Ridiculous hoax claims

[Bob B.]

admin said:

Wouldn't the dust fall faster due to the fact that there is no (significant) atmosphere on the Moon? I imagine an atmosphere would cause the dust to hang in the air before returning to the ground, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

You are correct, however for larger particles the effect may not be noticeable. Some time back I did some calculations to estimate fall time of different sized particles. I assumed sea level conditions, a particle density of 2.7 g/cc, and a drag coefficient of 0.5 (sphere). The time it would take to fall from a height of 2 meters is,

Particle Size .................... Time

1 micron (clay) ................ 8.35 s
10 microns (silt) .............. 2.69 s
100 microns (fine sand) .... 1.00 s
1 mm (coarse sand) ........ 0.68 s
No Drag .......................... 0.64 s

As you can see, by the time you get up to coarse sand the visible effect of drag is almost negligible.

Something else I did not take into consideration is that the drag coefficients of very small particles increases significantly. This would make smaller particles fall even more slowly.

[Sticks]

Just to muddy the waters further, I remember seeing on the web footage of the feather and hammer experiment done here on Earth, in an atmosphere and both hit the floor at the same time. It was made to debunk the "hammer test on the moon", being only possible because there was no atmosphere

[Bob B.]

sticks said:

Just to muddy the waters further, I remember seeing on the web footage of the feather and hammer experiment done here on Earth, in an atmosphere and both hit the floor at the same time. It was made to debunk the "hammer test on the moon", being only possible because there was no atmosphere

I haven't seen this, but I've heard about it. I think it might have been a David Percy demonstration. The way I hear it, the feather was held with the shaft vertically, thereby exposing the feather's minimum cross-section to the flow. David Scott held the feather horizontally with its maximum cross-section normal to the flow. This makes a huge difference in the results. The HB demonstration was intentional rigged to yield false results.

[Sticks]

The footage is supposed to be available on This site

I got a bandwidth exceeded error when I tried.

I have not looked through the site yet, has this particular site received the JayUtah treatment?

[Bob B.]

sticks said:

The footage is supposed to be available on This site

I got a bandwidth exceeded error when I tried.

I got the same error, however you can see in the picture that the person is indeed holding the feather upright as I described. The picture also includes "(c) Aulis", which means it is from David Percy.

I have not looked through the site yet, has this particular site received the JayUtah treatment?

That is Cosmic Dave's Web site and, yes, Jay has given it the treatment it deserves. ;D

[Sticks]

bob said:

That is Cosmic Dave's Web site and, yes, Jay has given it the treatment it deserves. ;D

Link?

[echnaton]

I’ve seen that clip. They use a metal fake feather and sure enough it drops like a hammer. I don’t recall them addressing the lower acceleration of the actual feather and hammer dropped on the moon, although it has been a while since I saw the clip. There is always the standard claim of slowed down video to fall back on in any case.

It is all for naught though because they only offer an “explanation” for how something could have been faked but have no backing for the claim that Scott’s falcon feather drop experiment actually was faked. So it is essentially meaningless.

[Bob B.]

sticks said:

bob said:

That is Cosmic Dave's Web site and, yes, Jay has given it the treatment it deserves. ;D

Link?

www.clavius.org/bibdave32.html

I've also seen Jay discuss Cosmic Dave's stuff quite a bit at BABB. You could probably do a search there and turn up more information.

[Bob B.]

echnaton said:

I don’t recall them addressing the lower acceleration of the actual feather and hammer dropped on the moon, although it has been a while since I saw the clip. There is always the standard claim of slowed down video to fall back on in any case.

As I recall, there is an instance when Dave Scott repositions the hammer in his hand by giving it a little flick and quickly grabing hold of it again. The fast motion of his hand pretty much negates the possibility the film is slowed down.

[Sticks]

Many thanks for that link - a good read, if somewhat late at night here in the UK

BTW has Jay ever met the Apollo 11 crew?

[Jason Thompson]

As luck would have it, I was recently given a copy of Spacecraft Films' DVD of the Apollo 15 mission, so I went and had a look at the hammer and feather footage just a minute ago.

Speaking of the hammer and feather experiment, has anyone noticed that when the camera zoom's in and out the LM and astronaut grow and shrink in image size but the mountain behide doesn't move at all..... Also when the camera zoom's back there look's like a black mask or something moving down over the top of the mountain.

Moonglow, I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Having just watched it I can assure you (and everyone else) that the mountain in the background maintains the same relationship with the foreground objects during the camera zoom. The top of the mountain comes to just above the door of the LM. Perhaps you are looking at a cropped version of the clip online. If this is the case then I suspect the 'black mask' described is actually the edge of the mountain with the black sky beyond.

I remember seeing on the web footage of the feather and hammer experiment done here on Earth, in an atmosphere and both hit the floor at the same time. It was made to debunk the "hammer test on the moon", being only possible because there was no atmosphere

Yes, this does indeed come from David Percy. I have it on the Aulis video 'What Happened On The Moon? An Investigation Into Apollo', which I purchased a few years ago (and boy do I wish I could reclaim those five hours I spent watching it!). He does successfully negate the experiment by holding the feather vertically with the shaft pointing downwards, thus making it a very streamlined shape for vertical descent. I am not sure about echnaton's claim that it was a fake feather; there would be no need since an ordinary feather would fall in just the same way when released in such an orientation. Dave Scott held the feather horizontally on the Moon, which of course would make all the difference in an atmosphere.

(As an aside, I would like to be able to say that is the only instance of a fudged and invalid test on that video, but I can't. One that really sticks in my mind is the attempt to show how an object nearer a light source can generate a longer shadow than one further away... by projecting shadows onto a wall!)

As I recall, there is an instance when Dave Scott repositions the hammer in his hand by giving it a little flick and quickly grabing hold of it again. The fast motion of his hand pretty much negates the possibility the film is slowed down.

There are several instances that completely undermine the slowed-down-film theory. As you say, Scott repositions the hammer in his hand with a little flick. In fact, he does this several times. He remains completely stationary as he drops the items, but he straightens up with a 'how about that?' far too quickly for the footage to be slowed. Of course, we must also remember that the hammer and feather experiment was in the middle of a section of TV footage taken from the rover that lasted in excess of one hour, which is replete with examples of movement that is not consistent with slowed down footage.

In short, there is no other way that experiment could have been performed with a real feather other than in a vacuum in lower gravity than on Earth. Of course, when confronted with this conclusion the conspiracist will invent the weighted feather. There is no evidence for it, but he requires it to be true because otherwise his argument falls apart. Once this happens we move beyond the realms of rational discussion, as so often happens in these cases....

[Bob B.]

Thanks, Jason.

[Kiwi]

moonglow said:

Speaking of the hammer and feather experiment, has anyone noticed that when the camera zoom's in and out the LM and astronaut grow and shrink in image size but the mountain behide doesn't move at all. When focal length is increased everything get's bigger at the same time no matter how near or far away it is. Anyway I thought that was odd. Also when the camera zoom's back there look's like a black mask or something moving down over the top of the mountain. Sound's weird I know but that's how it looked to me by looking at the mountain's texture as the camera zoom's in and out.

Moonglow, welcome to the board. Are you sure you know what you're talking about here, and have you done your homework? I have only a rough copy of this experiment that is taken from a condensed version of the movie, "Apollo 15: In the Mountains of the Moon," No. HQ 217.

How could you imagine there is a "black mask" when it is the dark lunar sky appearing behind the upper slope of whopping great Mount Hadley Delta, which towers about 11,700 feet above the plain on which the Falcon landed? The slope that appears is the one that is roughly above St George Crater, near Hadley Rille, and approximately south of the LM. It can be viewed in many photographs of the area.

As for "the LM and astronaut grow and shrink in image size but the mountain behide doesn't move at all..." what I see at top right, superimposed over the mountain but not on it, is probably dust on the lens. It is near the end of the EVA and the astronauts had to regularly dust the TV camera lenses. This dust build-up can often be viewed in the TV transmissions. I can't see any texture at all in Mount Hadley Delta, though it may be visible in better-quality DVDs.

Nearer the centre of the screen is a white spot which at one stage appears over Scott's spacesuit, and also appears later in the distant shot of the lunar module from the rover's final parking spot. I'm not sure whether this spot is dust or a fault in the camera.

[jaydeehess]

Thanks L.O. and B.B.. i would be very interested in the calcs. Now I know that the HB's will simply state that the 'movie set' had all the air sucked out and then shot the experiment in a vaccum at a faster frame rate then slowed it down by 1/6th to fake it all.

Nah, on second thought the one who posted isn't savvy enough to think of that, unless he actually read 'Dark Moon' but I don't believe he could have gotten all the way through "Of Mice and Men" in school let alone something like DM.

[DaveC]

That was my post in the old apollohoax forum. I think Johnno did a similar analysis. I can't redo it off the top of my head because I can't remember how many frames the hammer drop took. Gotta either find my old notes or repeat my mpeg editor exercise to count the frames.

However, it was something like this:

Scott released the hammer at frame one and and it hit the ground somewhere between frame 36 and 37 - making the fall time a little over 1.2 seconds (the video speed was (just under) 30 frames per second). Using the formula d=1/2at^2 and plugging in the Moon's gravitational acceleration, the fall distance works out to be about 1.2 metres - which, if you watch the film, appears about right. We know that Dave Scott is no taller than 6 feet - I think the official NASA info says 5'11" or about 1.8 metres. We also know that the hammer was dropped from a point somewhat below his shoulder height because the arm could not be extended at shoulder height in an Apollo spacesuit, and because it is obvious in the video that his arm was angled downward - the rover camera at a height of about one metre "saw" the upperside of Scott's extended arm. So - assuming Scott is proportioned like the rest of us - shoulder height for him is about 1.4 metres. The hammer head extended below his hand at the time of release and his arm was angled down. The calculated distance of 1.2 metres fits well with the observations and known facts.

Now - I'll go back and check whether I've remembered correctly and if not I'll post a correction before some HB pulls out a different set of numbers and says "gotcha!"

Added by edit:
The most compelling evidence in the Scott video that it wasn't slowed down is all his animated motion leading up to the drop and the pirouette he does at the end. That motion simply could not have been done at twice the speed.