Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Sept 4, 2005 8:37:40 GMT -4
Has anyone run into an HB who prefaces discussion with "I always thought it was a hoax, since the first moment I heard of the Apollo program?" The only person I'm aware of to make a comment like this was Bill Kaysing.
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Post by rocketdad on Sept 4, 2005 12:17:06 GMT -4
Thanks, Count Zero, for providing the numbers on the moon-shuttle mission.
I wasn't trying to start a cross thread, but a counter-example. It makes no sense to send a big heavy all-purpose vehicle that far. But people keep saying "the SM/CM/LM are too small to have done the jobs they did, and the Saturn V as too small to fly back and forth," etc.
The engineering mindset behind Dr, von Baun's earlier design ideas (and the quoted 1953 book was just ideas) was to spend money once and use it a few times. The Saturn/Apollo system was designed for a high disposability/ low weight mission, dropping equipment at the "side of the road" every time it was done being used.
Compare to the shuttle, where they even reuse the solid booster shells, but the whole system is super massive and designed to be as multi-purpose as possible.
Even the Sputnik took a massive booster to get into orbit. Maybe the hoax believers don't understand the magnitude of just HOW big. Extra weight of a larger CM gets very expensive at the launch pad.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Sept 4, 2005 14:56:11 GMT -4
Extra weight of a larger CM gets very expensive at the launch pad. The launch mass of the Saturn V rocket versus the payload mass injected into a trans-lunar trajectory was a ratio of about 60-to-1. This ratio should hold fairly constant as you increase payload size, thus a one pound increase in CM mass adds about 60 pounds to the launch vehicle.
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Post by Count Zero on Sept 4, 2005 18:14:48 GMT -4
People who haven't studied the problem may look at the LM or the CSM and say, "That's too small to do the job." In fact, the opposite is true: Building something larger would have made this particular job much more difficult.
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Sept 4, 2005 20:52:46 GMT -4
My intention wasn't to start a new thread but rather to steer people interested the subject to the thread with in a thread.
From my short time here it sees like it won't make much of a difference. M will probably hit and run no matter what. But since he's worrying about getting booted maybe he'll change his ways.
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