Pokrovsky theory

[Kiwi]

Dec 14, 2011 13:25:15 GMT -4 sts60 said:

...the USSR acknowledged and congratulated the US on its sucessful manned lunar landing on A11.

Indeed it did. Anyone who has access to their local 1969 newspapers can probably find the following information. Besides, it was all on the radio news at the time too. I don't know about TV -- not many of us had TV in New Zealand in 1969.

The West Australian is published in Perth, Western Australia, and the Manawatu Evening Standard is from my nearest city, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

The West Australian, Friday 18 July 1969, page 16
Russians hail Apollo

The Soviet news agency Tass yesterday put out an 800-word story outlining America's moon programme and hailing the three Apollo 11 astronauts.

Tass described the three men as "those courageous people entrusted with the most responsible task of landing on the moon."

Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, wished the astronauts bon voyage. It said: "Let us wish its courageous crew a happy voyage and full success."

No report

Communist China's official newspapers and radio have so far not reported the launching.

In Hong Kong, three Communist newspapers attacked the mission as a cover-up for the Americans' failure to win the Vietnam war and said that it was an effort to extend imperialism into space.

In Korea the U.S. embassy in Seoul put up a 20-foot-square television screen to show the launch, and about 50,000 South Koreans gathered to watch. Apollo programmes will be presented every night till splash-down next week.

Newspapers throughout Europe filled their pages with pictures of the blast-off. The French newspaper Le Figaro said: "The greatest adventure in the history of humanity has started," and devoted four pages to reports from Cape Kennedy and diagrams of the mission.

In Britain, the Communist Morning Star said: "The challenge of Yuri Gagarin's immortal pioneer orbit and the shame of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is being expunged in the rocket's fire."

The Daily Mall cartoonist portrayed two starving children in Biafra gazing at the moon and saying: "Maybe they'll discover it is made of cheese and bring some back for us to eat."

Major Yugoslav newspapers devoted three to six pages to Apollo. One issued a special edition.
—A.A.P.-Reuters

The West Australian, Wednesday 23 July 1969, page 8
Congratulations from Kosygin
Moscow, Tuesday

Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin sent congratulations to the Apollo 11 astronauts and President Nixon yesterday through former vice-president Humphrey, who is visiting Moscow.

Mr Humphrey was called to Mr Kosygin's office in the Kremlin after the moon walk.

Mr Humphrey quoted Mr Kosygin as saying: "I want you to tell the President and the American people that the Soviet Union desires to work with the U.S. in the cause of peace."

Prompt reports

The Russian radio reported the landing of the astronauts within ten minutes of touch-down and announced the ascent from the moon even more promptly. Moscow television showed the moon walk yesterday.

A first screening was edited to blank out the American commentary and the voices of the astronauts. It ended just before the astronauts raised the U.S. flag on the moon's surface.

About two hours later, in another TV broadcast, the sound and the flag raising had been restored.

In Peking, the official newspapers, TV and radio totally ignored Apollo 11, but some Chinese people may have heard of the landing by courtesy of Radio Moscow. A half-hour Chinese-language news broadcast from Moscow gave 30 seconds to the landing.

In London, a man who almost arranged the death of Saturn rocket designer Wernher von Braun sent him a cable of congratulations — and relief.

Politician Duncan Sandys, who planned a raid designed to kill Nazi Germany's major rocket scientists at Peenemunde (one of them Dr von Braun), said: "I am thankful that your illustrious career was not cut short in the bombing raid at Peenemunde 26 years ago."

Manawatu Evening Standard, Friday 25 July 1969, page 1
Astronauts home — Perfect, but upside down, landing
NZPA Aboard USS Hornet, July 24

Apollo-XI's astronauts, their footprints stamped forever in history, splashed (upside down) "in excellent condition" today to make good America's commitment to walk on the moon in the 1960s.

A beaming President Nixon was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific, 1000 miles southwest of Honolulu, when the epic voyage of the three explorers came to its end.

Civilian Neil Armstrong, aged 38, Air Force Colonel Edwin Aldrin, aged 39, and Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Collins, aged 38, blazed back through the atmosphere and disappeared into the most severe medical quarantine in history. They came back from a voyage of nearly a million miles in space.

The United States top space official, Dr Thomas Paine, administrator at NASA, predicted the Russians would be on the moon too, within 18 months, and urged his countrymen not to "turn inward" and sacrifice interplanetary exploration to internal problems.

Bedlam broke out in many American cities, large and small. Car horns, city and ship sirens screamed and fireworks crackled in San Francisco, where the Mayor, Mr Joseph Alioto, had asked every noise-making device in the city to be turned on for five minutes. Church bells rang in New England.

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins splashed down a few miles from the Hornet just at dawn, and bobbed in the dark ocean for more than an hour while they put on quarantine garments.

AAP-Reuter reported that Mission Control in Houston, Texas, said the unofficial splashdown time was 195 tours, 18 minutes and 21 seconds after lift-off from Cape Kennedy. This was a bare 45 seconds earlier than the original flight plan.

Black out

The spaceship seared into earth's atmosphere at over 24,000 miles an hour, and there were tense minutes of waiting for radio contact to be re-established after the re-entry blackout.

The flight controller, Mr Ron Evans, put in nine tight-voiced calls to the spacecraft before getting an answer.

Apollo-XI landed upside down in the sea, and there were long minutes while controllers waited for flotation bags to inflate and right the bell-shaped capsule, and so confirm that all was well aboard.

Then a recovery helicopter pilot radioed: "The crew is excellent and ready to take on swimmers."

Before they were taken aboard the helicopter which brought them to Hornet, the astronauts were sprayed and scrubbed with a fluid scientists believe will effectively take care of any moon organism — if such exist. The spacecraft was also sprayed and scrubbed.

The astronauts already had been given biological isolation garments — head-to-foot suits designed to prevent contamination of the earth by possible moon germs.

A frogman then sprayed the outside of the spacecraft with germ-killing fluid.

Trailer

The astronauts were taken by the helicopter to an aluminium trailer on the deck of the Hornet, to be quarantined from the world for 18 days.

The astronauts stepped on the Hornet's deck and walked steadily, clad in their isolation suits, into the rear door of the trailer that will be kept sealed, for a two-day trip to Honolulu on the Hornet and then by air to the space centre near Houston.

A moment later one astronaut's face appeared at a window and a great cheer broke out on the hangar deck.

In mission control at Houston, weary controllers cheered themselves hoarse and the room bloomed with American flags.

Soviet praise

From Moscow, the Soviet President, Mr N. Podgorny, today congratulated President Nixon on "the successful completion of the outstanding flight of the spaceship Apollo-XI, the moon landing and the safe return to earth of the American cosmonauts."

The Soviet President's telegram said: "Please convey our congratulations and best wishes to the courageous space pilots Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins."

Russian television viewers saw their first live transmission from the epic Apollo-XI flight, as the moon-walking astronauts landed on the Hornet.

[Bob B.]

Dec 14, 2011 22:28:08 GMT -4 PhantomWolf said:

How much did the Oxygen and Nitrogen tanks wiegh for instance?

I believe there were batteries in that area as well. It's very likely the listed mass of the "Airlock Module" includes everything in that section of the space station and not just the airlock alone.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

Dec 14, 2011 21:53:45 GMT -4 Tsialkovsky said:

It is pity that Pokrovsky and others are not allowed to use spy data in publications (Russian foreign policy).

Statements like that are semantically indistinguishable from "the dog ate my homework".

[ka9q]

Let's not forget the consumables while we're at it. Skylab was launched with 6,575.7 pounds (2,983 kg) of water alone. (NASA TM X-64825). It also carried food, oxygen, nitrogen (it had a mixed gas atmosphere) and CO2 scrubber for at least 513 man-days of habitation.

[raven]

I am assuming "NASA TM X-64825" is some kind of source, but what does it refer to and how can this one access it?
Edit: Never mind, found it.

[Jason Thompson]

Dec 14, 2011 21:53:45 GMT -4 Tsialkovsky said:

For example, NASA tells that the weight of air lock was 22 tons. The volume of this module is 17 m3.

That's the habitable volume of the airlock module. In other words, the volume of the empty space in the middle, not the volume of the whole module. The 17 cubic metres figure refers to none of the solid material used in the construction at all.

If that would be completely full solid aluminium,

Although aluminium was used in the construction of Skylab, why do all your figures for the weight assume it was the only thing used? Oxygen tanks and suchlike are not made from aluminium, Instrument panels and electrical systems are not made from aluminium. Fuel cells are not made from aluminium. A lot of these things are made of denser (and therefore heavier) materials.

And that still leaves out things like the consumables such as water, food, etc.

The weight of Skylab body was even less than 8 tons because removal of J-2 engine with all the accessories should be considered.

It has been considered. You seem to have missed the addition of many other much heavier items such as solar panels and an entire solar telescope.

[tedward]

Dec 14, 2011 21:53:45 GMT -4 Tsialkovsky said:

I trust very much Russian investigations 1969 at the Florida coast. With that fleet of electronic spying ships they can tel the Saturn V figures with 3 decimals. It is pity that Pokrovsky and others are not allowed to use spy data in publications (Russian foreign policy).

Sounds like they were spying for a reason, one you dismiss. But then say you cannot examine. This conflicts with what you said earlier. But you mention to three decimal places? So how do you know what they compiled?


"Americans really want to tell that there was a competition to the moon between USA and SU - and USA won. US media has done everything to find smallest pieces of Soviet moon interests. Unfortunately this is not true."


If they were spying, which we know they were, and that is what the cold war was about. But are you saying you do not know what the info acquired was? In which case how do you know there was no competition?

We have already seen information provided by others that refutes your claim. The US and USA were at it hammer and tongs. And it was so nice the other side of the iron curtain. people were prepared to risk getting shot, blown to bits, brought down by dogs and beaten by soldiers to get to the west.


You also said
"
There were two different realities in USSR - the political one and the military/scientific one. And during the Breshnev times the country was modest and polite to any direction."

And Breshnev (whose watch the economy went to shreds, oh, and he invaded Afghanistan) and the Soviets of that era was not the fluffy teddy bear you paint them. Look up what happened in Czechoslovakia for a start. Very nice were the Soviets to that nation.

[gillianren]

Dec 15, 2011 4:28:56 GMT -4 Jason Thompson said:

It has been considered. You seem to have missed the addition of many other much heavier items such as solar panels and an entire solar telescope.

Pfft. How much can a solar telescope weigh?

[tedward]

How much? Nothing in space........



(oh I hope that is seen in the right light)

[ka9q]

Some more Skylab mass figures picked from various NASA reports:

S-IVB, dry: 11,273 kg (already given)
J-2 engine: 1,584 kg (deleted - not that much, eh?)
S-IVB tanks: 9,689 kg (S-IVB dry mass minus J-2 engine)
Inst Unit: 2,064 kg (guidance system for Saturn V - attached to Skylab)
Cntl gyros: 543 kg (control moment gyros used for attitude control)
water: 2,983 kg (not including tanks)
food: 670 kg
oxygen: 2,240 kg (not including tanks)
nitrogen: 600 kg (not including tanks)

The NASA board investigating the launch problems with Skylab gave these masses:

Payload shroud: 11,794 kg (not jettisoned until orbit!)
Apollo Telescope Mount: 11,181 kg
Multiple Docking Adapter: 6,260 kg
Airlock Module: 22,226 kg
Instrument Unit 2,064 kg
Orbital Workshop: 35,380 kg (the converted S-IVB stage proper)

So our Russian friend should see how simplistic it was to think that Skylab was just a gutted S-IVB stage. A lot of equipment, furnishings and supplies were crammed into that thing. A Saturn V instrument unit that normally sits atop the S-IVB as a rocket stage was added in its usual position and several large experiment and habitat modules were attached that together weighed even more than the completed orbital workshop. Those extra modules were protected by a massive payload fairing that was carried all the way into orbit.

Fortunately for Skylab, the Saturn V still had quite a bit of extra margin. The failure of the micrometeorid shield at 63 seconds into the flight damaged the separation ordnance for the main part of the S-IC/S-II interstage, mass 4,985 kg. Instead of dropping off 30 seconds after staging as it should have, it was carried all the way into orbit along with the rest of Skylab and the S-II stage.

And if he doubts the sizes and masses of any of these things, he can examine them in person by going to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and looking at the flight-ready spare, where it has been a major display since the 1970s. Sounds like our Russian spy friends could have done better by buying some round trip air tickets to Washington, not to mention getting on the Internet and consulting the NASA Technical Reports Server.

[ka9q]

Dec 14, 2011 18:40:27 GMT -4 Tsialkovsky said:

Today they use computer controlled dynamic main engine which is capable of automatically maintaining the balance in any circumstances.

You are quite right that the task requires a computer. And so they built one. Read any number of books on the Apollo Guidance Computer, the very first digital autopilot, and how it was used:

Mindell, David A: Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight
O'Brien, Frank: The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation
Woods, W. David: How Apollo Flew to the Moon
Kelly, Thomas J: Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module

Not to mention the many excellent, free online resources:

Apollo Flight Journal: history.nasa.gov/afj/
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal: history.nasa.gov/alsj/
and the mother lode of them all, the NASA Technical Reports Server: ntrs.nasa.gov/

In 1960s USA took its first steps in docking technology. In Moon docking is very difficult because the lack of positioning technology there and docking may take several days if possible at all.

I laughed out loud at this one. So you think it isn't possible to go to the moon until we establish a GPS (or GLONASS) constellation there? Might I suggest you read up on the LM Rendezvous Radar and the VHF Ranging System flown on Apollo. It's amazing what you can do with relatively simple electronics when you put your mind to it. Just because Russians can't figure out how to do it doesn't mean no one else can.

[tedward]

Been wondering about spies brought up here. I had the idea that the usual suspect was the one in place, that is for arguments sake, a US citizen who wanted some weekend cash and would pass whatever they thought was suitable. Or maybe a plant, worked from the bottom up after being set up in country. Then there is the one breaking into offices and trying to bribe.

But as mentioned above, much of it was in the open so what good would a spy have been? Would they know what to look for to discredit something? Certainly a bit of loot in the right place might well have turned out a hoax seeing as the nature of the project was not very closed and I think the USSR would have used that at an opportune moment to ram it down the US throat. This opportunity being for the maximum embarrassment and aimed at currying gain and favour with unaligned countries.

Coupled with I think spies collect and pass information (in this case), they do not asses it past the need to identify it as what they are looking for. Obviously they need an idea. It would be passed on to more informative people such as rocket scientists for investigation.

So I would expect a scientist to shoot it down. Not a spy that no body can verify and no one can see what the brought out as claimed here.

[ka9q]

Dec 14, 2011 21:53:45 GMT -4 Tsialkovsky said:

And engines had extensive pogo problems even then breaking the vehicle's shielding and solar panels.

Where do you get your information? Are you just making it up?

The Skylab micrometeroid shield broke loose at T+63 seconds because of unexpected airflow through a tunnel as the vehicle passed Mach 1. It unpeeled the thin shield until it caught in the slipstream and tore away.

In the process of tearing away, the shield unlatched one of the solar panels but it remained undeployed because of acceleration loads and aerodynamic pressure. When the stack reached orbit and the S-II separated from Skylab, the four solid fuel retrorockets on the forward skirt of the S-II fired to back it away from Skylab. The plume of one of these retrorockets caught the partially deployed solar panel, blew it open and ripped it off its hinges.

These failures had nothing to do with pogo. Next time at least read the references, okay?

[Tsialkovsky]

The issue is that von Braun argues that Saturn V was capable of transporting 118 ton to LEO and 47 ton to Moon orbit. Soviet inteligence says that the capacity of rocket was not more than 27 tons to Moon orbit. NASA says that Skylab was 77 tons which indicates that the rocket was rather strong (even if major pogo vibrations occurred). My calculations propose that Skylab was not at all so heavy.

It would be easy to draw a compromising conclusion - Saturn V was indeed capable of transporting 77 tons to LEO and this means that about 27 tons to Moon orbit was possible. But if we accept that, we must understand that the figures are exceptionally high - anomalies - in rocket engineering. Today we cannot even imagine a rocket as strong without external boosters.

Then the big problem remains - we cannot explain how the 47 ton Apollo system could have been transported to the Moon orbit. We don't find any solution to this in rocket engineering. At least two separate rocket launches would have been necessary. I can easily understand those technical experts who believe that Apollo was a cold war show case as the Russian rocket experts say - and what these Germans also say (however, they don't believe in Russians either):
www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/atmosphaerenfahrt/

Saturn V F-1 engines were indeed dead end and major failures in rocket engineering - that is why they were not further developed and were completely abandoned. If they did what was told, they would certainly be today the most celebrated rocket systems used by all the space countries - but they are not even considered in rocket planning. RD-170 and RD-180 are engines used by all ... including US.

F-1 engines always had major problems with pogo - especially after about one minute from start (where Skylab was also damaged). In NASA reports it is mentioned that all the Saturn V test and flights were successful, but this is not true ... all they had pogo problems (Pokrovsky said that they had to reduce the performance 20 %).

Let's hope that projects like Falcon X Heavy and other similar ones will one day be true ... and that we could get a rocket capable of transporting more than 30 tons to Moon orbit - but that will take time.

I must repeat that Soviet politicians did not have any interest to deny the success of Apollo. But the space scientists knew exactly what the reality was (and maybe informed politicians). Somehow Soviet politicians were happy that USA puts their efforts to Moon missions ... not to military operations. The times were cold or actually very hot - USSR assisted Afghan government and took care of their Warzaw Pact countries - USA attacked independent countries in Asia (Korea, Vietnam, Lao, Cambodia, etc), Central America, South America, and had Gladio Program in Europe. And USA was in panic because of Soviet success in space research.

PS - it is not very nice to call experts having probably more knowledge on space research as hoaxers or conspiracy theorists - those other people who are repeating Wikipedia or NASA/Apollo sketches are parrots ... nothing more - so leave out such wording.

[ka9q]

Dec 15, 2011 9:01:35 GMT -4 Tsialkovsky said:

PS - it is not very nice to call experts having probably more knowledge on space research as hoaxers or conspiracy theorists - those other people who are repeating Wikipedia or NASA/Apollo sketches are parrots ... nothing more - so leave out such wording.

Sorry pal, but I calls 'em as I sees 'em. The sole support you have for your argument are some claims attributed to unnamed members in "Soviet Intelligence". At least most Apollo hoaxers and conspiracy theorists do give their names because they're seeking unwarranted publicity and fame -- or infamy, to be more accurate. Even if your friends in "Soviet Intelligence" did give their names, I think most people would consider them even less trustworthy than your average Apollo hoaxer. And that's saying quite a lot.

We've already shown you how simple sanity checks show your claims to be inconsistent with established, publicly witnessed facts. I.e., they're bogus. So either provide more supporting details (if you can) or withdraw them.