reynoldbot
Jupiter
A paper-white mask of evil.
Posts: 790
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Post by reynoldbot on May 13, 2006 16:23:28 GMT -4
I'd say his is a pretty good answer considering the fact that he is in his seventies and Apollo took place 35 years ago. Would you suspect a WWII veteran of lying if he couldn't give you an exact answer on, say, what the weather was like on his first flight overseas or what kind of shielding the plane had?
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Post by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on May 13, 2006 20:57:44 GMT -4
From the website associated with this board: "The recent Fox TV show, which I saw, is an ingenious and entertaining assemblage of nonsense. The claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts is only one example of such nonsense." - Dr. James Van Allen
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Post by scooter on May 14, 2006 6:16:40 GMT -4
Do you have a link to this quote? Considering how often Dr Van Allen is used by the HBs as a "source", we might want to sticky it just to swiftly squash that line of argument... They are complete skeptics, as long as it doesn't require any critical thinking and research. It's really a sad testimony to their movement... Dave
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on May 14, 2006 9:55:43 GMT -4
Do you have a link to this quote? Considering how often Dr Van Allen is used by the HBs as a "source", we might want to sticky it just to swiftly squash that line of argument... For those who want badly enough to believe Apollo was a hoax, that quote still isn't enough. I had one totally delusion HB respond to me by saying Dr. Van Allen must have had a gun to his head to make that comment.
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Post by scooter on May 14, 2006 11:08:27 GMT -4
...oh, yeah...that explains it. I forgot about the "MIB" factor...
Dave
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Post by Kiwi on May 14, 2006 11:36:38 GMT -4
There is a popular misconception that the astronauts had to know everything about everything on their flights. Well, no, that's why there was such a team effort behind the missions. That is one of the nutty things about hoax-believers who like to kid themselves that they are thinking. They seem to think that if the astronauts can't answer every question about every detail of their missions, there must be something suspicious, but they are asking the impossible. Note what Ken Mattingly says in the movie "For All Mankind": 0:07:46 T. Kenneth Mattingly II: We all are in this together as a team effort, we're going to make it work. And I don't know how to make it work. I don't know how to do most of this mission. But I do know that I can assure you that my piece of it is going to work and you won't fail because of me. 0:08:02[/i][/b]
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Post by Jason Thompson on May 14, 2006 17:31:11 GMT -4
I had one totally delusion HB respond to me by saying Dr. Van Allen must have had a gun to his head to make that comment.
We had one on the Yahoo Group who refused to accept Jay's word that Dr van Allen had said that. He then said that nothing would convince him about the radiation threat except seeing a video interview with Dr van Allen saying that, but then said he'd bet it was a line spoken under duress anyway. A classic example of shifting the goalposts so that no possible outcome can undermine your conclusion.
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Post by twinstead on May 14, 2006 17:56:23 GMT -4
We had one on the Yahoo Group who refused to accept Jay's word that Dr van Allen had said that. He then said that nothing would convince him about the radiation threat except seeing a video interview with Dr van Allen saying that, but then said he'd bet it was a line spoken under duress anyway. A classic example of shifting the goalposts so that no possible outcome can undermine your conclusion. I would suspect that had Van Allen said that travel through the belts was impossible he would have accepted it no questions asked.
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Post by JayUtah on May 15, 2006 18:46:09 GMT -4
The quote is from a written letter sent to an associate. I recieved, but then lost, a copy of that letter. So I wrote to Dr. Van Allen asking him to confirm the quote, which he did (in writing on paper) and signed his name to it. I have a scan of that letter, which I can put online as soon as I remember which computer I put it on.
Those who claim the quote doesn't exist, is not authoritative, or was somehow given under duress are grasping at straws. They have no rational basis for questioning its authenticity or provenance.
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Post by JayUtah on May 15, 2006 19:35:41 GMT -4
The video is linked below.
Thank you for providing it and the transcript. Very helpful.
The overall impression I get is about what I expect. Al Bean doesn't recollect a whole lot about the Van Allen belts because to the pilots it was no big deal. That was mostly a question for the engineers, and really not that big a question because the transit was expected to be so short. Bean knew what steps would have to be taken, but he wasn't well versed on the particulars of what steps actually were taken.
BS: The belts are one thousand miles to twenty-five thousand miles above the Earth.
No. Sibrel really can't make up his mind where the Van Allen belts are. In the cutaway excerpt from A Funny Thing... Sibrel says the belts begin at 1,000 miles, and therefore all subsequent space missions stayed "well below" them. But later he suggests the radiation effects from the Van Allen belts begin at a much lower altitude.
BS: Because I.worked in news..
A lie. Sibrel's involvement with news-gathering has been disavowed by those with whom he purported to have worked.
BS: ..I saw CNN. They said that the radiation belts surrounding Earth are more dangerous than previously believed, because the astronauts saw shooting stars with their eyes closed, just when they got.within six hundred...
Bzzt. Originally Bart Sibrel said the Van Allen belts started at 1,000 miles. Now (as usual) he hedges that by saying they impose effects on astronauts at altitudes as low as 300 to 600 miles. The latter is actually more true, but unfortunately it contradicts what Sibrel said in his first cutaway -- that all previous space missions stayed "well below" the Van Allen belts.
In fact, Skylab astronauts received a significantly higher dose than Apollo astronauts by remaining in Earth orbit, where they passed through the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly repeatedly. The Van Allen belts do, in fact, extend in parts to low Earth orbit, and while those extensions are zones of relatively low intensity, they have a cumulative effect.
Sibrel is trying to have his cake and eat it too. I called him on the altitude discrepancy, and Sibrel removed the contradictory statements from his web site. But unfortunately he cannot remove them from videos he made and distributed. He has not offered any retraction or reconciliation.
The CNN report to which Sibrel refers simply reports a higher flux than expected of certain kinds of high-energy electrons. It has an effect on long-term orbital missions such as the ISS, but it has almost nothing to do with Apollo missions or further planetary exploration. Sibrel simply tacks on his standard sky-is-falling interpretation. He really doesn't understand the magnitude of the radiation in question or its implications for space engineering.
AB: Oh, now, that isn't from radiation belt. We saw shooting stars but they're not shooting stars...from...with your eyes closed, although they look like it. Uh..if you're out in space beyond the Van Allen belt, and probably within the Van Allen belt, and close your eyes,..and just...pay attention.
Bean is rambling here, but he's generally on the right track. The "light flashes" (as they are usually referred to in the literature) were not confined to passage through the Van Allen belts. They were observed beginning at a certain altitude and at all distances beyond this. They were investigated as part of Apollos 16 and 17 and generally deemed to be harmless in the short term.
Sibrel and his shoddy journalism aside, I do find the remarks from Bean fairly interesting and curious.
That's because you're seeing them exactly the way Sibrel wants you to see them.
From what I can see, the interview dialogue I've posted above hasn't been manipulated to make Bean's comments other than what they appear to be.
This is a very good example of the extremely subtle nature of Sibrel's manipulation. Not all manipulation requires blatant and obvious editing of quotes. In the cutaways Sibrel reproduces his (wrong) discussion of the Van Allen belts from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon. In that discussion, Sibrel leaves his audience with the feeling that the Van Allen belts are invariably deadly, and that all missions except for Apollo cower beneath them in mortal fear.
This sort of juxtaposition is exactly the sneaky, misleading editing that slips by almost all viewers. Sibrel has "framed" Al Bean's statements in his (Sibrel's) own interpretation of the phenomena Bean is discussing. The juxtaposition makes it seem as if Bean is unaware of or uninterested in a phenomenon that "should" have been very important to him.
In other words, if you interpret Bean's statements in light of what we say about the Van Allen belts, they make reasonable sense. The Van Allen belts were simply not as big a deal as conspiracy theorists make them out to be, and therefore not as big a concern to the crew. It's only when you interpret Bean's statements in light of Sibrel's ham-fisted attempt to describe the Van Allen belts and play up their supposed danger that they become "suspicious".
Sibrel has simply manufactured an inconsistency in much the same way all conspiracy theorists do. The conspiracists state their ignorant suppositions (offline, in cutaways, sidebars, or prose into which they will later inject the quotes) and then interpose or juxtapose statements from experts that either contradict them or seem odd in that context. Keep in mind the statements weren't given in that context.
Sorry, Turbonium, you have fallen for one of the oldest and best techniques in tabloid broadcast journalism.
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Post by sts60 on May 15, 2006 23:26:42 GMT -4
I really have to apologize for starting the thread and then not participating. I've been swamped. I'm glad I didn't chide turbonium for not responding right away!
Anyway, when I do get around to participating, I don't plan to discuss the "who said what" so much; others have done plenty of that, and quite well. What I hope to do is provide some specific answers to questions like I would like to know what research, if any, was ever done subsequently that invalidated the original findings that concluded substantial shielding was necessary to prevent radiation from harming or perhaps killing humans within the belts?
Your continued patience is appreciated.
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Post by stutefish on May 16, 2006 17:54:02 GMT -4
According to Virtual Apollo, each Astronaut was assigned to study and inform the design of a specific subsystem of the Apollo spacecraft. Each Astronaut was assigned to a different subsystem. As I recall, Bean was assigned to the recovery subsystem--everything from the parachutes to the recovery fleet itself.
Perhaps the Astronaut assigned to the "cislunar hazards mitigation subsystem", or whatever, would have been able to give a much more coherent and better informed answer to a question about the VAB.
I'm sure that even at 70, Bean could talk in great and accurate detail about the recovery subsystem.
(I'd look all this up, but as luck would have it, I donated my copy of Virtual Apollo to my nephew this past weekend. Speaking of which, does anyone know if the reissue will fix the major errors in the first edition?)
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Post by Kiwi on May 16, 2006 23:02:17 GMT -4
Quotes from Dave Scott, Apollo 15, in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (CD edition 1999), "Post-SEVA Activities":
109:36:16 Allen: Dave, this is Houston.
109:36:23 Scott: Go ahead.
109:36:25 Allen: Roger. (I) apologize (in advance) for the question, but are your radiation meters tucked away yet?
109:36:35 Scott: They sure are.
109:36:37 Allen: Okay, thank you.
109:36:41 Scott: Rog.
[Long Comm Break]
[The readings - 25011 for Dave and 08020 for Jim - don't make sense to Houston, but Joe is reluctant to have them dig the gages out since they can get an updated reading at the next opportunity. At 109:45:38, Houston asks Dave to take another look and, at that point, he reports 25017. A change in the last digit indicates an exposure of 0.01 rads. The average total dosage experienced by the Apollo 15 crew was 0.30 rads, about 1/4 of the 1.14 rad dose received by the Apollo 14 crew. The significantly higher Apollo 14 dose was due to the fact that the outbound and inbound trajectories for that mission passed much closer to the center of the Van Allen radiation belt.
[Readers should note that the gauges did not read 00000 at the start of the missions. They were set with initial non-zero readings so that there would be no doubt as to whose PRD was being read.]
[Scott - "If we had been overdosed, what were we going to do? Leave? (With a touch of sarcasm) After doing all this stuff: getting ready for tomorrow, the film magazines and the suits and the hammocks and all that - and the doctors want to check them again!?"]
[Scott - "I might make a serious comment. You have to ask yourself the question: what if there'd been a high level of radiation. Because we were in a period of very high solar flare activity. At the peak of the cycle. If there had been a solar flare, somebody would have told us. At some point in the training, that was a concern. Had there been a radiation event, we would have known before the radiation ever got to us. So when they start talking these dosimeters - and I don't mean to put it down lightly, because it's serious business. On the other hand, when you're sitting there with all these other things, and nobody has said anything about a flare, then why would you have any big deal on the radiation meters that you couldn't handle in the morning. I always hate to sound like somebody isn't important in the system. The doctors are very important, but sometimes one of those questions slips through that, when you compare it with the other things that are going on, it really isn't important. And the interesting thing is, they're telling us to get to bed. 'Hurry up, guys, get to bed so you can get some rest.' And we're doing that. And, six minutes later, somebody wants to know about the PRD? Wait a minute. There's one (example) where they dropped the ball. That was a time where they should have left us alone and let us get to sleep."]
[Jones - "I can imagine that, on the Flight Director loop, the question comes up from the Surgeon and they discuss it a little bit and Joe or the Flight Director says 'All right. We'll ask them if they've still got them out.']
[Scott - "Right. And if they don't have them out, it's over. That's absolutely right. I'm sure that's the way it went."]
109:43:39 Allen: Hello, Hadley Base; this is Houston. Over.
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Post by Kiwi on May 17, 2006 1:45:33 GMT -4
More from Dave Scott, "Post-EVA-1 Activities":
130:54:42 Parker: Roger, Dave.
[The following comment relates to the risks the crews were willing to take, as symbolized by the Personnel Radiation Dosimeters.]
[Scott - "Sights, smells, and sounds are different on the Moon than the Earth. We've talked about the smell of gunpowder in the cabin. And the sound taking off. Yeah, it's a totally different environment. And the radiation environment, which is another interesting thing. Man, everybody is really turned on about rad-hard things these days. And I don't think we had a lot of that discussion in those days, even though we were during a period of pretty high solar activity. In fact, we were peaked in the cycle; and I don't remember a discussion comparable to today's where everything's got to be rad-hard and it's a big deal. They bought our watches off the shelf. I don't think they were rad-hard. And I don't know how much protection we actually had."]
[Jones - "Not much."]
[Scott - "Was the Rover rad-hard? Because, now, when people talk about sending objects to the Moon, one big requirement is that they have to be rad-hard. And I keep thinking, is that another overkill? Especially things like little Rovers which are only going to be there for one lunar day. How much rad-hard do you have to have?"]
[Jones - "Something's that's going to be sitting there for a few years, you'd want it to be rad-hard. Well, you'd want to stick it underground for starters."]
[Scott - "Or, if you're going to get some big solar flare - which you probably don't know you're going to get...This (subject) just occurred to me in recent discussions about all these things having to be rad-hard. I know we had our personal dosimeters, and I wonder, are those the levels (300 millirad exposure during the entire mission, mostly due to passage through the van Allen belts) that give you great concern, or requires focused protection?"]
[Jones - "It depends on the level of risk you are willing to accept. And, for whatever reason, I don't think we are as willing to accept risks these days, as a society. To hell with what the pilots are willing to accept. If the media and the public won't accept it, it isn't going to happen."]
[We then looked in the Mission Report for the radiation exposure experienced by the Apollo 15 crew and saw that it was comparable with allowable exposures by radiation workers and "well below the threshold of detectable medical effects.']
[Scott - "This has to do with what we do next. And, as you say, we are no longer risk takers. Are we boxing ourselves into an intolerable canyon where we can't get out because we have so many requirements and so much protection and it gets to the point where it costs too much money? If I have to make everything rad-hard, then you're never going to go everywhere. It was not a big deal, as I recall. Did my helmet have a lot of lead in the top to protect me? I don't think it did. But, now, if you send a robot to the Moon, by god, everything had better be rad-hard. And people spend a lot of money on that."]
[Dave then switched to the subject of conservatism in other aspects of space operations.]
[Scott - "People are putting a lot of conservatism in for orbit-maintenance propellant (in the context of operations in low-earth-orbit, in lunar orbit, or in Mars orbit) because of all these maintenance maneuvers you're going to have to make to stay in the proper orbit. I don't remember that being a big deal, after the mascon thing was resolved early on. I happened to be talking to our (Apollo 15) Flight Director (Gerry Griffin), and I said, 'Gerry, do you remember any orbit maintenance to keep the orbit right? I don't remember that.' And he said, 'Well, I think maybe we sent you guys up a couple of maneuvers but less than a foot per second. And we were there for six days. But, today, you talk to people and they put lots of propellant in to maintain an orbit. Maybe it has to be more precise. But we had to be pretty precise to find the landing spot."]
[Jones - "And to make sure Al was in the right place to pick you guys up."]
[Scott - "Sure. Today's mindset just seems to be more and more restrictive, more conservative, riskless - to (the point) where you're never going to do anything. Or maybe we were just all stupid. Right? Like rendezvous. Today, it's all got to be closed-loop, autonomous, precise. Where ours was sort of back of the envelope. And I've been asked, 'Boy, didn't you guys worry about rendezvous on the lunar mission?' No, not really. And we nailed it. And Al could come get us if we didn't."]
[Jones - "You basically had to launch in the same plane that he was in and at the right time, within a second or three. And that was it."]
[Scott - "Yeah. I've also been looking at that. And I went through some of the old rendezvous documents and found that, on 15, during our training Jim and I had this time problem on our (lunar) work day. And part of the last work day (after EVA-3) was the typical lunar rendezvous, which took, I guess, four maneuvers. And Jim and I worked in the simulator to cut it down. Instead of four maneuvers, we cut it to two maneuvers, because we wanted to save two hours, maybe one rev difference. We figured by shortening the rendezvous, we could save two hours of our work time. And we took that from the simulator to the mission planning and analysis guys and they liked it and, in fact, they liked it so much that they used it on 14. So everybody went from the four impulse to the two impulse rendezvous which, in the beginning of Apollo, wouldn't have been heard of, because you'd never make it. And, yet, I think we all nailed it. I don't think anybody had any real problem with rendezvous.]
["And, yet, today the Shuttle has problems with their rendezvous. They've almost blown a couple. They've had serious problems because they've changed the rendezvous procedures. Shuttle rendezvous technique and procedure is different from Apollo. It's like, 'Wow, guys, where are you all going?' In fact, the story goes, when they started the development of the Shuttle rendezvous, John Young was in a meeting and said, 'Why don't we just do it like we did on Gemini and Apollo?' 'Oh, no, no, no. You can't do it like that. The Shuttle's different.' And they swept John to the back of the room, again. Anyway, this discussion drags out a lot of stuff, and that's why it's useful.]
["We may be drifting down paths and roads that, in whatever number of years when somebody wants to go back to the Moon, they won't be able to; and they'll have to go back to this to find out how it was done. Because they won't be able to do it with the conservative mindset and all that. They get too precise and too mathematical and they get afraid to do any serious engineering; whereas a great deal of what we did was serious engineering. I mean, engineers got in there and they made engineering judgments and built things that worked. And it may well be that, with the mindset and technology in 50 years - or 150 years - it won't be possible. And they'll have to go back to this and discipline themselves to throw all the conservatism and rad-hard and precision and whatever, 'cause it won't work. And go back to the stuff that, at least in one program, worked pretty well.]
["This is a sidelight but, these days, every time I run into something, I wonder if it's me or...And that's why this (mission review) is good, 'cause I'd like to go back and see what we really did. Like the radiation stuff. I say to myself, 'What are these guys talking all this rad-hard stuff? I must have missed something back in Apollo."]
[Jones - "Well, it must be easy enough to calculate the probability of losing a piece of equipment if you don't rad-hard it and compare the cost of all your rad-hard efforts. And I suspect the answer is that you don't gain a lot. 'Cause you waste a lot of money, and you make things heavier and more expensive."]
130:54:45 Parker: And one last comment to give you a good night's sleep. That little water leak you guys saw when you came in the cabin this afternoon. Right now, our plots are showing that as 25 pounds (about ten liters). Do you guys care to make any comments about the size of the leak, or anything more about that?
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Post by Kiwi on May 17, 2006 1:47:25 GMT -4
Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt, Apollo 17, "EVA-3 Return to the LM"):
169:12:57 Parker: Be fine. (Pause)
[AS17-143-21924 (**) is Jack's "locator" from behind the Rover. Note that the rake and scoop are missing, having fallen off at some time since they left Station 9. The Big Bag is mounted on the pallet. Gene's comparable photo, taken from his Rover seat, is AS17-134-20457. The SEP transmitter is to the right of the high-gain mast.]
[For future reference in determining the distance of the final Rover parking place from the LM, EP-2 is about 190 meters from the spacecraft.]
[Schmitt - (Comparing the EP-2 "locator" with the VIP site "locator", AS17-143-21932 (**)) "It looks like Gene parked the Rover about a third closer (actually about twenty percent) and, when that thing went off, the back of the Rover must have gotten splattered a little bit. This business of the explosives packages brings up the question of long duration activities on the Moon away from a radiation shelter and what you would do in the event of a solar particle event. We didn't worry about them because we figured that the probability was low enough that we'd just deal with whatever happened."]
[Cernan - "And we couldn't have dealt with big ones."]
[Schmitt - "But if you're going to have a lunar base, you're going to have some kind of emergency capability. You'll have maybe a half hour - possibly as much as an hour - warning, although nobody's quite worked that out yet. But one way to deal with it is to excavate a trench with a linear charge, drive the Rover over it (to form a roof), get into the trench and, with an umbilical, attach yourself to Rover consumables. You have the walls protecting you and you can even think about putting low molecular weight material (e.g. water) in the floor of the Rover to give you additional protection. It's a neat idea; and it actually comes from Jim Blacic up at Los Alamos. And the reason I brought it up here is that people say, 'Explosives on the Moon!?' And you've got to remind them that we've already done that."]
[Cernan - "I was just thinking that it would be neat to be able to take a little tour back to the valley of Taurus-Littrow and see what things look like. See where the Ascent Stage hit (on the South Massif); see where the Rover is splattered with material from that bomb; see the remnants of the Descent Stage. Even if you had to do it remotely, I would really like to see what that area looks like."]
169:13:04 Cernan: You going to get on, Jack, or walk back? Dealer's choice.
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