Lost Bird Proves Apollo Inauthenticity

[scooter]

fattydash,

You live near the Lick Observatory. The do give public tours. Why not take a tour and ask some of these questions?

Being a doctor, you could probably arrange a get together with some of the scientists, where you could present your ideas and questions? You know, some one-on-one with those who do this stuff a lot.

Or will you be like all the other HBs and simply cherrypick the information you think supports your case and run away from/ignore any other, real, evidence?

[twik]

Jul 7, 2011 15:30:15 GMT -4 fattydash said:

Also, as soon as Eagle landed, they sighted stars in preparation for an emergency take off. See the Apollo 11 transcripts. So at that time, right then, they could have relayed Lick that position and could have been found, were they there that is . That fact, that the transcripts show nothing to this effect, and given the importance of the LRRR experiment, one may conclude none of this is real. Were it, the Eagle's position at Tranquility base would have been relayed not only to Lick, but to Collins and any other interested parties including those in Houston. Why did it take until August the 1st, 11 days after the Eagle had landed to find the reflector and Tranquility Base?

If it was faked, why did it take 11 days? Direct question.

[tedward]

fattydash is trying to big it up as important. It was a smaller part of the whole. If the package had not deployed as designed for some reason, they still landed on the moon, they still had the option to blast off without leaving the capsule, fattydash, look at the mission rules. Stay, no stay. What if they had not had the chance to go outside and had to blast off?

[sts60]

sts60

As regards your statement, response above, the accuracy issue I am investigating...

You confidently pronounce the Apollo program to be a fraud, but now you're "investigating" the essential details?

I have no library here with me now. That said, I would remind you, and as I have mentioned previously, this is an issue that cannot be overemphasized, the astronauts, the alleged astronauts are the only ones anyway with any capability of locating the Eagle's position on the surface of the moon

Wrong. The position was known to be within a few nautical miles of the planned point. The LM crew knew it by their own guidance system and by landmarks prior to needing to fly past the boulder-strewn planned touchdown point. The LM had been tracked by the high-gain comm system on the CM during much of the descent. And the tracking stations on the ground could figure out their location within a few n.mi. (I have some little experience with similar tracking stations and the ranging principles, and ka9q has explained this in some detail.)

Moreover, the landing point had to be fairly close to the designated location; this was dictated by orbital mechanics, the mechanics of powered flight, and the properties of the LM itself. It couldn't have just arbitrarily wandered a significant way across the Moon. In fact, the last location computed for the LM prior to liftoff was only a couple of hundred meters off.

and so it had better be good enough,...

It was, and this has been explained to you repeatedly, and unless you can actually provide a quantitative analysis as to why it wasn't, you're simply blowing smoke.

...Additionally, they somehow seemed to have found themselves back to Collins miraculously, a "miraculous rendezvous". As another feature of the official story, an important one, is that the coordinates of Tranquility Base, the Eagle's perch, well that wasn't known until 08/01/1969...

You don't get any less wrong with repetition. Why, exactly, was the known position insufficently accurate to permit two vehicles using a radar/transponder system, each with maneuvering reserve, and tracked from the ground, to achieve LOR?
(ETA: fixed syntax)

How is all of this nonsense possible? Well it never happened.

Here's the thing: you're telling this to people who actually know something about the subject, and telling us the same wrong things over again won't fool anyone. The only notion you're really advancing is that you'll say pretty much anything to support your conviction that Apollo was faked.

A person who claims to be a doctor and puts on a show of learning, when his errors are repeatedly exposed, would, I hope, question his own assumptions and biases. But you're just digging in and Gish-galloping on to the next wrong premise. Why is that? Is it a religious thing, or something?

[gillianren]

For heaven's sake, it used to be a relatively common occurrence to miss such landmarks as Bermuda when sailing across the Atlantic because equipment was so primitive. If we're to believe this argument as legitimate, it essentially disproves the entire Age of Sail.

[fattydash]

for twik

There was no retro-reflector at 00 41 15 N and 23 26 00 E on 07/20/1969 because there were no astronauts at Tranquility Base to place one there that evening. I imagine the hoaxers to have placed a reflective device at the site subsequently.

[twik]

Thanks, fattydash. So, do you believe "subsequently" means within the 11 days it took to locate the array, or was it placed some time later?

If you suggest it was placed within the 11 days, how was that done without actually sending someone up to do so? If done mechanically, why did the hoaxers not send it up to correspond exactly with the supposed landing?

ETA: If placed some time later than the 11 days, and the "location of the array" was a fake at that time, when and how was it placed there?

[Jason Thompson]

So there was no retroreflector on the Moon on July 20 1969, but one was somehow placed there betwen that date and August 1st 1969? How was that done without, you know, actually sending up a rocket? Do you have any evidence of the launch of a lunar-capable rocket at any suitable time for that?

[fiveonit]

Jul 8, 2011 16:14:52 GMT -4 fattydash said:

I imagine the hoaxers to have placed a reflective device at the site subsequently.

I IMAGINE that Buzz Aldrin brought back an alien from the moon, they eloped through Unholy Matrimony and subsequently had a child named Britney Spears. She is now the one chosen by the Reptilians to take over the world and force the human population to use Windows Vista. My point? I have just as much proof to back up my wild scenario as you do yours!

Oh - and I still find it highly doubtful that you are an actual doctor.

[ka9q]

Jul 7, 2011 15:30:15 GMT -4 fattydash said:

Also, as soon as Eagle landed, they sighted stars in preparation for an emergency take off. See the Apollo 11 transcripts. So at that time, right then, they could have relayed Lick that position

As Bob B. repeatedly explained to you, apparently without any beneficial effect, these star sightings were to determine attitude, not position!

The distinction is absolutely crucial. A spacecraft with fairly simple equipment can determine for itself how it is oriented with respect to the fixed stars. That's attitude. Modern spacecraft use special-purpose telescope cameras called star trackers. On Apollo, the astronauts selected and sighted stars manually with a low-power telescope.

It is much harder for a spacecraft to determine its position in space with respect to the earth or some other body. That is usually done by the ground by means of a radio tracking system. Only one station usually tracks at any given time, measuring range and range-rate. As I explained yesterday, a given range means only that the spacecraft is somewhere on a sphere with that radius centered on the tracking station. More work is needed to determine where on that sphere the spacecraft actually is.

Usually this is done by taking a series of range and range-rate figures over time and feeding them to a model that computes all the various forces acting on the spacecraft and, applying Newton's laws of motion, gives a state vector with estimated position and velocity of the spacecraft at some time that best fits all the measurements.

When a spacecraft is in orbit, the forces on the spacecraft are computed from models of the gravity fields acting on it. But what about when the spacecraft is on the surface? That model no longer applies because the spacecraft is no longer in free fall. It may not seem obvious, but it is actually harder to determine the exact location of a landed LM.

Most of the error in Eagle's estimated location was in the downtrack, or east-west direction. Tranquility Base is very nearly in the center of the moon as seen from earth, so motion in this east-west direction is nearly perpendicular to the moon-earth line. Relatively large east-wast motions therefore become relatively small changes in measured range, and the answer is not well determined in that axis.

And there were other issues. Eagle only has one transmitter that can transmit either phase modulation (PM) or frequency modulation (FM). During most of the mission, it operates in PM, which is the only mode that supports tracking. But to transmit TV, it has to switch to FM, which doesn't support tracking. So during the entire EVA while the world watched TV from the moon, it was impossible to do any tracking of Eagle at all.

[fattydash]

For ka9q, early in this thread I mentioned to Bob in a post that there was a film clip/film that features the MIT scientists who participated in the design of the Apollo navigational system. In that clip they mention "position" specifically as being determined by the system. I refer you to that post and that video. I thought it was worth watching, about 30 minutes. I believe I left the particulars regarding the name of the clip in the post to Bob.

[blackstar]

Jul 8, 2011 18:24:01 GMT -4 fattydash said:

For ka9q, early in this thread I mentioned to Bob in a post that there was a film clip/film that features the MIT scientists who participated in the design of the Apollo navigational system. In that clip they mention "position" specifically as being determined by the system. I refer you to that post and that video. I thought it was worth watching, about 30 minutes. I believe I left the particulars regarding the name of the clip in the post to Bob.

And did these scientists express any doubt about the authenticity of Apollo? If not then while it might be fascinating viewing it does nothing to support your case. Please present something that does.

[twik]

Once more, fattydash, I have asked several questions to help me understand your position. Could you spare a moment to answer them?

[LunarOrbit]

Jul 8, 2011 7:19:54 GMT -4 fattydash said:

Houston cannot locate the Eagle. They do not have the appropriate equipment to find the bird at its perch, 00 41 15 N and 23 26 00 E. Collins gave it a shot, he could not find the Eagle.

If the whole thing was fake, if everything was scripted, then why would they even pretend to be uncertain about their location. I'm mean, Michael Collins could have said something like "Hmmm... I'm looking but... oh wait... there they are!" and the audience listening in never would have know he was really standing two feet away from Neil and Buzz on the Hollywood sound stage rather than orbiting above them around the Moon.

You keep making claims about how "if this was real it wouldn't have happened this way" but your reasoning is completely flawed and backwards. Things rarely go perfectly in reality... only in Hollywood. So to me, the fact that the scientists couldn't spot the LRRR on the first try, or that no one knew the precise location of the LM until weeks later, makes it far more real to me. If things went too well then maybe I'd consider a hoax theory more plausible.

[ka9q]

Jul 8, 2011 18:24:01 GMT -4 fattydash said:

For ka9q, early in this thread I mentioned to Bob in a post that there was a film clip/film that features the MIT scientists who participated in the design of the Apollo navigational system. In that clip they mention "position" specifically as being determined by the system.

You are quite correct, the Apollo navigation system could determine its own state vector (position & velocity) as a backup feature.

But if you'll read a little more carefully you will discover that this positioning was only applicable during flight. The astronaut navigator (typically the Command Module Pilot, which for Apollo 11 was Michael Collins) sighted stars against the limb of the earth or the moon and the computer computed an estimated state vector.

This system was tested for the first time during the Apollo 8 mission. Much to everyone's delight, Jim Lovell was so good at taking observations that the onboard state vector almost exactly matched that determined by radio tracking. Nonetheless, the mission rules said that ground tracking would be primary. The onboard state vector determination would be used only if radio communications were lost.

But I emphasize once again: this system only worked for the CSM, and only during flight.

It would really help if you took the time to understand how this stuff actually worked instead of just mining the references for quotes you can take out of context. One doesn't establish physical and historical facts like Apollo missions with a battle of quotations.

And as blackstar has already asked, do the MIT people you quoted agree with your position that Apollo was faked?