I'm a skeptic

[3onthetree]

As the subject heading says I'm a skeptic,I don't want to be but i am.
One of the main reasons for my skepticism on the manned lunar landings is simply when they occurred,1969 through to the seventies.I remember those times although I was was only a little kid I remember the first moon landing,jumping up and down on the sofa excited and glued to the black and white grainy tv pictures.This is one of my problems,nothing worked back then. life was much harder than today, televisions themselves were expensive rubbish with vertical lines and poor transition quality,cars for example were no better huge amounts of body roll column shift vinyl bench front seats and air con via four window winders.
There are other reasons for my condition that I will go into later but I always think of the voyage of endeavor in comparison to the manned landings on the moon and the huge problems and loss of life in one and not the other.For the record I don't believe in little green men or other paranormal stuff and have a great respect for all the astronauts, having seen in cockpit video of a shuttle launch makes you appreciate there courage and spirit and makes you wonder whether you have any right to doubt any of them.However for Apollo there was a war on and they were soldiers.

[hplasm]

Hi 3onthetree,

Welcome to the forum.

I take it that you are skeptical that the landings did happen, from your post?

(IMHO, things worked better then, when they weren't designed with built-in obsolescence..

[Jason Thompson]

This is one of my problems,nothing worked back then.

Apart from ICBMs, supersonic aircraft, submarines, massive navy destroyers, satellites, nuclear weapons, etc....

You really can't compare Apollo with commercial hardware.Commercial stuff has to balance function with the ability of the public to afford it. Apollo was not under such stiff restrictions.

I always think of the voyage of endeavor in comparison to the manned landings on the moon and the huge problems and loss of life in one and not the other.

Assuming you are referring to Captain Cook's vessel, the problems and loss of life is not something that can be compared with Apollo because of the wildly different natures of the voyages. Endeavour was sailing on an ocean which could at any time be whipped into a frenzy by storms. The weather largely determined how much headway they made. For various reasons they also put ashore in inhabited areas, many of which had little or no medical care. It is hardly a surprise if one of the crew picked up a disease during shore leave. The possibilities for contamination of supplies were rife. However, Endeavour herself functioned beautifully.

Compare that with Apollo, where the astronauts coasted through space with nothing to obstruct them and no stop-off points at which they might pick up diseases.

Apollo did cost lives, but they were lost on the ground and everyone involved made damn sure it never happened again, even when they almost lost a crew in space on Apollo 13.

[gwiz]

Not entirely true, the Mini dates from the 1950s and you can still drive one round corners faster than most modern cars. Other 1960s technology that has still to be beaten includes Concorde and the SR-71. The Boeing 747 and the Harrier are only now about to be replaced by something better. It was only in 2004 that an aircraft flew higher than the 1950s X-15. Plenty of consumer items were then built to last, to be repaired rather than replaced as they are today. Anything electronic has obviously benefitted from the improvements in integrated circuit manufacture, but mechanical items are not necessarily better. A modern washing machine seems pretty flimsy, built to last five years or so. I'm still using a 1960s fridge which has never had any repairs.

[lenbrazil]

To be quite honest that has to be one of the dumbest lines of reasoning I have ever seen or heard, and believe me the competition is fierce. Did you even bother to research the subject or read any of the threads here before posting?

What exactly was your point re: the Endeavor? Did you confuse it with the Challenger or Columbia or the space shuttle program as a whole? Are you so ignorant of the facts as to believe there wasn’t any “huge problems and loss of life” in the Apollo program?

What does the Vietnam War* or TV/automobile technology have to do with getting to the moon? Cars esp. American cars were crap back then not because the technology didn’t exist to make better ones but because the automakers made more profit that way. Transmission quality of the Apollo missions wasn’t so hot because they were transmitted about 400,000 km. Color TV was in wide use long before the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and IIRC the landing was broadcast in color. Also IIRC the number of vertical lines in 1969 TV transmissions is the same as today.

* Or even the Cold War if that’s what you meant.

[Jason Thompson]

Color TV was in wide use long before the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and IIRC the landing was broadcast in color.

Nope, Apollo 11 only had a black-and-white TV camera on the LM. There were colour broadcasts from the command module during the trip to and from lunar orbit, but these could make use of the large high-gain antenna on the service module. The LM could not cope with colour transmissions (later landings erected a large antenna next to the LM, and later still there was such an antenna on the rover). The Apollo 11 landing and the EVA was captured from the LM window on colour film, but this was not for broadcast at the time but for use later.

[Bob B.]

3onthetree said:

As the subject heading says I'm a skeptic,I don't want to be but i am.
One of the main reasons for my skepticism on the manned lunar landings is simply when they occurred,1969 through to the seventies

What do you believe DID happen during that time? Prior to the first moon landing the USA performed,

6 Mercury flights
10 Gemini flights
4 Apollo flights

Do you believe these flights really happened? If so, then how can you argue 1960s technology wasn't reliable enough for spaceflight? The US has successfully conducted manned operations in space since 1961.

Landing on the moon was just the next step in the incremental buildup that occured over the previous twenty US space missions. NASA could spare no expense in building hardware that was as safe and reliable as possible. The hardware was then qualified through a systematic series of tests, both on the ground and in space. Only then was a moon landing attempted.

[lenbrazil]

I stand corrected, I did couch that statement with "IIRC", still as stated the poor quality of the TV transmission from the Moon missions is not evidence that they were faked

jasonthompson said:

Color TV was in wide use long before the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and IIRC the landing was broadcast in color.

Nope, Apollo 11 only had a black-and-white TV camera on the LM. There were colour broadcasts from the command module during the trip to and from lunar orbit, but these could make use of the large high-gain antenna on the service module. The LM could not cope with colour transmissions (later landings erected a large antenna next to the LM, and later still there was such an antenna on the rover). The Apollo 11 landing and the EVA was captured from the LM window on colour film, but this was not for broadcast at the time but for use later.

[Jason Thompson]

That's OK Len, you were only wrong about Apollo 11. All the other EVAs were broadcast in colour (although Apollo 12 got screwed up when Al Bean accidentally aimed the camera at the sun).

[Joe Durnavich]

The LM could not cope with colour transmissions (later landings erected a large antenna next to the LM, and later still there was such an antenna on the rover).

For the record, the LM and its steerable antenna could cope with color. Apollo 12 transmitted its first EVA in color through the smaller LM antenna. The big 210-foot antennas on Earth provided enough margin for an acceptable color picture.

The reason Apollo 11 was in black-and-white was as you pointed out: Apollo 11 had only a black-and-white camera. No color cameras that would work in the lunar environment were ready at that time.

[RAF]

3onthetree said:

However for Apollo there was a war on and they were soldiers.

I don't understand why you would think that the war had anything to do with the Apollo missions...

Nothing worked back then. Life was much harder than today.

That's plain silly...what's next? Did you have to walk to school uphill, both ways

[Joe Durnavich]

This is one of my problems,nothing worked back then. life was much harder than today, televisions themselves were expensive rubbish with vertical lines and poor transition quality,cars for example were no better huge amounts of body roll column shift vinyl bench front seats and air con via four window winders.

I think you have to distinguish between mass-produced consumer goods and custom-built systems. Consumer cars may have been junky, but Grand Prix and Indy race cars were not.

[Bob B.]

Chill out folks! 3onthetree says," I'm a skeptic, I don't want to be but i am." It could be he/she is simply asking for our help. I think some of the replies here have been a bit too harsh after only one post. Let's try to clear away 3onthetree's doubts while remaining polite.

[Jason Thompson]

Apollo 12 transmitted its first EVA in color through the smaller LM antenna.

You're right, I stand corrected. The larger antenna was erected later (it's visible in the shows of Surveyor 3 with Intrepid in the background), but shortly afterwards Al Bean burned out the camera tube.

[bughead]

Just an aside, not intended to threadjack 3onthetree, but it really irritates me that Alan Bean gets the bum rap for burning out the camera.

Really, was a lens cap too much to ask? I know how much redundancy and safety went into other systems, and I know the color camera wasn't mission critical, but really, they had engineers inventing solutions to problems that never came up or things that weren't really problems (like the clothsline gizmo to help unpack the LM equipment) but nobody bothered to think "gee, the sun's near the horizon, I hope nobody points a live TV camera straight into it. Maybe we should give them a lens cap."


Of course, accidents like that poke big holes in the "its all fake" idea. Why would they fake a stupid mistake on the second mission?