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Post by JayUtah on Aug 30, 2005 9:14:54 GMT -4
Earth orbit is not space?
In any case, the Apollo CMs were tested for this re-entry by using the SPS to raise them to a high orbit. and then using the SPS again to drive them toward the atmosphere at a sprint.
"It was the first time..." seems to be Spencer's recurring mantra. There has to be a first time for everything. Manned flight test is an inevitable fact of life. Most of these "firsts" were fairly abstract firsts -- the crew really didn't have to do anything in order to confront or manage it. Spencer is careful to mention, in many cases, that they were manned firsts, suggesting (correctly) that they had been tried unmanned before. That is when the "variables" were worked out.
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Post by Data Cable on Aug 30, 2005 9:24:20 GMT -4
Earth orbit is not space? He's saying you misunderstood "re-entry" to mean atmospheric re-entry, when apparently what the author meant was something like EOI (not realizing that no such maneuver was performed): [emphasis mine]
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Post by wadefrazier on Aug 30, 2005 9:32:43 GMT -4
I am not sure that this has happened much in your experience, but the critique from this forum caused the article to be retracted: www.serendipity.li/apollo/moonshine_6.htmI am very skeptical that that article can be rewritten to become aceptable to the people in this forum, unless the author admits that there does not seem to be any credible evidence of faking the moon landings. More than four years ago, I came to a moon hoax forum leaning toward the "we really landed" hypothesis, but with several issues still not answered to my satisfaction. Jay set me straight pretty quickly, then we found Armstrong's Leap together: www.ahealedplanet.net/cover-up.htm#paydirtThat not only more than removed my residual skepticism, it also removed Brain O'Leary's. It was one of the more pleasant outcomes of my researches. Thanks again, Jay.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 30, 2005 9:46:14 GMT -4
number of errors? The entire essay was one long and continuous error.
The problem here is that the Soviets would have known if it was faked, you can't hide the telemetry tracking, in fact the Soviets intercepted the Apollo radio and TV signals. They were quite capable of tracking the Apollo craft and actively did so Apollo 8, 10 ,11 and 12. In fact at the time of 11 they had their own probe in orbit to attempt a soil return to beat the US to that, a hollow victory, but it would have been one still. Unfortunately for them it crashed. It's also very possible that they were attempting to launch a manned lunar orbital mission to "observe" the lunr probe land and retrieve the sample. This failed because the rocket that was to launch the craft ws unreliable. The Soviet Moon program continued through to 1975 however, when it was finally canned and the resources redirected to their space station program instead
Some people try to get around the fact the Soviets would have figure it out faster than a a bee goes splat on a windscreen, by claiming the US bribed them to keep quiet, though that introduces the illogical weirdness of the US telling the Soviets they were faking the missions to make the Soviets think they had been beten. That's somewhere up with the idea that NASA never went to the moon but that they had to fake the pictures to hide the alien ruins they found there.
Quite simply, the Soviets knew it was possible and were in the process of getting there themselves. (their big problems were automating the lander, a condition that the new head of the Soviet Space Centre demanded, and the failure of the N1 heavy lifter, the USSR equivalent of the Saturn V.) They had sent unmanned orbiters to the moon, including one with living specimens onboard (Zond 5.) They were ready to send men into Lunar orbit, had they been able to get the N1 working. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the US, they didn't get the N1 working until it was too late and so they simply packed up their Lunar program and claimed it didn't happen (until they opened up the space program and admitted their plans and even displayed the equipment in 1991.)
Any Hoax explaination has to deal with these problems. It has to explain why the Soviets were still planning a moon trip up until 1975, why the USSR and US equiment was very similar, why the Soviets didn't spill the beans even though they would have known, and in fact listened in on the first four Lunar missions so as to hone their skills and equipment for doing their own missions, and how NASA could possibly have keep such a hoax secret from the Soviet spies inside their own organisation and their contractors..
It also has to explain the 380 kg of moon rock, soil samples, sample cores and trench samples, including photos of the rocks en situ on the lunar surface.
It need to explain the telemetry and how it was done, explain how the signal could have been tracked by not only the Soviets, but a number of amatuer dio operators. It has to explain the sightings of the Apollo craft when they did waste dumps on route to the moon. It also has to explain how come no one could see a supposed LEO ship which would have been a naked eye object or how the TV footage from Apollo 11 was done with the Earth seen to clearly disappear behind the window edge.
It's not just a simple case of rewritting the eassy, any claims of a Hoax not only has to get the history right, but explain every single observation of the footage photos, equipment, transcript, telemetry and physically returned items. As of yet I haven't seen anyone get even close to starting that.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Aug 30, 2005 10:17:22 GMT -4
However, about half of the 2,500 lbf thrust was pressure thrust, not momentum thrust. Pressure thrust doesn't create dust. Jay, this one threw me. What is the difference between pressure thrust and momentum thrust? This comes from the basic thrust equation, F = q*Ve + (Pe – Pa)*Ae where q is the rate of the ejected mass flow, Ve is the exhaust gas ejection speed, Pe is the pressure of the exhaust gases at the nozzle exit, Pa is the pressure of the ambient atmosphere, and Ae is the area of the nozzle exit. The product q*Ve is called the momentum thrust. The product (Pe-Pa)*Ae is called the pressure thrust and is the result of unbalanced pressure forces at the nozzle exit. The optimum operating condition occurs when Pe=Pa. Of course Pe=Pa is impossible to achieve in a vacuum, thus some pressure thrust is always present when operating in an airless environment. You can read more in my Rocket Propulsion Web page.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 30, 2005 10:53:05 GMT -4
Jay, this one threw me. What is the difference between pressure thrust and momentum thrust?
Every rocket motor generates thrust by these two methods. The total thrust is the sum of the thrust generated by each component.
Momentum thrust is the classic conservation of momentum, Newton's-third-law application. Throw a certain amount of mass at a certain rate at a certain velocity out the back of the rocket, and you have exactly as much momentum forward in the rocket as the exhaust has momentum leaving it.
Pressure thrust derives from the kinetic-molecular nature of the exhaust products when the exhaust is a gas. Normally you want the static pressure of the exhaust at the nozzle exit plane to equal the static pressure of the ambient. So if you're at sea level on Earth, you want the static pressure of your exhaust to be 14.7 psi.
In practice it's not possible to construt a nozzle that does this in a vacuum. You will always have some static pressure at the exit plane and so the plume will expand as it leaves the nozzle. This is especially true of a throttled engine, where the chamber pressure and exhaust fluid dynamics will vary widely. If the geometry of your nozzle is fixed, you may have considerable static pressure at the exit plane.
This static pressure also produces thrust. As the exhaust tries to expand into the vacuum, it also expands against the nozzle, forcing it upward like a piston.
Normally, in a well-tuned rocket, the pressure thrust is an order of magnitude or more smaller than momentum thrust. In the LM's DPS at 25% throttle, the pressure thrust accounted for about 40% of the total engine thrust.
Because the gas effects that produce pressure thrust are not especially directed, they don't have as visible or drastic an effect on a surface underneath.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 30, 2005 11:02:08 GMT -4
I read in Pellegrino and Stoff's book that the Saturn 1B from Apollo 1 was used on Apollo 5, due to superstition about putting another crew on top of it.
You win a T-shirt. That is absolutely correct. My apologies.
Spencer claims the Saturn 1 was the AS-204 vehicle, and then the Saturn 1B modification arose out of it. The vehicle for AS-204 (a.k.a. Apollo 1) was a Saturn 1B. The important consideration is that the booster was not deemed in any way at fault for the Apollo 1 fire, and it flew again on Apollo 5 without modification, except to attach the LM payload in place of the Block I CSM.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 30, 2005 14:24:40 GMT -4
I am not sure that this has happened much in your experience...
Enough to make it worth the effort.
I am very skeptical that that article can be rewritten to become aceptable to the people in this forum...
As am I. Spencer's case cannot be salvaged by changing a few details.
His argument, for example, that Kennedy put NASA on the spot is as wrong as it can be. But without it he loses the characterization of NASA as an organization struggling to meet a goal it could not possibly hope to achieve. His later assertion that NASA gave up in 1967 is far less plausible if you understand that NASA is the one begging for the opportunity to go to the moon.
And the key technical argument for having given up is the supposed difficulty of the Saturn development. Again, that's as wrong as it can be. Saturn 1 development was relatively straightforward, and even reused some design and construction elements from previous von Braun boosters. Saturn V development had a normal set of problems.
(The engineer's job is to solve problems. So when he says a design or development is "problematic" he means not merely that he encountered problems while solving it; he means that he ran into serious unforeseen problems.)
The F-1 engine combustion instability problem might qualify as a "nasty" problem, but we have a record of how it was solved, and the same methods were used for years until they were supplanted by more robust computational fluid dynamics. It's certainly valid to identify the most salient problems in a project, but simply to omit to describe how they were solved (and then imply that they never were) is dishonest.
The problem now is that he has removed the essay, and I wasn't done.
I don't mean that maliciously, of course. There were more errors to uncover. But if he's serious about responding to criticism -- which is something almost no conspiracy theorist does -- then we owe him the benefit of a complete analysis.
...unless the author admits that there does not seem to be any credible evidence of faking the moon landings.
It's not so much that we don't accept any conclusion except what we already believe. It's that we expect conclusions to be predicated on accurate fact, proper background, and sound logic.
You can't rewrite history and expect your conclusion to stand up. You can't analyze the nature of the aerospace industry without some understanding of it. You cannot expect people to agree with you simply because you express a belief.
Spencer unfortunately has picked up the bad habit of Bennett and Percy: he starts a section with innuendo and suggestion, and by the end of the section -- without any further exposition -- it has evolved into solid "fact" upon which he has built additional claims.
Jay set me straight pretty quickly, then we found Armstrong's Leap together:
That was exciting, and it has gone on to amaze other people who also failed to notice initially.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Aug 31, 2005 12:35:58 GMT -4
If the author of that article doubts the existence of the Saturn V, or thinks it was a modified Saturn IB, then he really ought to check out the Spacecraft Films Saturn V DVD set. Specifically, the collection of quarterly film reports on the third disc shows better than anything I have seen the sheer scale of the development and construction program. The amount of new stuff that had to be designed and constructed just to build, test and transport the Saturn V boggles the mind.
And all that was just for the first few minutes of each mission. After TLI the Saturn V is done with and useless.
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Post by papageno on Aug 31, 2005 13:18:57 GMT -4
When the round spaceship lands on the Moon, there is a lot of dust billowing around the landing pad. That is not particularly accurate.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 31, 2005 18:30:13 GMT -4
Not only that, Discovery is shown sunlit against a starfield. Not just a regular starfield, but a moving starfield. Kubrick specifically mandated this artistic license -- a clear departure from reality -- in order to convey location and movement, which is still the same reason given for including moving starfields with spacecraft in Hollywood.
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Post by gwiz on Sept 5, 2005 4:37:17 GMT -4
One question I do have regarding Apollo 2-6. Was Apollo 1 initially supposed to be the mission that became Apollo 7 and were 2-6 created after 1 because of the accident and a change of policy to hve the vehicles tested unmanned first, or were they already scheduled after Apollo 1? In other words, if Apollo 1 had been successful, would have Apollo 2 been the mission we now know as Apollo 9, Apollo 3 what was Apollo 8, Apollo 4 being 10 and 5 the first landing? AFAIK, NASA never publicly used the Apollo 2 and Apollo 3 names. Other people have applied them unofficially to unmanned flights, but I think that these numbers would have been used for the next two manned flights planned to follow after Apollo 1. Crews for these flights had been selected and were in training at the time of the fire. After the fire, NASA changed the naming system and used Apollo 4 for an unmanned mission. On this basis, if Apollo 1 had succeeded, Apollo 2 would have been a second CSM checkout, while Apollo 3 would have involved a rendezvous with a LM launched on a second Saturn 1B.
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Sept 5, 2005 7:17:09 GMT -4
I always understood that Apollo 1 was renamed following the accident as a tribute to the astronauts, and that it was not originally set to be designated as such.
Have I go that right?
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
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Post by Al Johnston on Sept 5, 2005 7:42:40 GMT -4
I can't recall exactly, but I recall reading that there was some to-ing and fro-ing on the matter. I believe that the crew referred to themselves as the Apollo 1 crew, and their widows raised objections when NASA tried to refer to the mission by its alternative AS- number (which all missions had: Apollo 11 was AS-209 IIRC, if not, someone will soon put me right ;D).
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
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Post by Bob B. on Sept 5, 2005 8:40:58 GMT -4
This according to Wikipedia: When North American Aviation shipped Spacecraft CM-012 to Kennedy Space Center, it bore a banner proclaiming it "Apollo One" and Grissom's crew had received approval for an "Apollo 1" patch in June 1966, but NASA was planning to call that mission "AS-204." After the fire, the astronauts' widows asked that "Apollo 1" be reserved for the flight their husbands would never make. For a time, mission planners called the next scheduled launch "Apollo 2." Suggestions were made that the flights should be called "Apollo 1" (AS-204), "Apollo 1A" (AS-201), "Apollo 2" (AS-202), and "Apollo 3" (AS-203). Finally, the NASA Project Designation Committee approved "Apollo 4" for the first (unmanned) Apollo-Saturn V mission (AS-501), but declared that there would be no retroactive renaming of AS-201, -202, or -203. The Apollo 1 (AS-204) Saturn IB rocket was taken down from Launch Complex 34 and later reassembled at Launch Complex 37B. It was used to launch the Apollo 5 LM-1 into earth orbit for the first Lunar Module test mission.
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