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Post by PeterB on Sept 6, 2005 20:03:36 GMT -4
Margamatix said: "Ah yes, the famous 'half-time football score'
"Did you know that, when street corner bookmakers took bets on the seemingly random last four numbers of the Dow Jones index, that the Mafia arranged, on the 4th of July, that this number would end in '1776'?
"So if a handful of dodgy Italians could do that, what limits could there be to the US Government's powers of flim-flammery?"
So your argument boils down to "the government is powerful enough to do anything, so I don't have to be able to explain it"?
I'm just trying to imagine football teams across the USA being instructed before their games by people in grey suits on what scores they were to have at full-time, with a few of them being told what scores to have at half time as well. At the end of the talk, the coach steps up and says, "You think you knuckleheads can remember that?"
I'll tell you what. As I get the time, I'm going to dig up what I can of the news reports provided by the Capcoms to the crews when they woke up. I'd like to think you could tell me with a straight face (well, as straight as you can manage when we're both typing) that the US Government used its powers of flim-flammery to arrange all those events to happen.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 31, 2005 19:13:28 GMT -4
Margamatix said: "There is no proof whatsoever that the moon landings happened. Belief in Apollo is a faith, nothing more and nothing less. "
G'day Margamatix
There are three main pieces of evidence I use to prove the Moon landings happened.
The first is rocks. Now you've previously argued that the rocks could be collected by sample return missions. I suppose I could just about grant that, even though you made little effort to explain (a) how rocks had been photographed on location, (b) how core samples a few metres long were collected, (c) how 10 kilogram rocks were picked up or (d) how fragile clods of compacted soil were picked up, given the robot technology of the time.
The second is the radio signals. We know Mission Control was talking to the astronauts in real time, referring to events which were happening at the time (such as half-time football scores). We know that the ground stations were pointing their dishes straight at the Moon in real time. We know that ham radio operators pointed *their* dishes at the Moon and picked up signals. You haven't addressed how NASA might have faked these signals.
The third is the behaviour of lunar dust in television images. It behaves like dust in a vacuum, and in reduced gravity. We can create vacuums in giant chambers. We can create 30 seconds of reduced gravity inside a plane. What we can't do is produce both a vacuum and reduced gravity together, nor do so in a location where you can see for kilometres.
*That* is proof.
It's *not* faith.
*So there!* :-)
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Post by PeterB on Aug 29, 2005 22:45:44 GMT -4
Jay
I read in Pellegrino and Stoff's book that the Saturn 1B from Apollo 1 was used on Apollo 5, due to superstition about putting another crew on top of it.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 22, 2005 1:42:00 GMT -4
Incidentally, Shepherd laughed because he sliced the ball.False. Shepard did not actually slice the ball. The CAPCOM made a joke that he had sliced it. He could manage only a clumsy one-handed stroke and managed to knock the ball only a few meters away from the LM into a crater. It is of course impossible to slice a ball in a vacuum.That's what made the joke funny. I wonder about people who don't get jokes like that. Apollo may have been a massive undertaking. But that didn't mean it had to be solemn. The astronauts were people like the rest of us, and loved their jokes and gotchas.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 22, 2005 1:31:31 GMT -4
For those who'd like to know more about the golf ball business, and who called the slice, here's what the ALSJ says:
135:08:03 Mitchell: (Garbled) (At the MET) Fredo, correct me, now; Mag Kilo-Kilo has never been used. Is that correct? 135:08:11 Haise [Capcom]: Stand by. (Pause) 135:08:17 Shepard: (Facing the TV) Houston, while you're looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here. (Pause) 135:08:53 Mitchell: You got more dirt than ball that time. 135:08:58 Shepard: Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.
[Al's second swing pushes the ball about 2 or 3 feet, mostly along the line toward the TV camera, rather than along the line of the swing.]
135:09:01 Haise: That looked like a slice to me, Al. 135:09:03 Shepard: Here we go. Straight as a die; one more. (Long Pause)
[Al's third swing finally connects and sends the ball off-camera to the right, apparently on a fairly low trajectory. He drops a second ball, which rolls left and toward the TV camera. Al gets himself in position and connects again. The trajectory of this shot appears to be similar to the previous one.]
135:09:20 Shepard: Miles and miles and miles. 135:09:26 Haise: Very good, Al.
[With regard to Al's "miles and miles and miles", see the discussion following 135:21:50.]
[Readers should note that, while the golf-shot picture in Al's book Moonshot bears some resemblance to the TV images, it is actually a composite made up of pieces of various Hasselblad images. The only actual record of the golf shot is the TV coverage. Al and Ed had already put their Hasselblads into the ETB at about 135:06:06.]
[Not long after I bought a copy of Moonshot, Andrew Chaikin and I had a long telephone conversation about the composite and worked out - at least in general terms - how it was put together. Journal Contributor David Harland tells us that the 1994 hardback UK edition published by Virgin Books contains the composite, while Brian Lawrence tells us that the 1995 edition does not.]
[In the composite, the LM and LM shadow come from a left/right reversal of AS14-669276. Note the LRRR which is sitting in the footpad of the ladder strut. In reality, the LR-Cubed was deployed at the ALSEP site during the first EVA. Both of the astronaut images in the composite come from a pan Al took at the beginning of EVA-1 shortly before 114:53:34. The image of "Al" is actually a left/right reversal of Ed's image from AS14-66- 9240. In the real photograph, Ed is doing a TV pan. In the composite, the TV camera has been removed and the golf club has been added. The image of "Ed" in the composite is taken from another frame in Al's earlier pan, AS14-66- 9241. And, once again, the TV had been removed from a left-right reversal of the original images. Similarly, the image of the U.S. flag has been taken from AS14-66- 9232- or one of the other tourist pictures Al and Ed took during the flag deployment. I have not yet identified the precise images from which the MET and the S-Band were taken; but, the MET image is very similar to the one in AS14-67- 9361, which Al took at the ALSEP site at the end of the ALSEP deployment. Finally, the ball and the shadows of the S-Band legs - like the golf club - appear to have been drawn in.]
135:09:27 Haise: And (to) answer Ed's question earlier there; Kilo-Kilo was used for the window shots, Ed; so, you ought to bring it back.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 22, 2005 3:11:34 GMT -4
Turbonium
PhantomWolf has it.
In both photographs the mountains are many kilometres away. But between the photos, the photgrapher has moved 100 metres or so further away from both the mountains and the LM.
Because the first photo was taken so close to the LM, 100 metres makes a big difference to the size of the LM, but virtually no difference to the size of the mountains.
Jack White then seals the apparent anomaly by cropping the second photo and blowing it up so the LM in that photo looks the same size as the one in the first photo.
So there's a two-fold problem. Your perceptual problems (caused by the strangeness of the Moon) were compounded by Jack's problem in manipulating the photos without explaining what he was doing.
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Post by PeterB on Dec 13, 2006 22:41:37 GMT -4
You are correct. The rockets they use to launch a satellite is three times that of the Saturn V. Three times what? Minty fresh? Fewer cavities? Cuter? Three times as hebustuous. (Don't worry, it's a new word my work colleagues are trying to introduce into English.)
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Post by PeterB on Aug 16, 2005 2:38:30 GMT -4
G'day Margamatix
If, as you say, the Saturn V wasn't big enough to go to the Moon, what rocket brought back all those rocks? You've already said you accept the rocks are genuine Moon rocks, and you think they were collected by robot technology of some sort. Now you need to explain how those robots got to the Moon.
Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Aug 15, 2005 23:13:41 GMT -4
Why will the fuel flow to the low side of the tank? Remember, the rocket is accelerating along its long axis. That alone will force the fuel to the bottom of the tank. It's the same principle which makes water stay in the bucket when you swing it over your head.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 19, 2005 3:58:57 GMT -4
Just a little bump for all the other Apollohoax members living in Canberra to come along to the talk tomorrow.
See you there! ;-)
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Post by PeterB on Aug 4, 2005 21:07:03 GMT -4
For those of you in Canberra on Saturday 20 August, there's going to be a talk about the Moon Hoax, as part of the Australian Science Festival. I'm going to be the MC. The other two people involved in the talk are Ken Skeldon, an English science communicator, and Mike Dinn, who was in charge of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station during Apollo. Details at: www.sciencefestival.com.au/popups/moon.html
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Post by PeterB on Aug 3, 2005 22:19:12 GMT -4
G’day Margamatix
You have some severe doubts about the Lunar Module, and without an engineering background (I don’t have one either) I can see why you’d have problems with what appears to be a very flimsy spacecraft. Was it you who used the term “static and cobwebs”? Excellent metaphor. However, you’re missing a lot of context.
We can look at the Lunar Module from two directions. One is the history of its development. The other is a straight-up assessment of how someone might design a craft to operate on the Moon.
The history of the LM is covered in considerable detail. The concept grew out of theories of how to land on the Moon. When Kennedy first set the goal of a mission to the Moon, the generally accepted theory on how to land was to send a whacking great rocket up, have it land on the Moon, then lift off and return to Earth. This is sort of similar to the method described in the two Tintin books about a mission to the Moon.
But there were two problems. Firstly, sending the main spacecraft to the Moon meant a big weight penalty. After all, the spacecraft carrying the astronauts had to survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, so it needed to be strongly built and carry a heat shield. Taking all this to the Moon required a lot more fuel. Secondly, if the astronauts were lying down in their couches for the landing, they wouldn’t be able to see the surface of the Moon, but, alternately, if they were standing up, they’d need a second set of instruments to guide them, as those in front of the couches would be in the wrong place.
So when some engineers came up with the idea of a second craft to do the landing business, it was quickly attractive. A craft designed to land on the Moon only could make several savings. Firstly, it wouldn’t need a heat shield. Secondly, because it would only fly through a vacuum, it wouldn’t need to be smooth sided. Thirdly, because the only gravity field it would operate in (as opposed to being a passenger) was the Moon’s, it could be built with much lighter materials. This last factor made constructing it on Earth tricky – there are a number of stories of accidental damage caused by workers who forgot how fragile it was on Earth – drop a screwdriver and it would fall through the floor.
The original design of the LM was conservative. That is, it still had rounded corners on the outside, and seats for the two crew. But as the designers strove to save weight, they dispensed with the seats (you can stand for a long time in one-sixth gravity without tiring) and redesign the shape almost as they wished. The result, after several redesigns, was the spidery contraption you see in the photos.
But let’s now look at the straight design. You have very specific objectives. You need to design a spacecraft to fly two astronauts from lunar orbit down to a specific location on the Moon; the astronauts have to have supplies for a couple of days; they then have to lift off the Moon and rendezvous with another spacecraft orbiting the Moon. Your spacecraft will therefore only operate in a vacuum, and only in zero gravity or the Moon’s 1/6th gravity. Weight is a very stringent restriction, and you also need to provide for unexpected contingencies.
Put all that together, and you’re pretty much forced to use ultra-light materials, milled to the thickness of a drink can to provide an air-tight structure. To provide stability in the same way as a tight-rope walker, you place the fuel tanks low and wide, with the engine as high as possible. Structure outside the air-tight skin only needs to be protected from direct sunlight, so only needs to be covered by the thinnest reflective material. This is pretty much describes the Lunar Module.
This isn’t to say that the Lunar Module was the best possible design. The LM would have been a lot safer and more liveable if the designers had been allowed more weight. But within their weight restrictions, it’s considered by aerospace engineers to be close to a pure spacecraft.
In fact, it’s possible that an even lighter design might have been used if the Saturn V rocket hadn’t been available. The engineers who came up with the first Lunar Module design also came up with an alternate design which was simply an open platform. It would have weighed a fair bit less than the final LM design, but the astronauts wouldn’t have had an air-tight skin to live within. That in itself would have made for a much shorter visit to the Moon.
The LM was then tested several times. Firstly, an unmanned flight on Apollo 5 simply ran the LM through its paces in space. Apollo 9 was the first manned test of the LM, in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 then tested it in lunar orbit. Apollo 11 then tested the last untested matter – landing and taking off.
So while the LM design looks like static and cobwebs, it was a thoroughly tested and viable design.
Incidentally, if you consider Apollo to have been faked, you might like to indicate whether you think the non-landing missions were faked:
Apollo 4: unmanned test of the Saturn V rocket in Earth orbit; Apollo 5: unmanned test of the LM in Earth orbit; Apollo 6: unmanned test of the Saturn V rocket in Earth orbit; Apollo 7: manned test of the Command Module in Earth orbit; Apollo 8: manned test of the Saturn V and Command Module in lunar orbit; Apollo 9: manned test of the LM in Earth orbit; Apollo 10: manned test of the LM in lunar orbit.
Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Aug 4, 2005 22:08:44 GMT -4
Jason's description sounds like the BBC show "The Planets" which I have on DVD. I always enjoy watching the Moon segment of the show.
As far as the dynamited crater field, I seem to remember Farouk el-Baz saying that the astronauts trained by by flying over them at a speed which recreated the speed they'd fly over them while in orbit. As lunar orbital speed would have been higher than the speed of a T-38, I assume the crater field was scaled down.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 2, 2005 22:31:36 GMT -4
G’day Margamatix
Here’s another way of looking at Apollo. You might not get a chance to personally meet astronauts (though I’m envious of the fact that three Moon walking astronauts will be in the UK shortly) but there are perhaps other ways of judging them.
Frank Borman: A lay preacher in his church, he was looking for a way to express the meaning of Apollo, because the mission he commanded (Apollo 8) would be orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968. In the end, he and his crew read from Genesis Chapter 1 at the end of a TV broadcast. Now I’m an atheist, but every time I listen to their voices reading those words, the emotion of the moment gets to me.
Buzz Aldrin: The first thing Buzz did on the Moon after Apollo 11 landed, when he had a spare moment, was to take communion. He wasn’t able to publicise the fact, because NASA was wary of further criticism from militant atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Also, if you look at “that” photo (the Man on the Moon photo) you’ll see that Aldrin has dust stains on his knees. I understand (though I’ve never been able to research it) that Aldrin knelt and prayed for a short time on the surface of the Moon, but was unable to say anything about it because NASA didn’t want the crew taking any risks with their mobility.
Well, he saves his left hook for people who lie in order to get an interview, then prod him continuously in the chest with a Bible and accuse him of lying. So if you look him in the eye and ask him squarely whether he walked on the Moon, I dare say you’d get a straight answer. (Though he might sigh before answering, given the number of times I bet he’s been asked.)
Jim Irwin: He had a religious experience on the Moon during Apollo 15, and afterwards founded a Ministry. In the years before his death he was involved in several expeditions to Turkey to find Noah’s Ark.
Charlie Duke: He had a religious experience after he returned to Earth from Apollo 16, and became a minister. According to Andrew Chaikin’s book “A Man on the Moon”, Duke considers his experiences on the Moon to be much less important than his ministry.
Now these men are only a portion of those who walked on the Moon (and Borman didn’t walk on the Moon either). But these are men for whom their Christianity is (or was) an integral part of their life. I find it very hard to believe that they would willingly lie for 30+ years.
But having said that, I don’t see that non-Christians, or those who hold their faith less closely than the people mentioned above, would have any more reason to lie either.
Neil Armstrong is a private man, and finds close scrutiny uncomfortable.
Alan Bean has pursued a career as an artist since leaving NASA, having found painting a useful way for expressing his experiences on the Moon. He even uses equipment which has been to the Moon to texture his paintings.
Ed Mitchell also had something of a spiritual awakening during Apollo 14. During the mission, he conducted an experiment into ESP, and after his return created the Institute of Noetic Studies, or some such. He has some ideas about the universe, life and intelligence which I think are pretty outlandish, but they appear to have been crystallised as a result of his experiences on Apollo 14.
Gene Cernan (Apollo 17) has been a proponent of continued manned exploration, as has Buzz Aldrin I think.
Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17) is a big supporter of a return to the Moon, in order to mine it for Helium-3, to be used as fuel for fusion reactors. When he spoke at a talk I attended, he candidly answered questions about his experience on the Moon.
Looking at these people, I find it very hard to work out where they could conceivably have lied about their experiences.
But it goes further. You can also talk to astronauts who didn’t travel on Apollo missions, but were Capcoms. These men spoke to the astronauts during the missions, and so were almost as familiar with the missions as the astronauts. Particularly in the later missions, the men who spoke to the astronauts on the Moon were scientist astronauts. They didn’t get to go to the Moon, but they were on Shuttle crews in the early 1980s – people like Tony England, Robert Parker and Joe Allan. If Apollo was faked, these astronauts would also know about it.
And then you can talk to the crews of the post-Apollo, pre-Shuttle missions. The crew of the first Skylab mission included Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad. You could talk to his crewmates Paul Weitz and Jo Kerwin. Likewise, the second Skylab crew was commanded by the other Apollo 12 moon walker Alan Bean. His crewmates were Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott. Seeing as they spent, respectively, 28 and 56 days in space, so would have had plenty of opportunity to talk about a Moon hoax.
So, in summary, there are a lot of astronauts you could talk to about the Moon hoax, and I doubt many would be willing to lie for NASA.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 2, 2005 7:12:45 GMT -4
Thanks for that.
I don't know whether they visit sunny Britain that often, though I went to a talk by Jack Schmitt here in Canberra a couple of years ago.
Though three of the twelve might have some troubles looking you in the eye, unless you'd like to look a zombie in the eye. Alan Shepherd (cancer), Pete Conrad (motorbike accident) and Jim Irwin (heart attack) have died since the days of Apollo.
I also take it that you won't be discussing rocks, radios or other aspects of Apollo any further.
Cheers
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