Why SEVEN Apollo Missions?

[cuscack]

Hi,

I'm new to this board.To those who doubt that NASA put men on the moon, that in fact the whole thing was a monstrous conspiracy, I'd like to pose this question? Why fake SEVEN missions to the moon?

If as the conspiracy theorists claim the moon landings were faked then why the hell do it a total of six times after all, the primary goal and proganda coup was achieved with Apollo 11.

If you are perpetrating a hoax you do the same one SIX times?!?- NONSENSE? Everytime you perpetrate the hoax the risk of detection becomes greater- therefore why continue to do it after Apollo 11?

Why FAKE an emergency on Apollo 13? WHY?! if you are faking the whole thing why the hell don't you just air your canned moon footage?

Why did the Russians sit idly by after Apollo11? if as is claimed the Astronauts simply parked in Earth orbit for the duration of the moon mission it would have been simple enough for the Russians to know this.
Are we to believe the Russians simply didn't bother exposing the hoax to the world considering the effect such an expose would have had on world opinion?


You are proabably all aware in your day to day lives of just how difficult it is to keep even the most trivial secret.Considering the amount of personnel involved in the Apollo programe it would be next to impossible to have kept the hoax under wraps for fory years.No deathbed confessions from key personnel?-NONSENSE!


Also various morons point out details from photographs such as the flag billowing. If you were faking footage of a flag in vacuum who would be so incredibly stupid to render it as if it were blowing?ARE YOU SERIOUS? surely the people who were faking the footage were not so PLANK STUPID to not have noticed a stiff breeze blowing across the set!
For the doubters information : in the movie industry one does have recourse to what is known as TAKE 2.


OK enough from me, before the internet I really didn't realise just how may truly stupid people there are out there. People who cling to desperate,absurd theories as some from of validation.

[PhantomWolf]

It wasn't 7, it was 11, you are forgetting 7-10, and since some claim the Saturn V never worked, then you'd need to add 4 and 6 to these as well, and 5 for those that claim the LM didn't work. So you could actually say it's really 14 missions with only Apollo 1 as a real mission though that was never designed to get off the ground, just to kill the crew, so 15.

[cuscack]

Yes of course Apollo 7- 10, I stand corrected. But I was under the impression that 11 was the first mission to the moon surface (to be followed throught to 17, hence my reference to seven missions )and that Apollos 7- 10 were preliminary missions towards that objective , am I right in this?

People out there actually claim the Saturn Vs didn't work............are you serious?

[echnaton]

There you go trying to be all rational. That just won’t do. To believe in a hoax you must just believe in a hoax. To maintain that belief, you must be very selective in the information you use and be sure that you only give credibility to that which supports your belief. For an example, read the threads that are centered around margamatix’s “arguments.” He is a true believer because he selectively interprets what ever he sees to support his opinion and supports it by declaring that it is apparent to his own eyes. If you insist on being rational you will never believe.

Welcome to the board!

[Bob B.]

Welcome the the forum, cuscack

cuscack said:

People out there actually claim the Saturn Vs didn't work............are you serious?

Amazingly, yes. There are those who claim NASA/Rocketdyne couldn't get the F-1 engine working, hence the Saturn V was far less powerful then advertised. It is essentially a small rocket in a big shell. Some say it could launch the CSM into orbit but no more. Others say it was just a big show and the whole thing crashed into the Atlantic once out of sight.

[Jason Thompson]

I was under the impression that 11 was the first mission to the moon surface (to be followed throught to 17, hence my reference to seven missions )and that Apollos 7- 10 were preliminary missions towards that objective , am I right in this?

Yes. Apollo 7 launched the first manned CSM into orbit for a shakedown of its systems. Apollo 8 sent the CSM alone into lunar orbit, providing practice at control and communication at lunar distances. Apollo 9 tested the CSM and LM in Earth orbit, then Apollo 10 took both the CSM and LM into lunar orbit and practiced everything except the landing itself.

Before all these there were Apollos 4 and 6, which were unmanned Saturn V launch and CSM orbital test flights, and Apollo 5, which was an unmanned LM test flight. On top of those you have the early Saturn flights which often used Apollo boilerplate spacecraft for tests.

Most HBs want to ignore all these, however, assuming they have even done sufficient research to even know of their existence. That's why you get claims about the LM being an 'untested' vehicle at the time of Apollo 11, That's why you get some HBs bringing up the transmissions from Apollo 9 as evidence of the lack of appropriate signal delay in the 'faked' lunar mission. That's why we had one HB on the Yahoo group talking some rubbish about the astronauts observing Earthrise from the lunar surface during the Apollo 10 mission. That's why someone here once reported a conversation with someone who was insistent that the Moon landing, singular, was faked.

People out there actually claim the Saturn Vs didn't work............are you serious?

Sadly, yes. Bennett and Percy, in their book Dark Moon, claim that the Saturn V was not powerful enough to have sent the Apollo missions to the Moon. Well, that's what they first claim. Later they claim that it was used to send surrogate astronauts to the Moon.

They take particular issue, as I recall, with the appearance of the exhaust from the F-1 engines, which shows a 'dark' plume for the first eight feet or so, then the bright, incandescent flame. They cite testimony from some expert in rocket propulsion (in fact they spend almost an entire page listing his credentials and trying to justify their use of him as an 'expert') who says this is not typical of the engines that use the propellants used by the Saturn V first stage. If they bothered to look at film of the launches of Saturn I and IB rockets, however, they would have seen closeups of the engines which show exactly the same effect. It is simply more noticeable on the Saturn V because the F-1 engine is so much larger.

They then go on to speculate that maybe the Saturn V just used the engines from the Saturn IB (which they incorrectly call B-1 engines; they were actually designated H-1 engines) in a larger shroud. They do not bother to explain how five engines that can only generate about 1,000,000lb thrust between them can manage to lift something the size of the Saturn V, however....

if as is claimed the Astronauts simply parked in Earth orbit for the duration of the moon mission it would have been simple enough for the Russians to know this.


It would have been simple enough for anyone to know this, since the Apollo CSM/LM stack would have been easily visible with the naked eye as it orbited the Earth. Look up on any clear night and you will see dozens of satellites crossing the sky, most of which are considerably smaller than the Apollo spacecraft stack.

[sts60]

Welcome, cuscack!

Speaking of Saturn Vs, they apparently have some admirers here - though why one is featured prominently on this particular page is open to speculation (my likely explanation is a spaceflight-ignorant web designer).

[cuscack]

Thanks for all your informed and interesting responses.
The Apollo programme is a subject I've only recently become more interested in.
I note that no one who has responded to my initial query vis repeating the "hoax" - is in the conspiracy camp, which to be honest is a shame because
I'd dearly love to hear the oddballs explanation why it was necessary to fake the moon landing six times.

Off topic, but it is interesting to see how the conceptual images for the future moon landing vehicles look remarkably similar to those from the Apollo programme (albeit scaled up)I suppose the old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it " applies. Having said that, a part of me is somewhat frustrated that we are looking at 45 year old concepts and techniques this far down the line.

Is this a result of cutting the Apollo programme so abruptly? things stagnate I guess, hardwon practical experience and knowledge once lost and not passed on is gone for good- (or until it is relearned). A reasonable analogy (maybe?) would be if we attempted to rebuild a jet aircraft of the complexity of an A380 after a hiatus of 45 years- the blueprints may exist, as of course would the theoretical knowledge. but the absence of any practical experience would make the task immeasurably more difficult.

[Bob B.]

cuscack said:

I note that no one who has responded to my initial query vis repeating the "hoax" - is in the conspiracy camp, which to be honest is a shame because
I'd dearly love to hear the oddballs explanation why it was necessary to fake the moon landing six times.

There are a couple reasons I've heard claimed for the six "fake" landings: (1) There were people making big money off the hoax, thus it was continued to keep the cash flowing, and (2) it was used to distract people's attention away from the Vietnam War.

[JayUtah]

Hi cuscack, and welcome.

The majority of regular posters here are in the anti-hoax camp. Have patience and and one of the hoax proponents may respond.

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke," is a good rule for engineers to live by. (I'm an engineer.) Especially if you engineer complex systems or devices, you generally don't want to trade known problems for new problems until the known problems are entirely unbearable.

The CM shape is the result of a considerable amount of research in aerodynamics and ballistic dynamics. It works. The Soviet Union invested a considerable amount of research into the shape of their human-rated re-entry vehicles, and the modern Soyuz capsule uses those dynamics largely unchanged. The U.S. will likely stick to the Apollo-type conical CM until it simply doesn't work at all for some application.

I am privy to some of Boeing's thoughts on their CEV design. Boeing is a major customer of mine for computational fluid dynamics tools -- virtual wind tunnels. There are a number of innovations, chiefly in the re-entry and landing systems. The heat shield is not an integral part; it is jettisoned when no longer needed. The craft touches down on land, requiring an impact attenuation system. This allows the carcass of the CEV to be reused up to ten times. This looks like a reasonable compromise between the benefits and the pitfalls of reusability.

The new service module is a cylinder because the cylinder is a sort of default shape in aerospace. If you don't care what shape it is, make it a cylinder. This is mostly because we have a lot of experience making a variety of cylindrical structures with very high structural efficiency and at low cost. The conspicuous newcomer is the solar array. As yet it is not clear to me whether this will fully eliminate the need for hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells or is simply a redundant system to avoid the Apollo 13 scenario.

The LOR mission profile specifying a two-stage lander is still as mathematically sound as it was when it was proposed.

The LSAM design is functionally identical to the Apollo LM because it has to accomplish the same basic mission. There are really only a few ways to build a descent stage. You want the mass concentrations -- chiefly fuel -- arranged symmetrically around a gimballed engine in a structure supporting an undercarriage with an extensive stride. You want it to have a large moment of inertia and a short main-thrust moment arm. In terms of arranging the parts, the descent stage designs itself. The skill in designing and building it is in the achievement of structural efficiency and safety.

It may be advantageous to add some features to the descent stage that can help to build permanent settlements. My thinking is that if you're going to leave the descent stages there, why not design your permanent lunar fixtures such that they can be built partly from structures on the descent stages from past missions? And consequently, why can't we design the LSAM descent stages to have modular struts, panels, etc. that can be reused safely like that?

But then you have to consider whether it's better overall simply to send raw materials in cargo versions of the LSAM and not to "pollute" the LSAM design for possibly irrelevant reuse. A key principle in engineering is to let the primary purpose dominate the design.

The LSAM upper stage is, in the new design, simply the default cylinder. I expect this to change as the design evolves. I expect the fore-canted windows from Grumman's ascent stage to return, as well as the hardware to help people in and out of the surface egress hatches. And of course there will have to be the standard festooning of antennas and other sensors.

Reusing the STS booster technology seems like quite a cop-out, but it's more mature and usable equipment than the Saturn was for Apollo. I think it's important to recall how much NASA is currently under fire for safety issues. I can see that wanting to reuse the current human-rated booster components from STS is a step toward safety, using equipment for which an impressive experience base already exists. Yes, I too would like to see NASA take this opportunity, as they have in the past, to make great strides forward in all categories of space hardware. But that isn't always the best or safest approach.

[Bob B.]

jayutah said:

The conspicuous newcomer is the solar array. As yet it is not clear to me whether this will fully eliminate the need for hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells or is simply a redundant system to avoid the Apollo 13 scenario.

Here is an interesting article about NASA's plans:

A Closer Look at NASA's New Exploration Architecture

It says solar arrays will be used due to the requirement that the CEV have a service-lift of up to 6 months. For this length of time fuel cells are not practical.

edit: fixed URL

[PeterB]

Jayutah, describing the LSAM descent stage said:

You want it to have a large moment of inertia and a short main-thrust moment arm.

*sticks hand up*

What’s than in English, Jay? :-)

It may be advantageous to add some features to the descent stage that can help to build permanent settlements. My thinking is that if you're going to leave the descent stages there, why not design your permanent lunar fixtures such that they can be built partly from structures on the descent stages from past missions? And consequently, why can't we design the LSAM descent stages to have modular struts, panels, etc. that can be reused safely like that?

But then you have to consider whether it's better overall simply to send raw materials in cargo versions of the LSAM and not to "pollute" the LSAM design for possibly irrelevant reuse. A key principle in engineering is to let the primary purpose dominate the design.

I wonder that this redesign for multi-use has been a bugbear for NASA in its post-Apollo years, with resulting cost overruns.

[PeterB]

Cuscack said:

I'm new to this board.To those who doubt that NASA put men on the moon, that in fact the whole thing was a monstrous conspiracy, I'd like to pose this question? Why fake SEVEN missions to the moon?

G’day Cuscack and welcome to Apollohoax.

It’s a good point and one which points out one of the sillier aspects of Apollo hoax theory. On the old Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board, someone described how they’d run Apollo if it was to be faked. They came up with a much shorter program which included a single landing and no live TV coverage. If NASA wanted to fake Apollo, they went about it almost the most complex way possible.

Also various morons point out details from photographs such as the flag billowing. If you were faking footage of a flag in vacuum who would be so incredibly stupid to render it as if it were blowing? ARE YOU SERIOUS? surely the people who were faking the footage were not so PLANK STUPID to not have noticed a stiff breeze blowing across the set! For the doubters information : in the movie industry one does have recourse to what is known as TAKE 2.

There are some Apollo hoax believers who think they have an answer to this, in the form of the whistle blower – supposedly people wanted to drop subtle hints of faking that might be picked up in the future.

Of course, what this theory misses is the fact that any breeze strong enough to blow a flag around would raise clouds of dust from the surface, and these are conspicuous by their absence.

[PhantomWolf]

An interesting note is that when redesigning the Soyuz to make the LOK (the Soviet CSM) the Soviets actually removed the Soyuz solar arrays and replaced them with fuel cells.

[JayUtah]

peterb said:

Jayutah, describing the LSAM descent stage said:

You want it to have a large moment of inertia and a short main-thrust moment arm.

*sticks hand up*

What’s than in English, Jay? :-)

I thought it was clear. :-)

"Moment of inertia" is the rotational equivalent of regular inertia. Just like massive things require more force to move them than less massive things, objects with greater moment of inertia require more force to turn them. Linear acceleration is applied force divided by mass. Angular acceleration is applied moment (a turning force) divided by moment of inertia. The moment of inertia derives from the raw mass of an object, but also from its geometry. And if the geometry is irregular, you have different moments of inertia about different possible axes.

The example I like to use is a plank. If you lift it onto your shoulder to carry it, you'll note that you have difficulty turning. The plank doesn't want to start turning. And once turning, it doesn't want to stop. But you can very easily roll the plank from flat to edge-up on your shoulder. It's the same mass, but it turns more easily in one dimension than it does in the other. It has a high moment of inertia in the yaw and pitch dimensions because it's long and narrow according to those axes.

The moral is that if you want to make something less susceptible to accidental rotation -- i.e., "rotationally stable" -- then give it a geometry that produces a high moment of inertia.

So now consider a barbell. They're enormously hard to turn in two of their three cardinal axes. That's because the mass is concentrated outboard, away from the pivot. This was how the lunar module ascent stage was designed. The mass of the fuel was placed outboard on outriggers on each side of the cabin, as seen from the front. As seen from the side. the astronauts were cantilevered (i.e., put out on a limb) forward in the cabin and the flight equipment out the back. This keeps the LM from rotating easily for any given amount of rotational force.

A "moment arm" is how you translate linear force into rotational force. It's nothing more glamorous than how a wrench works. If the nut or bolt won't come loose, you get a longer wrench because that lets you create more torque. "Moment" and "torque" are practically synonymous. You measure torque by the length of the moment arm and the strength of the linear force you are applying perpendicular to the moment arm. So it's always a force measure multiplied by a length measure: such as foot-pounds or newton-meters.

Geometrically, a moment is a vector. Rotational motion occurs in a plane, and the vector is simply the normal vector for that plane -- the vector that is perpendicular to the plane. So if you're by the side of the 101 freeway in Los Angeles or the M-1 motorway in England trying to change a tire, undoing the lug nuts is rotation in the same plane as the tire -- a vertical plane.

There's (literally) a rule of thumb for determining the proper vector. Curl the fingers of your right hand in the direction that the rotation will occur. Loosening lug nuts is a counterclockwise rotation, so if counterclockwise is the direction from the root of your fingers to their tips, then your extended thumb points in the proper direction of the moment vector. Tightening the lug nuts is a clockwise rotation, and you have to contort your right hand to get your fingers to curl clockwise from your own point of view, but the gist is that with these vectors you can sum moments using vector arithmetic, both in direction and in magnitude.

Clearly if you lengthen the moment arm but keep the linear force constant, you get more torque. That's why you use long wrenches to apply more torque. This applies to rocket thrust because what happens if the axis of the motor doesn't point through the center of mass?

The point at which thrust is applied to a rocket is generally considered to be the center of the circle formed by the narrowest part of the rocket thrust chamber -- its "throat". The direction is the axis of the thrust chamber.

Look at figures 7 and 8 in this page.
www.clavius.org/techlmstab.html
Ignore the gravity vector for this discussion; it really shouldn't be there anyway. The rightmost drawing in figure 7 shows what happens when the thrust goes off-axis, usually because the center of mass has moved. If you decompose the vector along the line connecting the engine throat to the center of mass, the short perpendicular vector at the bottom is how much of the rocket's thrust is acting perpendicular to that line and thus creating a moment -- an angular force.

In figure 8 we show that if you shorten the distance between the main engine throat and the spacecraft center of mass, then the actual induced moment will be smaller for some degree of engine deflection. If you shorten that moment arm, then off-axis thrust isn't as problematic. That's why the LM ascent engine was essentially in the cabin. The throat was probably near the astronauts' knee level -- very close to the spacecraft's own center of mass.

And note where the RCS thrusters were. They were also on outriggers to give them as long a moment arm as possible. So you give a mechanical disadvantage (for rotation, anyway) to the main engine and a mechanical advantage to the control jets. That's how you're able to keep the LM ascent stage stable.

I wonder that this redesign for multi-use has been a bugbear for NASA in its post-Apollo years, with resulting cost overruns.

Quite possibly. Sometimes the straightforward way of doing something really is the best way, even if you can think of things that would seem to be optimizations at first glance.