HB Contradictions

[blackstar]

In fact the best reason for putting men in space is illustrated by one of the things that HB's keeping harping on about, the difference in the success rate between the Apollo missions and Mars probes. More than one Apollo mission(and Gemini and Mercury) was saved by human intervention. Many of those Mars missions could have been saved by a man on the spot, even if just to remotely pilot the probe to its target.

[gonetoplaid]

Jan 12, 2006 11:39:29 GMT -4 Bob B. said:

I was just thinking about some of the contradictions that exist in the usual hoax arguments. I thought perhaps we could compile a list of these contradictions.

The purpose of this thread is not to debunk the arguments, but only to point out the contradictions between mutually exclusive arguments. I’ll start off with the following:

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Argument #1 – The hoax was perpetrated to fool the Soviets about the USA’s technological capabilities.

Argument #2 – The USA paid off the Soviets so they wouldn’t expose the hoax.

Contradiction – If the Soviets knew about the hoax and accepted a payoff, then clearly they weren’t being fooled. The motive for perpetrating the hoax in the first place therefore doesn’t exist.

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Argument #1 – Insufficient computing power existed in the 1960s to land on the moon. Vertical takeoff and landing under rocket power is inherently unstable.

Argument #2 – The LRRRs were placed on the moon using robotic landers. The lunar rock and soil samples were collected using unmanned robotic spacecraft.

Contradiction – The ability to land a spacecraft on the moon was beyond 1960s technology, yet NASA used that same insufficient technology to land on the Moon. The contradiction is obvious.

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Argument #1 – Objects in space cannot be cooled by the vacuum of space.

Argument #2 – The moon’s temperature varies from +250 degrees F in the sun to -250 degrees F in the shade.

Contradiction – The moon is an object in space. If objects in space cannot be cooled by space, then how can a +250 sunlit surface cool to -250 when it moves into shade?

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That’s enough for now. Do you have any to add?

Neat post since you bring up so many of the hoax arguments.

"Argument #1 – The hoax was perpetrated to fool the Soviets about the USA’s technological capabilities." -- Ya gotta give plausibility to this argument if you exclude all other arguments.

"Argument #2 – The USA paid off the Soviets so they wouldn’t expose the hoax." -- Are ya kidding? You could have never bought off the Soviets in this regard.

"Contradiction – If the Soviets knew about the hoax and accepted a payoff, then clearly they weren’t being fooled. The motive for perpetrating the hoax in the first place therefore doesn’t exist." -- Yep, an inarguable contradiction.

"Argument #1 – Objects in space cannot be cooled by the vacuum of space." -- Any object in space exposed to shadow (no sunlight) will rapidly cool towards absolute zero, the cooling limited by any part of the object exposed to sunlight and the object's ability to conduct heat from its illuminated side to its shadowed side.

"Argument #2 – The moon’s temperature varies from +250 degrees F in the sun to -250 degrees F in the shade." -- What is your argument? This argument specifically supports the varying illuminated and shadow temperatures on the moon.

"Argument #2 – The LRRRs were placed on the moon using robotic landers. The lunar rock and soil samples were collected using unmanned robotic spacecraft." Slick -- better than having a human compensate for lunar topography irregularities in order to land on the lunar surface?

"Contradiction – The ability to land a spacecraft on the moon was beyond 1960s technology, yet NASA used that same insufficient technology to land on the Moon. The contradiction is obvious." -- Hardly at all. All ya gotta do is point the spacecraft at an object (the moon) which you know is going to be in a given position two days later. Then all ya gotta do is circle the object and trim your orbit. No brainer stuff there and which can be calculated to sufficient accuracy using a slide rule. Finally, the Apollo astronauts, riding a lit rocket engine and in direct control of said rocket engine, have far higher chance of successfully landing on the lunar surface compared to any possible robotic mission. Besides, how can you account for the Apollo 11's video showing its decent engine's blast atop the lunar surface?

[henke]

As I said, if someone threatened me to life, I would - perhaps - make such an agreement, i e totally the opposite of any HB.

Russians brought home large chunks of stones prior to that, o.k. it's debatable how much is "large". Say of a size that you can fit in you palm? Larger? Smaller? The selectiveness regardless samples remains elusive. But hey, as long as I am pro moon-landings, and not pro-hoax, that's all what counts.

I still do think they hype it a tad too much, when any anniversary comes around. Now, we got that. Been there, done that, let's move on, and NOT rest on our laurels.

[gillianren]

Remembering where we've been can encourage us to see where we can go from there. Besides, it puts NASA in the public mind as something other than "a waste of money."

[gonetoplaid]

I find it amazingly ironic that at the exact moment when Apollo 11 landed on the moon that, from the landing site's vantage point, Washington DC was just about to set (rotate out of view due to the Earth's rotation). In other words, from Washington DC, the moon was just about to dip below the western horizon. It is simply amazing that US astronauts have not been back to the moon since the premature end of the Apollo missions.

[PhantomWolf]

It is simply amazing that US astronauts have not been back to the moon since the premature end of the Apollo missions.

Not really, no one has been willing to pay for it, going to the moon is expensive. My Mother went to the US twice in 1985-86 and has never been back. Same reason, it's too expensive for her to go, and she had no reason. Me, I have been there three times now, 1986, 2005, and 2008-9, it's still expensive, but I had a reason to go there and was willing to pay the price. It's exactly the same with the moon.

[henke]

I mean, even GoneToPlaid replied:

"... All ya gotta do is point the spacecraft at an object (the moon) which you know is going to be in a given position two days later. Then all ya gotta do is circle the object and trim your orbit. No brainer stuff there and which can be calculated to sufficient accuracy using a slide rule. Finally, the Apollo astronauts, riding a lit rocket engine and in direct control of said rocket engine, have far higher chance of successfully landing on the lunar surface compared to any possible robotic mission..."

Well, it seems that at least someone else is behind my stance, that "once in space" it's "all you gotta do is..." which is my opinion too. Going into space: Brave, bold and a major scientific, and technical achievement. Going to the moon: Added bonus effect.

I would not say "it's a piece of cake..." though, but not by much. It's just MORE MONEY getting to the moon from then on. They've put things on the moon before that, and brought it back, and from a technical standpoint, two/three human beings is just a matter of load in lbs and water, oxygene. The fuel is basically about the same. The technology involved ain't that much more complicated. And this "aiming" thing. As it would become harder to aim just because there are two/three astronauts onboard.

You can aim direct or miss it, regardless of living things onboard, or robots.

[PhantomWolf]

and from a technical standpoint, two/three human beings is just a matter of load in lbs and water, oxygene. The fuel is basically about the same.

Of course the more weight, the more fuel required to get them into orbit in the first place, thus the bigger the rocket needed. Unfortunately rockets don't scale up well, so the technology that goes into a Saturn V is vastly more complex than that which went into an Atlas.

[Data Cable]

Aug 4, 2009 3:02:34 GMT -4 henke said:

The technology involved ain't that much more complicated.

It is when you wanna make dang sure it doesn't fail and kill the crew. That's the essential definition of "man-rated hardware."

[Mr Gorsky]

Aug 4, 2009 3:49:33 GMT -4 Data Cable said:

Aug 4, 2009 3:02:34 GMT -4 henke said:

The technology involved ain't that much more complicated.

It is when you wanna make dang sure it doesn't fail and kill the crew. That's the essential definition of "man-rated hardware."

Absolutely ... a spacecraft breaking and "killing" a robotic probe is just an unfortunate mishap, the same happening with a human crew is a tragedy, a massic public enquiry and possible multiple lawsuits.

That is one important reason it is so much more expensive and complex to send men to the moon (as the US did) than robots (as the USSR did).

[ineluki]

Aug 1, 2009 19:02:53 GMT -4 gonetoplaid said:

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Neat post since you bring up so many of the hoax arguments.

With all respect, this thread isn't meant to debunk the arguments (especially not Bob's collection from 2006), just to collect those that directly contradict each other.

[JayUtah]

Aug 4, 2009 3:49:33 GMT -4 Data Cable said:

It is when you wanna make dang sure it doesn't fail and kill the crew. That's the essential definition of "man-rated hardware."

That's a crucial bit of understanding. Each additional "nine" of reliability costs up to ten times as much as the previous "nine."

[ka9q]

I think the single biggest hoax believer contradiction is their belief that, for a wide variety of reasons, NASA was both utterly incompetent at landing humans on the moon yet supremely competent at pulling off the biggest hoax in human history and keeping it air tight for over 40 years.

All but the most extreme conspiracy theorists generally concede that laser ranging retro reflectors are really on the moon. Some concede that at least some moon samples on the earth are genuine. And still others concede that independent observers received radio signals from the vicinity of the moon during the Apollo missions. But they insist that these things could have been (and therefore were) all accomplished by robotic missions. I.e., they concede that NASA had a good robotic lunar capability by the mid-late 1960s. This is significant.

In some ways it is actually easier to land humans than robots on the moon. Human pilots can fly to a safe landing spot but the Surveyors simply took their chances. Even today we're nowhere near having robotic vision systems that can match the human eye and brain.

I think this explains the hoax believers' obsession with radiation. It's the only conceivable obstacle to human lunar flight that would not also block robotic missions. Otherwise, sending humans would be a simple matter of adding a pressurized cabin and a life support system to the robotic lunar capability they already concede NASA had.

[echnaton]

Aug 30, 2009 19:33:26 GMT -4 ka9q said:

I think this explains the hoax believers' obsession with radiation. It's the only conceivable obstacle to human lunar flight that would not also block robotic missions.

Radiation is also the most difficult of the potential obstacles to intuitively understand and the easiest way to raise fears.

[Jason]

Radiation is very scary to the general public, and has been since the 60s.