelf space I devote to the secondary sources of Apollo historical material. From the uncounted pages of digital primary material I've read over the past 15 years of answering conspiracy theorists, as well as a likely equal amount in the decades of my professional and educational career in space science preceding that. From my hard-won knowledge of orbital mechanics and a working understanding of the AP-8 and AE-8 models that I have to use in my profession. From the published orbital geometries (several contemporaneous sources) of the Apollo missions. From my correspondence with Dr. Van Allen.
See, you receive the succinct, concise answers from us knowledgeable practitioners because we distill all this down for you. To turn around and demand it in that same distilled form only from some other source is frankly insulting and arrogant on your part.
Maybe one of you will surprise me.
I doubt it. You have obviously come here with strong preconceptions of what you would find, and you are laboring most intently to make that preconception seem true. You have utterly ignored corrections to your misunderstandings, you have arrogantly and assiduously asserted that what you believe to be true about our professions should be the standard to hold historical fact up to, and you have failed the most basic tests of observation. Yet from this presumptively lofty perch you simply lob decades-old, long-debunked materials that you obviously just cribbed from the common web sources. How is this anything but some sort of coup-counting exercise on your part? You demonstrate zero desire to be taught, so what is your point in coming here?
