Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[JayUtah]

I remember how my wife lost it when I was watching MST3K and they made a joke about ISO 9000 certification.

Some of it is sooooo stupid. In our storage rooms we have to label empty drawers STORAGE.

 

[Foster Zygote]

No corrections; that's an accurate explanation of weight versus mass, and of the invariant aspect of strength.

Sometimes instead of treating small objects and planets or moons as different kinds of masses, it's helpful to remember that the Newtonian law of gravity merely describes the strength of an attractive force between two masses. In that way of thinking you can say the Earth weighs 210 lbf in your gravity field.

I remember my high school physics teacher (Mr. Vermilion) explaining that if you had a load that weighed 200 lbs. on earth, on the moon it would feel the same as lifting 33⅓ lbs. because its weight was reduced to 1/6th its earth weight. But if you put it on a frictionless slide and put your back against a rock and pushed it away with your legs, it would require the same effort whether you were on the earth or the moon, because its mass remained the same.

 

[Steve]

No corrections; that's an accurate explanation of weight versus mass, and of the invariant aspect of strength.

Sometimes instead of treating small objects and planets or moons as different kinds of masses, it's helpful to remember that the Newtonian law of gravity merely describes the strength of an attractive force between two masses.
In that way of thinking you can say the Earth weighs 210 lbf in your gravity field.

Love to see Vixen wrap her head around that one .

 

[JayUtah]

Love to see Vixen wrap her head around that one .

And what if the Earth is wearing a backpack!? Shee-eesh!

 

[Trebuchet]

No corrections; that's an accurate explanation of weight versus mass, and of the invariant aspect of strength.

Sometimes instead of treating small objects and planets or moons as different kinds of masses, it's helpful to remember that the Newtonian law of gravity merely describes the strength of an attractive force between two masses. In that way of thinking you can say the Earth weighs 210 lbf in your gravity field.

Thank you, Jay, that means a lot.

 

[EHocking]

It’s too bad that it will either be totally misunderstood or just ignored.

 

[JayUtah]

It’s too bad that it will either be totally misunderstood or just ignored.

"Things weigh less on the Moon" is fundamental. Go to any planetarium or other space-oriented educational institution and they will have some sort of depiction of your weight on different planets and moons. We successfully convey this reality to kids with single-digit ages. Not all grasp it in that moment, but by the time they're in high school the notion that the strength of gravity depends on what planet you're on is not even a difficult concept.

@Vixen can't decide whether she's talking about raw scalar weight or the off-center weight of a backpack. Raw weight is a simple sum as @Trebuchet described. The force of the Moon's gravity is less on a mass than it would be on Earth, but your legs are just as strong on the Moon as they are on the Earth. When she tells us that lower gravitational strength doesn't mean that things weigh less on the Moon, that's the kind of stupidity that would compel us to think about screening for mental illness.

When she tells us she's "not talking about center of gravity," we then have to assume she's talking about scalar weight. But then when she talks about the backpack being off-center, and the ratio of off-center weight to balanced weight being the same, you can't do that without talking about center of gravity, moment arms, and all the geometric factors that apply to that kind of problem. You can't invoke balance without talking about center of gravity.

She's obviously hoping she can just hurl a bunch of physicksy-sounding statements and we'll all just bow to the Three Nines. It doesn't work that way. You don't get to challenge actual rocket scientists using a not-very-bright child's understanding of the underlying principles.

 

[Trebuchet]

I think she doesn't understand th basic difference between weight, which is a force, and mass, which is just mass.

 

[JayUtah]

I think she doesn't understand th basic difference between weight, which is a force, and mass, which is just mass.

That's the answer for one of the two prongs in the fork of her confusion. If she wants to ignore center of gravity, then she's left with the simple arithmetic you explained. Things that weigh X on earth weigh X/6 on the Moon. Easy-peasy, but the confusion between mass and weight is, to be honest, widespread. It doesn't help that EES users sometimes express mass in pounds—the proper unit is "slugs." it doesn't help that there is now an informal metric unit kgf—"kilograms-force." Science weeps, but these are admittedly practical necessities.

The other prong of her confusion isn't a matter of weight versus mass. It's what she believes should be the posture of an astronaut wearing a supposedly heavy backpack. I say supposedly heavy because she wants to express the weight as a ratio of its weight to the astronaut weight. She wants to say that because the astronaut per se weighs less on the Moon, the proportional weight of the backpack should result in the same posture because the ratio determines this. This is categorically untrue. The astronaut's balanced posture depends on the lunar weight of the backpack alone.

Understanding this requires the ability to formulate the problem correctly using vectors. She clearly can't, so she's limited to shouting out vague concepts and then either doubling down or running away when superior understanding contradicts her.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

The other prong of her confusion isn't a matter of weight versus mass. It's what she believes should be the posture of an astronaut wearing a supposedly heavy backpack. I say supposedly heavy because she wants to express the weight as a ratio of its weight to the astronaut weight. She wants to say that because the astronaut per se weighs less on the Moon, the proportional weight of the backpack should result in the same posture because the ratio determines this. This is categorically untrue. The astronaut's balanced posture depends on the lunar weight of the backpack alone.

Just explain that the PLSS pack was balanced by the astronauts' massive balls.

 

[dudalb]

There is an option missing: Trump cancels the election.

"Things weigh less on the Moon" is fundamental. Go to any planetarium or other space-oriented educational institution and they will have some sort of depiction of your weight on different planets and moons. We successfully convey this reality to kids with single-digit ages. Not all grasp it in that moment, but by the time they're in high school the notion that the strength of gravity depends on what planet you're on is not even a difficult concept.

@Vixen can't decide whether she's talking about raw scalar weight or the off-center weight of a backpack. Raw weight is a simple sum as @Trebuchet described. The force of the Moon's gravity is less on a mass than it would be on Earth, but your legs are just as strong on the Moon as they are on the Earth. When she tells us that lower gravitational strength doesn't mean that things weigh less on the Moon, that's the kind of stupidity that would compel us to think about screening for mental illness.

When she tells us she's "not talking about center of gravity," we then have to assume she's talking about scalar weight. But then when she talks about the backpack being off-center, and the ratio of off-center weight to balanced weight being the same, you can't do that without talking about center of gravity, moment arms, and all the geometric factors that apply to that kind of problem. You can't invoke balance without talking about center of gravity.

She's obviously hoping she can just hurl a bunch of physicksy-sounding statements and we'll all just bow to the Three Nines. It doesn't work that way. You don't get to challenge actual rocket scientists using a not-very-bright child's understanding of the underlying principles.

Or maybe somebody just does not get the diffrence between weight and mass....

 

[threadworm]

Finally there is the outright claim that engineers have blow the whistle—just no one you've ever heard of. Bill Kaysing claimed to be an engineer, but was no such thing. Anders Björkman claimed to be an engineer but was no such thing. Ralph René claimed to be an engineer but was no such thing. Nowadays it's all Russian academics from places you've never heard of writing papers for Aulis. They claim such things as photo analysis that proves the Saturn V wasn't flying as fast as claimed etc. In addition to completely unverifiable credentials, these offerings are comically bad on their face. These high-octane "Russian academics" seem to fail at basic physics and geometry.

You can add to that (and tying in with the abuse of the Apollo photographic record) the alleged academics who managed to smuggle 'research' papers into supposedly peer reviewed journals.

This pair of mystery Greeks claimed Apollo was faked because Google Moon didn't match the views in the panoramas.

Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions | Amathes | Journal of Geography and Geology | CCSE

Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions

ccsenet.org

The singularly failed to do the most basic of checks, ie "Is Google Moon correct?". Reader, it is not.

Modelling Apollo terrain

Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions by Pyrrhon Amathes and Paul Christodoulides is a crock of ◊◊◊◊ and the peers who reviewed it should be ashamed of themselves.

onebigmonkey.com

The alleged academics get a veneer of respectability to their careers by adding a peer reviewed paper to their publications list, and conspiracy loving idiots get to point at an academic paper as proof of their delusions.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I think she doesn't understand th basic difference between weight, which is a force, and mass, which is just mass.

It confused me for a long time as a schoolkid because we so routinely informally use mass units to describe weight.

 

[kookbreaker]

"Things weigh less on the Moon" is fundamental. Go to any planetarium or other space-oriented educational institution and they will have some sort of depiction of your weight on different planets and moons. We successfully convey this reality to kids with single-digit ages. Not all grasp it in that moment, but by the time they're in high school the notion that the strength of gravity depends on what planet you're on is not even a difficult concept.

Yeah, a staple of museums in the 70's & 80's would be to set up several mechanical scales that you would step on and it show your weight on the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, etc. by some adjustment in each scale's readout.

Not so common these days, instead if you do see them they are usually a single digital scale with a readout board showing weights on all the planets.

What's fun is the first versions of these 'new' scales used to have large displays above the scale for all to see. Then they realized that was an issue and put a smaller display hopefully only the standee could view.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

You can add to that (and tying in with the abuse of the Apollo photographic record) the alleged academics who managed to smuggle 'research' papers into supposedly peer reviewed journals.

This pair of mystery Greeks claimed Apollo was faked because Google Moon didn't match the views in the panoramas.

Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions | Amathes | Journal of Geography and Geology | CCSE

Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions

ccsenet.org

The singularly failed to do the most basic of checks, ie "Is Google Moon correct?". Reader, it is not.

Modelling Apollo terrain

Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions by Pyrrhon Amathes and Paul Christodoulides is a crock of ◊◊◊◊ and the peers who reviewed it should be ashamed of themselves.

onebigmonkey.com

The alleged academics get a veneer of respectability to their careers by adding a peer reviewed paper to their publications list, and conspiracy loving idiots get to point at an academic paper as proof of their delusions.

OMG that flying bobby pin bit was beyond embarrassing. Some peer reviewer has some explaining to do.

 

[JayUtah]

OMG that flying bobby pin bit was beyond embarrassing. Some peer reviewer has some explaining to do.

Indeed it's pretty deplorable if this paper was actually peer-reviewed. It's garbage science from start to finish. "We'll just assume the yardstick we're using is correct even though we've completely omitted a quantitative error analysis of it." That's bad enough. But saying that images must be fake because there's a hair on it is probably the stupidest thing I can imagine.

 

[Mojo]

Indeed it's pretty deplorable if this paper was actually peer-reviewed. It's garbage science from start to finish. "We'll just assume the yardstick we're using is correct even though we've completely omitted a quantitative error analysis of it." That's bad enough. But saying that images must be fake because there's a hair on it is probably the stupidest thing I can imagine.

For some reason I'm imagining someone saying, "hold my beer!"

 

[welshdean]

I remember how my wife lost it when I was watching MST3K and they made a joke about ISO 9000 certification.

...and "FLAG" on the flag. ISO 9000 and all that...

All this talk of ISO 9000 is going to make a certain poster think you're talking about camera settings/film.

 

[EHocking]

I’d use it to take photographs of stars in daylight

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I’d use it to take photographs of stars in daylight

Not on the moon. Film that high-speed would get fried by the x-rays.