You are probably thinking of the “reborn” astronaut, Dave Bowman, as he watches over the Earth. Or maybe the sun rising and its rays touching the obelisk to set off the signal.

Ann wrote: “He said it would require lead shielding on the moon capsule to be 6 feet thick in order to prevent frying the astronauts.”

The Van Allen belts are strong, but not *that* strong. Otherwise there would have to be similar shielding on the ISS. Whenever the ISS flies (sails?) through the South Atlantic Anomaly, it (and other satellites in similar orbits) receives a dose of radiation similar to the bulk of the Van Allen belt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly

The Van Allen belt does have higher radiation than the surface of the Earth, but it will not fry astronauts that pass through as they escape Earth orbit or come back to Earth. The higher radiation dose to the astronauts is accounted for when planning a mission, there is a radiation-exposure budget, and there are dosimeters to verify that the astronauts did not exceed exposure limits.

There were concerns that a large coronal mass ejection (back then I think they were called ion storms) could cause very high doses, but that did not happen on any of the missions.

This also applies to satellites headed for geostationary orbit (GEO) or are escaping Earth orbit. The Van Allen belts do not fry the electronics, but a satellite stuck in a transfer orbit will get a high exposure over the course of several months (several scores of passes through the belt), as was the concern with the Air Force’s Advanced EHF 1 satellite (it was raised out of the belts before much or any damage occurred).

Go back to believing that we went to the moon. If we hadn’t, the Soviet Union would have immediately and vigorously called us on it.

Also, that famous earth rise photograph–wasn’t that shown in the film 2001- A Space Odyssey?