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Post by ka9q on Aug 20, 2010 19:38:53 GMT -4
Regarding the "bolded stuff", i.e., that TV transmissions from Apollo lasted a long time and therefore could not have been made from low earth orbit, I refer you to the very large amount of information published by NASA on its ground tracking networks for the Apollo missions.
The TDRSS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellites) were not launched until the Shuttle era; I think the first one went up on STS-6 in 1983. The second was lost in the Challenger disaster. Before TDRSS, NASA used a very large network of ground stations to communicate with satellites in low earth orbit, and even then they could only talk to them for a few minutes at a time, with long periods of no communication when no ground station was in sight.
NASA could cover gaps in communications with ships and planes, but the obvious expense meant that could only be done for critical periods like orbital insertion and trans-lunar injection.
Furthermore, most of NASA's ground stations were equipped only for telemetry and voice. Only a few sites even had the ability to receive TV, such as Goldstone in California and Honeysuckle Creek in Australia. So video transmissions during the earth orbital test flights Apollo 7 and 9, and during the parking orbits of the lunar missions, were necessarily quite brief. They could only last as long as a pass at a TV equipped ground station.
Once the Saturn third stage fired again to propel Apollo toward the moon, it rapidly moved away from the earth to altitudes high enough to see nearly half of the planet at once. This made it possible for just three ground stations (Goldstone, California; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra Australia) to provide continuous communications with Apollo until it went around the far side of the moon.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 20, 2010 19:57:55 GMT -4
I'm not even a space expert (though my copy of Live TV From the Moon has finally shipped!), and I've never found the arguments anything but laughable.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Aug 20, 2010 20:23:32 GMT -4
The following link is to an animated illustration of a type of translunar trajectory known as a free return. Apollo 11 flew a trajectory like this on the way to the Moon. In Apollo 11's case, however, the spacecraft fired its engine when it swung around behind the Moon to slow down and enter lunar orbit. Had the engine not been fired, Apollo 11 would have swung around the Moon as seen in the illustration and returned to Earth. This is what Apollo 13 did when its mission was aborted. Free Return Trajectory(The spacecraft is shown to move in four-hour increments.) The reason I'm showing you this is that you should be able to see how the spacecraft was always on the same side of Earth as it flew to the Moon. When you're on the side of the Earth facing that direction, the spacecraft will remain visible for many hours at a time until the Earth has rotated far enough that the spacecraft sets below your horizon. NASA required only three tracking stations spaced equally around the planet to maintain constant contact with the spacecraft (in California, Spain and Australia). Had the spacecraft remained in Earth orbit it would have been rapidly circling the Earth once every 90 minutes. For any specific location on Earth, the spacecraft would be visible for only a matter of minutes as it would quickly cross the sky from horizon to horizon.
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Post by ka9q on Aug 20, 2010 22:39:05 GMT -4
Which brings up another question. Fireballs, why do you think NASA would have needed to fake the landings? What do you think prevented them from going to the Moon for real? This is indeed the crux of the whole moon hoax 'debate'. If you can send men to the moon, then there's hardly a need to fake it. You just do it, and you needn't worry about the 'secret' getting out. Even hoax proponents understand this simple logic. So they spend much time arguing that it was somehow impossible to send men to the moon. Not just hard -- we know it was hard, that's why JFK picked it -- but impossible. Hoax proponents have great difficulty because even they generally concede that in the 1960s both NASA and the USSR developed the capability to fly machines to the moon. And they generally concede that men were flying in low earth orbit. So they have to distinguish between manned lunar flight on the one hand, and manned earth orbital and robotic lunar flight on the other. They have to find something to make the former impossible despite the overwhelming evidence for the latter. That's hard. If you can send robots to the moon, you can just add a life support system and a food supply and send humans too. And if you can fly humans in low earth orbit with enough food, water and oxygen for the duration of a lunar trip, you can actually send them there by just giving them a bigger rocket. (A lander is nice too, but optional.) And we had that bigger rocket: the Saturn V. Its existence is pretty hard to deny when millions of people regularly filled the beaches to watch it fly. So the hoax advocates have a real problem. What could possibly thwart a manned mission to the moon, but not an unmanned one? Why, radiation of course! The word elicits a primal, almost unreasoning fear in many people. And that's perfect for the hoax advocates. They would have everyone believe that space beyond low orbit is filled with radiation so intense and so deadly that any foolish human astronaut would be instantly killed by it. Only it isn't. Sure, there's radiation in space. Yes, it's especially intense in regions near the earth called the Van Allen belts where charged particles from the sun are trapped by the earth's magnetic field. But the Apollo flights flew very rapidly through the Van Allen belts, and they avoided its denser parts. There are other forms of radiation that exist outside the earth's immediate vicinity: galactic cosmic rays and particle radiation from the sun. Fortunately, both are low enough to be quite tolerable for a quick trip to the moon. Once in a while the sun throws off clouds of energetic particles, and had it thrown an especially big one directly at the earth/moon system during an Apollo mission the astronauts would quite likely have gotten sick. Fortunately, that didn't happen. Radiation is a serious concern for many of NASA's longer term human space flight plans. A permanent lunar base could have an underground shelter, but that's not an option for an interplanetary trip to Mars or an asteroid. But radiation was only a minor problem for Apollo. The bottom line? It was possible to go to the moon. Difficult and dangerous, but possible. That's precisely why JFK directed NASA to do it. NASA did it, and there was no need to fake it. When NASA screwed up and three astronauts died on the ground, we found out. When NASA screwed up and three more astronauts nearly died on their way to the moon, we found out about that too. NASA is one of the most open US government agencies. It's one that the other agencies should emulate. Those who accuse it of fantastical conspiracies and hoaxes are simply barking up the wrong tree.
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Post by ka9q on Aug 20, 2010 22:57:54 GMT -4
The question is less 'would it be possible?' than 'what evidence is there it was done that way?' There is not one single scrap of evidence for the existence and launch of such robots. It would be a useful exercise to compute how big a launch vehicle you would need to return a certain amount of material from the moon. Anything that is to make it back to earth intact has to fly through the atmosphere at speeds approximating the earth's escape velocity (11.2 km/sec). That requires a fairly sturdy structure enclosed by a heat shield. The heavier the payload, the heavier this re-entry vehicle. This return capsule must also be launched off the surface of the moon to at least the moon's escape velocity of 2.38 km/sec. That takes fuel, the amount depending on the performance of the rocket and the mass of the return capsule. Return capsules and the fuel to launch them aren't available locally on the moon, so they must first be landed there. They don't work too well after impacting at a few km/sec so they have to be landed softly. Parachutes are great for landing things softly on earth, but they're useless in the moon's vacuum so you have to do a powered descent that takes more fuel and probably another rocket engine. And to get the return capsule, its fuel and its rocket engines for the soft landing and return launch, in the vicinity of the moon in the first place, it must be launched from earth toward the moon at nearly the earth's escape velocity of 11.2 km/sec. That requires even more fuel and even bigger rockets. So run all the numbers and calculate, for every kg of material to be returned from the moon, how much the heavier the launch vehicle had to be as it sat on its pad waiting to fly to the moon.
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Post by fireballs on Aug 21, 2010 0:28:02 GMT -4
Good points, all.
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Post by tedward on Aug 21, 2010 11:36:11 GMT -4
I would not see it as good points, the info being imparted here. More as a start to where to look for genuine information and a way to validate such info.
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Post by Kiwi on Aug 21, 2010 11:49:11 GMT -4
Thanks for the links! ;D But the only problem I have is with the moon rock one. How can we trust those people? Could NASA have paid them off? I'm covering all the bases here... Have a look at this five-year-old thread about lunar rocks. apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=theories&thread=614&post=9248In the first post, PeterB (an Australian) wrote six important points about the rocks that were brought back, and replies 2 and 3 have the names of some of the scientists who had put their names forward to examine the Apollo 11 samples before the mission flew. I'll bet that like most of us here, you've never heard of most of the tests proposed. Although the list was compiled well before the existence of the internet, it might still be possible to research some of the scientists in it. If you go to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (link at the bottom of every page here) you can read for yourself the Apollo 11 Press Kit, from which the list of names comes. In any case, you should probably spend a few hours, days or weeks at the ALSJ if you haven't already. Note also in reply No. 2 the reference to two National Geographic articles about the rocks. Unfortunately the geologist in the September 1973 issue worked for Nasa so perhaps doesn't count, but the article is still interesting. It may be worth wondering whether or not some of the staff of National Geographic were capable of seeing through a hoax if there was one. They have always employed excellent journalists. Have you also spent time on JayUtah's website, Clavius? Link at the bottom of every page here. He covers every major "hoax" claim in a very informative fashion.
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Post by fireballs on Aug 21, 2010 12:48:38 GMT -4
Thanks for the links! ;D But the only problem I have is with the moon rock one. How can we trust those people? Could NASA have paid them off? I'm covering all the bases here... Have a look at this five-year-old thread about lunar rocks. apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=theories&thread=614&post=9248In the first post, PeterB (an Australian) wrote six important points about the rocks that were brought back, and replies 2 and 3 have the names of some of the scientists who had put their names forward to examine the Apollo 11 samples before the mission flew. I'll bet that like most of us here, you've never heard of most of the tests proposed. Although the list was compiled well before the existence of the internet, it might still be possible to research some of the scientists in it. If you go to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (link at the bottom of every page here) you can read for yourself the Apollo 11 Press Kit, from which the list of names comes. In any case, you should probably spend a few hours, days or weeks at the ALSJ if you haven't already. Note also in reply No. 2 the reference to two National Geographic articles about the rocks. Unfortunately the geologist in the September 1973 issue worked for Nasa so perhaps doesn't count, but the article is still interesting. It may be worth wondering whether or not some of the staff of National Geographic were capable of seeing through a hoax if there was one. They have always employed excellent journalists. Have you also spent time on JayUtah's website, Clavius? Link at the bottom of every page here. He covers every major "hoax" claim in a very informative fashion. Thanks! I thought it over and yes, I suppose the moon rocks are genuine. ;D But why is it impossible for 6 rovers to return samples, much like the Russians did? Also, could the reflective mirror on the moon have been placed by a bot? The Russians did that also.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Aug 21, 2010 13:05:43 GMT -4
Thanks! I thought it over and yes, I suppose the moon rocks are genuine. ;D But why is it impossible for 6 rovers to return samples, much like the Russians did? The Soviets flew three missions to obtain something like 326 grams of material. The Apollo program collected 382 kilograms. The scale of the missions needed to collect that much material is a couple orders of magnitude bigger than what the Russians did. Why should I believe the rocks were collected by some method for which not a single shred of evidence has been uncovered in over 40 years? That doesn’t seem like a very prudent thing to do in light of the fact that there is a perfectly good explanation that is supported by a mountain of evidence. Also, could the reflective mirror on the moon have been placed by a bot? The Russians did that also. Possibly, but could've doesn't count. Did they? - that's the question. There is zero evidence that the American's placed their reflectors robotically and plenty of evidence that they were placed by astronauts. What possible reason can you give me to believe they were placed robotically in the face of all the evidence that indicates otherwise?
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 21, 2010 13:07:13 GMT -4
But why is it impossible for 6 rovers to return samples, much like the Russians did?It's not impossible; just very, very unlikely compared to the documented and evidenced procedures by which they were obtained. The reasons have to do with the quantity and nature of the samples. Prevailing sample-return technology in the 1960s and 1970s was limited to a hundred grams or so per mission. This has to do with the technology limit on the robotic methods for extracting the material from the lunar surface and stowing it aboard the return capsule. It also has to do with the booster technology limit. To return a certain quantity of material from the lunar surface to Earth, using available propulsion and automated guidance, necessitates a certain capacity in the booster. Six missions that return 350 kg of surface material requires booster technology that either did not exist at the time, or would have been conspicuous to build and launch. The nature of the Apollo samples includes core samples, differentiated samples, large-specimen samples, and adaptively chosen samples. There was at the time no viable remote core-sampling technology. There was no means to collect very large (e.g., 1-5 kg) single specimens. There was no means to interactively choose which samples would be collected. Soviet sample-return technology was limited largely to undifferentiated material sampled from the vicinity of the landing site. Also, could the reflective mirror on the moon have been placed by a bot? The Russians did that also. And the Russians could have placed their reflector on the Moon by means of secretly sent cosmonauts. You're still thinking in the mindset that fakery is the default conclusion that we should hold if we cannot establish authenticity beyond question. That it simply stacking the deck. If you want to argue that the Apollo LRRR was placed by robotic means rather than by human astronauts, you need to show actual evidence of that means, not just the insinuation that it was possible. The Russians placed their retroreflectors by robotic means. Examples of those robot spacecraft survive. The people who designed and built them are identified, and attest to their work. We know when they were launched, and there is evidence of their flight. If someone wanted to claim that secret manned missions put them there instead, you'd need to find the identities of the secret cosmonauts, and evidence of a previously secret manned lander, and evidence of their launching and deployment. Similarly, the Americans placed their retroreflector using human astronauts. We know the names of those astronauts, and they attest to having done it. We have the designs and examples of the spacecraft used to accomplish this. We have specific dates for the missions, and copious evidence that the missions occurred. If, on the other hand, you want to say they were placed by secret robots, we'll want to know who design and built them, who tested them, when they were flown, and by whom. If you can't provide any of that, then your affirmative alternative simply fails by a complete lack of evidence. See, your approach is simply biased heavily against manned missions. This is why it doesn't work as logic.
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Post by blackstar on Aug 21, 2010 13:10:15 GMT -4
Have a look at this five-year-old thread about lunar rocks. apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=theories&thread=614&post=9248In the first post, PeterB (an Australian) wrote six important points about the rocks that were brought back, and replies 2 and 3 have the names of some of the scientists who had put their names forward to examine the Apollo 11 samples before the mission flew. I'll bet that like most of us here, you've never heard of most of the tests proposed. Although the list was compiled well before the existence of the internet, it might still be possible to research some of the scientists in it. If you go to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (link at the bottom of every page here) you can read for yourself the Apollo 11 Press Kit, from which the list of names comes. In any case, you should probably spend a few hours, days or weeks at the ALSJ if you haven't already. Note also in reply No. 2 the reference to two National Geographic articles about the rocks. Unfortunately the geologist in the September 1973 issue worked for Nasa so perhaps doesn't count, but the article is still interesting. It may be worth wondering whether or not some of the staff of National Geographic were capable of seeing through a hoax if there was one. They have always employed excellent journalists. Have you also spent time on JayUtah's website, Clavius? Link at the bottom of every page here. He covers every major "hoax" claim in a very informative fashion. Thanks! I thought it over and yes, I suppose the moon rocks are genuine. ;D But why is it impossible for 6 rovers to return samples, much like the Russians did? Also, could the reflective mirror on the moon have been placed by a bot? The Russians did that also. Well the Soviet missions returned about 300 grammes of dust, against about, I think, 800 kilogrammes of material for Apollo. And the Apollo material included sizeable rocks and drilled core samples two metres long, even current day robot probes couldn't do that. And the Soviet Retroreflectors weren't as effective as the hand placed ones from Apollo, I believe one of the Soviet units failed totally because it wasn't placed properly.
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Post by laurel on Aug 21, 2010 13:10:36 GMT -4
Actually, there was more than one "reflective mirror." Apollo 11, 14 and 15 all placed reflectors on the Moon. Have you seen the videos and photographs of their deployment?
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Post by laurel on Aug 21, 2010 13:15:05 GMT -4
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Aug 21, 2010 13:20:55 GMT -4
I think, 800 kilogrammes of material for Apollo. That would be pounds, 842 to be exact (382 kilograms).
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