Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Helen]

Only Vixen knows what it means. Only Vixen ever knows what she means - except when not even she knows, of course, which is what usually turns out to be the case.

When I use words, they mean just what I choose them to mean - neither more nor less.

 

[Mojo]

There's a nice knock-down argument for you!

 

[Here_to_learn]

And with this free association game we have Humpty-Dumpty->Egghead->Nixon, so even though the thread is rotating, it keeps the same stuff up front.

 

[theprestige]

Is "N 51° 07.6' 23.2"" supposed to mean "N 51° 07' 59.2""?

I think it's meant to be,

N 51' 07.6'' 23.2'''

Which is fifty one seconds, oh seven point six minutes, and twenty three point two hours,

According to the super conventional but also hyper esoteric tick-mark notation every schoolchild is taught, at Vixen's school, as any fool knows.

 

[JayUtah]

Is "N 51° 07.6' 23.2"" supposed to mean "N 51° 07' 59.2""?

Indeed, we had a whole thread about how to do it right.

 

[bknight]

Indeed, we had a whole thread about how to do it right.

I missed the memo.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Is there anyone who actually buys into the hoax thing?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Is there anyone who actually buys into the hoax thing?

There's one born every minute, so there might be, if she ever manages to explain what her hoax thing is.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Is there anyone who actually buys into the hoax thing?

Depends on what you mean. I don't think that the "hoax thing" describes a coherent set of propositions about what is supposed to have happened for most people who play hoaxer online; it's just a contrarian vibe tricked out with an assortment of largely optional talking points. The question that hoaxers most hate being pressed on is: "What *exactly* do you think actually happened?" Most haven't thought about it, and the ones who have quickly realize that they cannot answer the question without their incoherence being exposed.

 

[steenkh]

Is there anyone who actually buys into the hoax thing?

@Vixen claims she has not decided yet if she supports the hoax thing herself. She just can't see any valid arguments against the hoax!

 

[Vixen]

WTF? Did you recently have a head injury or something?

You’re meant to be explaining to me in baby steps the logistics of transmitting TV pictures from the moon to the earth, and how “geopositioning” satellites and the rotation of the earth factors into it.

What has this new nonsense about being stranded at sea in the 19th century with a pocket watch got to do with anything?

Okay, quickly moving onto Exercise 4.

Going back to Exercise no.2., consider the following:

1. You are fed up of Go-Pro-ing alongside your friend's test drive of a new car. So, you invest in an arial drone that takes videos. You find you still need to 'be' there, despite being remote, in order to keep track of this one car so that it appears as a still image, against the moving background <(i.e., geo-'stationary').

2. Your youtube channel is so successful, you become wealthy enough to launch your own satellite which means no more hands-on close tracking of your friend's car. So, for this satellite to keep up with your friend's car, hands-free it needs to be (indicate one, some, all or none of the following):

• (a) immediately above the area your friend is driving
• (b) for it to be 'hands-free' it needs to travel at the same speed as the Earth's orbit
• (c) the car needs to be red
• (d) it will go into orbit at the same speed as Earth* at:
  • (i) 250km high
  • (ii) 1,000km high
  • (iii) 3,000km
  • (iv) 36,000km high
• (e) at this point your friend's car, driving along the motorway below, is said to be
  • (i) geostationary
  • (ii) geopositioned
• (f) at this point the satellite is said to be
  • (i) geostationary
  • (ii) geopositioned.

Here endeth lesson no. 4.

For bonus marks: (g) what year was the first live satellite tv broadcast?

*see baby step no. 1

 

[JayUtah]

Okay, quickly moving onto Exercise 4.

We're just ignoring how incompetent and irrelevant you were in your Exercise 3?

Going back to Exercise no.2., consider the following:

1. You are fed up of Go-Pro-ing alongside your friend's test drive of a new car. So, you invest in an arial drone that takes videos. You find you still need to 'be' there, despite being remote, in order to keep track of this one car so that it appears as a still image, against the moving background <(i.e., geo-'stationary').

Asked and answered. There is no moving background in the Apollo lunar orbit video. This is an important detail as it differentiates the kind of camera tracking that is employed.

2. Your youtube channel is so successful, you become wealthy enough to launch your own satellite which means no more hands-on close tracking of your friend's car. So, for this satellite to keep up with your friend's car, hands-free it needs to be (indicate one, some, all or none of the following):

No "moving background" required. Keep that in mind.

Here's some questions for you from someone who has actually designed, built, and operated geostationary satellites and satellites for other purposes.

Does your satellite have the ability to rotate as a free body? Does the optical assembly need to be fixed to the chassis or can it rotate within it?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Okay, quickly moving onto Exercise 4.

Going back to Exercise no.2., consider the following:

1. You are fed up of Go-Pro-ing alongside your friend's test drive of a new car. So, you invest in an arial drone that takes videos. You find you still need to 'be' there, despite being remote, in order to keep track of this one car so that it appears as a still image, against the moving background <(i.e., geo-'stationary').

2. Your youtube channel is so successful, you become wealthy enough to launch your own satellite which means no more hands-on close tracking of your friend's car. So, for this satellite to keep up with your friend's car, hands-free it needs to be (indicate one, some, all or none of the following):

• (a) immediately above the area your friend is driving
• (b) for it to be 'hands-free' it needs to travel at the same speed as the Earth's orbit
• (c) the car needs to be red
• (d) it will go into orbit at the same speed as Earth* at:
• (i) 250km high
• (ii) 1,000km high
• (iii) 3,000km
• (iv) 36,000km high
• (e) at this point your friend's car, driving along the motorway below, is said to be
• (i) geostationary
• (ii) geopositioned
• (f) at this point the satellite is said to be
• (i) geostationary
• (ii) geopositioned.

Here endeth lesson no. 4.

For bonus marks: (g) what year was the first live satellite tv broadcast?

*see baby step no. 1

For the record, are we moving away from the whole "logistical challenges of beaming TV to earth from the lunar surface" thing, to something more like Allen and Weaver's original point that you initially misunderstood?

The answer to your bonus question is 1962, if by broadcast you mean public broadcast.

 

[Vixen]

He'd be even more important if there were more evidence for his doctorate, his professional authority, and his own self. When you find yourself stamping your feet and insisting upon the importance of dubious sources, you should ask why you're using an argument that rests upon such dubious sources.


If you set out from England, your watch was probably set to London Time, which officially became GMT in 1880. If you haven't messed with your watch since embarkation, it's probably still set to GMT.

If you set out from the United States, your watch was probably set to some local time, but you would probably also be aware of how many minutes that local time deviates from Eastern Standard Time (adopted 1883), and of the number of hours that separate EST from GMT.


A Waltham Model 57 (introduced in 1857) would probably be accurate to within a couple of minutes per day. If you took to sea a month ago, relying on such a watch for longitude could put you as far as a thousand miles from where you started (which is not where you are now). If you took to sea a mere week ago, you might be able to fix your original longitude to within a couple of hundred miles, which again is pretty useless because that doesn't tell you where you are now.

But you would be able to improve upon that by estimating your current local time from the sun and comparing that to the estimate of GMT you could calculate from a good pocket watch. If you set out only a week ago, that might tell you the longitude of your current position to within a couple of hundred miles.

That's right. You could put up a stick to try to estimate the sun at its highest point (at the Equator, it will be 90° overhead). Obviously, the Earth, being a globe, means it won't be so high further away from this, which is why you can estimate time by what time the sun, here, by your pocket watch, compared to GMT, if you know it.

 

[JayUtah]

That's right. You could put up a stick to try to estimate the sun at its highest point (at the Equator, it will be 90° overhead).

No.

The sun's zenith altitude changes throughout the year no matter from what point on Earth it is observed. Maybe Google for "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn."

Obviously, the Earth, being a globe, means it won't be so high further away from this, which is why you can estimate time by what time the sun, here, by your pocket watch, compared to GMT, if you know it.

No.

The way you know GMT is that your pocket watch is set to it.

Maybe don't try to be the teacher if you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[JayUtah]

For the record, are we moving away from the whole "logistical challenges of beaming TV to earth from the lunar surface" thing, to something more like Allen and Weaver's original point that you initially misunderstood?

It seems to me that she's trying really hard to marry the concepts, because the First Rule of @Vixen is that Vixen can never be wrong.

 

[Vixen]

Yes, Vixen, this is elementary celestial navigation which many of us are trained to do. With the corrections that @Andy_Ross has noted to your method, and the additional corrections I've provided, it describes one method for fixing your position on Earth's surface.


You need a sextant for measuring the altitude of objects above the horizon and the angular distances between other objects. You need a chronometer set to local noon at a known meridian. English sailors used Greenwich. French sailors used Paris until 1914. You carry the chronometer with you so that you know the time of local noon at your reference meridian. Ships usually carried two chronometers and averaged their errors.

"Local noon" is the exact moment that the sun is overhead—i.e., has reached its zenith. You measure that with your sextant. By noting the time on the chronometer at which local noon occurs where you are, you will know how long it has taken the Earth to rotate to bring the sun directly overhead at your location. Since Earth rotates at 15º per hour, you will know the angular distance (i.e., longitude) from your reference meridian.

You can find your latitude by measuring the altitude of the sun at local noon and correcting it via known seasonal declination. Vixen's thought experiment includes likely knowledge of the date; they abandoned ship "a few days" earlier, which presumably is a known date. However, to achieve the accuracy she claims in the latitude, you need reference charts for the seasonal declination for that date. Her thought experiment mentions none of that.

Alternatively you can sight the star Polaris at night to get latitude more or less directly, assuming you're in the Northern Hemisphere. But obviously then you can't use the sun to determine your longitude. At night you can use "lunars" (provided the Moon is up) to determine longitude, but that too needs reference tables to convert the position of the Moon relative to background stars to a time reference.

So no, @Vixen hasn't given you a credible terrestrial navigation solution.


We've also asked her what she means by "geopositioning." The use of various navigation methods to locate you on the surface of Earth's spheroid relative to some fixed point is the correct definition of "geopositioning." You're right in that it has absolutely nothing to do with transmitting TV signals to Earth. She's trying to fabricate something that somehow means she wasn't wrong to use the word "geopositioned" to talk about spacecraft.

Whether she realizes it or not, she has introduced the notion that rotation of a sphere at a constant angular velocity can determine angles subtended by fixed points on that surface over a given time duration, and consequently linear distances along the circumference of the sphere. If she does realize it, then she thinks she has to explain geostationary orbits from first principles. Allen and Weaver have something to say about that, but we'll see whether she is able to figure it out.

You are right that time of season (vernal equinoxes) would need to be adjusted for, which is why anyone conversant with a sextant would take into account. I wanted to keep it simple for JesseCuster.

 

[Andy_Ross]

That's right. You could put up a stick to try to estimate the sun at its highest point (at the Equator, it will be 90° overhead). Obviously, the Earth, being a globe, means it won't be so high further away from this, which is why you can estimate time by what time the sun, here, by your pocket watch, compared to GMT, if you know it.

and if you stew cranberries like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

 

[JayUtah]

You are right that time of season (vernal equinoxes) would need to be adjusted for, which is why anyone conversant with a sextant would take into account.

And since you're not conversant with a sextant—or, in fact, the basics of celestial navigation—you didn't know that it had to be taken into account. You're still getting it wrong. You think the sun at noon at the equator is always directly overhead!

I wanted to keep it simple for JesseCuster.

No. Being wrong is not the same as being simple. You specifically said that the problem required only the tools you listed and you asked him to name the mystery tool. That's a bogus question when you leave out important parts that are also required.

 

[Andy_Ross]

No.

The sun's zenith altitude changes throughout the year no matter from what point on Earth it is observed. Maybe Google for "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn."


No.

The way you know GMT is that your pocket watch is set to it.

Maybe don't try to be the teacher if you don't know what you're talking about.

From the Sextant user manual already linked.




I found a link to a better version of the manual

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0515/5992/3873/files/00026-710_IM_00025.pdf