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Post by laurel on Jan 28, 2012 18:08:07 GMT -4
Funny, if someone falsely accused me of being a sock puppet, I'd correct them.
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Post by forthethrillofital on Jan 28, 2012 18:14:57 GMT -4
Funny, if someone falsely accused me of being a sock puppet, I'd correct them. Am I the one being accused? What exactly is it about? Not sure what this all means. Sorry if I am not with you on that. I don't spend much time with this sort of thing. Admittedly I am not much of a conspiracy theorist myself with so much else going on in my life. Do you have reading recommendations for me? |
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Post by laurel on Jan 28, 2012 18:17:18 GMT -4
If you don't spend much time with this sort of thing, why should anyone believe your hoax claims? Wouldn't it make more sense to believe people who've actually spent a significant amount of time doing research on the Apollo program?
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Post by sts60 on Jan 28, 2012 18:54:52 GMT -4
I suggest looking at it from a different perspective. Since forthethrillofitall doesn't really spend much time on this, and hasn't really offered anything of substance to discuss, why should you spend any time arguing with her? All the regular are aware of fattydash/Patrick1000/DoctorTea/etc.'s incompetence, mendacity, immaturity, and cowardice. Why bother arguing with someone who is offering a casual endorsement, unless she decides to engage in a substantive manner?
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Post by blackstar on Jan 28, 2012 20:04:39 GMT -4
Funny, if someone falsely accused me of being a sock puppet, I'd correct them. Am I the one being accused? What exactly is it about? Not sure what this all means. Sorry if I am not with you on that. I don't spend much time with this sort of thing. Admittedly I am not much of a conspiracy theorist myself with so much else going on in my life. Do you have reading recommendations for me? I would recommend encouraging Patrick1000 to take up the generous offer to put him in touch with Gene Kranz, and by encourage I mean go stand in front of a mirror and talk to yourself... |
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Jan 29, 2012 0:58:02 GMT -4
I checked every one of the OP's references cited in his long posts on page nine of this thread. Every one of them checked out. Each author did make reference to the astronauts not knowing where they were. Not much else to understand. The OP is correct here. Those are the authors' statements. Clear statements. The references given by the OP indicate that the astronauts were given their position with a good degree of accuracy. EDIT to add: For instance, in Reply #524 I demonstrate how the data read to Michael Collins while in lunar orbit placed Eagle only 234 meters from the official position as determined days later. And Reply #525 by ajv explains how the OP made a colossal blunder when claiming the astronauts were given a conflicting position. |
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Post by twik on Jan 30, 2012 10:45:01 GMT -4
I'm always amused by the way fattydash/Patrick1K and his followers conflate "did not know the precise co-ordinates" with "didn't know where they were", as if the closest anyone could get was "somewhere on the surface of the moon".
I wonder if he has ever done any orienteering or geocaching. Probably not, because that would have taught him about the margin for error in locating things.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 30, 2012 10:54:16 GMT -4
I wonder if he has ever done any orienteering or geocaching. Given my luck yesterday in finding caches, I am more inclined to believe the A11 landed on the dark side of the moon. That is certainly where the caches must have been hidden. |
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Post by nomuse on Jan 30, 2012 17:24:02 GMT -4
Heh. I was saved by a creek while orienteering in West Virginia. Here's the set-up; thick woods, so you and your partner would progress by one guy going forward a hundred paces or so, then the rear guy yelling "move to your left! No, your other left!" until the front guy was aligned on the heading. Then the rear guy would jog up to join him. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Eventually we broke out of the woods and were on the trail I expected, but there was no creek. I was able to just barely see one peak through the trees and take a back azimuth off it, but that didn't match where we were supposed to be.
And then it clicked. I was willing to bet I had the right peak (it had a distinctive saddle shape to it), and that we'd done the bounding progression to within a few degrees of accuracy, and this was indeed the trail we were looking for. Which meant....yes indeed....I'd SUBTRACTED the GM angle instead of adding it!
I plotted our presumed position, turned around, and found the creek less than a hundred feet down the trail.
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Post by forthethrillofital on Feb 2, 2012 18:46:55 GMT -4
I checked every one of the OP's references cited in his long posts on page nine of this thread. Every one of them checked out. Each author did make reference to the astronauts not knowing where they were. Not much else to understand. The OP is correct here. Those are the authors' statements. Clear statements. The references given by the OP indicate that the astronauts were given their position with a good degree of accuracy. EDIT to add: For instance, in Reply #524 I demonstrate how the data read to Michael Collins while in lunar orbit placed Eagle only 234 meters from the official position as determined days later. And Reply #525 by ajv explains how the OP made a colossal blunder when claiming the astronauts were given a conflicting position. The OP's point was that the writings of highly regarded authors such as Chaiken consistently feature statements making reference to the astronauts not knowing where they were. The Houston people did not know where they were either. This is what I meant when I wrote that I checked out all of the OP's references in his long posts on page 9. Every one checked out. That convinced me that he is really on to something meaningful. There does seem to be a concensus. |
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Feb 2, 2012 19:57:09 GMT -4
The OP's point was that the writings of highly regarded authors such as Chaiken consistently feature statements making reference to the astronauts not knowing where they were. The Houston people did not know where they were either. This is what I meant when I wrote that I checked out all of the OP's references in his long posts on page 9. Every one checked out. That convinced me that he is really on to something meaningful. There does seem to be a concensus. All references to not knowing their location meant they didn't know their "exact" position. They knew the approximate location with very good confidence, which was about four miles long of the planned target. By about 9.5 hours after landing the knowledge of the landing site had been refined to a position that was only 234 meters from what would become the official position. The OP's references confirm this. |
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Post by echnaton on Feb 2, 2012 23:38:52 GMT -4
That convinced me that he is really on to something meaningful. There does seem to be a concensus. Either that or you are not too discriminatory in giving meaning to things. I am betting on the lack of discrimination. |
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Post by ka9q on Feb 3, 2012 0:42:17 GMT -4
I checked every one of the OP's references cited in his long posts on page nine of this thread. Every one of them checked out. Each author did make reference to the astronauts not knowing where they were. Not much else to understand. The OP is correct here. Those are the authors' statements. Clear statements. I'd say that both the original poster and you (in the unlikely event you're distinct) still share some common problems and misunderstandings. You don't seem to understand that accuracy is fundamentally a quantitative notion, i.e., specified with numbers, and that measurement accuracies often improve with time as complementary meaurement methods are combined, systemic errors are found and corrected, and random measurement "noise" is averaged out through repetitive data-taking. You must understand that measurements are almost always relative, and they can often be made far more accurately in relation to some things than to others. When a measurement is said to be "not good enough", that is always with respect to some specific use. It does not mean that no one has any idea at all. It may still be perfectly good enough for some other use that isn't nearly as critical. This is why Michael Collins never located the landed Eagle. He needed a very accurate estimate of Eagle's landed position relative to the moon itself, and he never got it in time. There may not even be a well defined limit on what constitutes an "good" measurement if you've got enough time to make use of a poor one. That's why it took over a week for the Lick Observatory to make its first successful laser contact with the Apollo 11 LRRR. But when it came to linking the LM back up with the CSM, what mattered was not the positions of the spacecraft relative to the moon, but their positions relative to each other. And that's where the rendezvous radar on the LM and the VHF ranging system on the CSM excelled. That's what they were designed to do, that's why they were built, and that's why the Eagle was able to find its way back to Columbia in just a few hours. Even these systems only had to be good enough to get them within visual range of each other, at which time the crew could do the rest. |
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Feb 3, 2012 10:54:02 GMT -4
I think the following story is analogous to the situation with Eagle on the moon.
Let’s say I’m driving to Columbus, Ohio for a business meeting. I’ve only been to Columbus on a couple occasions so I’m not at all familiar with the city. I get off the highway and start following the directions I was given, but I soon discover I must have missed a turn somewhere. I see none of the streets and landmarks described in my directions. I try to turn around but I become disoriented and I no longer know were I am.
Surely all of us here would describe my predicament as being “lost”, but am I really? I know with certainty that I’m in downtown Columbus, and I know that I’m likely within a mile or so of my intended destination, I just don’t know exactly where I am within the downtown district.
I call my business associate and tell him I’m lost and I need help. He asks me to describe my location. I answer that I’m near the corner of E. Broad Street and Grant Avenue just across from the Columbus College of Art & Design. From this description he can deduce to within a small error my exact location. He then proceeds to give me new directions to his office.
After I return home from my trip, I look up where I was on Goggle Maps. From the images I can pinpoint my exact position at the time I called for additional directions.
All along I knew where I was – downtown Columbus – but I was lost within the downtown district of Columbus. By describing my location to my work associate, he was able to determine were I was within about half a city block. This was accurate enough for him to give me new directions to get me to his office in time to complete our meeting as scheduled. After getting home and seeing a detailed map, I was able to pinpoint my exact position.
I equate this story to Eagle because all along they knew Eagle was within the error ellipse, they even knew that it landed long of the ellipse center, they just didn’t know exactly where Eagle was within that area. By having the astronauts describe landmarks, the geologists back on Earth were able to determine the position within a few hundred meters. This was good enough for Eagle to find its way back to Columbia. After returning to Earth, astronaut debriefings provided enough additional information to determine the exact location of the landing site.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Feb 3, 2012 11:09:34 GMT -4
The OP's point was that the writings of highly regarded authors such as Chaiken consistently feature statements making reference to the astronauts not knowing where they were. But they don't. They make references to the astronauts not knowing exactly where they were. That's a hell of a difference. They knew where they were to within an acceptable margin of error. They passed landmarks they recognised on the way down. That's a world away from being totally lost, which is what the OP claimed. He also claimed they were too lost to effect a successful rendezvous, but was unable to explain why he thought you needed to know your exact position to do this. Do you feel he had a point there as well? Again, they didn't know exactly where they were, but knew they had to be somewhere within a specified landing elipse. |
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