Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Steve]

Don't change the goalposts. You were demanding to know what 'geopositioning' is.

Ok what is it? No link, use your own words.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Question for Vixen: if you are on the moon, how long does it take the earth to transit the lunar sky?

That's something you can look up.

It's also something a person of ordinary intelligence would know right away.

But, as @Vixen continues to remind us, it is not something a person whose intelligence lies three standard deviations away from the mean would know.

Or anyone who had read the last few pages of this thread and had even the most basic comprehension of English.

In addition to having read those last few pages and possessing basic comprehension of English, it might require the degree of intelligence possessed by 99.9% of the human race.

 

[JesseCuster]

Don't change the goalposts. You were demanding to know what 'geopositioning' is.

Is asking me why NASA didn’t use a communications satellite as a relay station for transmitting TV footage from the moon to earth part of your explanation?

 

[Andy_Ross]

I always just thought it stood for "geep"

General Purpose GP

 

[Andy_Ross]

I am asking the questions this time. But as JayUtah has answered for you, here's a couple more:

1. If the first satellite-tv broadcast (to the general public) was via Telstar in 1962 (well done, Reformed_Offlian!), then why didn't NASA use a satellite (for example, its Explorer range) for Apollo11?

Statement in support: filming was done by a handheld Westinghaus Short Scan TV (SSTV) camera. It relayed images of 10 frames per second, which were picked up - it is claimed - by two receivers in Australia and one in California, due to Canberra being most accessible to where Apollo11 was situated on the Moon, then decoded by an SSTV decoder (all not dissimilar to Logie Baird-s 1926 television system) into images then refined by NASA to send out to tv stations.

NASA claims this Apollo11 telemetry film was erased and the original no longer exists.

Telemetry film?

Why would a satellite be needed when there's direct line of site from the moon to the earth recieving stations?

 

[Andy_Ross]

That's something you can look up.

So you don't know.

Except by the time you read this you will have looked it up.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Don't change the goalposts. You were demanding to know what 'geopositioning' is.

So tell us.

 

[wollery]

If the first satellite-tv broadcast (to the general public) was via Telstar in 1962 (well done, Reformed_Offlian!), then why didn't NASA use a satellite (for example, its Explorer range) for Apollo11?

You are asking the wrong question.

The question you should be asking is "Why was the Telstar satellite needed for the TV signal in 1962?"

If you can answer that then you might possibly be able to understand the category error you are making.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

1. If the first satellite-tv broadcast (to the general public) was via Telstar in 1962 (well done, Reformed_Offlian!), then why didn't NASA use a satellite (for example, its Explorer range) for Apollo11?

Why would they? What would the advantage be? A geostationary satellite would orbit out of Apollo's LOS just like a point on the earth's surface would.

Why not just beam the tv images straight to earth, like they did for the Ranger and Mariner missions?

 

[JayUtah]

Is asking me why NASA didn’t use a communications satellite as a relay station for transmitting TV footage from the moon to earth part of your explanation?

It's certainly part of the evasion.

I think it finally clicked with her how you don't need to be any sort of synchronous orbit in order to take pictures from orbit of surface features. At least she seems to have given up on that without actually admitting that Allen and Weaver are deliberately taking their readers for ride.

To be clear: you just pan the camera as you go by, keeping your subject centered in the frame. Now when you do this, an aspect change is expected. Lo and behold, we can see one clearly in the Apollo lunar orbit video if we speed up the video so that the relatively slow orbital motion becomes apparent.

But now in order to save face she has to backpedal to the previous conflation—some sort of communications relay she thinks has to facilitate sending signals from lunar orbit to Earth. Even though she disavowed that just a few hours ago, that sort of thing never sticks with her. She's back to throwing any and all obstacles (including the "missing" telemetry) in the path of her critics to try to cover her escape.

And none of that provides any insight into what she originally thought "geopositioned" meant. We took the fun little detour into celestial navigation, which is an example of what geopositioning actually means. But none of that has anything to do with satellites or communications, so she's just doing her standard stunt of finally figuring something out and pretending she knew it all along.

 

[JayUtah]

Why would they? What would the advantage be? A geostationary satellite would orbit out of Apollo's LOS just like a point on the earth's surface would.

Not necessarily. Geostationary satellites by definition are in equatorial orbits (i.e., 0° inclination). The Moon's orbit is inclined with respect to the equator according to a cycle that goes between 18° and 29° over an 18-year period. Depending on where the Moon is in its orbit, it can maintain a more-or-less constant line of sight to a geostationary satellite for several days.

There are two problems. It's a lot easier to aim an antenna at Earth than it is to aim one at something orbiting Earth. It would take constant fine adjustments to the transmitting antenna.

The bigger problem is exactly size. Because the spacecraft antenna are small and provide only a minimal transmission gain, it takes an antenna the size of a radiotelescope to pick up the signal at the receiving end. That would be the case whether the antenna were on Earth or in geostationary orbit.

Why not just beam the tv images straight to earth, like they did for the Ranger and Mariner missions?

Which is, of course, the easiest and best way to do it.

 

[JesseCuster]

Vixen, is “geopositioning” to do with a satellite in orbit around the moon, a satellite in orbit around the earth or is it something to do with figuring out your coordinates when you’re actually on the Earth? In your half-baked attempt at explaining whatever your argument is, you’ve been vacillating between discussing a satellite (i.e the CSM in orbit around the moon) capturing the footage in some way that doesn’t involve the background whizzing by, the CSM relaying or transmitting the footage, a satellite in Earth orbit receiving and relaying the footage, and someone trying to fix their position on the Earth.

What exactly do you think you’re getting at?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Telemetry film?

Why would a satellite be needed when there's direct line of site from the moon to the earth recieving stations?

NASA needed to be able to broadcast over the telemetry films as quickly as possible.

 

[JesseCuster]

NASA needed to be able to broadcast over the telemetry films as quickly as possible.

Telemetry films taken without viewfinders!

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Not necessarily. Geostationary satellites by definition are in equatorial orbits (i.e., 0° inclination). The Moon's orbit is inclined with respect to the equator according to a cycle that goes between 18° and 29° over an 18-year period. Depending on where the Moon is in its orbit, it can maintain a more-or-less constant line of sight to a geostationary satellite for several days.

Ooh, good point. That the moon's orbital plane lies closer to the ecliptic than to earth's equatorial plane is something I know but don't always remember. Also, the fact that the geosynchronous orbit radius is several times the earth's radius affects the geometry.

 

[Foster Zygote]

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).

Oh, Vixen! You don't fail to entertain. The sun will pass through the local zenith at local noon on only two days each year. I'm sure it will be additionally entertaining to see you try to pretend that you knew that all along.*

Obviously, the Earth, being a globe...

It seems entirely plausible that your next big conspiracy theory thread will start with a sentence almost identical to the above.

...means it won't be so high further away from this...

You might want to look up the definition of the "tropics" before you embarrass yourself further.

...which is why you can estimate time by what time the sun, here, by your pocket watch, compared to GMT, if you know it.

You probably don't realize it, but the above sentence is a syntactic train wreck.

Accurately knowing GMT has nothing to do with determining your local time. It has to do with determining your longitude by comparing GMT to your local time.

You're flailing about desperately trying to act as though everyone is inferior to you in knowledge, even as you once more demonstrate just how ignorant you are of the subjects about which you're attempting to "educate" others.



ETA: * I didn't have to wait long.

 

[JayUtah]

Ooh, good point. That the moon's orbital plane lies closer to the ecliptic than to earth's equatorial plane is something I know but don't always remember.

It also helps to understand that the Moon's orbit precesses. The 18-year (and change) cycle I mentioned is nodal precession, like a wobbling top. It takes 18 years for the tilt to make one full wobble, which is how you get a nearly 10-degree difference in the Moon's orbital inclination as reckoned according to Earth's equator.

Earth's rotational axis precesses too, but that's on a time scale of tens of thousands of years.

 

[Mojo]

Don't change the goalposts. You were demanding to know what 'geopositioning' is.

No, he was asking what you meant by the term when you introduced it to the discussion, as the conventional meanings don't make sense in the context you used it in.

 

[Mojo]

NASA claims this Apollo11 telemetry film was erased and the original no longer exists.

"Telemetry film"? Do you think they got the Ektachrome bods to take photographs of the data?

 

[Foster Zygote]

No, that is not true. My assertion was a rebuttal in self defence. I certainly don't consider personal characteristics makes one better or worse than anyone else.

But you still assert that your intelligence has been tested in the 99.9th percentile, which is so obviously not true.