4 Questions!

[stever]

I love the site, very good work. I just have 4 questions, for you.



1) Why does this rock have a letter 'C' on it? There is also a 'C' on the ground in front of the rock. The use of the letter C on film props is well known by the people in Hollywood and is used to show where the centre of the scene should be.

2) Instead of being able to jump at least ten feet high in "one sixth" gravity, the highest jump was about nineteen inches.

3) If the Rover buggy had actually been moving in one-sixth gravity, then it would have required a twenty foot width in order not to have flipped over on nearly every turn. The Rover had the same width as ordinary small cars.

4) www.tntleague.com/misc/lem.rm This shows a flame as the LEM takes off, but the moon is supposed to have no air..

[PeterB]

G’day Stever and welcome to the Apollohoax board. Turning to your questions…

1) Why does this rock have a letter 'C' on it? There is also a 'C' on the ground in front of the rock. The use of the letter C on film props is well known by the people in Hollywood and is used to show where the centre of the scene should be.

I have no idea how Hollywood does things, but it seems a bit strange that they’d put the letter somewhere visible.

Anyway, the “C”s are actually dust fragments which was inadvertently included when the print was copied on one occasion. Original versions of the print don’t show them.

2) Instead of being able to jump at least ten feet high in "one sixth" gravity, the highest jump was about nineteen inches.

Actually, the highest jumps were about four feet, when the astronauts jumped from the ground to the lowest step on the Lunar Module ladder.

Why didn’t they jump higher? Because it was unsafe to do so, because there was no specific reason to do so, and if something went wrong, they were a long way from help. The astronauts were working in a very unforgiving environment, and as a result they acted cautiously.

3) If the Rover buggy had actually been moving in one-sixth gravity, then it would have required a twenty foot width in order not to have flipped over on nearly every turn. The Rover had the same width as ordinary small cars.

How do you calculate this figure? The rover had no weight outboard of the wheels, and the greatest weight, the astronauts, was near the centreline of the rover. It was thus quite stable.

4) www.tntleague.com/misc/lem.rm This shows a flame as the LEM takes off, but the moon is supposed to have no air.

The brief appearance of the flame is what’s known as an ignition transient. The engine used fuel and oxidiser which were hypergolic – that is, they ignited on contact. However, as the engine fired up, there was a slight imbalance in the ratio of fuel to oxidiser until each achieved a steady flow rate. Once the flow was steady, the fuel and oxidiser mixed in the correct ratio, and produced an invisible flame.

I hope these answers help, but if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

[jovianmoon]

Hi stever,

I would be inclined to welcome you to the board, but as I am usually a lurker here and do not post often, it might be appropriate if I leave that up to the more prominent members. Oh well, welcome anyway...

In your post you have lauded the site - "I love the site, very good work." Are you referring to this BB or Clavius? I only ask because the answers to three of your questions can be found at Clavius.

For answers to questions 1, 2 and 4, please see:

www.clavius.org/rover1.html (1. 'C' rock)

www.clavius.org/gravleap.html (2. jumping)

www.clavius.org/techengine.html (4. rocket engines)

As for question three, I have to share PeterB's point, and also say that your query "begs the question" in that it assumes the person who answers your question agrees that the Lunar Rover would have required a twenty foot width to maintain stability in motion. I for one have never seen any data to suggest that this is the case. The question I would ask you in response is: If you are to compare the width versus stability of the Rover to that of small cars, would you not have to factor in the speeds (and resulting momentum) reached by both types of vehicles? Momentum, as I'm sure you know, has a direct bearing on the stability of a moving object, and I think it might be disingenuous to suggest that the Rover travelled at speeds comparable to that of a hatchback on a freeway (no disrespect intended - I'm sure this comparison did not originate with you).

Anyway, check out those Clavius pages if you haven't already. I'm sure you'll find them helpful.

Cheers,

Matt.

[Jason Thompson]

Stever, welcome to the boards. Before I tackle your questions, can I ask if we can expect to see the other 28 questions from the Cosmic Conspiracies website in future posts? If so, why not post them all now and get it over with?

OK...

) Why does this rock have a letter 'C' on it? There is also a 'C' on the ground in front of the rock. The use of the letter C on film props is well known by the people in Hollywood and is used to show where the centre of the scene should be.

What absolute rubbish. The use of a letter C on film props to denote the centre of a scene is most certainly not a technique practised in Hollywood or anywhere else. Any scene-setter would be dragged over the coals for putting such an obvious mark smack in the middle of a scene. The centre of a shot is decided by the director, not marked with a huge letter.

As to the C on the rock, it is a reproduction artifact, not part of the rock. Here are a few things to ponder.

1: There are two pictures taken of that location. Both show the rock, but only one shows the 'C'. Why?

2: Why would such an obvious marking be so prominently placed if NASA was trying to fool everyone?

The 'C' on the ground is probably just a random arrangement that happens to resemble a familiar letter.

2) Instead of being able to jump at least ten feet high in "one sixth" gravity, the highest jump was about nineteen inches.

Copied verbatim from Cosmic Conspiracies, and utterly factually incorrect. There are numerous examples of astronauts jumping much higher than 19 inches. In particular they all had to jump a number of feet just to get to the bottom rung of the LM ladder.

Furthermore, just because someone can do something does not mean they should. The astronauts were carrying their life support systems on their backs. Would you leap around knowing that if you fell badly you could well damage the only thing keeping you alive out there?

There are many more examples of objects behaving as if in low gravity. The fact that the astronauts did not leap around is not sufficient to doubt that they are in a lunar grvaity environment.


3) If the Rover buggy had actually been moving in one-sixth gravity, then it would have required a twenty foot width in order not to have flipped over on nearly every turn. The Rover had the same width as ordinary small cars.

Handwaving. On what does the author base the assertion that the vehicle should tip over? It has a low centre of gravity and is moving at only a few kilometres per hour. Why would it flip over? Also, all four wheels can be used to steer, thus reducing the turning radius.

4) www.tntleague.com/misc/lem.rm This shows a flame as the LEM takes off, but the moon is supposed to have no air.

The question on the Cosmic Conspiracies site states that sceptics claim a flame is impossible without oxygen. Well, that's just wrong on both counts. You can produce a flame without atmospheric oxygen, and sceptics never claim you cannot. The claim is that the propellants used by the LM do not produce a bright flame.

What is of more interest is the use of that clip by the authors of the site. They claim it supports their arguments simply because it proves the sceptics wrong (or at least, it disproves what they misunderstand sceptics to be saying). However, their original claim was itself based on the lack of a visible flame from the LM as it blasted off! They claim that a flame should be visible as the LM blasts off, and the fact that it isn't shows that it was faked. They then pull out an example where there is a visble flame, but don't seem to realise what that means for their original argument.

The authors of that site have no specific goal other than to find support for their theory wherever they can, and to find ways of proving those who disagree with them wrong. They throw as much crap as they can and hope some will stick. The fact that their own arguments do not support each other passes them by completely. But then, we are talking about a group of people who see no contradiction in stating on one page that Man never went to the Moon and on another that the Apollo astronauts found evidnce of aliens up there.

[gwiz]

stever said:

3) If the Rover buggy had actually been moving in one-sixth gravity, then it would have required a twenty foot width in order not to have flipped over on nearly every turn. The Rover had the same width as ordinary small cars.

The cornering force, and hence the overturning torque, varies as the square of the speed for a given radius of turn, so even if the righting torque due to the gravitational force is only one sixth of the earth value, you're safe on the moon as long as you're at less than 40% of the earth overturning speed.

[gezalenko]

I find it incredible that HBs still go on about the "C" rock, as if that proves Apollo was faked.

There's a very good (and to me, plausible) explanation of how the "C" was introduced to later versions of the image, and was not on the original.

Even if you don't accept that explanation, another obvious possible explanation is that the C wasn't on the rock, but appeared on the original image due to some flaw - perhaps a flaw in the film, dust on the lens, or similar.

Even if you don't accept THAT explanation, and insist that the C was actually on the rock, another obvious possible explanation is that it's just a feature of the rock, caused by natural processes, and it just happens to look like a C because of the way the light is falling on it, and our brains' inbuilt tendency to find meaning in random shapes.

The idea that it MUST have been painted on by the studio team is just absurd. And the idea that this is common practice in the film industry is also absurd.

Which leads me to another angle on this subject.

Despite the best efforts of film production teams, many blockbuster films are littered with obvious production mistakes. Check www.moviemistakes.com to get a flavour of this.
Picking a popular film related to space flight, the entry for Star Wars alone contains 244 (as of today) alleged mistakes submitted by film fans. It's open to debate whether or not all these mistakes are genuine, but even so, it's clear that movies in general often do contain mistakes. It is alleged that Star Wars contains about a dozen errors in the category "Visible crew/equipment" such as cameras being reflected in surfaces such as C3P0's head.
Are there any genuine mistakes like this in the Apollo footage ?
I doubt it. Sure, the cameraman's reflection is often caught on astronaut's visor, but the cameraman is another astronaut.

Yes I know we've had claims that, for example, astronauts look as if they are on wires, but is there actually any footage of the wires themselves ?
For Star Wars, it is claimed that there are indeed scenes in which you can actually see sticks holding up the Millenium Falcon.

And Star Wars allegedly contains many many "Continuity" errors - for example "When Obi-wan and Luke are watching the hologram of Princess Leia projected onto a small table, the objects on the table change position and number in each shot"
Does the Apollo footage contain errors like this ?
Again, I doubt it.

So if Hollywood film-makers have been making this type of error so often, for the best part of a century, how on earth did the Apollo "fakers" manage to avoid them ?

Oh and by the way, it seems as if the makers of Star Wars did at least avoid one mistake - leaving the C rock / C droid / C plant pot / C whatever in picture.

[sts60]

Hi, stever.

There's not much to add to others' replies at this point, but since your questions are more or less from "cosmicdave"'s site, I have a few suggestions:
1. Search for relevant terms in this forum to see questions already discussed at some length in this forum (e.g., "Apollo Guidance Computer", "Apollo 1", "Van Allen").
2. Have a look at JayUtah's item-by-item rebuttal to the "32 questions".
3. If LunarOrbit doesn't mind my suggesting it, do a similar search in the "Conspiracy" forum at Bad Astronomy/Universe Today. (http://www.bautforum.com). Many of the regulars here are also there, and some of us spent considerable time trying to set "cosmicdave" straight.
4. Think about your sources. Bear in mind that "cosmicdave" has some limited notoriety for simultaneously asserting that we never went to the Moon, and that we went to the Moon but found aliens there!

[Al Johnston]

Aliens contains one of the most "how did they get away with that?" errors on film:

After Ripley has opened the hatch to blow the Queen Alien out, a cut-in-half Bishop has to catch Newt to stop her flying out into space. If you consciously avoid letting your eyes follow the movement, you can clearly see the hole in the floor that Lance Henriksen is standing in...

[Bob B.]

I believe the “C rock” claim originated with Ralph Rene. He claims that film industry practice is to place cards on the ground with letters A, B, C, D, etc. to indicate the locations where certain props are to be placed. (Of course no one seems to concur that this is in fact industry practice, even those who have worked in the industry.)

Later some hoax conspiracist noticed a shadow in the dirt that looks somewhat like a C. But it has already been claimed normal practice is to place a card on the ground marking the prop’s location. Therefore the C on the ground has to be just a coincidence, doesn’t it? Or are the conspiracists now claiming the industry practice is to etch the letter on the ground rather than place a card? If so, it seems industry practice changes to whatever the conspiracists need it to be to fit the alleged evidence.

Doesn’t this seem just a bit inconsistent and manipulative to you? The conspiracists argue whatever they have to make their theory sound plausible whether the argument has any basis in fact or not.

edit spelling

[JayUtah]

1) Why does this rock have a letter 'C' on it?

It doesn't; see the link already provided to my site.

There is also a 'C' on the ground in front of the rock.

And if you look elsewhere in the photo, you'll find a half dozen or so examples of numerals and of English, Russian, and Hebrew letters. Does this mean they are all marks on the "set"? No -- it just means that your brain is trying to fit patterns to the abstract shapes you see in the dirt. A C is really just an arc, a pretty common shape.

The use of the letter C on film props is well known by the people in Hollywood and is used to show where the centre of the scene should be.

Utter hogwash.

First, in film there is no such thing as "the center of the scene".

Second, you occasionally mark -- "spike" in entertainment terminology -- important points or directions on a stage, but it's always done in a way that can't be seen by the camera.

Third, on live theater stages you occasionally spike the centerline, but you don't mark it with a C.

Fourth, where a centerline is notated on a drawing, the label is an elided C and L. This is the only "well-known" way in which a centerline is ever labeled on anything.

Fifth, unlike Cosmic Dave or any of the other conspiracy theories, I've actually been to an worked in Hollywood, as well as having about 25 years' experience myself in set and prop-building for commercial theater. I have yet to meet any property master who buys the "marked prop" theory or the "centerline" theory.

2) Instead of being able to jump at least ten feet high in "one sixth" gravity...

How did you arrive at this figure?

...the highest jump was about nineteen inches.

No, the highest jump was between five and six feet, and is visible on video.

3) If the Rover buggy had actually been moving in one-sixth gravity, then it would have required a twenty foot width in order not to have flipped over on nearly every turn.

No. This comes from a book published in the late 1950s or early 1960s in which a hypothetical moon buggy is designed. The rover in the book was very much larger than the eventual rover built for Apollo. A rover that size would need a very wide wheelbase, not only because of the lesser gravity but because it was designed to have proportionally higher ground clearance. Tall vehicles, as you know, are more susceptible to rolling during cornering.

The Apollo LRV (rover) had a wheelbase about as wide as a normal car, but it also was considerably smaller in other dimensions than a normal car. More specifically, its center of mass was much lower to the ground than in a standard car, even thought it was able to provide about 14 inches ground clearance.

If you look at the vehicle from the front, the center of mass and the two contact points of the wheels would ideally form an isosceles triangle. Bisect that into two reflected right triangles, and that forms the geometric basis from which to reason about lateral stability. The exact dimensions of the triangle are irrelevant; the trigonometrical angle is what concerns us.

The ground contact point is the pivot around which the LRV would roll. The center of mass is the locus of a lateral force produced by inertia in a turn. It will act in the plane of the turn. The hypotenuse between the center of mass and the contact point is the moment arm. Decompose the inertia vector from the turn along this arm and derive the moment. This will tell you what rotational force is being applied. Now assume the center of gravity is the center of mass; the locus of gravity's downward force is there. Decompose it along the moment arm. If the vector sum of the inertial roll moment and the gravity anti-roll moment is in the upward direction, you will have a roll rate.

The hypothetical rover had a ground clearance requirement of one meter, or three feet. If we put its center of mass at that level -- which is very generous; it is almost certain to be much higher -- and compute its characteristic lateral stability triangle for a 20-foot wide wheelbase, we can compare it directly to the Apollo LRV. From technical documents we know the exact dimensions of the LRV and the location of its center of mass. When we do this, we find that the LRV is actually more stable in this respect than the hypothetical rover.

Incidentally, since I last studied this question historians have located a prototype rover at Johnson Space Center that had previously been forgotten. It was of the scale suggested in this older book, and it indeed has a wheelbase that's about 20 feet wide.

4) www.tntleague.com/misc/lem.rm This shows a flame as the LEM takes off, but the moon is supposed to have no air..

You don't need air to make a flame.

[stever]

Thank you very much guys, for the replies. I appreciate it.