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Post by gwiz on May 19, 2006 7:17:50 GMT -4
We did not know, when Apollo's manned missions began, what the effects of space radiation were on living organisms in a weightless environment.False: Biosatellite 2, operated in 1967. The results are that microgravity has no significant effect on a primate's response to ionizing radiation. None was suspected. You're getting your Biosatellites a bit mixed up, Jay. Biosatellite 2, like the failed Biosatellite 1, didn't carry a primate, though it did investigate the combination of zero-g and radiation on plants, insects and frogspawn. Biosatellite 3 was the only monkey flight as the second one was cancelled due to complaints from the animal rights movement. However, the Russians subsequently launched several monkeys in their Bion series, with some NASA participation in the later missions. I've never seen it claimed that Bonny's dehydration was due to a failure of the satellite. The story as I heard it was that he refused to drink, possibly due to depression brought about by the combination of the intrusive instrumentation and failure to come to terms with zero-g. Edit to add: Or possibly the now well-known zero-g fluid retention/ loss of thirst effect? Edit to add: Incidentally, the combination of radiation and zero-g on a mammal had already been tested by the Russian Kosmos 110 flight of two dogs in 1966. This flew into the lower part of the Van Allen belts for three weeks, giving the dogs a dose of 12 rads, more than any human astronaut received before the long-duration space-station missions.
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Post by SpitfireIX on May 19, 2006 7:41:13 GMT -4
Hello, all-- Just a friendly note to anyone who might still think that facts or logic can possibly persuade turbonium to reconsider his conspiracist views--you may want to check out the recently revived JFK thread on bautforum.com. See especially pages 12 and 13. [edit: hyperlink]
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Post by gwiz on May 19, 2006 7:42:43 GMT -4
Second - unknown, or poorly known, deep space hazards. For example, microwave radiation was only detected in 1965. In pure form, it is non-ionizing and not detectable with the MG counters used by Apollo, and as mentioned earlier, by Van Allen. But it certainly is capable of being lethal to living organisms under certain conditions, as we are aware of today. If the levels of microwave radiation had been lethal in deep space, we would quite easily have not known about it during Apollo missions. First time I've ever heard the cosmic microwave background described as a hazard. It wasn't detected before 1965 because it is incredibly faint. You get a much higher microwave dose at the same frequencies just from the sun, and people have been known to survive that for as long as 120 years.
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Post by echnaton on May 19, 2006 8:51:39 GMT -4
Hello, all-- Just a friendly note to anyone who might still think that facts or logic can possibly persuade turbonium to reconsider his conspiracist views--you may want to check out the recently revived JFK thread on bautforum.com. See especially pages 12 and 13. [edit: hyperlink] There is always a hope that he may one day see the error of his ways!
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Post by JayUtah on May 19, 2006 9:27:15 GMT -4
I've never seen it claimed that Bonny's dehydration was due to a failure of the satellite.
As earlier I may be inappropriately combining occurrences on different missions. My notes have less to do with biology and more to do with engineering. The technical problems with the spacecraft were not singular or severe, just many and annoying.
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Post by PhantomWolf on May 19, 2006 9:29:56 GMT -4
The leap in going from orbiting Earth to landing men on the Moon is, to you, reasonable and logical. To me, it' s prepostorous.
But that is of course not what happened. NASA went from sub orbit, to low earth orbit, to rendezvous, to docking, to highly elliptical orbits, to orbiting the moon, to practicing a moon landing. All of these steps are needed to do the actual landing on the moon. You tend to overlook those things that are inconvenient to you position
I thonk this needs to be pointed out a few more times. Apollo 11 didn't just apear from nothing. Turbonuim claims they should have taken small stepos, but he ignores that this is EXACTLY what they did.
Mercury
Sub-Orbital Flights Orbital Flights
Gemini
Rendezvous with a Target object Docking with Targets Firing secondary burn to create highly elipical orbits.
Apollo 8
Extention of the ellipical Orbit Entering Lunar Orbit Exiting Lunar Obit
Apollo 10
Undocking Lunar Lander Descenting to landing position Redocking in lunar orbit
The -ONLY[/i]- thing that Apollo 11 did that no-one had previously was go from the holding orbit that 10 was in to the actual landing itself. That was the "Huge Jump" that Turbonuim and others seem to think is so impossible.
If the levels of microwave radiation had been lethal in deep space, we would quite easily have not known about it during Apollo missions.
Microwaves are not effected by magnetic fields and so the VA Belts would have no effect on them. If they were of a high enough level to be fatal on the moon, they would be fatal to anyone in Earth Orbit and we'd know about it here on the surface too as the atmosphere would not intirely shield against them. The only Radiation that could possibly be greater outside of Earth orbit is chatrged particle radiation and that is detecable.
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Post by SpitfireIX on May 19, 2006 9:39:06 GMT -4
Hello, all-- Just a friendly note to anyone who might still think that facts or logic can possibly persuade turbonium to reconsider his conspiracist views--you may want to check out the recently revived JFK thread on bautforum.com. See especially pages 12 and 13. [edit: hyperlink] There is always a hope that he may one day see the error of his ways! True--that's one reason I have continued to debate him as long as I have. As I mentioned on bautforum.com, he actually showed some signs of reason in an earlier Pearl Harbor conspiracy discussion. Sadly, he is clearly a JFK true believer.
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Post by PhantomWolf on May 19, 2006 9:50:00 GMT -4
True--that's one reason I have continued to debate him as long as I have.
After the FEA discussion here and on the BAUT I was feed up with him to the point i declared I wasn't posteing anymore, but somehow I still do think perhaps there is some sort of hope for the boy. I think it's a vain hope though. Perhaps sanity will prevail one day and I'll stop discussion with him for good.
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Post by Jason Thompson on May 19, 2006 9:58:28 GMT -4
Turbonuim claims they should have taken small stepos, but he ignores that this is EXACTLY what they did.
Indeed, and let's elaborate on it a bit more, shall we?
Unmanned satellites
Prior to Apollo there were many and varied unmanned satellites that produced reams of data about the environment in low Earth orbit and cislunar space. These included the Explorer series, many of which measured the radiation, the Lunar Orbiter series that included radiation measurements in lunar orbit, and the Pegasus satellites that returned invaluable data on micrometeoroid levels.
Project Mercury
Beginning with unmanned test flights, they then progressed to suborbital manned flight (Freedom 7 and Liberty Bell 7), then to orbital flight. Initially three orbits (Friendship 7 and Aurora 7), then six (Sigma 7), then more than a full day in space (Faith 7).
Project Gemini
Gemini 3 was a three-orbit shakedown, but even they scored a first by altering their on-orbit trajectory.
Gemini 4 included the first EVA.
Gemini 5 extended duration to 8 days in weightlessness.
Gemini 6 demonstrated rendezvous by meeting Gemini 7 in orbit.
Gemini 7 extended manned duration of spaceflight to 14 days.
Gemini 8 performed the first docking.
Geminis 9, 10, 11 and 12 perfected rendezvous and docking, including attempting visual tracking, radar-less rendezvous, and fewer orbits required to make the rendezvous, down to the first revolution. They also included more EVA work. Gemini 10 and Gemini 11 achieved altitude records by increasing their apogees to around 400 and 800 miles respectively.
All Gemini flights demonstrated the effectiveness of hardware such as fuel cells being developed for Apollo, flight computers, spacesuit design, etc. They also produced vast amount of biomedical data concerning man's ability to operate in space.
Apollo
Unmanned CSM flights and an unmanned LM test flight preceded Apollo 7, which tested the CSM in Earth orbit. Apollo 9 tested the CSM and LM in Earth orbit. Apollo 8 demonstrated moving into orbit around another body, and Apollo 10 took the LM down to 50,000 feet above the lunar surface. Apollo 11just crossed that last 50,000 feet, so was no giant leap in terms of progress, whatever Turbonium may like to believe.
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Post by Jason Thompson on May 19, 2006 10:00:24 GMT -4
However, all this detracts from the main point of this debate. We are all still waiting for turbonium to provide evidence that the space environment was impassable.
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Post by hplasm on May 19, 2006 10:03:39 GMT -4
However, all this detracts from the main point of this debate. We are all still waiting for turbonium to provide evidence that the space environment was impassable. I believe the term is 'Searing Radiation Hell'....
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Post by brotherofthemoon on May 19, 2006 10:12:13 GMT -4
However, all this detracts from the main point of this debate. We are all still waiting for turbonium to provide evidence that the space environment was impassable. I believe the term is 'Searing Radiation Hell'.... If you believe Moon Man, you still need to get past the Scorching Lunar Vaccusphere, a 250-degree wall of nothingness that surrounds the Moon out to a distance of perhaps 30 miles.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on May 19, 2006 10:43:52 GMT -4
Unmanned probes did not stop while the manned programme was in progress. Prior to Apollo, and continuing during Apollo, there were Rangers, Mariners, Surveyors etc going to the Moon, Mercury and Mars, plus Soviet missions to Venus.
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Post by JayUtah on May 19, 2006 12:56:06 GMT -4
However, all this detracts from the main point of this debate.
Exactly. The current tangent derives from a statement I made (i.e., "Animal flight test doesn't really help") in the context of a radiation argument. It's perfectly valid in that context, but Turbonium tried to refute it by improperly expanding the context. Animal testing is helpful in other ways. The tap-dancing attempt to tie them together is a red herring.
So it is less useful to show the progression in overall engineering and procedural expertise leading up to Apollo than it is to focus on the progression of engineering pertaining narrowly to radiation. In that narrow discussion it is appropriate to note that expertise in space radiation preceeded the buildup to Apollo, continued after it, and that interest in space radiation had goals other than to validate Apollo's radiation hazard mitigation strategy.
Turbonium is making the tacit and wrong assumption that all research on biology and radiation must be applicable to Apollo. If it was done after Apollo and found something, then Apollo is somehow negligent. If it was done after Apollo and used different methodology, then Apollo is deficient for not having used that methodology. All that is vague handwaving.
If the question is whether sufficient research was done to support Apollo, you have to know specifically what Apollo's needs were and what needed to be known to satisfy those needs and what the acceptable ways were of acquiring that knowledge. "Well, they should have done this or that just to be sure," is not a sufficient argument. It's begging the question.
We are all still waiting for turbonium to provide evidence that the space environment was impassable.
And unfortunately I don't anticipate much useful progress. Turbonium has shown he's much more interested in rhetorical brownie points than in arriving at the truth. He presents an argument he admits is incomplete, and tries to make it someone else's job to finish it.
There are two readily apparent problems with all that. First, Dr. Van Allen has specifically cut to the chase and repudiated the outcome of the discussion. We don't need to have it -- or at least the part of it that focuses on Dr. Van Allen's research. It doesn't matter what Turbonium proposes to read into Van Allen's other writings. Turbonium is taking the predictably indirect route: building up a case by inference. If the conclusion is observable per se, inference is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if someone comes up with a line of inference that concludes Van Allen's research "really" argues for the impossibility of Apollo. Van Allen's position on the viability of Apollo according to cislunar radiation is specific and explicit.
Second, Turbonium has already stated his conclusion. The fact that he's now in the middle of an incomplete argument to support it all but admits the conclusion is based on no argument and simply on belief. If Turbonium's belief is not to be considered post-justified then it must have a complete argument standing by.
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Post by SpitfireIX on May 19, 2006 16:27:18 GMT -4
Turbonium has shown he's much more interested in rhetorical brownie points than in arriving at the truth. He presents an argument he admits is incomplete, and tries to make it someone else's job to finish it.
Even worse, when someone else brings the argument to a conclusion he doesn't like, turbonium simply refuses to accept the conclusion. I don't want to hijack this thread, but I would like to present one particularly egregious example for those who lack the time or the interest to extensively review the JFK thread I linked above.
In an attempt to impeach the Single Bullet Theory, turbonium claimed that the doctors who attempted to save Kennedy's life at Parkland hospital had "solidly established" that the wound in the President's throat was an entry wound, when in fact that was only informed speculation. I presented testimony given by the doctors to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations that their appraisals were simply educated guesses, that the wound could in fact have been either an entry or an exit wound, that they could not have been certain which it was because they hadn't conducted a proper examination, and that they completely agreed with the autopsy report's characterization of the throat wound as "presumably of exit." I also quoted from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that emergency physicians frequently confuse entry and exit wounds, particularly in the case of multiple gunshot wounds.
turbonium attempted to handwave away all of this evidence, even going so far as to claim that the JAMA study is "irrelevant" to the issue, and that he could cite a study showing just the opposite. I requested that he do so three weeks ago; so far no citation has been forthcoming.
Clearly he refuses to be convinced, no matter how overwhelming the evidence.
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