Photographs left on LM landing pad...

[mosis2]

www.aulis.com/jackstudies_1.html

Second set of photos up from the bottom - why are there photos left on the landing pad? These are visible on the NASA version of the photo too, at:

www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/as15-87-11839HR.jpg

A few points: why is there so much dust under the module? Funny how that engine managed to not blow it all away, nor leave any trace of its activity.
Isn't it odd that the side of the lunar module seems to be made of bits of paper stuck together with sticky tape... (Top part of the picture, the light part of the LM).

[LunarOrbit]

This has already been discussed in this thread.

[nomuse]

Oh, HNM. Not the photographs one again!

[3onthetree]

Ah.
I must admit I was sucked in by the 10 by 8 photo on the pad argument for a little while. It turned me right off looking at scans of scans of scans etc etc ...
Bits of ripped up aluminium kind of makes more sense.

[nomuse]

Am I imagining things, or does the ground look a lot smoother under the LM....as if swept, even?

I find it amazing that someone could look at these photographs showing kilometers of detailed surface quite unlike this Earth, and all kinds of bits of an elaborate and specific technology, and think the craftsmen that would have created a fake-up of this quality would slip up and do a crappy job on the broad surface of the most foreground item -- the LM itself.

On the one hand, they've imagined some film crew working to a script so specific they could match journals, recollections, video, stills, radio transmissions and telemetry... and yet assume last-minute directorial intrusions and obvious slip-ups such that the back sides of props are allowed on screen and random objects (like Polaroid photographs) are left on the sound stage.

[reynoldbot]

I think this claim has always been kind of ironic since a photograph was left on the surface and photographed by an astronaut intentionally, but somehow even if the objects on the LM were photographs that is somehow indicative of a hoax.

[JayUtah]

A few points: why is there so much dust under the module?

Complex question.

The lunar regolith is several meters thick. You don't get bedrock until you start going down into some substantial craters. The upper few centimeters of the regolith is fairly loose and so easily disturbed by a rocket plume and even more easily by feet. Mechanical pressure is generally more disruptive by nature than fluid pressure.

But under those few top centimeters you have the same basic material, only in a compacted form. While direct downward pressure has little effect on displacing it, "scouring" from a fluid will continue to loosen and displace individual particles. If you want to watch fluid erosion proceed to exhaustion, you might have to wait until the LM engine scours its way down through several meters of material.

I live in a desert. The structure of the soil is not very different from that on the moon, except of course we do have some ground water and some organic material in the soil. But what we have, in the dryest case, is some loose surface material on top of some compacted surface material that can actually bear quite a lot of weight. Bedrock is far below. And when we have any action that disturbs the material, we get as much dust for as long as you care to observe it.

The real point is that since the regolith looks essentially the same for many meters down, it would be hard to tell how much loose or loosely-compacted material had actually been removed by seeing photographs directly under the nozzle. You'd want to crawl under there with a stick and poke at the regolith and see how compacted it is relative to nearby areas. That would help you understand how far down the engine dug. And since most of the photographs are taken of areas quite far removed from the nozzle, there's little point in drawing a conclusion from it.

Funny how that engine managed to not blow it all away, nor leave any trace of its activity.

Second point first. Look at the pictures from Apollo 11. There is definitely a visible effect of the plume on the ground. Later missions weren't that interested in the plume effects on the regolith and so didn't photograph it closely. And so the dust commonly claimed to be "under" the LM is merely near the footpads and nowhere near the area directly affected by the plume. If you know what you're looking for you can see plume effects all around the LM, but they're subtle.

"That engine" begs the question. Rocket engines are not universally powerful, nor are their plumes equally erosive. The rocket engine at that point is operating at about 2,500 lbf thrust, or about that produced by a 747's engines at idle, or 1/10 of the thrust of a Hawker Harrier hovering.

Almost half that thrust is "pressure" thrust, or thrust that isn't derived from the conservation of momentum and would thus have nothing to do with plume effects. So if you have 1,500 lbf of pressure spread over the area of the exhaust nozzle, that works out to minimal loading. And that's a best-case scenario. In a vacuum-tuned nozzle with normal plume dispersal, 90% of your exhaust product mass is contained in a cone with a half-angle of 45 degrees. At a height of two meters that's a very substantial area and very little loading.

From the films of the descent it's very difficult to see exactly how much dust is being displaced by the plume. Crew reports vary as to how much surface was actually visible through the sheet of departing dust. But there is simply no evidentiary basis to conclude that the raw amount of dust displaced by the engine must have been colossal, or should have been.

Isn't it odd that the side of the lunar module seems to be made of bits of paper stuck together with sticky tape...

No, it isn't.

Jack White's training in journalism does not qualify him to comment intelligently on spacecraft design and construction methods. He's just begging the question. Apparently, according to him, spacecraft are supposed to be built like Sherman tanks.

The descent stage doesn't have anyone living in it. Its contents are mounted to the structural beams, and all you need is to protect them from the thermal effects of sunlight and a bit of space dust. It really doesn't take much construction to do that. What you're seeing is the outermost of about 20 layers of metalized polymer film. In many cases it's aluminized Mylar or Kapton with the polymer side out. What White thinks is "paper" is a material called H-film turned inside out with the nickel side showing. When you metalize a polymer, the metal side acquires a matte finish.

Believe me, that "paper" is incredibly tough. You could lay it across the gas burner on your stove and it won't do much to it. Apollo used quite thin versions, but the stuff I've used is 3 mils thick and you can pull as hard as you want and you won't tear it. Since all you need is shade and a way to disperse the impact of space dust, the lighter the matieral the better. You need to keep your spacecraft as light as you can. We still use those methods today because they work.

Now when you're dealing with films, tape is the only reliable way of fastening it because it spreads the stress of fastening over the whole dimension of material instead of concentrating it on certain stress points. When you use a piercing fastener or you create holes for fasteners spaced periodically, you establish those stress points and the material tears more readily. The tape is made from the same backing as the material itself, with industrial-strength pressure-sensitive adhesive on it.

Get a piece of aluminum foil. Now thumbtack it to your wall in a few places. Pull on the foil and see how easily it tears away. Now get another piece and use masking tape to tape it to the wall. You can pull much harder on it without the foil tearing. That's how this particular piece of engineering works. Your thumbtacks concentrated the tension on a few localized places in the foil while the tape spread the tension over a long, continuous extent of the material. Tape is not always a sign of poor workmanship. That's why engineering needs to be done by engineers instead of blowhards like Jack White.

[sts60]

Geez, I didn't even notice the flimsy-LM comment. We went through this at length with star/lordoftherings many months ago, who insisted that NASA was "disrespecting" everyone by not making a prettier spacecraft. Never mind several people, including space engineers, pointing out how it reflected actual engineering practice; she knew better. As did Moon Man, margamatix, etc.

Yes, real spacecraft use tape and thin films and foils and blankets. No, real spacecraft don't look like the flying industrial refineries of which Hollywood is so fond. I know mosis2 has changed his opinion, but if he's interested in reading more about it, he should search back (what, a year now?) for posts involving "Kapton", "H-film", and "Mylar". He should also download the LM operations manuals and structure handouts (handily compiled here by Bob Andrepont).

[JayUtah]

A better reference is Scott Sullivan's Virtual LM. He redacts many of those sources and provides a clearer reference to the various skin materials used on the LM.

[kevb]

No tracks
No dust
No stars
No sense

[brotherofthemoon]

kevb said:

No tracks
No dust
No stars
No sense

Well, I'm convinced now! ::)x1000

[nomuse]

Now that's a succinct and efficient HB for you.

He doesn't post any claim, any idea, any argument. He very nearly posts in code; unless you are familiar with a great many of the HB claims you won't even understand what he is alluding to. But since he has alluded in only the most general sense (there are many specific claims I am familiar with that could possibly fit the bill) it is not possible to make any specific refutation. To do so would risk the "No, I didn't mean the lack of tracks behind the rover in THAT pic....I meant this OTHER pic!"

All I can do is reply with a similar set;

No argument
No understanding
No clue

[Kiwi]

nomuse said:

No argument
No understanding
No clue

Hear, hear!

[sts60]

No tracks
No dust

There are plenty of examples of tracks, and dust clearly disturbed in a 1/6 G vacuum environment.

No stars

Stars where photogrpaphed from the lunar surface during Apollo 16. Stars were photographed during orbital night during Apollo.

If you are saying somelike the astronauts shold have seen a sky full of brilliant stars, it is up to you to quantify how many they could have theoretically seen when dark-adapted, and exactly how an astronaut on the lunar dayside could become dark-adapted. No handwaving allowed.

No sense

Your post makes enough sense to be understood, but since you are simply posting a few often-debunked claims without any support whatsoever, it fails completely.

If you want to make specific claims and support them, please go ahead. But if the above is all you're going to post-and-run, then you neither deserve nor will you receive any attention.

[dwight]

No manners
No ability to constructively interact with fellow humans
No education
No wonder

-and now everybody!!!-