Saturn V rocket needed to be 266 times bigger.

[JayUtah]

...by a Nazi war criminal responsible for the mass slaughter of civilians...

Von Braun's war record is fairly well documented, and is utterly irrelevant to whether Apollo was real.

At this point you're just throwing crap in hopes that any negative light you can shine on Apollo will make your claims seem even slightly reasonable.

You claimed once to have believed in Apollo. Didn't you accept von Braun's Nazi past then? Why so different now?

[taibak]

In addition to what Jay said, I feel obliged to point out that von Braun was not a war criminal. He was forced to join the Nazi party to further his career and spent two weeks in a Gestapo prison on false charges. Hardly the resume of a mass murderer.

[hubcapdave69]

margamatix said:

Well, let's all hope that Apollo didn't happen, as I'm sure you would all be as nauseated as I would if America's first mission to the moon was masterminded by a Nazi war criminal responsible for the mass slaughter of civilians, who should have been hanged at Nuremburg......

argumentum ad hominem. Attacking the truth of someone by assaulting their character is a logical fallacy.

[scooter]

This really is frustrating...I don't know how you all do it.

Mr M presents a argument, albeit based on an out of context quote from a very large book, tosses in a irrelevant and innaccurate snippet of personal background from the author, then...poof...

I get the distinct impression that these folks just don't want to read what we write. It may interfere with their delicate "logic stream" or something. It doesn't take long to detect a pronounced and predictable pattern here...and it's not aimed at gathering facts and finding a truth in all this.

I'm listening though, wish he would read that book the young lady was quoting from, probably a whole bunch of neat stuff in there!

Dave

[JayUtah]

Well, be careful. It depends on which "civilians" von Braun is being accused of mudering. He had no direct influence on the use of slave labor from civilian internees to produce the V-2. The production of the V-2 was under a completely different authority. But it must remembered that the V-2 was considered by the British to be a terror weapon, largely indiscriminate in its target. Thus the Londoners who died in V-2 attacks might well be considered indiscriminate civilian casualties. But before condemning such desperation as war crime, consider also the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

It is the conspiracist's aim to force us to defend von Braun and (by inappropriate extension) the Nazis in Germany as a prerequisite to believing in the moon landings and defending them from criticism. Von Braun's politics or personal demons are not the issue. One does not have to be a saint in order to design rockets that fly to the moon. The issue is whether it was done, not the historical cloud under which some choose to place it.

[Jason Thompson]

Whereas it did show footage of many of NASA's launch-pad failures,

Which are irrelevant. Failures are expected when developing new technology. How many airliners crashed before we had regular passenger flights? The fact that early rocket development was beset by exploding rockets does not mean the problems could not be ironed out to make successful flights, as I'm sure you will agree. After all, no doubt you have seen many successful space launches in your lifetime.

the Saturn V rocket would have needed to weigh 800,000 tons and been taller than the Empire State Building in NY in order to have reached the moon.

But, as has already been pointed out to you, the Saturn V never went to the Moon. This impossibly large rocket described in the book was the reason for choosing another mode of flight for lunar missions, one that involved a smaller rocket.

I will stress again, that this is Wernher von Braun's calculation, not Bart Sibrel's.

But Sibrel is the one misrepresenting its significance. Von Braun knew what he was talking about when he made that calculation. Sibrel does not, or does not wish to. If that sounds harsh, recall that Sibrel claims to have smoking gun footage that blows open the whole hoax, but wants money from each and every person who wants to see it.

I'm sure you would all be as nauseated as I would if America's first mission to the moon was masterminded by a Nazi war criminal

It really doesn't bother me in the least. Von Braun presided over a construction facility that used slave labour, but what exactly were his alternatives? Resign in protest and be imprisoned or shot as one who sympathises with the enemy? Did he personally kill anyone? No. Did he personally sign orders that had people killed? No. Was he working on a weapon of mass destruction? most assuredly, but that does not make him any worse than any British bomb-maker or pilot who went along and bombed Dresden into a pile of smoking rubble.

Von Braun's past and activities were well-known in the US. His personal beliefs were not in line with Hitler's, so why persecute him for being part of Nazi Germany? By that citerion every German who did not actively oppose Hitler should be executed for War Crimes. I hope you don't believe that to be true.

[apollo18]

margamatix said:

if America's first mission to the moon was masterminded by a Nazi war criminal...

I would just like to add that Wernher von Braun was by no means the Apollo "mastermind" as you put it.

[echnaton]

Welcome to the board Apollo 18.

[hubcapdave69]

As an aside, does anyone know where I could find a copy of Conquest of the Moon?

[JayUtah]

A university library is your best bet, especially a university that has a good aerospace engineering program. You can find it at used bookshops. It's anachronistic science, and so it's not in print.

[PhantomWolf]

I see that margamatix has changed his tactics from ignoring the replies and just repeating his initial claims to ignoring the replies, abandoning the thread and starting new one.

[bazbear]

margamatix said:

Well, let's all hope that Apollo didn't happen, as I'm sure you would all be as nauseated as I would if America's first mission to the moon was masterminded by a Nazi war criminal responsible for the mass slaughter of civilians, who should have been hanged at Nuremburg......

That's ridiculous. After the London Blitz and the Battle Of Britain, the gloves were off for all sides in regards to bombing civilian targets. Using your logic, the designers of bombers like the B-17, B-29, He-111, Lancaster etc. etc. would be war criminals, too.

In any case, whether he was a war criminal or not doesn't change the fact the Apollo landings actually took place.

[gwiz]

jayutah said:

Modern rocket designs, which began in the early 1960s -- too late to help von Braun with his earlier book, but not too late to contribute to Apollo -- employ newer, more structurally efficient materials, skin-and-stringer and monocoque methods, and the use of internal pressure to keep elements braced in compression. A modern rocket works a little like a soda can. When it's pressurized, it can sustain a tremendous load both in compression and in bending. Unpressurized it collapses easily, showing the inherent structural strength of its constituents.

"Modern" rockets begin even earlier than the 1960s. The 1950s missile designs are still the basis for many current launch vehicles such as Delta and Soyuz, plus Atlas and Titan from the same era which are only now being replaced.
Only the Atlas and its Centaur upper stage actually rely on internal pressure for structural strength, a technique which gives a very light structure at the expense of complicating operations. The new Atlas V first stage reverts to a conventional structure.

[Bob B.]

There’s little I dislike more than a person who spreads lies and ignorance, which places Bart Sibrel near the top of my hate list. His latest intro shows he is either a buffoon, or a conman, or both. The man is an idiot and he won’t be happy until he pulls everyone else down with him.

First off, like a typical layman he seems to think that everything in rocketry has to do with thrust. While thrust is an important factor in rocket design, it ultimately has little to do with determining how fast, hence how far, a rocket will go. ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft made it all the way to the Moon using an engine with a thrust of only 70 milliNewtons. Yet, Sibrel starts his intro by giving the formula for impulse thrust as if it alone is sufficient to determine whether the Saturn V could send Apollo to the Moon. Knowing thrust is not enough, and if Bart Sibrel wasn’t such a dolt he could easily perform the calculations to show the Saturn V was more than up to the task.

Traveling through space is nothing more than transferring from one orbit to another. A spacecraft’s orbit is determined by its state vector, i.e. its position and velocity. To change the orbit we change the state vector by adding or subtracting velocity. The following Web page gives the lowdown on orbital maneuvers:

www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm#maneuver

The job of the Saturn V was to launch the Apollo spacecraft and then inject into a transfer orbit between Earth and the Moon. To do this, the Saturn V had to provide only enough velocity to get into low Earth orbit and then to change from a circular Earth parking orbit to an elliptical orbit with an apogee beyond the orbit of the Moon. This was done within the first few hours of the mission, after which the job of the Saturn V was finished.

Velocity in low Earth orbit is about 7.8 km/s, but a launch vehicle must also provide enough velocity to overcome gravity and drag during ascent to orbit. This generally requires another 1.5 km/s. However, due to the Earth’s rotation a spacecraft launched from Florida is already moving about 0.4 km/s. Therefore, the total velocity required to reach orbit is about 7.8+1.5-0.4 = 8.9 km/s.

Escape velocity from low Earth orbit is 11 km/s, thus the change in velocity needed to go from a circular orbit to an escape trajectory is 11-7.8 = 3.2 km/s. However, the Apollo spacecraft needed to get to the Moon only, not escape Earth’s gravity all together, thus a change in velocity of about 3.1 km/s was used. This means the total velocity the Saturn V had to provide was about, 8.9+3.1 = 12 km/s.

From these Web pages,

www.braeunig.us/space/specs/saturn.htm
www.braeunig.us/space/specs/apollo.htm
www.braeunig.us/space/specs/lm.htm

we get the following data:

Escape tower: 4,173 kg
Command module: 5,806 kg
Service module: 24,523 kg
Lunar module: 16,440 kg
Spacecraft-LM adapter: 1,800kg
Instrument unit: 2,030 kg
Stage 3, propellant: 106,940 kg
Stage 3, dry: 11,380 kg
Stage 3, other: 755 kg
Stage 2-3 interstage: 3,650 kg
Stage 2, propellant: 451,650 kg
Stage 2, dry: 36,395 kg
Stage 2, other: 505 kg
Stage 1-2 interstage: 5,195 kg
Stage 1, propellant: 2,149,500 kg
Stage 1, dry: 130,570 kg
Stage 1, other: 2,450 kg

TOTAL MASS: 2,953,762 kg

Stage 3 specific impulse: 427 s vac, at 5:1 mixture ratio
Stage 2 specific impulse: 424 s vac, at 5.5:1 mixture ratio
Stage 1 specific impulse: 265 s SL

The following Web pages show the derivation of Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation and the correct method for calculating the delta-V of a multi-stage rocket:

www.braeunig.us/space/propuls.htm#impulse
www.braeunig.us/space/propuls.htm#stage

Applying this method to the Saturn V we can calculate its delta-V. After stage 1 burnout we jettison stage 1, 1-2 interstage, and escape tower. After stage 2 burnout we jettison stage 2 and 2-3 interstage. We therefore have,

dV1 = 265*9.80665*LN(2,953,762/(2,953,762-2,149,500))
dV1 = 3,381 m/s

mo2 = 2,953,762-2,149,500-130,570-2,450-5195-4,173 = 661,874 kg

dV2 = 424*9.80665*LN(661,874/(661,874-451,650))
dV2 = 4,769 m/s

mo3 = 661,874-451,650-36,395-505-3,650 = 169,674 kg

dV3 = 427*9.80665*LN(169,674/(169,674-106,940))
dV3 = 4,166 m/s

Total dV = 3,381+4,769+4,166 = 12,316 m/s

12,316 m/s > 12,000 m/s, so where’s the problem?

[Kiwi]

hubcapdave69 said:

argumentum ad hominem. Attacking the truth of someone by assaulting their character is a logical fallacy.

The trouble is that Margamatix gives the impression that he has no idea at all about logical fallacies. They have been mentioned to him before, to no avail, and it doesn't seem that he has looked them up on the internet. He just doesn't care that his various claims mean nothing at all, and he has no intention of defending them or actually getting to understand the many replies that have been written for him.

Come to think of it, he doesn't seem to know much about logic either. It makes one wonder what he teaches his kids about critical thinking. The poor sods will probably grow up very ignorant.