jupiter2's Moon rocks thread

[Jason Thompson]

Since the previosu thread is growing ludicrously long and jupiter2 insists on starting another topic, I've answered him in this thread.

From what I understand from reading the official history of the program its been a tug of war between NASA and scientists wanting to see these rocks

And why is your interpretation valid? The Moon rocks are currently priceless, since we have no immediate way of getting any more. It is standard practice in science for a limited supply of material to be handed out only to those who can provide a sound justification for wanting them. Telescope time at major observatories or with Hubble is handled just the same way.

which are supposedly guarded like Fort Knox, never allowed to be seen .

They are allowed to be seen and used, but only to those who provide a reasonable justification for doing so. I have personally seen and handled the samples they put in educational packs.

NASA put them in an radiation oven and tried to irradiated them,

Meaningless. What is a radiation oven, and how does irradiation alter the characteristics of the rock put in there?

NASA has recently been spreading the word that the moonrocks similarity to earth rocks are because the moon came from the earth.

Nothing recent about it. Moon rocks were recognizable as basalts and anorthosites the second they were picked up by the astronauts.

So in addition to stonewalling astronomers on the star photos

Don’t try to hide other claims in an argument. What ‘stonewalling’ is going on with regard to star photos?

scientists were never given real moonrocks to examine either!

So why does every geologist who has ever managed to get some for study agree that they came from the Moon?

Im talking about then 69,70, etc. who knows what theve manufactured by now.

So you admit your argument is baseless then? Do you have anything other than speculation and innuendo regarding actual manufacture of fake rocks?

But then, scientists never saw any rocks to study.

Evidence?

They got moondust collected by the unmanned probes, which never had the capability to lift and scoop heavy objects.

And what unmanned probes would these be. Can you provide one single piece of evidence that any unmanned sample return mission was carried out by NASA? Just one? No, you require there to have been unmanned sample return missions in order for your ‘theory’ about faked lunar samples to hold up.

What was the reason for Werner Vaun Braun's little trek to the South Pole before the Eagle had landed?

It’s called ‘vacation’. People do it all the time, and Antarctica is a fascinating place.
I guess they have some interesting meteorite down there that NASA figured they could pass of as legit at the time.

Nope, the first lunar meteorite was not identified until after Apollo, and it was identified as such by comparing it with Apollo samples. But even if they were going to Antarctica to collect lunar meteorites, why send von Braun, a rocket scientist, rather than a geologist who might actually have some hope of recognizing what he was picking up?

Did you know Von braun suddenly quit the NASA Space Program a few years after .Perhaps he was tired of trying to aquire meteorites to be passed of as lunar material?

Or he realised that his visions of rockets to Mars were not going to be supported by NASA and therefore left for something else to do.

Von Braun had told NASA point blank a spacecraft would have to have 4 feet of lead shielding and be the size of the Queen Mary to protect humans from the radiation, micrometeorites, and solar flares. and that was just to get to the moon!

Provide the reference for this claim or else retract it.

No payload is going to lift that kind of size and weight into space.

Please go and look up what words like ‘payload’ actually mean before using them in an argument.

Imagine that, a Nazi with a conscience!

Like Oskar Schindler, you mean?

Now tell me this is wrong and that thousands of scientists have moonrock paperweights on their desks.

No, it is right, and justifiably so. On what basis do you assume people should be given free reign to pick up and handle/contaminate every lunar sample brought back, thus rendering it worthless for study? Geologists only need a few grams of material, if that, for study.

Lunar material from unmanned probes which once in a while would land safele, being much lighter craft, yes,

Prove that such craft existed. There is a vast supply of evidence for Apollo, and NONE WHATSOEVER for any unmanned sample reurn craft.

Then NASA puts out this story of the infamous "GENESIS ROCK". which no one can touch, just observe. Its a great story of how one of the astronauts just tripped over it while walking on the moon immediately saw how "special" it was and brought it back to earth. Tell me what makes it special besides the fact that no one is allowed touch it?

Why are we obliged to do your work for you? Why don’t you go and read up on what the geologists were looking for on the Moon and what the significance is yourself?

So we have demonstarted ignorance of Apollo and its objectives, basic technical terminology, specualtion and handwaving about mythical unmanned sample return probes, a 'radiation oven' and some crap about Wernher von Braun, lunar meteorites, NAzis and lead shielding.

Jupiter2, do you have ANYTHING of value to bring to these discussions?

[Grand Lunar]

I'll add my own viewpoints.


Reading your original post, Jupiter2 it seems you've gone from "wanting to believe" to the same level that Joe Rogan is at.
Have you ever retracted that statement, BTW? That you want to believe? If what you said was true, then I don't believe you'd call Apollo a "fairy tale".

From what I understand from reading the official history of the program its been a tug of war between NASA and scientists wanting to see these rocks which are supposedly guarded like Fort Knox, never allowed to be seen .

Consider the limited supply. It's not like we can get the rocks whenever we want. No, we must wait about a decade before we can do that again.

But as for "never allowed to be seen", that's a bucket of bilge water. They have been seen, examined, and tested.

The charge is "moorocks" were to be faked . NASA put them in an radiation oven and tried to irradiated them, but for the most part werent happy with the results.

Ah, straight from the mind of Kaysing, I believe.
Explain how this "radiation oven" can alter the age of the rocks to appear older than Earth rocks, simulate solar wind and cosmic rays, micrometeorite pitting, and alter the chemical makeup to show that the rock never was in an oxygen and water environment.

NASA has recently been spreading the word that the moonrocks similarity to earth rocks are because the moon came from the earth.

Evidence for this "spreading the word".
Hoax believers spread that word, that's for sure. But I've seen nothing that says that NASA has said anything to this effect.

I believe this may be true but NASA used the argument to bolster their claims that they have these rocks some 850 pounds of them in a secure place where they cant be contaminated by air and allowed to erode in any way, like letting scientists actually see them?

The rocks have been seen, and I mentioned before. You're not doing so good in the research department, are you?

So in addition to stonewalling astronomers on the star photos scientists were never given real moonrocks to examine either!

Oh, so now you're going on about the lack of stars?
That's even worse.
First, the astronauts were sent to photograph the moon, not the stars.
Second, show me how you can properly expose a brightly lit foreground and relatively dim stars in the same frame.
And third, the perspective of the stars would not change much between Earth and the moon. You'd have to travel very far to get a different perspective.

But then, scientists never saw any rocks to study.

Says who?

They got moondust collected by the unmanned probes, which never had the capability to lift and scoop heavy objects.

Reference?

Or they got rocks found right here on earth,

Evidence please. And explanations too, as mentioned earlier.

What was the reason for Werner Vaun Braun's little trek to the South Pole before the Eagle had landed?

Ever hear of a vacation?
It's not far-fetched. I myself have would like to vacation there.
As pointed out, that's exactly what Von Braun did; he took a vacation. End of story, end of claims.

I guess they have some interesting meteorite down there that NASA figured they could pass of as legit at the time.

The lunar meteorites weren't known as such until after Apollo rocks were studied.
Also, why sent a rocket scientist? Why not a geologist?

Did you know Von braun suddenly quit the NASA Space Program a few years after.

After Apollo ended (there's another clue for you), Von Braun was "promoted" to a powerless desk job.
Can you blame him for quitting?

This newspaper blurb about NASA circa late 60's early 70's I found is from around that time and its very telling of the point im trying to make:

"On the whole the early work on the Apollo 11 samples was more intriguing than revealing. A few scientists were willing, on the basis of the results presented at the Houston conference, to discard one or more theories of lunar origin, but most were not. One commented, "some still like the moon hot; some like it cold." Many called attention to the limitations of the data and the futility of drawing sweeping conclusions with information from such a small area. One of them put it in perspective with the comment, "what I looked at was an area equal to the size of three postage stamps and a thimbleful of material"; another remarked facetiously, "our results are based on the wanton destruction of two grams [about the weight of a dime] of lunar material."

Very sarcastic wouldnt you say. ?
NASA stonewalling maybe? (pun intended)

It seems you're taking this out of context.

The lunar origin theories referred to are those that described how the moon formed. Theories had to thrown out, because the Apollo rocks did not support those theories. A new theory, now widely accepted today, came about from analyzing the Apollo rocks (yet another clue for you).

Von Braun had told NASA point blank a spacecraft would have to have 4 feet of lead shielding and be the size of the Queen Mary to protect humans from the radiation, micrometeorites, and solar flares. and that was just to get to the moon!

This sounds like it either came from Kaysing or Ralph Rene (or both).
What is your reference?

If you left the ship you would be killed by other types of radiiation.

So the spacewalks by the shuttle and ISS astronauts are fake too?

Imagine that, a Nazi with a conscience!

Like Oskar Schindler?

Heres another "read between the lines" newspaper story about the moonrocks:

WASHINGTON -- Thirty years after they were picked up and hauled back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts, the 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of moon rocks still have not given up all their secrets.

For starters, scientists don't know which craters the rocks came from or the origin of all the cosmic objects that smashed into the moon over the past 4 billion years. If those objects were water-rich comets, as some have suspected, why didn't the water remain in the rocks?

"There's a lot we don't know but we're finding things all the time," said Graham Ryder, a geologist and staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston.

The moon rocks were collected between 1969 and 1972 on six Apollo missions from different sites near the lunar equator.
The astronauts brought back 2,415 separate bits of the moon ranging in size from a grain of sand to nearly the diameter of a basketball.

Most of the Apollo samples are at the lunar sample building at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, stored in dry nitrogen to keep them moisture-free. There they are sliced and diced with chisels or diamond-tipped saws to be sent to researchers around the world.

"The samples are so precious that we don't get to touch them at all," said Ryder, 51, who helped catalogue the rocks at JSC from 1978 to 1982. He has been at LPI since 1984.

"They can only be touched with aluminum, stainless steel or teflon to avoid contamination. Even the rubber gloves you use have to be covered with teflon," he said.

A smaller number of moon rocks also are stored in a vault at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio for permanent safekeeping.

About 40 or 50 scientists around the world still are investigating the moon rocks. They have to apply to the curators at JSC with a detailed explanation of how they plan to use the samples and what they hope to learn.

Researchers are only allowed few tens of milligrams at a time -- about the size of a cube of sugar or smaller. The samples typically arrive by registered mail packed in a teflon bag.
Only a few kilograms, about six or seven pounds, have been pulverized or destroyed in the scientific process, Ryder said.
"Some of them are totally consumed depending on the analytical technique you're using," he said. "I've had some that I ground up into to a powder and fused into a glass bead. In other cases, you might add chemicals that would effectively destroy the sample."


Now tell me this is wrong and that thousands of scientists have moonrock paperweights on their desks.

It seems more like that you don't have a clue as to what was being said in that article.
In essence, it mentions that there is still more to learn from these moon rocks, and that it describes how one goes about examining them.
There's no "reading between the lines" required here. You simply invented that in hopes of trying to find support for your viewpoint.

Lunar material from unmanned probes which once in a while would land safely, being much lighter craft, yes, 850 pounds of small to large moonrocks. Never seen them-never will.

What are you talking about here?
The 850 pounds of material was brought back by six manned missions. Where are you getting this stuff on unmanned probes? JayUtah, BTW, gave a good synopsis about using unmanned probes to return as much as Apollo did over it's time frame.

Then NASA puts out this story of the infamous "GENESIS ROCK". which no one can touch, just observe. Its a great story of how one of the astronauts just tripped over it while walking on the moon immediately saw how "special" it was and brought it back to earth. Tell me what makes it special besides the fact that no one is allowed touch it?

And who says no one can touch it?

All I see from you is a load of baseless claims and suppositions. Just sad.

[petereldergill]

Until then i am not likely to believe the myth of the "moonrocks"


underline mine

I like how the moonrocks are now a myth!

Pete

[sts60]

I for one will not indulge jupiter2 in the "lay low and then change the subject" routine, until he answers the rebuttals to his claims in the FACT OR FICTION thread. I respectfully suggest you do the same, and embargo further replies to his change-of-subject until he has either answered the previous challenges, or conceded his errors.

[JayUtah]

...with the Apollo story, or fairy tale, whatever you want to call it.

I'll continue to call it well-established and thoroughly documented history, if you don't mind. And so much for your claim that you really want to believe in Apollo but just can't. You're just going down the standard, long-debunked list of conspiracy theorist ignorance and calling it your own. No original thought there.

From what I understand from reading the official history of the program...

But in the LM stability thread it was aptly demonstrated that you don't understand the program, nor understand what you read about the program. So rather that you summarizing what you've read, you need to provide exact references to what you've been reading so that we can see how badly you've misinterpreted this material too.

And no, Bill Kaysing's book does not count as the "official history" of the program.

...its been a tug of war between NASA and scientists...

Which exact scientists have complained? I want names and references to their complaints so that I can verify they actually exist. Otherwise you're just handwaving.

...wanting to see these rocks which are supposedly guarded like Fort Knox...

Why supposedly? Do you actually know? Or are you just guessing?

...never allowed to be seen.

Do you have any idea how many hundreds of scientists all over the world have studied the Apollo samples and published papers on them?

NASA put them in an radiation oven and tried to irradiated them, but for the most part werent happy with the results.

Bill Kaysing doesn't know what a radiation oven is or is supposed to do to rocks, and neither do you. Nevertheless he says that mythical, magical device is how NASA is supposed to have endowed the samples with the properties that scientists find so fascinating.

NASA has recently been spreading the word that the moonrocks similarity to earth rocks are because the moon came from the earth.

Oddly enough, so are the Russians. They got their own lunar surface samples themselves without NASA's assistance or involvement.

So in addition to stonewalling astronomers on the star photos...

Careful: your agenda is showing. Couldn't resist that extra dig at NASA, could you?

...scientists were never given real moonrocks to examine either! Im talking about then 69,70, etc.

LOL! What pure fantasy! I think Sts60 has the link to the list of international scientists who were given Apollo samples to study almost immediately. Your propensity to fabricate fanciful histories and timelines boggles the mind. Just how much reality do you propose to rewrite in order to make your "reluctant" belief seem real to you?

...who knows what theve manufactured by now.

You certainly don't.

They got moondust collected by the unmanned probes, which never had the capability to lift and scoop heavy objects.

Which probe would that be? Who made it? Where was it launched? Where did it land? How were you able to determine that it couldn't lift heavy objects?

Or they got rocks found right here on earth.

Which is it? Mythical space probe, or earthbound lunites?

Here's how it usually works. People who once believed in something typically lose their faith in it because of a more clearly established proposition to the contrary. When that happens, they can describe that refutory proposition in depth. On the other hand, people who want to believe in anything but a certain thing typically grasp at any and all straws that present themselves, no matter how flimsy or farfetched.

Now which approach does your activity here look most like? Aren't you, in fact, a dedicated conspiracy theorist? Isn't your objection to Apollo based on a predetermined belief that you're trying to uphold, not a reluctant realization?

What was the reason for Werner Vaun Braun's little trek to the South Pole before the Eagle had landed?

He went on vacation, and it was no secret. That doesn't keep conspiracy theorists from trying to pretend that there was something else going on, for which they have no evidence.

I guess they have some interesting meteorite down there that NASA figured they could pass of as legit at the time.

That claim is so full of holes that it's mostly just holes.

1. Lunites were not discovered in Antarctica until after the first Apollo mission.

2. The total amount of lunites recovered in Antarctica is an order of magnitude smaller than the amount of Apollo samples.

3. Lunites are markedly different from Apollo samples due to their having spent several million years on Earth. Geologists can tell the difference between lunites and Apollo samples without even breathing hard. The claim that NASA believed it could give them to geologists and purport them to be moon rocks recovered in situ is pure wishful thinking.

4. Wernher von Braun was an engineer, not a geologist. Why would he be the one to go somewhere and look for ordinary rocks to fool geologists? When your sink is clogged, do you call an electrician?

5. Wernher von Braun's trip to Antarctica was highly publicized. If you were planning to collect Earth rocks to pass off as moon rocks, wouldn't you want to keep that trip secret?

Did you know Von braun suddenly quit the NASA Space Program a few years after .Perhaps he was tired of trying to aquire meteorites to be passed of as lunar material?

Or perhaps, as he himself told his friends, he was skeptical of NASA's future after the severe post-Apollo budget cuts. Again you're simply rewriting the facts to suit your belief.

This newspaper blurb about NASA circa late 60's early 70's I found...

From the Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1970, quoted in NASA SP-4214, Where No Man Has Gone Before, which you cut and pasted from this URL: www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4214/ch11-4.html

Why do you think a summary in the popular press carries the same weight as the actual scientific findings? Straw man.

... "our results are based on the wanton destruction of two grams [about the weight of a dime] of lunar material."

What the Wall Street Journal did not report, and which therefore you don't understand, is that those are appropriate sample sizes for the specific geological tests involved. What science really wants is about ten thousand of those little two-gram samples from different places all over the moon, to make sure that the one sample they used was not a fluke. The scientist here is being facetious in that he's talking about the defensibility of conclusions drawn from so few samples, not about the size of the individual sample.

Here's more from your source.

"There is clear evidence . . . that the surface of the moon is variable in both composition and age. It is therefore of great scientific importance to obtain materials from a variety of terrains and sites."

Since the only samples available at this time were from the Sea of Tranquility, the statement makes perfect sense.

Very sarcastic wouldnt you say. ?

Begging an irrelevant question.

NASA stonewalling maybe?

No. Here's some more from your URL.

Gene Simmons, newly appointed chief scientist at MSC, summed up the state of lunar science at the end of the conference. "There is a large amount of undigested data and very little interpretation," he said. "You'll see in the next six months many revisions of statements as to what it all means."

Your own source rejects your claim of stinginess. But you didn't think we would find your source, did you? You didn't think we would catch you selectively quoting? That's why you gave us only the vaguest of references, intentionally blurring the date even though the exact Wall Street Journal citation was in the footnote.

Shame on you.

Von Braun had told NASA point blank a spacecraft would have to have 4 feet of lead shielding...

No he didn't.

First, the notion that you would shield a spacecraft with lead is strictly a layman's belief. Engineers know better. Lead, concrete, and other dense materials are needed to shield against gamma rays and other short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation that arises from nuclear fission, but other materials such as polyethylene and aluminum work far better at shielding against the type of radiation encountered in cislunar space.

The claim of thick shielding actually comes from John Mauldin's Prospects for Interstellar Travel. Ralph Rene and other conspiracy authors misquote and warp this claim repeatedly, often misattributing it to hide its source. Mauldin is talking about the shielding requirements for a generation ship on a long voyage in interstellar space at a sizable fraction of the speed of light. Rene and other ignorant folk wrongly believe those circumstances also apply to Apollo missions.

...protect humans from the radiation, micrometeorites, and solar flares.

How much and what kind of radiation? I want a number.

During the period 1969 to 1972, how many potentially lethal solar flares actually occurred? I want a number.

As for micrometeoroids, low Earth orbit is actually a more hostile environment for that than translunar space or the lunar surface. Because Earth's gravity attracts the particles, there are more of them near Earth than in surrounding regions. After 40 years of continuous international spacefaring, the number of operationally significant debris strikes remains in the single digits. Conspiracists handwave a greater risk than actually exists.

If you left the ship you would be killed by other types of radiiation.

Exactly what types, and how much of it is there? I want a number.

No payload is going to lift that kind of size and weight into space.

You want us to believe you understand space travel, yet you can't even use the word payload correctly.

Heres another "read between the lines" newspaper story about the moonrocks.

Reading between the lines is a euphemism for making up stuff. I'm not interested in what innuendo you believe you can attach to what others have said.

Until then i am not likely to believe the myth of the "moonrocks"

And if you ran the zoo you could say that. Can you describe how the Apollo sample application process differs materially from the procedures common in science to access and use any other scarce resource? You point only to NASA's criteria and imply in your typical handwaving fashion that this constitutes unfair restriction.

But to support your claim that scientists are chafing under those restrictions, you would have to show that the relevant scientists complain about NASA being unfair. You have not done that, so the best explanation remains that NASA's restrictions are not aimed at keeping samples out of qualified people's hands, but are common and accepted practices in science when considering destructive testing on a limited data set, and that you personally don't know what you're talking about.

[JayUtah]

I respectfully suggest you do the same...

Oops, didn't see this until now.

[Apollo Gnomon]

Did you know Von braun suddenly quit the NASA Space Program a few years after .

Did you know that von Braun was "promoted" out of a job? He was sent from Huntsville to Washington, where instead of being "just a plumber" (his words, to a pair of physicists, during a conversation that went beyond him) handling actual engineering, he was expected to be some kind of political entity. That's why he quit. He didn't have a job that made any sense to him anymore. In fact, he wasn't even given any work to do - they just turned him loose.

The idea that von Braun would be involved in perpetrating a hoax is preposterous, and shows a complete lack of understanding. He's one of the people that they would have had to hide the hoax from.

From a very young age, Werner wanted to personally go to the moon. Eventually he matured enough to realize that he was going to engineer it, but never get to do it himself. Then the political BS took that from him. That's why he quit.

By the way, I've been watching "Lost in Space," where Jupiter2 get's his name. I've recently seen what wire-work and slo-mo effects to simulate zero or low gravity actually look like. Doesn't look anything like the real deal.

Von Braun had told NASA point blank a spacecraft would have to have 4 feet of lead shielding...

What a bunch of crap. Werner von Braun told NASA nothing of the sort. I notice you don't even offer a link or reference to this kind of totally made-up nonsense.

Werner von Braun wanted, in his younger years, to make a massive rocket (typical engineer - brilliant, but naively thinking that everything he knows is everthing there is to know) capable of taking a large team of researchers straight from Earth to the moon, and back again, after spending a month on station.

He wanted to go to the moon, himself, or at least send others. Why would he tell the money people something that would make the trip impossible?

[twinstead]

This is an excellent thread for those new to conspiracy theories. Jupiter2's posts are textbook nonsense coming from somebody with a preconceived opinion about something he knows absolutely nothing about and stubbornly arguing with a group of people who have studied the subject for years.

This is classic stuff.

[PhantomWolf]

these rocks which are supposedly guarded like Fort Knox

man, and there I was under the impression that they were stored at the NASA Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility and availible for those with suitable requests. Boy do I feel stoopid.

[Data Cable]

Hmmm, Fort Knox is actually an interesting analogy. Why is it so tightly guarded? Do we actually know there's gold in Fort Knox? How many have seen it? Shouldn't we, the American public, be allowed to go in and see the gold, even take some if we want? It's our gold, isn't it?

[Mr Gorsky]

Ah ... Fort Knox was all done in a studio with special effects. I can't believe people are still stupid enough to believe that it exists.

[Alliterative Andy]

In the words of Simon Gruber: "Fort Knox? HA! Fort Knox is for tourists!"

[reynoldbot]

My parents have personally handled apollo samples (they are both geologists) and they vouch for their authenticity. Are you calling my parents liars or morons? I'd like to know which one.

[Grand Lunar]

reynoldbot said:

My parents have personally handled apollo samples (they are both geologists) and they vouch for their authenticity. Are you calling my parents liars or morons? I'd like to know which one.

I envy you!

Closest I have to that is an uncle that owns a palm-sized meteorite.

[captain swoop]

I have a genuine Spinosaurus tooth!