Rocks from the Moon

[sts60]

If I was required to answer this is one sentence, I would say "Because in the second half of my life, I have learned that the government of the United States is prepared to lie to me"

The U.S. government, like any other government to one degree or another, tells lies sometimes. But no amount of government disinformation can repeal scientific and engineering fact. The evidence for Apollo is massive and both internally and externally consistent.

I can understand your suspicion of government claims. But it's not enough to say "I think they were lying." You have to show how and where they were lying, and that a purported lie trumps the evidence. No HB has ever done this, and for the good reason that they can't. You haven't even tried to do this. Your general statement of mistrust is not proof. It's not evidence. It's not even specific to Apollo.

Oh, and the bit in my signature below.

You repeated Sibrel's appeal to ignorance. He has no understanding whatsoever of engineering or physics, and we have pointed out some of his obvious mistakes.

So that's not much of a claim either. In particular, what exactly about the LM do you find unsuitable to its task? And in general, why do you uncritically accept the unsupported claim of a man who literally doesn't know what he's talking about, who lies and stalks astronauts for his personal gain, but ignore the detailed (and free!) explanations provided to you here?

And the astronaut who was jerked up on a wire.

No, it was explained many times to you why this is incorrect. You keep repeating this claim as if it was accepted fact, but you haven't made the slightest attempt to back it up.

Any the fully-lit shaded astronauts. And the dust. And the fact that the USA could fund an impossibly expensive space programme at the same time as funding an impossibly expensive war. And everything, basically.

But if you actually look at these claims, as the regulars here have, you find that each one of them crumbles to nothingness or irrelevance when examined critically. Your "everything" turns out to be a lot of "nothing". In any case, you haven't backed up any of your original assertions - you've hardly even discussed them: you just keep repeating them as if that proves something. So I don't feel particularly obliged to start a round on new ones until you are kind enough to debate the old ones.

I didn't just come up the Thames on a piece of toast, as we say here in the UK.

You have bought the silly and thoroughly disproven claims of a demonstrated liar and ignoramus hook, line, and sinker. You have bought the codswallop of a con man. You keep parroting them to us, but can't or won't discuss them when we point out their shortcomings. You've been badly fooled by someone, and the way you cling to it reminds me of the reactions of a lot of people when they learn how badly they've been swindled; they cling even harder to their belief in the con man.

Plus, you're not the only person who's been around a little bit - "this ain't my first rodeo", as we say here in the States. We've seen the scientifically illiterate swindlers like Sibrel before. We've actually learned the relevant subjects, and are prepared to discuss them in detail and show you the entire story - something the Sibrels, Whites, and Kaysings of this world desperately want to conceal from you. And we'll spend a lot of our free time helping you learn the real story. If you want to learn it.

Oh yes, and we won't charge you US$29.95 for our "exclusive" information, either.

[TaeKwonDan]

margamatix said:

Whereabouts in my posting is the word "always"?

Then why does it matter that the US government has lied in the past? It gives you reason enough to not trust things on face value, but it is not proof of wrong doing in and of itself. Either it matters, because you think they always lie or it's an emotional argument meant to sway one from looking at the facts of the case.

Thus the fact that the government has lied in the past should have no bearing on whether or not you accept the evidence that the Apollo landings were real. The evidence stands or falls on its own.

[margamatix]

skinbath said:

twinstead said:

margamatix, in my opinion your reputation can only be salvaged if you enjoy a good pint of ale.

Anybody who loves a good pint can't be all bad, therefore if you do, you can't be all bad.

Regardless of that whole toast and Thames thing.

It seems to me that margamatix enjoys lots and lots of "good pints"!

Twinstead's attempt to draw me into that little trap was so shallow and obvious, that I didn't waste my time on it.

"Tu quoque" seems to be a favoured weapon among MDs. Why?

[skinbath]

margamatix said:

skinbath said:

It seems to me that margamatix enjoys lots and lots of "good pints"!

Twinstead's attempt to draw me into that little trap was so shallow and obvious, that I didn't waste my time on it.

"Tu quoque" seems to be a favoured weapon among MDs. Why?

Hey, lighten up and take it in the way, a) I certainly meant my post and b) I`m sure it was meant by "twinstead". ;D

(edit to re-phrase)

[twinstead]

"Tu quoque" seems to be a favoured weapon among MDs. Why?

Dude, try to focus and recognize attempts to lighten this thread up.

Just because one disagrees doesn't mean one has to loose ones sense of humor

[PeterB]

*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.

[Kiwi]

margamatix said:

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.

The Salem witchcraft hysteria is probably the closest thing in history to moon-landing-belief hysteria, but in the end, the truth outed, and it will about the Apollo moon-faking too.

Margamatix, let's get back to the earliest posts in this thread. You seem to deliberately avoid answering the many questions asked of you, but please have the courtesy to apply yourself to those that follow with a thoughtful answer and not mere handwaving.

I ask these questions because it is probably difficult for any reasonably sensible person to understand your response to the list of scientists. Answering thoughtfully, sincerely and honestly will at least give us some idea of the type of person we are dealing with.

1. Are you dismissing out of hand the qualifications and expertise and the ability to analyse lunar samples of all those scientists listed in the two posts on page 1?

2. Have you investigated any of the scientists and the tests that they proposed?

3. When you appeared to dismiss them with the above quote, did you seriously consider your answer and at the time were you sober and -- in your opinion -- in reasonable control of your faculties?

[Martina W.]

Now that I finally am (re-)registered to this board (thanks for your quick response, LunarOrbit) I just have to set at least one common error straight:

phantomwolf said:

On August 6, 1961, after putting up a dog, the USSR put up Yuri Gagarin in a craft that couldn't land, but hiding that little fact from the world,

They did not actually hide it. The earliest source I can come up with is a children's book (Bekier, Erwin: Juri, der erste Kosmonaut, p. 37) published 1961 in the GDR.

And while I'm at it, it was April 12, 1961 and Laika was not the only Russian "space dog" before manned spaceflight - Chaika and Lisichka were on Korabl-Sputnik 1 and died when the rocket exploded in July 1960, Strelka and Belka were recovered alive from Korabl-Sputnik 2 in August 1960, Pcheka and Mushka burned up in Korabl-Sputnik 3 due to a too steep reentry angle, Kometa and Shutka made a hard landing due to ejection seat failure and were recovered alive in December 1960, Chernushka was recovered alive with the Korabl-Sputnik 4 capsule in March 1961 while her flight partner Ivan Ivanovitch Maket used the ejection seat (Maket is Russian for Dummy ), Zvezdochka did the same in Korabl-Sputnik 5 in late March 1960.

OK, I admit I'm just reading B.E. Tschertok's "Maschinostroeinie", a massive 4 part book about Russian space flight

[JayUtah]

Yes, thank you Martina. It was actually known outside of Russia at the time that Gagarin's capsule could not land safely, but the information has taken quite a while to percolate to the U.S.

[gwiz]

martinaw said:

Pcheka and Mushka burned up in Korabl-Sputnik 3 due to a too steep reentry angle

That was the story at the time. With current information, the re-entry burn was insufficient and the craft did another orbit and a half before being deliberately blown up. One hopes the destruction charges were removed for the manned flights.

[Martina W.]

gwiz said:

That was the story at the time. With current information, the re-entry burn was insufficient and the craft did another orbit and a half before being deliberately blown up.

Thanks, I did not know that. May I ask for your source?

[gwiz]

martinaw said:

gwiz said:

That was the story at the time. With current information, the re-entry burn was insufficient and the craft did another orbit and a half before being deliberately blown up.

Thanks, I did not know that. May I ask for your source?

This site:

www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/sputnik6/sputnik6.html

gives the story in full, with a list of sources. If you haven't come across Sven's site before, I can recommend it. He was the Swedish amateur space tracker who picked up signals from Apollo 17:

www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm

[bazbear]

margamatix said:

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.

The Salem witchcraft hysteria is probably the closest thing in history to moon-landing-belief hysteria, but in the end, the truth outed, and it will about the Apollo moon-faking too.

Say what? If anything resembles the paranoid irrationality of those 17th century witch hunters, it's the HB community's tenacious ability to hold onto and believe in the "evidence" of an Apollo hoax, even after these theories and "proofs" have been shown to be incorrect; time and time and time again.