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Post by PeterB on Jul 31, 2005 21:23:30 GMT -4
*Desperately trying to drag this thread back on to the topic.*
Everyone, let’s keep it on rocks here and discuss other aspects elsewhere. Cheers.
G’day Margamatix
I see you think that a sample return mission is plausible, and that an unmanned lunar module could be equipped in some way to collect the Apollo rocks.
I’m not going to say it’s impossible. In fact, I’ve even discussed how such a mission might be put together on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board. But once we considered all aspects, we came up with a project which was much more difficult than Apollo.
The main problem with your idea is that (as others have mentioned) there’s no evidence of any sort of robotics program in NASA. Now NASA developed a lot of technology during Apollo, and this technology found its way out into the community. Things like miniaturised electronics, the fuel cell, computer-controlled machining and the astronauts’ heart-rate monitors were all technology developed as a result of Apollo which are now used across the community. By contrast, the sort of robotics necessary to collect samples of the range I’ve described is even now not really possible.
A few years after Apollo, NASA sent the two Viking spacecraft to Mars. They were each armed with a shovel which scooped up a small amount of material and placed it in a container to conduct tests. If NASA had developed sophisticated robot technology for Apollo, don’t you think it’s reasonable they might have used it elsewhere?
The reason I make such a point about the range of materials collected from the Moon is that this range is significant. Imagine picking up a 10kg weight. Now imagine picking up a clod of compressed Earth the weight of a cricket ball (sorry, couldn’t resist a cricket reference!). You have to use very different techniques to pick the two objects up, and you have to handle the clod delicately to prevent it from crumbling. Now robot hands can do either of these tasks, but none that I know of can handle both. Even more importantly, this sort of mechanisation has only become possible in the last few years, and is significantly different from the pre-programmed robots which make cars.
Something else you might like to consider is this. Most of the Apollo photos show rocks sitting on the ground. These photos were usually of rock samples about to be collected, photographed in situ to provide context to the geologists. Now if Apollo was faked, these shots would’ve had to be taken on Earth. This means in turn that the rocks would have been placed on some sort of Earthy material, which would contaminate the rocks, and greatly reduce their usefulness to geologists. The contamination would also be quickly detected, and alarms would sound.
In some cases, the act of collecting rocks is also recorded on video. If you watch these videos, you’ll often see out to a distant horizon. This is consistent with the video of astronauts collecting rocks having been recorded on the Moon.
Finally, the sheer range of rocks collected and individually bagged and boxed suggests that they were collected at a range of sites. In order for a robot mission to collect material from such a range of sites would require a mobile vehicle of some sort to transport the sample collection tools. This in turn would need to be transported to the Moon and then deployed, and then to transfer its payload back to the unmanned Lunar Module.
Remember, all these systems have to work, and need to be capable of collecting over a thousand times as much material as the three unmanned Soviet sample return missions.
When it comes to collecting a range of rocks, it’s hard to beat humans.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 29, 2005 5:26:29 GMT -4
Hi Margamatix
Did you read my original post?
It’s well known that the Soviets retrieved material from three unmanned sample return missions. Those three missions produced about 300 grams of material between them – less than the mass of your average can of soup. The spacecraft were able to scoop up a little bit of material right beside them, and couldn’t discriminate in what they picked up.
Compare this to Apollo. The Apollo rocks massed about 380 kilograms, more than a thousand times as much as the Soviet missions. The largest individual rocks massed around 10 kilograms. They also brought back fragile clods of compressed lunar soil. They also drilled core samples which were a couple of metres long. This amount and selection of material was, and still is, far more than any robot mission could manage.
Well, they soft-landed several Surveyor spacecraft on the Moon in 1966 and 1967, to test what the surface of the Moon would be like.
But why would they land any other spacecraft on the Moon? The Lunar Module *could* land automatically, but the astronauts were able to pilot it as well to make sure it landed somewhere safe. An unmanned, fully automated Lunar Module would quite probably crash because it would be unable to avoid rocks and craters which an astronaut could pilot it away from. And anyway, an unmanned Lunar Module couldn’t collect rocks, so how does that answer my original question?
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Post by PeterB on Jul 28, 2005 22:21:40 GMT -4
It's not a case of being "in on the hoax". I am sure they genuinely believe in what they are saying, just as those who persecuted "witches" in Salem did in the late 1600s. G'day Margamatix Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I think you're missing the point. The scientists that Kiwi listed were given these rocks to look at. They were already familiar with Earth rocks. When they looked at the Apollo rocks, they could see how they were different. They were unlike rocks from Earth in very significant ways. For example, the rocks contained no water. Rocks everywhere are made up of various sorts of crystals in varying mixes. The chemical composition of many of these crystals on Earth has water bound into the molecules. Water doesn't evaporate out of these crystals as it does from (say) your washing. You can't even bake it out if you chuck the rock in an oven. Therefore, the lack of water in the Apollo rocks was a clear indicator that the rocks didn't come from Earth. Another example is the zap pits. These are the tiny marks made by the impact of dust particles travelling at tens of kilometres per second. Even today we can't make objects that small travel that fast. Rocks with zap pits can only conceivably have been in deep space for thousands or millions of years. A third example is convection patterns in the rocks. As JayUtah explains on his Clavius site, Moon rocks show convection patterns which are consistent with the rocks having once been liquid in a low gravity environment. These sorts of patterns can't be created on Earth, because of the stronger gravity. This is all a long-winded way of saying that the scientists consider the rocks to have come from the Moon, not because of a belief system, but because the evidence points to it. I'd seriously doubt it. People were sentenced to death by the State as a result of the Salem witch trials. Nothing remotely approaching that has occurred with Apollo. This is why I'd like you to challenge my ideas with alternative ideas: provide me with a method for creating the Apollo rocks which takes into account the points I made. Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Jul 27, 2005 19:36:00 GMT -4
G'day Margamatix
I was wondering if you might care to turn your mind to the Moon rocks. There were about 380 kilograms of Moon rocks produced out of Apollo, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts about how they came to be here.
You might like to know that:
1. They can’t be Earth rocks; 2. They aren’t Moon rocks collected on the Earth; and 3. They aren’t Moon rocks collected by unmanned missions.
How do we know this?
1. The Apollo rocks contain no water. They are completely dry. This is completely unlike any rock on Earth. There’s no way you can take an Earth rock and chuck it in an oven to bake the water out of it, as the water is chemically bound within the crystals which make up the rock. This was unexpected before the first Moon rocks were examined by scientists. 2. The Apollo rocks contain evidence in their structure of having been formed in a low-gravity vacuum, which has never existed on Earth. This was expected by scientists, but there’s no way it could be recreated in a laboratory. 3. The Apollo rocks are covered with minute craters called zap pits. These are the result of the rocks being bombarded over time by interplanetary dust, hitting them at tens of kilometres per second. This effect can’t be recreated in a laboratory. 4. Moon rocks have been recovered in Antarctica, but they’re lunar meteorites. Their outer surfaces have been melted from the heat of passing through the Earth’s atmosphere, and they look nothing like the Apollo rocks. 5. The Soviets recovered about 300 grams of lunar material on three unmanned sample return missions. That’s less than one-thousandth of the material in the Apollo rocks. The Soviet missions recovered handfuls of pebbles and soil in the immediate vicinity of the spacecraft. By contrast, the Apollo rocks include core samples more than a metre long, fragile clods of compressed soil and individual rocks weighing up to 10 kilograms. That variety and amount of material can’t be collected by robot missions. 6. The Apollo rocks and the Soviet lunar material have both been examined by scientists from around the world, often by scientists from countries which are politically hostile to the suppliers. No scientist who has examined this material has ever suggested that there was any faked material. In fact, it’s helped scientists develop a new theory for the origin of the Moon, which has been tested against other evidence.
Therefore, the most logical explanation is that Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon and collected a range of samples on the various missions.
If you have any alternate theories which don’t contradict the evidence above, I’d like to know.
Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Jul 27, 2005 21:15:42 GMT -4
Hey, how about we go over to that survey and add a few votes to the "Yes" side. Is it still open? Do you think that might prove anything, Margamatix? :-)
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Post by PeterB on Jul 27, 2005 4:19:57 GMT -4
Sticks
I wouldn't worry too much. I'm not too sure of a couple of these myself without a bit of research.
1. Fuel line was full of fuel, but in the shade. IIRC. 2. No idea. 3. No idea, unless it was something to do with opening a second valve. 4. I think the LM's clock/event timer was on the blink, so Armstrong's watch was left on board as a back-up in case it fell off outside. 5. 150-odd? 6. Snoopy?
But what would swearing achieve? Sibrel could still say they were bearing false witness. And it's not as though he's going to include the footage in his own videos - he's already been shown to have excluded video footage which contradicts his claims.
Most of the Apollo astronauts are Christians. They wouldn't swear on the Koran any more than any other Christian would.
Essentially, swearing on the Bible achieves nothing, and wouldn't convince Sibrel. He's not interested in the truth, only in promoting himself.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 26, 2005 20:11:13 GMT -4
Okay Margamatix, I'll answer your questions. How many astronauts were prepared to swear on the Bible that they had been to the moon? I don't know, but I understand that Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14 swore on the Bible. Good for you. But that doesn't make you right. Many of us can be genuinely convinced of things that are incorrect or wrong. At the start of every Australian Football League season I'm genuinely convinced my team will win the premiership. Doesn't always happen, though (and hasn't since 1990!). In any case, would you like to elaborate on what has convinced you of this? No, because I'm not Christian. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to do so. I'm willing to sign a statutory declaration. But in either case, all that does is affirm my opinion. I could still be wrong. Having said that, though, I'm quite convinced that Apollo was real in every respect, because the evidence is convincing to me, and by comparison, the arguments of those who think Apollo was faked are poor. No, for two reasons. One I've already descibed above. The other is that I don't think those who raise a skeptical viewpoint are necessarily "simply paranoid delusionalists." Some people maybe are. Others are deliberately deceptive (for example, Dave Cosnette at www.ufos-aliens.co.uk, who has had several of his errors corrected repeatedly, but won't change his site). Others again are simply uneducated in the details of Apollo, and don't know why their arguments are wrong. So, again, would you like to tell us why you think Apollo was faked? Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Jul 25, 2005 21:43:27 GMT -4
It does. How many astronauts were prepared to swear on the Bible that they had been to the moon? I would be prepared to swear on the Bible that having examined as much evidence as possible and having believed in the Apollo landings for all of my life, that I genuinely no longer believe that men have been to the moon. Would you be prepared to swear on the Bible that you genuinely believe that men have? Would you be prepared to swear on the Bible that you genuinely believe that those who raise the sceptical viewpoint as I do are simply "paranoid delusionalists"? G'day Margamatix Would I be right in guessing that you're a Christian? Would you swear on the Bible, even given Matthew 5:34-37? But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.But out of interest, what has made you change your mind? What evidence do you have that Apollo was faked? Remember that evidence of faked film isn't evidence the missions themselves were faked. You still have to explain the rocks collected on the missions, and the radio signals. Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Jul 26, 2005 1:56:00 GMT -4
Margamatix Why not visit www.apolloarchive.com and look at all the video clips there. You can watch Dave Scott trip over a rock or drop a feather and a hammer, Alan Shepherd and Ed Mitchell put a flag together, or Charlie Duke lose his balance on a penetrometer.
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Post by PeterB on Jan 9, 2006 20:44:49 GMT -4
Well, there were a couple of times when the astronauts picked up the rover to turn it around. IIRC it was because it was quicker to do that than sit down, buckle up and drive. I don't think it was ever done to save batteries or for accuracy.
The astronauts were constantly advised what their heading should be, and they had a sun compass to help with that. They also had some sort of inertial system which gave them distance and direction back to the LM, but I don't know the details of that.
If all else failed, they could always follow their tracks back to the LM, given that there weren't too many other wheeled vehicles in the vicinity, and Houston would also have been able to work out a rough heading based on previous travels, which would be good enough to get them into visual range of the LM.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 11, 2005 2:06:59 GMT -4
G'day Moonglow
The crumpled part of the LM's skin isn't that significant. The panels were there simply to cover up parts of the LM which had to be kept out of direct sunlight, nothing more. That part of the LM's surface wasn't part of the airtight skin of the LM; *that* was underneath what you can see in the picture.
Instead, to save weight, the panels covering the rear of the LM were incredibly thin, and secured using high-strength sticky tape. The reason they buckled was, I think, due to the acceleration of the LM during ascent from the Moon.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 11, 2005 2:07:54 GMT -4
Okay, thanks for that.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 7, 2005 2:04:23 GMT -4
I suspect the photo may be AS14 -66-9306.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 7, 2005 1:56:48 GMT -4
There's at least one photo (shown on the Aulis site) which shows double reticles. Unfortunately I don't have the photo's number.
The photo is of the lunar module, with the Sun behind the LM. The reticle nearest the Sun is doubled, with the darker reticle giving the appearance of being recorded at a slight angle to the fainter.
The best analogy I can think of is to imagine the cross being drawn on a piece of translucent paper and a more solid page behind, then the translucent page being partly turned.
I presume the effect is something to do with the Sun being close to the reticle, but I'd appreciate someone explaining it in a bit more detail.
Cheers
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Post by PeterB on Jun 28, 2005 0:27:38 GMT -4
LOL @ Turbonium. Nice picture! But of course it's a fake - GWB doesn't have a helmet on! ;-)
Anyway, remember that your eyes take a finite time to react to light or dark. If you walk outside at night after being in a brightly lit room, it'll take you 10 or 20 seconds for your eyes to adjust. The astronauts on the Moon also couldn't easily lean back to get the bright ground out of their vision. If they stood in shadow, or were inside the LM, they could reduce the amount of sunlight to such an extent that they could see the stars.
Also, as far as taking photos of stars is concerned, the astronauts on Apollo 16 *did* take some photos of stars, using an ultra-violet camera. The reason for taking these photos was that UV light from space doesn't reach the surface of the Earth. So, unlike visible light, being on the Moon is very different from being on Earth.
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