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Post by sts60 on Apr 20, 2006 16:37:24 GMT -4
kevin, welcome.
You do understand that the Moon actually rotates (once every 28 days*) on its axis, as it revolves about the Earth* in the same period of time, right? Otherwise we would see the entire Moon, not just one side*.
Do you also understand that the rotation of the Moon has nothing* to do with going into orbit around it? It only* depends on the mass* of the Moon and the altitude* of the orbit you want to be in.
Clear on those...? Otherwise you're going to be lost before you start.
*close enough for illustrating the point!
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Apr 27, 2006 22:27:24 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 27, 2006 22:27:24 GMT -4
We train dogs; we educate humans.
Nah; I've had plenty of both. Education is where you learn facts and principles and get thinking skills. Training is where you learn to apply these skills to real-life problems.
Such a statement is also clearly made by someone who's never tried to train my dog.
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Apr 27, 2006 22:23:19 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 27, 2006 22:23:19 GMT -4
NASA has always contracted most of the work of designing and building spacecraft. That is not unusual for a government agency, nor is it peculiar to the Apollo era. Moreover, the expected staffing profiles are worked out years in advance, otherwise the gov't couldn't budget and the contractors couldn't make a business plan. The House subcommittee report I was looking through the other day shows the staffing levels before its publication (in 1969) and projected afterwards. Apollo program staffing had been declining markedkly and continuously well before Armstong and Aldrin set foot on the Moon, because most of the design, fabrication, facilities construction, and testing had already been done by then.
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Apr 21, 2006 9:06:18 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 21, 2006 9:06:18 GMT -4
Too slow. Use the shoe-phone.
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Apr 20, 2006 22:43:04 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 20, 2006 22:43:04 GMT -4
One other thing - others have already considered and refuted your claims that lunar samples (which you completely mischaracterized) could have come from a terrestrial location like Sudbury. I'll simply remind you that a while back you claimed Sudbury was some sort of secret NASA site, when in fact training activities there were publicized like everything else to do with the Apollo astronauts, and in fact information about training activities there can be obtained today on NASA's own web servers. You never acknowledged this, either.
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Apr 20, 2006 22:37:46 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 20, 2006 22:37:46 GMT -4
I don't buy the signal crappola line.
In other words, you have nothing but reflexive disbelief. OK, fine; we accept that you have no counter-argument whatsoever to the tracking evidence.
BTW, only one 'p' in "crapola".
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Apr 20, 2006 9:09:04 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 20, 2006 9:09:04 GMT -4
But the people with "no time" for research to back up their claims are so often the ones who have plenty of time to churn out dozens of new claims. Funny how that works
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Apr 19, 2006 20:49:09 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 19, 2006 20:49:09 GMT -4
Not knowing the name of "every nut and bolt" isn't a problem.
Not understanding even the most basic physical principles before making claims - that's a problem. Not knowing the most major parts before making claims - that's a problem. Churning out a stream of wild claims without doing the slightest research - that's a problem. Ignoring the information that other people provide for you - that's a problem.
Mind you, it's not a problem for us.
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Apr 19, 2006 10:04:05 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 19, 2006 10:04:05 GMT -4
gonzo, I do believe you've hit the nail squarely on the head.
MoonMan, feel free to say exactly what kind of radiation you would expect (types, energies, fluxes) and exactly why the materials and mission designs could not have dealt with them. Otherwise, you're just waving your hands.
Also, feel free to explain why James Van Allen himself was wrong when he helped NASA design the Apollo trajectories, or was wrong when he specifically repudiated the notion that the the "belts" named for him were some kind of barrier impassible to humans.
Finally, you might want to explain exactly how spacecraft operate routinely in the VA belts for years and years, despite the fact that electronics are also affected by radiation, or why astronauts on the Shuttle, Mir, and ISS have routinely transited low-hanging parts of the VABs many, many times with no apparent ill effect.
Otherwise, you're just waving your hands. And you can't get away with that here.
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Apr 19, 2006 8:43:27 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 19, 2006 8:43:27 GMT -4
(Smacks head) Doh!
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Apr 18, 2006 21:06:23 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 18, 2006 21:06:23 GMT -4
MM, assuming you're really serious about the question and not just pulling our legs... It costs a heckuva lot to lift stuff into low Earth orbit. It costs even more to lift things into high Earth orbit, especially a heavy object like the Hubble. So you need a truly compelling reason to spend the extra money - lots and lots of it - for the grunt work of getting higher. The Hubble's advantage over Earthbound observatories arise mainly from the fact that it's above the atmosphere. It doesn't really matter whether it's 300 miles or 1000 miles or 10,000 miles or 100,000 miles up. It is already above the unsteady air, humidity, dust, pollution, and scattered light. That allows it to take clearer images than a comparable telescope, with less background interference, and allows it to see a wider range of wavelengths (e.g., certain UV wavelengths that can't be seen from the ground). So going higher isn't a compelling reason just for "seeing The Hubble is designed for deep-space work; it's raison d'etre is to help answer the Big Questions about galactic motion, dark matter, and the early days of the Universe - looking waaay out past our solar system. Moving it out simply won't make a difference in such work, even if you moved out past Pluto. Bob B.'s New York - LA simile is dead on in this case. So there's no profit in moving it higher for that. Even the Solar System work done by HST wouldn't derive much benefit from moving it higher. Moving it way up into geosynchronous orbit would make only a slight difference in its ability to resolve lunar features, and virtually no difference at all in its ability to resolve features on other planets. So that's no reason either. So what justification is there for sending a Hubble-class imager further out? None, really, when you consider what else you could do in space with that kind of money. For a lot less, we've already put Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into orbit around the Red Planet, where it will give us one-meter resolution. That's plenty good enough until we're ready to put "boots on the ground". The other funny thing about your post, MoonMan, is that you're trying to rehash the old "can't get men above low Earth orbit because of radiation/meteors/aliens/whatever" argument, but you didn't even get that right. You're now saying that an unmanned vehicle* can't get above a few hundred miles, which is patently ridiculous. Large communications satellites are a multibillion-dollar business which enable many more billions of dollars a year in commerce. So not only is your argument without merit in its conclusions, it's based on a botched rehash of another claim which is wrong to begin with, and in your formulation contradicts a reality obvious to anyone who watches satellite television or listens to XM or Sirius satellite radio! Hat trick! Congratulations! *edited to add- in this case, a robotic servicing mission
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Apr 18, 2006 17:00:15 GMT -4
Post by sts60 on Apr 18, 2006 17:00:15 GMT -4
You're pulling our legs now. Admit it.
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Post by sts60 on Apr 19, 2006 17:00:12 GMT -4
Well, I'm still hoping that turbonium will drop in on the "Radiation for turbonium" thread, and lay out in detail why Apollo was unable to overcome the radiation environment.
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Post by sts60 on May 2, 2006 14:55:32 GMT -4
The US administrations under Bush the elder and Clinton believed that with the cold war over they didn't have to worry as much about homeland defence. When given intelligence that an attack might take place on US soil, Bush the junior bushed it off because they weren't able to believe that it could happen.
We're very good at fighting the last war. All of us. The current Administration was fixated on the nuclear-missile threat from North Korea, and pushing a missile defense system along much faster than it should have. This mindset led them to overlook the terrorist threat. Which doesn't let them off the hook, of course, but there were probably a number of other threats they were warned about which haven't happened.
People leaving WTC 2 were told to go back and many ended up dying because of it.
An example of a globally appropriate response being fatally inappropriate in a particular case. It's very often safer to shelter in place in a high-rise fire; the firefighting response will attempt to create defensible zones where this will take place. No one anticipated the buildings would collapse when the initial response was being organized, and dispatchers gave advice that would probably have saved many lives if it had been an ordinary fire.
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Post by sts60 on May 1, 2006 12:43:22 GMT -4
Sibrel would forever be just a part-time cameraman hated and reviled blah blah blah.
I think that's giving him too much credit. "Held in contempt for being a cheesy, puffed-up little con man" is rather more like it.
I'm not as much of an expert in air defense, so I keep my mouth shut on those points and I let others speak who actually have worked in air defense and can discuss those points with confidence.
I'm not an expert in air defense either, but there are real conspiracies to cover up some truths about 9/11. The Washington Post just this weekend discussed the claims by various officials about the air defense response that day, many of which overstated or completely misrepresented its quickness and accuracy. The gist was that they tried to make the response look much better than it had been (interceptors going the wrong way or to intercept flights that had already crashed, or scrambled late or not at all, etc.). Some of it could be attributed to the "fog of war", but later versions were just deliberate "spin" or outright lies. The 9/11 commission debunked such claims and recommended an investigation into their origin(s).
Why don't the 9/11 CTs complain about this real conspiracy? Probably because it shows just how inadequate the system was that day.
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