Rocks from the Moon

[sts60]

During the build-up to war, I said to my wife "Of course they haven't got Weapons of Mass Destruction, we've spent the last three months building up troops on their border, don't you think they would have used them by now?"

Well, not necessarily at that time; they could have been confident of riding out an invasion... but the point is moot, as there were none.

I was dubious myself, but with little way to evaluate the claims and counterclaims, I couldn't be sure at the time. We now know conclusively that the WMDs did not exist - despite the absolute belief of many millions of people, a large portion of whom still believe that they exist!

There were countless "experts" saying "this proves it, that proves it", but sometimes you are a little better off ignoring the experts and applying some of Mom's good old-fashioned common-sense to a situation.

Bless her heart, Mom's common sense only goes so far. For instance, she probably thinks that in order to catch up to something in orbit ahead of you, you aim it and speed up.

Of course we have never been to the moon.

No. Your sense of certainty is not a useful argument, especially since you seem to have no expertise in the relevant fields. (The last is not an insult; there are plenty of fields about which I'm ignorant, and the same goes for most people).

Your statement begs the question and draws an invalid comparison between politically-driven assertions based on scanty data, obtained via classified sources, about the capabilities and intentions of a closed, hostile, sovereign country on the one hand, and testable assertions about one of the most thoroughly documented, open and almost entirely unclassified engineering and scientific programs in history.

One can generally not go and look at the sources of data used (and ignored) in the preparation of the WMD claims, and I for one have little expertise in the evaulation of such claims. However, there is an enormous amount of high-quality data available for Apollo, quite a bit of which has been looked at in detail by various posters here. Some of us also have directly relevant expertise. Considerable amounts of data and expertise have been offered to you, but you have yet to use them. Saying "of course I'm right" is ignoring our responses, not addressing them.

You remind me of a police officer who pulled me over for speeding once in my dark green pickup. He was writing down information and said, "What color is that - black?" Of course, he could have seen for himself easily if he had removed his sunglasses. Your sunglasses are still firmly fixed in place.

[margamatix]

This machine appears to date from around 1914, by which time man had been flying in heavier-than-air machines for around 65 years (gliders) and powered heavier-than-air machines for 11 years.

It's no surprise that this could fly.




The moon is 240,000 miles away, in a total vacuum, in one-sixth of Earth gravity, at temperatures of 280 degrees celsius.

The furthest from Earth any country has sent any man, woman or animal in the last 30-odd years is 400 miles.

Fourteen astronauts have died doing this.

We sent mission after mission to the moon and they all came back, fine and dandy, without any long-term damage to their health.

When NASA was asked in 1987 if they could send a man to the moon, their opinion was that if they were fully-funded, they might be able to do it by 2010.

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

[sts60]

Don't ever say to me "You are a truck driver, I am an expert, therefore my opinion is worth more" because I'm afraid that just won't wash.

That is a straw man; kindly don't go beating him up around here.

Your occupation is not the issue, but your understanding of Apollo and the relevant fields is, simply because you have so far relied exclusively on belief and appeals to "common sense".

In other words, your claims have basically boiled down to "I believe this" or "I don't believe that". There is no obligation for people who do have expertise relevant to Apollo to accept your mere opinion as useful evidence if you don't understand the material. You need to come up with something to back your claim up. Saying "of course" and "I believe" just doesn't hack it.

[gdwarf]

margamatix said:

This machine appears to date from around 1914, by which time man had been flying in heavier-than-air machines for around 65 years (gliders) and powered heavier-than-air machines for 11 years.

It's no surprise that this could fly.

You miss the point, I was referring to how Sibrel and Co. say "look at this, it doesn't look like it could do X" By simply looking at the photo and pretending that you know nothing about flight you could easily be fooled into thinking it wouldn't fly, but you do know about flight, so you know it can. You do not, however, know anywhere near as much about space as you do about flight.

The moon is 240,000 miles away, in a total vacuum, in one-sixth of Earth gravity, at temperatures of 280 degrees celsius.
[/quote
That temperature is the temperature of the surface, not the air, not the LM, but the lunar surface.

The furthest from Earth any country has sent any man, woman or animal in the last 30-odd years is 400 miles.

Correct, but a few years previous there was a mission that sent animals further, I would like some confirmation, but did it not send animals around the moon?

Fourteen astronauts have died doing this.

Millions, if not Billions, of people have died from driving cars, does this mean that it's impossible to drive?

We sent mission after mission to the moon and they all came back, fine and dandy, without any long-term damage to their health.

Millions, if not billions, of people drive everyday, despite the above numbers of deaths, and most get to where they want to go just fine.

When NASA was asked in 1987 if they could send a man to the moon, their opinion was that if they were fully-funded, they might be able to do it by 2010.

I'd want to confirm that quote, but even if it was true it's not a huge surprise. Space travel is a highly specialised thing, simply because you can send a man to the moon does not mean you can send one to Mars, the opposite is also true. In 1987 most of the Apollo stuff had been stored away/ destroyed etc. Why? NASA didn't want to waste huge amounts of funding to preserve it all, so they kept the most historically important stuff and got rid of the rest. Besides, it would take longer to build new space ships, etc. I'm sure that others here could tell you more.


Edit: I was correct, Jay did tell you more, I reccomend you read his post about this to get a better feel about why 2010 was the earliest date.

[JayUtah]

It's no surprise that this could fly.

You missed the point. Of course a careful consideration based on the functional merits of the design will reveal whether the airplane can or cannot fly.

The point is that Sibrel doesn't do this for the LM. He encourages you to judge it solely on the basis of your opinion of its appearance. If you were to apply exactly the same kind of analysis to the LM as you just did for this airplane, you might come to a different conclusion than Sibrel.

The moon is 240,000 miles away, in a total vacuum, in one-sixth of Earth gravity...

So? What makes you think engineering cannot overcome these limits?

...at temperatures of 280 degrees celsius.

Only sometimes, and only the temperature of the lunar surface itself.

The furthest from Earth any country has sent any man, woman or animal in the last 30-odd years is 400 miles.

Copied uncritically from Bart Sibrel.

This is a good example of his deceit and intent to mislead.

Originally his claim was that no one had ever sent anyone beyond 400 miles. That's because he didn't know about the Soviet Zond flights that sent biological samples -- including turtles -- around the moon and back to Earth and recovered them safe, alive and well. This confirmed that complex organisms could pass through the Van Allen belts safely.

Further, two different Gemini flights flew well into the lower Van Allen belts and took radiation readings. Their crews were also recovered alive and safe, and are still alive today. Even though Gemini was an important developmental program to pave the way for Apollo, Sibrel makes no mention of it whatsoever. He is determined to make it seem as if Apollo simply sprang out of nowhere and is thus suspicious.

When these missions were brought to his attention, he didn't retract his claim. He just added that arbitrary "...in the past 30 years..." to make his claim technically accurate, yet still misleading and suggestive of a hoax. Other missions have gone into the Van Allen belts, appropriately before Apollo. Sibrel doesn't want you to know about them.

Further, many countries deploy communication satellites in the Van Allen belts. Electronics are more sensitive to radiation than people. Yet these satellites seem to work fine for their design lifetimes.

Fourteen astronauts have died doing this.

Several times as many people have died fishing for crab in Alaskan waters. What's your point?

We sent mission after mission to the moon and they all came back, fine and dandy, without any long-term damage to their health.

The question of long-term damage is actually still being assessed. Since some of the Apollo astronauts have subsequently died of cancer, I think it's premature to conclude that there is no long-term damage at all.

However, please explain why we should expect some particular degree of long-term damage? Damage from what?

When NASA was asked in 1987 if they could send a man to the moon, their opinion was that if they were fully-funded, they might be able to do it by 2010.

Yes, those of us who work in the aerospace industry consider that a reasonable estimate.

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

But when it comes to your handling of space travel and Apollo, you might just as well have. You are simply echoing the ignorant statements of dishonest authors. Why would that make you well-informed?

Nearly all these questions are covered on my web site, which you claim to have read. You are obviously lying about having done that.

[JayUtah]

"NASA didn't want to waste huge amounts of funding to preserve it all..."

That type of machinery as a shelf life usually measured in months, or at best a very small number of years. If you build examples of the technology and store them away, they will only be viable for a year or so at most. The mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties of the components change over time and fall out of tolerance. Some portions of the Apollo CM (gaskets, seals, etc.) had shelf lives of only about three months.

If you save away the plans, they are valid typically only for about five years. After that time, the manufacturing and conditioning processes that were presumed in the design are superseded and require redesigning the affected components, and the standardized components are revised by their manufacturers and require redesign and validation.

[gdwarf]

jayutah said:

"NASA didn't want to waste huge amounts of funding to preserve it all..."

That type of machinery as a shelf life usually measured in months, or at best a very small number of years. If you build examples of the technology and store them away, they will only be viable for a year or so at most. The mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties of the components change over time and fall out of tolerance. Some portions of the Apollo CM (gaskets, seals, etc.) had shelf lives of only about three months.

If you save away the plans, they are valid typically only for about five years. After that time, the manufacturing and conditioning processes that were presumed in the design are superseded and require redesigning the affected components, and the standardized components are revised by their manufacturers and require redesign and validation.

Ah, thanks for making that more specific. I was feeling that my explination was too open to cries of coverup.

[Jason Thompson]

As interesting as this thread has become, perhaps I could drag it kicking and screaming back to the original point.

If the dozens or hundreds of qualified people around the world who examined the moonrocks all believe they are genuine and were collected from the Moon by people, why exactly should we disbelieve them?

How could the rocks have been faked so convincingly that they not only passed every test back in the time they were collected, but every brand new, more sophisticated and at the time unimagined test that has been developed in the intervening 33 years since the last Apollo mission?

So, how could rocks be faked, and on what sensible basis do you discount the testimony of so many geologists from all across the globe?


P.s. If I may also return to one of the tangents, a variation on that photo of a plane and whether you could tell it will fly just by looking at it. Look at a Hawker Harrier. Does it look like a flying machine? Yes, it shares many characteristics with other aeroplanes. However, just by looking at it would you believe it could fly sideways and backwards?

[JayUtah]

There is a conspiracy there, of sorts.

The Saturn V was specifically dumped in favor of the space shuttle. The Saturn V was seen as mainstream technology, albeit the pinnacle of it. The shuttle was seen as a departure from convention and therefore risky. The shuttle contractors were obviously worried about competing with the Saturn V. So for confidence reasons, as well as budgetary reasons, the Saturn V program was terminated. And I mean terminated. The plans were archived and the tooling was ordered dismantled. This was to send a signal to the shuttle contractors that NASA wouldn't "secretly" maintain production of the Saturn V. About half of Apollo's budget was for Saturn V development. This was sold to Congress on the presumption that it would be the heavy-lift booster family even after Apollo. So you can imagine how reluctant Congress was to approve "yet another" entire launch vehicle family just ten years after approving the Mother of All Rockets.

But that's a specific situation involving the Saturn V and the space shuttle. For technology that had no follow-on (e.g., the lunar module) it simply goes fallow. The short version of that statement is that you just have to work in the industry in order to understand how and why that happens. The long version involves the details of how companies in those industries design and produce their products. Making spaceships is not like building houses, or even like building cars. Building lunar modules isn't even like building Delta IIs. The production processes in those industries are far more specialized and individual than in any other industry. And as such, the design of the machinery they produce is heavily influenced by the means intended to produce it. You design the machinery presuming how it will be built. Those production methods change about every 5 years as new and cool methods are developed. The older ones fall by the wayside.

To resurrect the old designs means resurrecting the old methods. And it's not as if any manufacturing engineer can be brought in to operate them. Most of the methods presume the knowledge and experience of the people who originally operated them, who in almost all cases were the same people who invented them.

I keep harping on the example of the Kevlar-wrapper out at ATK/Thiokol, but that's a really good example. It's a one-of-a-kind machine, operated by the guy who designed it. And it takes that machine to make the Thiokol SRM designs; the enginers design the motors knowing that they will be built with some configuration of the wrapper. Tooling and production methods are considered high-value intellectual property in the aerospace industry.

[frenat]

More than a hundred people die each year from falling coconuts. Maybe we should ban trips to the tropics!

The astronauts that died knew the risks. Going into space is dangerous. It always will be even if it becomes thousands of times more common than it is now. Yes it was tragic. Yes it would be better if it had never happened. But it has no bearing on the Apollo project whatsoever. They were in a completely different vehicle and completely different circumstances.

[JayUtah]

The notion that the many geologists who studied the lunar samples were innocently fooled invokes the premises, as Jason notes, of what methods could have been invoked to produce the samples. The various properties of the samples have been discussed, and hoax believers generally have no idea how to produce those properties.

There are several hypotheses we might consider, but if we just consider the two implied here -- (a) The samples were brought back from the moon by the Apollo astronauts, and (b) the samples were fabricated by NASA -- we can quite quickly conclude that one is quite a bit more plausible than the others. Since (b) requires unknown techniques, it is a hypothesis full of holes. (a) may seem implausible to some, but there is an appropriate amount of substantiation and documentation for each of its premises: we have designs and examples of the spacecraft built to do it; we have photographs and video of the samples being collected; and we have the testimony of those who claimed to have done it. The conspiracy theorists cannot name or describe any existing process that would produce the samples, cannot name any individual who can claim and substantiate having been party to the fabrication, and there is no circumstantial evidence of any such process ever existing or having taken place. Put head-to-head, the Apollo hypothesis clearly wins out over the fabrication hypothesis because the latter is nothing but holes.

But more insidiously, the claim that geologists were fooled by these fabrications is tantamount to claiming that geologists don't know their business. The conspiracists simply presume that geologists would have no a priori knowledge of what lunar samples ought to consist of, and obviously no genuine samples against which to compare them. The latter is comparative study, and is obviously useful in geology. But it is not the sum total of geological practice. Geologists are not out of luck if they are prevented from doing comparative studies. The former is synthetic study, and it is much more useful in this notion. Because geologists know how rocks form in general, and know in great detail how various conditions affect the final appearance, they can speak with great authority on how rocks should appear in the absence of those conditions, or under different conditions.

The epistemologically rigorous might point out, with some justification, that this is really analytical understanding, since the body of geological knowledge thus described is obtained by observation, generalization, and discovery of causation. Understanding "after the fact" is deemed analytical. But when those principles are then used as a starting point from which to theorize about materials yet unseen, the practice becomes synthetic.

In any case it is a gross misunderstanding and underestimation of geology to presume that a geologist can simply be handed some fabricated material and he would be unable to detect it as such, or that he would have no scientific justification for expecting certain properties (and the absence of others) in lunar rocks.

[PeterB]

margamatix said:

phantomwolf 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.

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.

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.

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

[PhantomWolf]

Although I don't want to derail the stones issue, I love moon rocks, to me they are one of the major nails on the Hoax's coffin. Sibral's claim they were cooked up in ceramics ovens is one of the funniest jokes of the century and shows exactly how little he really knows about moon rock, but I wanted to taken on this quote and evaluate the LM in the same way as margamatix did the bi-plane.

margamatix said:

This machine appears to date from around 1914, by which time man had been flying in heavier-than-air machines for around 65 years (gliders) and powered heavier-than-air machines for 11 years.

It's no surprise that this could fly.

Cool, not a problem, you used logic and looked at the logical progression, so let's do the same with Apollo.

The basic principles of rockets have been around for a very long time. Stories of rocket like devices are as far back as 400 BC, though that first provable rocket was used by the Chinese in 1232 AD. This means that rockets have been around for longer than gliders, in fact they have existed for nearly eight centuries!

In the 17th centruy Newton, 300 years ago, Newton defined his Laws of Motion, and with it more work was done on the ideas involving rocketry, including vehicles that were propelled by jets of steam and German and Russia scientists were building 45 kg rockets. In 1792 AD the Indians used rockets against the British and by 1799 AD the British were investigating them as a weapon. Note well that this is still 200 years ago, over 150 years prior to Apollo.

Modern Rocketry really started to in 1903 when Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published the use of liquid propellants rather then gun powders (funny how we often use solid fuels again. ) and along with the American, Robert H. Goddard, conducted a lot of experiments (Independantly obviously.) Goddard propsed a number of formula which would define a rockets flight, and also achieved what many consider the first modern Rocket flight in 1923. So while areoplanes were still in their infancy, rockets were right along side of them.

The third great space pioneer was a German named Hermann Oberth, and from his works in 1923, the German rocket industry flurished creating the V-2 in 1937, still 20 years prior to Sputnix and 30 years prior to Apollo. Luckily it was too late to affect the outcome of WW2, but by 1945 german rocketers had developed plans for the World's first ICBM, a rocket capable of hitting cities in the US.

October 4, 1957, 20 years after the V-2, 12 years before Apollo, Russia puts Sputnix into orbit. If not for a row over using a "Nazi built rocket" the US could have beaten them and once the politicing is over, four months later, on January 31, 1958 the US put Explorer 1 into orbit. Still over 10 years to go to Apollo.

In 1960 as the Mercury program was gearing up to get the first man into space, Kennday, under NASA's advisement called the US to come to the ballgame and show the Russians that the Western technology was better by heading to the Moon. NASA believed they could do it, if they were funded well. The Democrats accepted the challenge and went for it, Johnson continuing the funding for the programs after Kennedy's death. Here the Russian program and the US program were quite different. From the start NASA had its eyes on the moon and so its program was designed to get them there. Russia just wanted firsts.

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 claimed the first man in space, the US having already tested Mercury Capsule, a space capsule with no computer at all, with Chimps responded by putting Alan Shepard into space, followed by 6 further Mercury missions. Recuirting more Astronaunts, NASA began the next phase of their mission to the Moon, Gemini.

Gemini consisted of 10 manned missions. These involved true rendevous where the craft manouevereding their obits to meet up. It involved space dockings with other craft and it involved orbital burns to place the craft high into the Van Allen Belts. ll of the things that would be required for the Apollo missions were practiced and learned in those 10 missions. Everything short of putting a craft into lunar orbit and landing a Lander on the moon.

During the time of the Manned missions, Jet Propulsion Labs were working on their side of the Moon missions, getting a craft to the Moon. With a successful Ranger program, they moved onto Surveyor, the first attemps at a soft landing on the moon. Surveyor proved to be a major success and provided detailed information about landing a craft on the moon, and in one case, re-launching, moving and re-landing on the moon. So the parts of Apollo that Gemini had not done, Surveyor had!

By the time of Apollo, NASA was ready. Rockets had been in a modern form for well over 30 years since the V-2. The science of rockets had been developed over 800 years and the Laws of Motion that governed then had been defined for 300 years. They had done the needed docking, orbital burns, sending craft into Lunar orbit, landing a craft softly on the Moon, and having it take off. All they needed to do was put men in a lander and do it.

Just as they tested the CSM unmanned first then in Earth Orbit and then sending it to Lunar Orbit, they tested the Lander unmanned first, a simple test automated test flight in Earth Orbit. When that succeeded they took on to the moon's orbit and tested it there to 50,000 feet above the surface. The only test they hadn't done was land it. That final test came with Apollo 11. The objective of the mission, to descent the final 50,000 feet, land, then take off again. Anything else (ie getting out) was extra.

Apollo 11 was the final test of a project that had been dedicated to getting to the moon for 10 years. A project with 800 years of science behind it, with 30 years of large modern rocketry, and 4 previous projects laying out the pavement for it. It didn't come from nowhere, it was a further step on the road that was being travelled.

You are willing to accept a plane can fly because it has 10 years of heavier than air flight behind it's development, but not a rocket with 30 years behind it? That seems strange to me, and the only reason I can see that you won't is because you don't want to believe.

[margamatix]

We have the technology to send unmanned vessels to the moon. Although it would have been extremely difficult to do in 1969, it falls within the realms of possibility that such a vessel could have collected rocks and returned to Earth with them at this time.

It's worth pointing out here though, that the USSR did not find it possible to do this until the Luna 20 project in 1972.

If it had all really happened, don't you think we would have landed and returned an unmanned craft before trying with a manned one?

[PeterB]

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.

If it had all really happened, don't you think we would have landed and returned an unmanned craft before trying with a manned one?

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?