Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[Patrick1000]

Doesn't Look Weak to Me, From NASA's Own Web Site.

Patrick thinks NASA identified a probably-safe landing site 200m across and assumes it was entirely surrounded by dangerous rocks which got ever bigger, denser and more jagged the further from the centre you strayed. He thinks the moon is like a video game.

Is this Patrick's weakest argument yet? The competition is fierce.

Doesn't Look Weak to Me Jack by the hedge, not in the least. From NASA's Own Web Site;

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=2325

Paul Muller the man who discovered Mascons wrote(CAPITALS MINE);

"It was just over a year before the first astronauts were scheduled to land on the Moon, and NASA's TOP PRIORITY was to determine what was diverting its unmanned spacecraft as they flew low over the lunar surface. Apollo astronauts were training to land within 200 meters of the targeted location, but lunar spacecraft were going off course by as much as 2 kilometers. So instead of a landing zone of an eighth of a square kilometer, they could only be confident of landing within an area of more than 12 square kilometers. "There was no way the astronauts were going to be able to learn 100 times as much surface area of the Moon," Muller said, "so they would know where they are when they rotate the spacecraft and look out the window to land."

So there was no way they were going to learn 100 times as much surface area huh Paul? Did you know that Armstrong landed so far off course he would have had to have learned over 1200 times as much surface area than that which was viewed by NASA's navigational specialists in 1968-1969 as negotiable/manageable/acceptable/safe? Bet you feel pretty silly now Paul, dontcha'? Guess you feel pretty foolish Paul, going through all that, figuring out all that complicated stuff about mascons and then finding out they really never cared, that it was no big deal landing 4 and a half miles away from where the landing was targeted? And you thought they had to be within 200 meters, and you thought they never could possibly deal with 100 times more terrain, and here they were landing 4 and a half miles from the targeted landing site and dealing with over 1200 times as much terrain; boulders, craters, topographical difficulties and dangers that they were completely unprepared for. Silly you Paul!

 

[Patrick1000]

Be safe, will miss you.

Unlike a certain poster, I am actually traveling and may not be back to this thread for a couple of weeks. I say this just in case a certain poster decides to declare he has "run me off" and proclaims victory with each day that goes by without a new reply.

May get one or two more posts in before the flight. Which does have an actual gate time.

Be safe and enjoy, will miss you nomuse. Lots to tell when you return, best to you, P.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Doesn't Look Weak to Me...

No. Weak.

You are conflating initial concern at an inability to fly accurately to the intended landing site (which did not happen) with a controlled, deliberate overflight of the site when it proved unsafe.

Weak as water. Please provide your "evidence" that the astronauts only learned a 200m square of the lunar surface.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It's increasingly tedious and increasingly obvious that all Patrick does is nitpick anecdotal accounts by people directly or peripherally involved with Apollo, and pounce on any phrase they use to inject a sense of jeopardy into their story.

Whenever anyone remarks that this or that was terribly dangerous, Patrick siezes on it and declares that this irrefutable evidence proves that NASA would never have done it, QED.

The lesson to future generations is that when you write the accounts of your exploits, make sure they are as dull and aridly dry as possible. If you inject one iota of thrill into your narrative, some conspiracy nut will elevate it to holy writ status and use that to discard the whole event as false, no matter how thoroughly documented and evidenced it is.

 

[Kiwi9]

DVDs too?

Here's a list of names of Nasa's Mercury-Gemini-Apollo films, with times as far as I know, which could be wrong if I got them from some of the rubbishy DVDs:

1 Freedom 7 (Mercury 1) 0:28:21
2 The Voyage of Friendship 7 (Mercury 3) 0:28:50
3 Friendship 7 0:58:10
4 The World Was There
5 Four Days of Gemini Four 0:06:39
6 Proud Conquest: Gemini 7 and 6 0:29:12
7 This is Houston, Flight (Gemini 8) 0:24:55
8 Legacy of Gemini 0:27:25
9 The Apollo 4 Mission 0:15:30
10 The Flight of Apollo 7 0:14:30
11 Debrief: Apollo 8 0:28:00
12 Apollo 8: Go for TLI 0:21:48
13 Apollo 9: The Space Duet of Spider and Gumdrop 0:28:30
14 Apollo 10: Green Light for a Lunar Landing 0:28:30
15 Apollo 10: To Sort Out the Unknowns 0:25:30
16 Eagle Has Landed: The Flight of Apollo 11 0:28:20
17 Apollo 11: For All Mankind 0:34:07
18 Apollo 12: Pinpoint for Science 0:28:20
19 Apollo 13: 'Houston... We’ve Got a Problem' 0:28:30
20 Apollo 14: Mission to Fra Mauro 0:28:30
21 Apollo 15: In the Mountains of the Moon 0:28:00
22 Apollo 16: Nothing So Hidden 0:28:07
23 Apollo 17: On the Shoulders of Giants 0:28:18
24 The Time of Apollo 0:31:12
25 Moon: Old and New
26 Jupiter Odyssey
27 Skylab: The First 40 Days 0:22:31
28 Skylab: Second Manned Mission 0:37:01
29 Four Rooms, Earth View (Skylab) 0:27:59
30 Who's Out There? 0:28:01
31 Apollo-Soyuz Mission 0:28:31

Oh, I forgot one more excellent DVD, which would no doubt also suit Patrick1000 because it is a movie of a fictional trip to the moon made up from all the best movie, audio and video footage that could be found. It mixes dialogue, astronauts and missions but is a wonderful work of art. But definitely not to be taken as a record of what actually happened.

Anyway, it is "For All Mankind" (1989) by Al Reinert.

Two things that have been mucked up by "historians" in recent years:

1. Many documentaries now show Neil Armstrong jumping down to the LM's footpad and portray that as him stepping onto the moon. He actally jumped down to the footpad twice, then paused on the pad and later took that step. They probably pinched that footage from "For All Mankind."

2. I don't know how this could have happened, but the Hanks/Howard consortium screwed up the timing of the Saturn 5's ignition before liftoff in both "Apollo 13" and "From the Earth to the Moon." They had ignition occurring at zero in the count, whereas it started at 8.9 seconds and liftoff was at zero.

The sound of Public Affairs Officer Jack King counting down Apollo 11 is etched into my mind:

- 0:00:25 PAO (King): T minus 25 seconds. 20 seconds and counting. T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal.
- 0:00:12 PAO (King): 12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts.
- 0:00:08.9 ** S-IC engine start command.
- 0:00:06.4 ** S-IC engine ignition (#5).
- 0:00:06 PAO (King): 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero, all engines running -
- 0:00:01.6 ** All S-IC engines thrust OK.
0:00:00.00 ** Range zero. 16 July 1969, 13:32 GMT — 9:32 a.m. EDT.
0:00:00 PAO (King): Liftoff. We have a liftoff, 32 minutes past the hour. Liftoff on Apollo 11.

 

[Obviousman]

How would Armstrong have answered my Apollo 11 Post Flight Simulation Press Conference hypothetical question Obviousman? Haven't seen a serious response yet.

Please don't try and change the subject; you quoted sources where problems were raised, but then ignore where those problems were solved.

To maintain a premise, when you know there are answers which dismiss the premise, does not give a good impression of your honesty. It's cherry picking, at best.

 

[Patrick1000]

I think not, but nice try my friend

No. Weak.

You are conflating initial concern at an inability to fly accurately to the intended landing site (which did not happen) with a controlled, deliberate overflight of the site when it proved unsafe.

Weak as water. Please provide your "evidence" that the astronauts only learned a 200m square of the lunar surface.

I think not, but nice try my friend! The point is, missing the landing site is a big deal. So much of a big deal that figuring out how to get within 200 meters of a targeted site was made THE TOP PRIORITY BY NASA. Why were the lunar orbiters not going where they were supposed to? Mascons. Why was the mascon issue so vitally important? Because they threw spacecraft off of their intended course.

For an unmanned craft, this would not be so critical, but for a manned craft, according to Paul Muller who discovered the mascons, it would be very important indeed. Important becasue the astronauts could only prepare to land within a relatively small patch of real estate. Perhaps the landing elipse as presented in books is large, but when it came to training, Armstrong was planning to land within an area 200 meters by 200 meters, 40,000 square meters or 0.04 square kilometers.

So Armstrong saw 7200 additional meters go by, and per Paul Muller, an astronaut training to deal with that, land somewhere within that additional stretch, would need to study all 51,840,000 square meters, or 5.18 square kilometers. So he was in danger, Armstrong was. In danger in the sense of being at risk in Apollo's pretend world. Armstrong had not trained for those fifty one million square meters worth of unplanned for contingency. Simulated bolders, simulated craters, and simulated what not, none of this he knew. He trained for 200 meters square of real estate, 200 meters square of moon.

What makes the Apollo 11 story so very bogus in this context is not the claim that the Boy Scout and Fuzzy Buzzy overflew the targeted landing site by 4.5 miles, but the claim that this was no big deal. We now know it was a very big deal, a TOP PRIORITY DEAL, because the astronauts trained to land within 200 meters of the simulated site. Armstrong didn't "know" the simulated terrain 4 and a half miles from the simulated targeted site. This was a very big deal indeed Jack by the hedge, very very very BIG.

So to overfly a landing site is one thing, but Armstrong trained to land within 200 meters of the originally targeted and ultimately overflown simulated site. So it is OK by me if he says he overflew the site by 4 and a half miles due to this or that problem. On the other hand, are we going to let him and the other yo-yos get away with it when they say it didn't matter that this happened, that it was no big deal, that there was no danger were the thing, the Apollo 11 Mission, to have been real? Of course not! NASA had made this a TOP PRIORITY, a TOP PRIORITY!!!!!!, so that dealing with additional terrain would not be an issue, a TOP PRIORITY so that the astronauts would see the very terrain that they trained to see and would not have to deal with an immense patch of unknown lunar surface, not have to deal with a region of lunar surface that they were unprepared for. All these hot shot scientists Jack by the hedge, FIVE TEAMS OF THEM WORKED ON THIS TOP PRIORITY PROJECT IT WAS SO IMPORTANT.

So, what do we say to Neil when he says no big deal? We say LIAR LIAR SPACESUIT PANTS ON FIRE!!!!!

 

[drewid]

As I was saying drewid. Understanding Apollo is not difficult.

So why do you keep on getting stuff wrong?

 

[drewid]

Please don't try and change the subject; you quoted sources where problems were raised, but then ignore where those problems were solved.

To maintain a premise, when you know there are answers which dismiss the premise, does not give a good impression of your honesty. It's cherry picking, at best.

Standard procedure when he realises he's about to be shown up/has been shown up. He's done it repeatedly.

I call cowardice.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I think not

Agree, I do.

Please show your evidence that NASA had absolutely no contingency but to abort if the proposed landing site proved unsafe. Got none? Thought not.

You are still conflating initial concern over whether the LM could be guided to a designated point with some imagined absolute requirement for a particular point to be landed on.

In Patrickworld, there was absolutely no reason for the LM to have manual control avaiable at all. Let the computer land where it was programmed to, and give the astronauts nothing but a panic button if they wanted to bail out. If they strayed outside the 200m safe zone, there be space-dragons.

 

[sts60]

...The lesson to future generations is that when you write the accounts of your exploits, make sure they are as dull and aridly dry as possible. If you inject one iota of thrill into your narrative, some conspiracy nut will elevate it to holy writ status and use that to discard the whole event as false, no matter how thoroughly documented and evidenced it is.

No. The lesson is to pay no attention to incompetent nobodies on the Internet who are desperate for attention, but will never measure up to the accomplishments of the men and women who actually achieve such great ends.

Neither the people who made Apollo happen, nor history in general, will ever even notice such silly, anonymous ranters. Somewhere, deep down, they know this, so they seek whatever validation they can get by trolling ephemera like this forum, gibbering like monkeys flinging their own waste. Eventually their audience moves on and they are quickly forgotten; meanwhile, the real world continues to honor the courage, dedication, and skill that enabled one of mankind's greatest achievements.

 

[drewid]

No. The lesson is to pay no attention to incompetent nobodies on the Internet who are desperate for attention, but will never measure up to the accomplishments of the men and women who actually achieve such great ends.

Neither the people who made Apollo happen, nor history in general, will ever even notice such silly, anonymous ranters. Somewhere, deep down, they know this, so they seek whatever validation they can get by trolling ephemera like this forum, gibbering like monkeys flinging their own waste. Eventually their audience moves on and they are quickly forgotten; meanwhile, the real world continues to honor the courage, dedication, and skill that enabled one of mankind's greatest achievements.

Well said.

At least one good thing has come out of this. I've got a copy of "From the trench of mission control..." on the way. Now available as a print-on-demand version, (the original being out of the print at the moment).

 

[Kiwi9]

...Armstrong was planning to land within an area 200 meters by 200 meters, 40,000 square meters or 0.04 square kilometers. ...He trained for 200 meters square of real estate, 200 meters square of moon.

You made that up, didn't you? PROVE IT, Patrick1000. Come on, PROVE IT.

I bet you can't do any more than prove that you don't even understand what "proof" means. The documentation you've shown doesn't in any way prove that that's what he trained for, because it was written before the most intensive part of his training. And for a start, you also have to take into account what you've already been told about -- the deliberate avoidance of a hazardous area by manually flying the LM.

You are just talking nonsense and, as usual, you don't know that you are.

Come on Pattydash, put up or shut up. PROVE IT.

 

[Patrick1000]

More on Muller, Mascons, Navigation, and Why 4 and a Half Miles is a Long Way

The quote below is found in many references on this subject. This one in particular I got from;

http://www.glossary.com/reference.php?q=Mascon

"The lunar mascons alter the local gravity in certain regions sufficiently that low and uncorrected satellite orbits around the moon are unstable on a timescale of months or years. This acts to distort successive orbits, causing the satellite to ultimately impact the surface. The lunar mascons were discovered by Paul M Muller and William Sjogren of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1968 from analysis of the highly precise navigation data from the unmanned pre-Apollo Lunar Orbiter . The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five unpiloted Lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States in 1966 through 1967 with the purpose of mapping the lunar surface before the Apollo landings. At that time, one of NASA's highest priority "tiger team" projects was to explain why the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft being used were experiencing errors in predicted position of ten times the mission specification (2 kilometers instead of 200 meters). This meant that the predicted landing areas were 100 times as large as those being carefully defined for reasons of safety. Lunar orbital effects resulting from strong gravitational perturbations were ultimately revealed as the cause. William Wollenhaupt and Emil Schiesser of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston then worked out the "fix" that was first applied to Apollo 12 and permitted its landing within 30 meters of the target, the previously-landed Surveyor 3 spacecraft."

So again, the point is not that they went off course, but that once having gone off course, it was no big deal. Not so! Note carefully that landing areas one hundreth the size(0.04 square kilometers) of those being reaized(4 square kilometers) were so prescribed for the Apollo Missions out of safety concerns. I will quote once again, from the very paragraph above;

"This meant that the predicted landing areas were 100 times as large as those being carefully defined for reasons of safety."

Safety dictated that the "actual Apollo landings" occur within a 0.04 square kilometer patch of lunar surface possibility, within 0.04 square kilometers of some well known, pre-mission targeted, thoroughly studied and well anticipated position on the lunar surface. Because Apollo navigation specialists were finding that the landing site photographing orbiters were experiencing errors in predicted positon of ten times that which was viewed as reasonable/safe, understanding and "fixing" the problem became paramount, A TOP PRIORITY.

 

[Garrison]

The quote below is found in many references on this subject. This one in particular I got from;


So again, the point is not that they went off coutse, but that once having gone off course, it was no big deal. Not so!

Amazing how little is left after your cut and paste is removed and yet again you use a quote that seems to have little to do with your claims and indeed asserts the reality of Apollo. It's been explained in detail why the change in the landing zone was irrelevant in terms of rendezvousing after they lifted off, that you can't apparently understand it is your problem.

 

[mrbusdriver]

The quote below is found in many references on this subject. This one in particular I got from;

"Safety dictated that the "actual Apollo landings" occur within a 0.04 square kilometer patch of lunar surface possibility, within 0.04 square kilometers of some well known, pre-mission targeted, thoroughly studied and well anticipated position on the lunar surface. Because Apollo navigation specialists were finding that the landing site photographing orbiters were experiencing errors in predicted positon of ten times that which was viewed as reasonable/safe, understanding and "fixing" the problem became paramount, A TOP PRIORITY.

Really? They couldn't safely land outside this square? The mission planners couldn't conceive landing safely outside this small target?
If that's the case, why was the target landing ellipse so large? The target spot may have been defined precisely, but it was obvious early in the descent, to the crew and Mission Control, that they were landing long.

 

[Patrick1000]

It is a quote that contradicts Commander Armstrong, nothing more, nothing less.

Amazing how little is left after your cut and paste is removed and yet again you use a quote that seems to have little to do with your claims and indeed asserts the reality of Apollo. It's been explained in detail why the change in the landing zone was irrelevant in terms of rendezvousing after they lifted off, that you can't apparently understand it is your problem.

It is a quote that contradicts Commander Armstrong, nothing more, nothing less.

Armstrong and the Apollo 11 Mission as it presents itself in the official narrative, say that being off course by 4 and a half miles was no big deal. This information which I now present demonstrates clearly nothing could be further from the truth.

Safety mandated landing within 200 meters of a thoroughly studied and well anticipated targeted site, not 7200 meters from a site where one would not have a clue as to what one was up against at that moment of truth.

So for Armstrong to claim that he went that far off course, and that as a consequence, it was no big deal, is to intentionally mislead us, is to lie to us.

From my quotes above, the navigational experts considered 2000 meters off course unacceptable. 7200 meters off course, dealing with 51 million square meters of unstudied moon, this would have presented a great danger to the astronauts were any of it real, real in a threatening way. For Armstrong and Aldrin, 07/20/1969 was a day of a LM landing simulation, not a day where they participated in the first bonafide manned lunar landing

Of course there was no danger, Armstrong was correct in that. But there was no danger because none of this ever happened, not in any real sense anyway. Armstrong's life was never on the line, as he was never on the moon. Were that to have been the case, he would have acknowledged his flying off course and landing 4 and a half miles from the intended landing site was significant indeed. He never did this, and so we may confidently conclude, he never walked on the moon.

 

[tsig]

Any iota? I would read the above post, #3429, VERY carefully mrbusdriver. You now have a BIG BIG BIG BIG BIG PROBLEM ON YOUR HANDS. Not kidding. I hope that you are sitting down.

Oh noes!!! All caps and repeating adjectives. However shall we answer such cogent arguments?

 

[Patrick1000]

Say what you will tsig, you too have a BIG BIG BIG PROBLEM on your hands.

Oh noes!!! All caps and repeating adjectives. However shall we answer such cogent arguments?

Say what you will tsig, you too have a BIG BIG BIG PROBLEM on your hands with this one.

 

[Patrick1000]

So tsig, knowing what you do now, what do you think?

Oh noes!!! All caps and repeating adjectives. However shall we answer such cogent arguments?

So tsig, knowing what you do now, what do you think? Would that be a worry for someone like "astronaut Armstrong", going way off course like that and flying over utterly unfamiliar territory. It would appear that in studying for a genuine landing, the navigation people thought the most the astronauts could handle would be the study of 40,000 square meters, 0.04 square kilometers worth of moon.

Ol' Neil flew over 51 million square meters worth of a navigational specialist's nightmare.

What do you think tsig? What do you say about Neil discounting the seriousness of his predicament there on "the moon"?