Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[Jack by the hedge]

<blather snipped> Beattie writes;

"<snip>...and attempting to find the LRRR that the astronauts had left behind. This latter operation was not as easy as we expected, since the exact location of the landing site was not immediately known. Mike Collins had attempted unsuccessfully to locate the LM from orbit using the command module sextant. After analyzing the flight data and the returned photographs, we passed our best estimate to the LRRR PIs, and the LRRR was found on August 1, 1969, by the Lick Observatory in California."

Donald A. Beattie. Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program (ebook Locations 2912-2915).


<snip> ...we know for an absolute fact that the Lick Observatory staff was given the coordinates 00 41 15 north and 23 26 00 east on the night of 07/20/1969. But here we have a fabulous primary source, one of the Apollo Lunar Scientists himself, Donald Beattie, telling us NO! not true!, Michael Collins unsuccessfully attempted to locate the LM, and as a matter of fact, it wasn't until the Apollo scientists, Donald Beattie included, had passed on their best estimate of the LM location based on flight data and RETURNED!!!! photographs to the Lick Observatory staff, that the staff was able to successfully target the LRRR and in so doing determine its coordinates to be 00 41 15 north and 23 26 00 east on 08/01/1969.

My oh my oh my oh my, who is lying here?

Nobody. The LRRR was not located until 1st August. But merely by reading these threads, we know why. It was because the initial best estimate was good, but the figures were misunderstood when phoned through to Lick. So far, no smoking gun.

<snip> So we can conclude that NASA principals informed the Apollo Lunar scientists that the Eagle's coordinates had never been obtained that evening and that these scientists were to analyze photographic and flight data to help Lick Observatory find the LRRR and in so doing , find the Eagle.

Can we conclude that? Can you support the assertion? Even if you can, so what? NASA though Lick were searching at their estimated location and finding nothing. So if they want others to work the same problem with all the available info, what's strange about that. So far, no smoking gun.

Now we know the Lick Observatory Staff received the coordinates of the LRRR already on the night of the landing. They are not lying, so NASA is the only shady suspect left. NASA it would seem pretended they did not know where the Eagle was on the night of 07/20/1969. What other conclusion can one possibly draw?

Already explained above. I conclude Lick were looking in a different location from the one NASA believed they'd given them. Nobody's lying. Still no smoking gun.

So, what exactly have you got?

 

[sts60]

A little context for those of you who don't frequent Bad Astronomy/Universe Today or apollohoax.

Patrick1000 (aka fattydash, mvinson, piersquared, DoctorTea, BFischer, BSpassky, sicilian, etc., etc.) pushed this same silliness over on the other two forums. He started spewing on apollohoax after getting suspended on BAUT for TOS violations, then banned for creating multiple sock-puppets. He then started posting here after the exact same thing happened on apollohoax.

[The thread over on apollohoax was especially entertaining; he was trying to bluff his way past people who were actually looking at the AGC source code, and at one point claimed that the A11 crew was hiding in Earth orbit and on the ground - which the careful observer will note is not, well, physically possible. That's perhaps the finest example of contradicting himself, but is far from the only one.]

He has claimed to be a 53-year-old doctor/scientist/published writer; touted his engineering expertise and "PhD from Cambridge"; claimed that he was part of a group of doctors using some "proprietary" US$5,000 language software (but later said he was too accomplished a writer to use a thesaurus); and so on. If you can endure reading through these threads, you'll probably come to the conclusion, as I have, that he has an unusually large ego even for a 12-year-old, and his mom should cut back his Red Bull allowance - pushing 400 posts in a week? Well, it's his summer vacation.

I'm sorry to see he's basically abandoned this thread. He's rather assiduously avoided answering (except for some handwaving on Gemini) my questions in this thread, some of which were intended to help him define his claim, some of which looked for supporting details, and some of which explored the consistency of his various statements.

I will note that while he ignored, among other things, my question 3 (evidence for his planted-LRRR claim), he did offer the following to SezMe:

...Launch was before 07/16/1969. Vehicle i imagine would be surveyor like as they had experience with that, though that need not be the case. Tool would be the very staff or something like it that the Apollo Lunar scientists had designed and were prepared to later deploy. Best I can do for now. Great question Sez. Thanks!

The "very staff or something like it". Unfortunately, poor fattydash/Patrick1000/etc. doesn't seem to understand that "evidence" != "content-free speculation". However, there is a more fundamental problem with his handwaving (other than the fact that there is nothing at all to support it).

He has spent a lot of time harping about the supposedly "exact" A11 location that was supposedly known ahead of time. But, since he doesn't really understand the subject, he doesn't get that his appeal to magical exactitude excludes his imagined LRRR-placing device. The Surveyor spacecraft, whose locations were determined both by tracking from the ground¹ and from comparison with ground features², had 30 km (narrowed to 10 km for Surveyor VII) radius landing targets. Most of the determinations disagreed with each other to some extent - exactly as anyone who understands the topic would expect, and just as was the case with A11. In 1969, the year after the last Surveyor landed, the location values still generally had spreads of hundreds of meters to several km, and Surveyor V still had not been located by surface feature comparisons.

In other words, poor fattydash/Patrick1000³, in his eagerness to make up stuff, has once again debunked himself. Such are the occupational hazards of trying to bluff your way when you don't actually understand the subject, and can't place any of it into context.



¹ A method he didn't know existed when he was rattling on over at AH.
² A method he ridiculed in the context of Apollo, but apparently he is OK with it for Surveyor.
³ Why, yes, I would like fries with that.

 

[Hans]

Howdy STS

I lurk at Baut all the time and have wished that JREF would take on the Baut requirement that posters must answer questions and attempt to prove their claim - if not they are given the boot - this thread would have been 15 pages shorter.

 

[twinstead]

Howdy STS

I lurk at Baut all the time and have wished that JREF would take on the Baut requirement that posters must answer questions and attempt to prove their claim - if not they are given the boot - this thread would have been 15 pages shorter.

Yea, but he BAUT conspiracy forum isn't nearly as entertaining as this one for that very reason. I mean seriously--why else would we be here?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

BAUT doesn't have stundie awards. Letting people fail about for days on end sometimes produces great comedy.

This guy hasn't managed it, but that's mostly because his verbose empty blather doesn't really SAY anything.

 

[sts60]

Hans, twinstead,

I like a variety of forums. BAUT is very tightly enforced and thus long, pointless rambling is minimized, but the entertainment value is lessened somewhat. Also, the longer threads offer a bit of opportunity to analyze the CT's rhetoric for various fallacies and inconsistencies - which is good training for listening to politicians' campaign speeches. I also tend to learn things in even the most pointless threads in the course of debunking some silly claim or another. This is especially true on AH, where the likes of Bob B., ka9q, and JayUtah put the hoax claims under a microscope.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Last point Stella to help you perhaps. If Apollo is real, they do not know 00 41 15 north and 23 26 00 east until after the Eagle has landed and sophisticated measurements are made, correct? Remember, those are not just any coordinates, the LRRR is sitting on them. So, what does it mean if those coordinates are given to the Lick Observatory staff before those sophisticated measurements are made? think of it in those terms and let me know what you think. I suggest it can ONLY mean fraud.

Cut to the chase.

At what time did Lick Observatory get the coordinates?

You claim that they had them "before," so I want to know what time it was.

 

[Myriad]

Patrick, since your questions have been addressed, I have a few for you.

1. Was a site for the landing, with known coordinates, selected in advance of the mission?

2. When flying a lunar module on descent, with death the likely consequence of any maneuvering error including running out of fuel or of touching down at any velocity not sufficiently close to zero, do you think the pilot, crew, and mission control would pay close attention to their velocity relative to the lunar surface, and would also pay close attention to the elapsed time of all maneuvers?

3. Given a velocity and a time, can a distance be calculated? Is it difficult to do so?

4. Was the LEM designed to be able to fly freely any distance in any direction like a helicopter, or was its lateral maneuverability limited and its course, once it began its lunar descent orbit burn, primarily determined by its pre-existing inertia relative to the lunar surface?

5. Given a set of target coordinates on a spherical body, and an estimated distance and direction from those coordinates, can a new set of coordinates be calculated? How difficult is this to do?

These could be very important to your claims, so I hope you're not afraid to answer them.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[R.A.F.]

But my point stands with respect to their "landing" at an unplanned site.

No, it does not. You are simply making a strawman argument.

Not far from the site as originally planned...

...but close enough for the spread out Laser beam from Earth to "hit" the retro-reflectors.

There...I fixed that for you.


It's over Patty....your arguments are irrational, and we all know it.

 

[nomuse]

Why are the perpetrators of the Hoax pretending they do not know the pretend location of the pretend Eagle? I am not positive, but I presume they feared the Russian unmanned craft, LUNA 15, might be so bold as to photograph 00 41 15 north and 23 26 00 east. Had they done so, they would have found an LRRR and no astronauts. Other explanations are possible, but that is best.

Wow. That's the clearest you've ever stated that belief. I guess practice does make perfect -- you first mentioned Luna 15 about two weeks ago, at ApolloHoax.

And in all that time you have failed to show that a 1960's Soviet probe could better the photographic performance of Clementine, Hayabusa, SMART, or even the LRO. You have failed to show any sources at all on this magnificent camera.

You have failed to show Luna 15 was even on the same hemisphere of the Moon. And you have failed to explain why the same task wasn't possible for Luna 16, Luna 17, Luna 18, Luna 19, Luna 20, Luna 21, Luna 22, Luna 23, and Luna 24 -- all which launched AFTER Apollo 11, and thus all had the theoretical capability of overflying the site.

Plus you fail to account for why the conspiracy can manage to get JAXA to fake photography of the sites, but they can't manage the Soviets -- yet, they did manage to stop the Soviets from using any of their extensive radio and radar tracking facilities.

Your conspiracy theory doesn't work. It has holes in it your average writer for a Captain Planet episode would be ashamed of.

 

[sts60]

I guess I could have mentioned this before. If fattydash/Patrick1000/DoctorTea/etc. can't answer the questions, I can at least help provide some cues for #3.

When did this mission take off? From where? What was the launch vehicle? Where was mission control?

...Launch was before 07/16/1969. Vehicle i imagine would be surveyor like as they had experience with that, though that need not be the case. Tool would be the very staff or something like it that the Apollo Lunar scientists had designed and were prepared to later deploy. Best I can do for now. Great question Sez. Thanks!

Maybe something like these images, showing the spacecraft and deployment mechanism:

and

and a close-up of the secret device itself:

 

[Hans]

The real killer of this Patrick1000 idea is how the Laser device would have gotten there in the first place - didn't Apollo put down three in total, so three missions had to be set up, rockets used, payload designed and built and somehow that package put on the surface - and no one would notice it.........

Not to derail this dead in the water idea but...

Question to our experts; (written by a layman) assuming a claim that a secret military satellite launch could have been used to send a robotic craft to the Moon how reasonable is it to consider this could have been done three times without anyone noting it and could a rocket that would lift one of the old spy birds up be able to send a much smaller lander to the moon?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

What time was it when Lick received the coordinates?

Important question, patrick.

 

[sts60]

The real killer of this Patrick1000 idea is how the Laser device would have gotten there in the first place - didn't Apollo put down three in total, so three missions had to be set up, rockets used, payload designed and built and somehow that package put on the surface - and no one would notice it...

There were indeed three LRRRs deployed by Apollo missions (11, 14, 15). Their design, construction, testing, and deployment are all well-documented, and you can find the contract numbers and so on for them. The people who were involved with it will proudly tell you of their involvement. There's even an image of, for example, the Apollo 11 LRRR near the LM descent stagefrom lunar orbit. So all of the LRRRs are accounted for.

By contrast, there is no evidence, none whatsoever, for the fantasy of something else being built, tested, or deployed. Nor for the alleged spacecraft that took it to the Moon, nor the launch vehicle that sent it on its way. fattydash/Patrick1000/etc.'s claim is equally as valid as saying it was built by gnomes and sent there by invisible pink unicorns.

...assuming a claim that a secret military satellite launch could have been used to send a robotic craft to the Moon how reasonable is it to consider this could have been done three times without anyone noting it and could a rocket that would lift one of the old spy birds up be able to send a much smaller lander to the moon?

No at all. The Atlas-Centaurs which sent the Surveyors on their way all lifted off from LC-36 at Cape Canaveral (I've driven by that site while poking around some of the old pads). U.S. launches to the Moon and beyond were always from the Cape, and there were no U.S. facilities elswhere suitable for an escape or near-escape flight. Launches from the Cape are simply not concealable from the tens of thousands of residents in the immediate area.

Because fattydash/Patrick1000/etc. doesn't know anything about how any of this actually works, he's free to fantasize about nonexistent reflectors on non-existent, magically precise spacecraft launched by nonexistent rockets from nonexistent facilities, all built by nonexistent people under nonexistent contracts. But reality isn't obliged to take notice of this any more than of his nonexistent PhD, $5,000 language software, and so on.

 

[Patrick1000]

A little context for those of you who don't frequent Bad Astronomy/Universe Today or apollohoax.

Patrick1000 (aka fattydash, mvinson, piersquared, DoctorTea, BFischer, BSpassky, sicilian, etc., etc.) pushed this same silliness over on the other two forums. He started spewing on apollohoax after getting suspended on BAUT for TOS violations, then banned for creating multiple sock-puppets. He then started posting here after the exact same thing happened on apollohoax.

[The thread over on apollohoax was especially entertaining; he was trying to bluff his way past people who were actually looking at the AGC source code, and at one point claimed that the A11 crew was hiding in Earth orbit and on the ground - which the careful observer will note is not, well, physically possible. That's perhaps the finest example of contradicting himself, but is far from the only one.]

He has claimed to be a 53-year-old doctor/scientist/published writer; touted his engineering expertise and "PhD from Cambridge"; claimed that he was part of a group of doctors using some "proprietary" US$5,000 language software (but later said he was too accomplished a writer to use a thesaurus); and so on. If you can endure reading through these threads, you'll probably come to the conclusion, as I have, that he has an unusually large ego even for a 12-year-old, and his mom should cut back his Red Bull allowance - pushing 400 posts in a week? Well, it's his summer vacation.

I'm sorry to see he's basically abandoned this thread. He's rather assiduously avoided answering (except for some handwaving on Gemini) my questions in this thread, some of which were intended to help him define his claim, some of which looked for supporting details, and some of which explored the consistency of his various statements.

I will note that while he ignored, among other things, my question 3 (evidence for his planted-LRRR claim), he did offer the following to SezMe:


The "very staff or something like it". Unfortunately, poor fattydash/Patrick1000/etc. doesn't seem to understand that "evidence" != "content-free speculation". However, there is a more fundamental problem with his handwaving (other than the fact that there is nothing at all to support it).

He has spent a lot of time harping about the supposedly "exact" A11 location that was supposedly known ahead of time. But, since he doesn't really understand the subject, he doesn't get that his appeal to magical exactitude excludes his imagined LRRR-placing device. The Surveyor spacecraft, whose locations were determined both by tracking from the ground¹ and from comparison with ground features², had 30 km (narrowed to 10 km for Surveyor VII) radius landing targets. Most of the determinations disagreed with each other to some extent - exactly as anyone who understands the topic would expect, and just as was the case with A11. In 1969, the year after the last Surveyor landed, the location values still generally had spreads of hundreds of meters to several km, and Surveyor V still had not been located by surface feature comparisons.

In other words, poor fattydash/Patrick1000³, in his eagerness to make up stuff, has once again debunked himself. Such are the occupational hazards of trying to bluff your way when you don't actually understand the subject, and can't place any of it into context.



¹ A method he didn't know existed when he was rattling on over at AH.
² A method he ridiculed in the context of Apollo, but apparently he is OK with it for Surveyor.
³ Why, yes, I would like fries with that.

Oh there you are sts, I thought you were hiding.

I never heard fattydash discuss David Reed. My dear boy, you simply must be mistaken confusing the 2 of us. There is a touch of overlap admittedly, but as we all know, my focus is the David Reed/FIDO official NASA story incoherence. Don't believe fatty can handle anything that complicated.

Have you thought about taking a shot at my 4 challenge questions sts? They are ever so fun and embarrassing for your side.

I see some of the others want to challenge me about the space diarrhea business again. I'd be careful about that fellas, you're liable to get Borman poop all over your faces. Do you really think I wouldn't know the facts about salmonella? Before I answer your question about salmonella, what do you guys think Borman had? I don't think he had anything, not salmonella gastroenteritis, not a Secanol problem , not garden variety space sickness. I think it's fake poop. But assuming it is real poop, what do you think caused it?

And play fair, no pulling in that ringer Mackay that knows all that cool stuff about pogo and how the poop affects performance. He intimidates me. If you guys want to continue with this, we need to keep it sort of fair at least. Thanks!

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

U.S. launches to the Moon and beyond were always from the Cape, and there were no U.S. facilities elswhere suitable for an escape or near-escape flight.

Sometimes clever theorists magically invent super-secret launch facilities in the desert, at Area 51 or White Sands Missile Range. The idea makes sense to them because they think the rockets simply fly straight up.

 

[Patrick1000]

The real killer of this Patrick1000 idea is how the Laser device would have gotten there in the first place - didn't Apollo put down three in total, so three missions had to be set up, rockets used, payload designed and built and somehow that package put on the surface - and no one would notice it...

There were indeed three LRRRs deployed by Apollo missions (11, 14, 15). Their design, construction, testing, and deployment are all well-documented, and you can find the contract numbers and so on for them. The people who were involved with it will proudly tell you of their involvement. There's even an image of, for example, the Apollo 11 LRRR near the LM descent stagefrom lunar orbit. So all of the LRRRs are accounted for.

By contrast, there is no evidence, none whatsoever, for the fantasy of something else being built, tested, or deployed. Nor for the alleged spacecraft that took it to the Moon, nor the launch vehicle that sent it on its way. fattydash/Patrick1000/etc.'s claim is equally as valid as saying it was built by gnomes and sent there by invisible pink unicorns.

...assuming a claim that a secret military satellite launch could have been used to send a robotic craft to the Moon how reasonable is it to consider this could have been done three times without anyone noting it and could a rocket that would lift one of the old spy birds up be able to send a much smaller lander to the moon?

No at all. The Atlas-Centaurs which sent the Surveyors on their way all lifted off from LC-36 at Cape Canaveral (I've driven by that site while poking around some of the old pads). U.S. launches to the Moon and beyond were always from the Cape, and there were no U.S. facilities elswhere suitable for an escape or near-escape flight. Launches from the Cape are simply not concealable from the tens of thousands of residents in the immediate area.

Because fattydash/Patrick1000/etc. doesn't know anything about how any of this actually works, he's free to fantasize about nonexistent reflectors on non-existent, magically precise spacecraft launched by nonexistent rockets from nonexistent facilities, all built by nonexistent people under nonexistent contracts. But reality isn't obliged to take notice of this any more than of his nonexistent PhD, $5,000 language software, and so on.

I believe the real killer sts is the fact no longer in dispute that the EXACT COORDINATES OF TRANQUILITY BASE WERE KNOWN BEFORE THE EAGLE EVER LANDED. THE REAL KILLER IS THE APOLLO PROGRAM'S FOREKNOWLEDGE OF THOSE COORDINATES. IT MATTERS NOT A WHIT WITH RESPECT TO THE DETAILS OF HOW IT IS THEY GOT THE LRRR UP THERE. 00 41 15 NORTH AND 23 26 00 EAST WAS KNOWN BEFORE IT WAS CALCULATED. IT IS SCRIPT AND NOT SCIENCE. GOOD LUCK STS, GOOD LUCK WITH MY QUESTIONS. IT'S YOUR ONLY CHANCE BUDDY, BETTER GIVE IT A SHOT.

 

[Hans]

The real killer of this Patrick1000 idea is how the Laser device would have gotten there in the first place - didn't Apollo put down three in total, so three missions had to be set up, rockets used, payload designed and built and somehow that package put on the surface - and no one would notice it...

There were indeed three LRRRs deployed by Apollo missions (11, 14, 15). Their design, construction, testing, and deployment are all well-documented, and you can find the contract numbers and so on for them. The people who were involved with it will proudly tell you of their involvement. There's even an image of, for example, the Apollo 11 LRRR near the LM descent stagefrom lunar orbit. So all of the LRRRs are accounted for.

By contrast, there is no evidence, none whatsoever, for the fantasy of something else being built, tested, or deployed. Nor for the alleged spacecraft that took it to the Moon, nor the launch vehicle that sent it on its way. fattydash/Patrick1000/etc.'s claim is equally as valid as saying it was built by gnomes and sent there by invisible pink unicorns.

...assuming a claim that a secret military satellite launch could have been used to send a robotic craft to the Moon how reasonable is it to consider this could have been done three times without anyone noting it and could a rocket that would lift one of the old spy birds up be able to send a much smaller lander to the moon?

No at all. The Atlas-Centaurs which sent the Surveyors on their way all lifted off from LC-36 at Cape Canaveral (I've driven by that site while poking around some of the old pads). U.S. launches to the Moon and beyond were always from the Cape, and there were no U.S. facilities elswhere suitable for an escape or near-escape flight. Launches from the Cape are simply not concealable from the tens of thousands of residents in the immediate area.

Because fattydash/Patrick1000/etc. doesn't know anything about how any of this actually works, he's free to fantasize about nonexistent reflectors on non-existent, magically precise spacecraft launched by nonexistent rockets from nonexistent facilities, all built by nonexistent people under nonexistent contracts. But reality isn't obliged to take notice of this any more than of his nonexistent PhD, $5,000 language software, and so on.

Kinda what I figured, thanks for the confirmation!

 

[Hans]

No, you're just too daft to realize when you've been pwned.

So, what time at night was it when Lick received the coordinates? You're the one with the inspector Clouseau mystery theory -- the burden of proof is on you to prove the coordinates were known by Lick prior to when they SHOULD have been.

You don't think, I mean it couldn't possibly be true, that Patrick1000 doesn't know about the 'magic' of different time zones?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

I believe the real killer sts is the fact no longer in dispute that the EXACT COORDINATES OF TRANQUILITY BASE WERE KNOWN BEFORE THE EAGLE EVER LANDED. THE REAL KILLER IS THE APOLLO PROGRAM'S FOREKNOWLEDGE OF THOSE COORDINATES. IT MATTERS NOT A WHIT WITH RESPECT TO THE DETAILS OF HOW IT IS THEY GOT THE LRRR UP THERE. 00 41 15 NORTH AND 23 26 00 EAST WAS KNOWN BEFORE IT WAS CALCULATED. IT IS SCRIPT AND NOT SCIENCE. GOOD LUCK STS, GOOD LUCK WITH MY QUESTIONS. IT'S YOUR ONLY CHANCE BUDDY, BETTER GIVE IT A SHOT.

Bold does not equal clarity. Drink less redbull.

You keep asserting this point "EXACT COORDINATES OF TRANQUILITY BASE WERE KNOWN BEFORE THE EAGLE EVER LANDED" but you don't prove it.

When were the coords known? Time, please?