Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[frenat]

You are correct. It was the third stage that failed to restart. That doesn't negate or even dilute my point. The failed Apollo 6 burn was to simulate that of a translunar injection burn.

The rocket does not work matt. They wouldn't put 3 guys in the next one, Apollo 8, not real guys, in a real questionably functional rocket. The thing is fake, all of Apollo, proven right there with the whole Apollo 6 debacle.

You don't know what the word "prove" means do you? A problem with a rocket that the engineers know they can fix is certainly NOT proof of anything fake, no matter how many times you repeat it without paying attention to your answers.

 

[Patrick1000]

When I say the Apollo 13 pogoing was fake, I mean no astrounauts were inside

Funny thing about newspaper articles. They like to sensationalize things, it sells more papers.

Reading NASA's documentation gives a different story. The early shut down of Stage Two's engines 2 and 3 resulted in an increased burn of the other three engines for 58 seconds, and the orbit about Earth was not a danger to the craft, if rather more ellipical than planned. The failure of the Saturn IVB was also not a danger to a crew, as had it failed on an actual mission, the crew would have still been in Earth Orbit and so simply landed. There was nothing about the performance of Apollo 6 that would have endangered a crew had Apollo 6 been manned, even the Pogo that occured was within tollerance of a crew as shown by Apollo 13 which suffered a similar amount.

The fact that the issues were caused by damaged fuel lines was an easy one to overcome and the idea that NASA would have been scared to send men up on one after these issues had been resolved on the ground is simply ignorance of the real situation.

When I say the Apollo 13 pogoing was "fake", I mean no astronauts were inside the rockets to experience the effects. The rockets themselves bounce. There were no consequences however since they are unmanned.

 

[Patrick1000]

My mistake, wrote "matt" in response to this previously

Patrick, G. Harry knew full well we went to the Moon. He also knew it wasn't for military purposes.
I'm sure he's laughing loudly up there right now at your silliness. BTW, his son is still alive...why don't you contact him for confirmation of your ideas? You can reach him through the NAR.
(yeah, I fly rockets...it's a sciency thing, smoke and fire, good stuff)

My mistake, wrote "matt" in response to this previously.

Not sure I get your point mrbusdriver. By the way, just having an LRRR on the moon and nothing else, even if Armstrong set it there, makes Apollo military. The gadget is utilized in making measurements of more than one type that can and undoubtedly were used in ICBM targeting/programming.

 

[JayUtah]

You are correct. It was the third stage that failed to restart. That doesn't negate or even dilute my point.

Of course it does. It shows that you know less about Apollo than most grade-schoolers. And your entire line of reasoning is based on the notion that your expectations are a suitable standard for authenticity. When you demonstrate that those expectations are not just poorly informed but downright ignorant, you undermine that standard.

In the line of reasoning you've chosen to employ, your demonstrable level of expertise is not only relevant, it's the only thing that's relevant.

The rocket does not work matt.

You're not qualified to make that judgment. The experts disagree with you.

They wouldn't put 3 guys in the next one, Apollo 8, not real guys, in a real questionably functional rocket.

That's what has happened on every manned space mission.

Boeing 747s have at times malfunctioned. Is it therefore immoral to put 350 people on one and fly it?

 

[Patrick1000]

It is well documented the LM could land on its own, that is by way of autopilot

You haven't proven it's a fraud. You're simply sweeping under the carpet all the problems with your contradictory theories by trying to say that if you can't figure it out, then the alleged hoaxsters must have just been that good.



Sad that you can accept that NASA are professional fraudsters but not professional engineers.



Between $19 billion and $24 billion, following a $20 billion estimate. Please get your numbers correct.

It has been well-documented what that money was spent on, but you have completely ignored it. You provide zero evidence that the money was spent on anything you've speculated about.



But you argue that the Saturn V was an "abysmal" failure. When it's a prelude to Apollo 8, you crow about the alleged failure. But when it's in support of your alleged militarization activities, then all of a sudden the Saturn V works just fine. You keep changing your story.



You provide no evidence that any such things exist except inside your imagination. You provide no evidence that technology intended for LEO and artificial satellites has any relevance on the Moon. You completely ignore the documented uses of actual space technology for the purposes you outline. You completely ignore the inherent problems with using the Moon for those purposes.

You post the same drivel over and over again, paying absolutely no attention to what your critics say. Do you ever intend to reconcile your beliefs with reality?



Except that Tom Kelly designed the LM very specifically to land two expert pilots (not a load of unmanned gear) on the lunar surface. You cannot simply wave your hands and declare that the LM was "really" intended for a wholly different purpose than the designer intended, and that the designer himself would be completely unaware of it.



No, the LM cannot land by itself. It requires a human pilot.



Of course you like it. You keep telling us that you're going down in history as the man who undid Apollo. You don't get to go down in history if you're just another guy who accepts Apollo as real. You don't get to go down in history if you're proven to be just another crackpot. The only way you get to go down in history is if people believe your hoax claims. Sounds like you have a pretty ego-related reason to make these claims and stick to them regardless of the facts.

And there's nothing remotely honest about your approach.



All those previous posts have been exhaustively and repeatedly debunked, exposing your colossal ignorance in the process. You just pretend those rebuttals don't exist.

It is well documented that the LM could land on its own, that is by way of autopilot.

Here is an excellent article supporting that claim which includes details as below.

http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/the_bug.html

It is a well documented fact that James Lovell had intended to allow the autopilot to land the LM during the Apollo 13 mission barring any unforeseen problems with the targeted landing site suitability during the approach.

It is also a well recognized fact that the Grumman engineers and the Grumman test pilots had a case of champagne bet as to whether or not any of the Apollo missions would be autopilot landed or not. The engineers were of the opinion that the autopilot would do a better job in any case , and eventually, the PGNS would be allowed to land one, start to finish, a' la Lovell's intention. The Grumman pilots on the other hand, being pilots, argued that the astronauts being pilots, would never let the LM auto land. It simply was not/is not in a pilot's nature.

Regardless, there is ample documentation for the LM's autopilot landing capabilities Jay. Take a look at the Smithsonian article and you will be convinced such was the case.

 

[LongFuzzy]

"...they don't have a bathroom in the spaceship. Game/set/match right there bro."
So, if no bathroom, then its fake? (By bathroom, do you mean toliet? Or a place to take a bath?) Does that mean Gemini, Mercury, Soyuz, are all fake? But the shuttle is real because it has a toliet?
-LF

 

[Andy_Ross]

Sure they have, albeit indirectly. The Lick and McDonald Observatory LRRR experiment scientists published material that directly contradicted NASA's publications. These scientists were/are confirming FRAUD! and doing so very directly.

Now just because they remained duped despite their publications, doesn't discount they are in a very real sense were coming forward and saying the thing was/is fake.

Wampler had the Tranquility Base's coordinates Captain_Swoop, while at the very same time the CapCom and Armstrong were trying to figure out where the Eagle landed. How silly!!! AND PHONY TO BOOT!!!

Authenticity was/is more than questioned here Captain_Swoop, this in incontrovertible evidence of/for FRAUD.

So you have no real reply? You can't show me a single engineer or scientist with relevant qualifications and experience with engineering, rocketry, geology, astronomy, radio and telecommunications or Aerospace that has questioned the authenticity of Apollo?

 

[JayUtah]

Sure I have proven it is a fraud Jay, they don't have a bathroom in the spaceship. Game/set/match right there bro.

Explain then why qualified physicians disagree with you.

imagine what's gonna' happen to their fragile fighter pilot psyches...

You obviously don't know many fighter pilots.

Your cavalier misunderstanding of relevant facts, your ignorance of the applicable sciences, your commission of elementary errors, and your inattention to your critics' responses would hardly qualify your overall argument as even remotely credible.

 

[Ravenwood]

When I say the Apollo 13 pogoing was "fake", I mean no astronauts were inside the rockets to experience the effects. The rockets themselves bounce. There were no consequences however since they are unmanned.

If Apollo was unmanned, how did the LRRR get emplaced & aligned? I have spoken with one of the men who designed & built the LRRR, so he is well aware of what would be needed to deploy it & explained the procedure to me quite well. I'm going to have to show him this thread the next time I see him just to get his opinion

 

[nomuse]

When I say the Apollo 13 pogoing was "fake", I mean no astronauts were inside the rockets to experience the effects. The rockets themselves bounce. There were no consequences however since they are unmanned.

So, let me get this straight...your claim is that there were serious problems with a number of the engines, including a bone-shattering vibration (like that will have no effect on electronics, right!) and ignition failures that would prevent them from reaching the Moon at all....

...and this is proof that NASA launched, instead of the documented Apollo missions, automated military-purposed missions of a much, much higher degree of technical complexity?

I suppose in your world, peeling on a short single-pitch 5.6 means you should change tactics and try instead to LEAD a 5.13b on manky rock with no fixed bolts.

 

[Garrison]

...and this is proof that NASA launched, instead of the documented Apollo missions, automated military-purposed missions of a much, much higher degree of technical complexity?

Apparently even Patrick doesn't agree with Patrick...

 

[JayUtah]

It is well documented that the LM could land on its own, that is by way of autopilot.

If only you knew what they are talking about!

As usual, it's not what you think it means. And as usual, you're quoting popular sources and failing to delve into the technical details that they leave out. I know them, and you don't. Hence you wallow in your own naive interpretations while the rest of the technically-competent world accepts Apollo as real. You hear the word "autopilot" and you get a set of ideas in your head, and without checking to see whether they're accurate ideas, you immediately start judging reality by them.

Nor will this be the first (or even the second, third, or fourth) time you've been entirely mistaken about LM guidance and control. Keep in mind that you come to this discussion with a huge degree of "fail" behind you on this topic.

PGNS employed three computer programs from Luminary -- P63, P64, and P66 -- to "autopilot" the landing. In fact, each of these required pilot input. They were not "auto" in the sense of unattended flight, but "auto" in the sense that many guidance commands were based on a numerical model rather than on pilot commands, thus freeing the pilot from tedium and error. "Autopilot" is never synonymous with "unmanned."

The most obvious error in your thinking is that each of these programs, at various times, asked the pilot to confirm its computations and intentions. The program is there for anyone to inspect. If there's no human pilot to press the PRO button, the computer program will not proceed. So much for your claim that the LM manufacturers wouldn't have known they were building what would be no more than an unmanned vehicle.

P63 first asks the pilot to confirm the ignition timing parameters. It then asks for final ignition confirmation. The pilot must then designate the landing site by manually setting Noun 69. During this phase, there is no automatic updating of the AGS to accommodate AGC-only information such as radar. The pilot must manually synchronize the AGS using hand-keyed inputs.

P64 also requires pilot confirmation to begin its work. P64 is completely capable of flying the LM from pitchover to terminal descent without any pilot input. But the pilot has two things the computer lacks: eyes. Only the pilot can determine whether the landing site to which the computer is sending them is a suitable one for his spacecraft. P64 will blissfully fly the ship into the side of a crater or on top of a pile of boulders. It's up to the pilot to tell P64 where to land. Noun 69 is only good to about 1,000 feet, and within that tolerance can be a lot of nastiness.

Finally we come to P66 (terminal descent), which is your Waterloo. It takes over at about 200 feet, again with pilot confirmation. Up until now the PGNS mode is AUTO, meaning that the DAP takes commands from the targeting program. In P64 the targeting program gets pilot input from the joystick and translates those into commands to adjust the spacecraft's attitude to land shorter, longer, left, or right from the previously designated landing point. To land shorter, for example, the DPS is throttled back slightly for a short period, allowing the spacecraft to dip lower.

But in P66 the PGNS mode switches to ATT HOLD and the DPS throttle mode switches to ROD HOLD. In ROD HOLD mode, the computer simply maintains a selected descent rate, with that rate determined entirely by the pilot. No numerical model applies here. P64 will leave the descent rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 fps, but there's no guarantee of it. The pilot is supposed to manage the descent rate from the 12 fps to the 2-3 fps at touchdown; 12 fps at touchdown will exceed the spacecraft structural limits.

Because the LM is expending fuel and thereby growing lighter, the throttle has to be closed slightly to maintain the constant descent rate. But it's still up to the pilot to determine what that rate should be. P66 is considered "autopilot" because it manages the throttle according to a high-level input from the pilot -- the ROD selector switch.

P66 provides no lateral control. That is, horizontal rates are entirely under the command of the pilot, who is responsible for nulling them out. That is the essence of ATT HOLD. The LM will maintain its orientation in space, regardless of whether it's a good orientation or not. Nominally P64 exits with the spacecraft moving slightly forward, but there is no guarantee of this. The pilot is meant to correct the final laterals. In P66 the pilot sets the orientation (and therefore lateral accelerations) with the joystick. He has a manual throttle command if he wants it, but the "autopilot" function of P66 is to manage that for him.

From your source: "It was the LM pilot’s responsibility to notice when the contact light went on." (emphasis added) The LM designers deliberately made it the pilot's choice whether to act on the contact signal or not. There was no automatic cutoff. The pilot and the pilot alone made the decision to go for touchdown.

MIT wanted to enhance P66 to do a full automatic landing, but they were never allowed to. The original Luminary P66 was simply a throttle controller. The Luminary P66 as enhanced for the J-type missions provided an automatic mode for lateral stability, but still no automatic descent-rate model.

What is the whole controversy then between the pilots and the engineers? The pilot could enter P66 at any time, even before the 200-foot limit for P64. And most pilots did. At a certain point they decided that P64 had gotten them close enough. And in Armstrong's case, he realized that his need to avoid the boulder field was not something the LPD could address. Hence he manually commanded the computer to P66 at about 600 feet, leveled off, and flew horizontally in a way P64 could not do. While the other missions would probably have succeeded if they had let P64 take them all the way down to 200 feet, Apollo 11 would have crashed.

The context you're missing is that "autopilot" under no circumstances was meant to control the spacecraft without pilot input below 200 feet or to provide for touchdown and engine commands. That was always the job of P66 and a highly experienced pilot who could be trusted to avoid obstacles and compensate for any altitude-sensing errors by visually judging the altitude and commanding the descent rate. Your source is talking about the premature termination of P64 in favor of P66. The engineers had wished P64 would be allowed to run to completion, placing the LM 200 feet above the exact landing site.

There really is no way you can handwave around the very evident fact that the LM was meant to require a human pilot, even if it nevertheless incorporated a high degree of automation.

 

[abaddon]

One must think for a moment about these claims.

Patrick claims, on the one hand, that NASA was incapable of launching a rocket, with 3 astronauts inside, capable of reaching the moon. OK, an unevidenced claim.

Patrick also claims that NASA launched a mission which was entirely capable of remotely, by automation, capable of landing on the moon and deploying military hardware. Another unevidenced claim.

I leave it to any readers to spot the incongruity.

It cannot be both.

 

[Patrick1000]

Who says these unmanned missions are of higher technical complexity?

So, let me get this straight...your claim is that there were serious problems with a number of the engines, including a bone-shattering vibration (like that will have no effect on electronics, right!) and ignition failures that would prevent them from reaching the Moon at all....

...and this is proof that NASA launched, instead of the documented Apollo missions, automated military-purposed missions of a much, much higher degree of technical complexity?

I suppose in your world, peeling on a short single-pitch 5.6 means you should change tactics and try instead to LEAD a 5.13b on manky rock with no fixed bolts.

Who says these unmanned missions are of higher technical complexity?

Manned missions seem the most complex to me, given the safety concrens, and if an unmanned mission fails, there is no fallout. With manned missions, people die. I do not understand your rationale nomuse.

Unmanned parking of a military instrument a' la a big version of Surveyor seems a heck of a lot easier than landing men on the moon if you ask me, and if you ask the Ruskies as well. They had no trouble with unmanned soft landings, relatively speaking anyway. They at least achieved them. They, meaning the Ruskies, never pretended to do manned missons like we did, presumably because they could not pull then off either. But the unmanned stuff must be simpler, has to be. Consider the Mars probes for instance nomuse. No way we can do manned stuff to the RED PLANET, but the unmanned stuff is done rather routinely now, albeit with some inherent difficulties.

You are a bright guy nomuse, but you are way way way way off target here with your general point of counter.

 

[Patrick1000]

It's totally fake Garrison, I'll prove it to you.

Apparently even Patrick doesn't agree with Patrick...

It is totally fake Garrison, I'll prove it to you right here, and in so doing, I'll provide you with another one of my signature vacuum sealed presentations for full on, flat out, Apollo Mission fraud. Consider the following my fellow Apollo historian.

According to the 1968 NASA Publication, "APOLLO 8, MAN AROUND THE MOON", so long as the spacecraft did not stray out of earth orbit, the ship could be followed by way of the tracking system's 30 foot antennas. Once out of earth orbit, NASA had to employ the 85 foot antennas located in Canberra/Australia, Madrid/Spain and Goldstone/California. This, for both tracking AND communications. The respective longitudes of these stations were 149 degrees east, 355 degrees east, and 243 degrees east.

There were no redundancy provisions in this system. If one of the antennas went out for whatever reason, communication and tracking of the astronauts would have been lost per NASA's own report on the subject. Let's take a look at the consequences given the system's being set up this way, set up without any back up whatsoever.

Between Canberra's longitude and Madrid's longitude, the earth turning "eastward" there are 154 degrees, 10,652 miles at the earth's equator, given an earth circumference of 24,900 miles. If the Canberra dish went out for whatever reason, the Goldstone dish 92 degrees to the east of Canberra could cover for a while, but that coverage would only be for 88 degrees of rotation or equivalently, just a little under 6 hours. This would leave another roughly 5 hours of vulnerability where neither Goldstone nor Madrid were in the moon's line of sight. So, during those 5 hours, were Canberra out, tracking and communications with the astronauts would have been completely out for 5 long hours. All this, with the failure of a single dish. The system was that tenuous.

The Madrid dish was 112 degrees west of Goldstone, and so if Madrid had gone out, with glodstone's longitude 7,747 miles away at the eaquator, and with Canberra 154 degrees to the east, the latter station could have provided coverage for Madrid for some 26 degrees of rotation only, less than two hours. As such with Goldstone then 5 and a half more hours away from the moon's line of sight by rotation, it would have taken that long for the California dish to come on line. No tracking, no communication for five and a half hours, think about that..... One dish out......

If Goldstone went out, with Canberra 94 degrees to the west, or equivalently 6,502 miles distant longitudinally(at the equator), and Madrid 112 degrees to the east, the latter station could have provided coverage for the down Goldstone antenna for 68 degrees or roughly 4 and a half hours. With Canberra a little over six hours of rotation away, this is the best situation, and there would be no communication for perhaps an hour and a half or so.

In summary, the system was vulnerable such that with one anentaa going out, there could have been no tracking an no communication for 5 and a half hours or so. NONE! Far too long were a ship in trouble.

Obviously, such a set up is unacceptable. Imagine were Apollo 13 real, and Canberra goes off line for whatever reason. There would have been no communication with the Apollo 13 astronauts for as many as 5 and a half hours. They would have died, or may well have anyway, were any of this real. IT is not of course. This is not a real communication system obviously. It functions, but is not part of a MANNED Apollo mission system. Clearly the missions are unmanned as were the missions manned the system would be viewed by anyone as unsafe to say the least.

The fact there was no redundancy in the long distance tracking/communications system to back up the large dish antennas at Canberra, Madrid, and Goldstone, proves Apollo fraudulent in the sense that it proves the missions had to be unmanned, for safety's sake alone.

You simply would not send astronauts into space with their life line being a single antenna, the failure of which might equate with their deaths. That would be reckless to say the least. So we may confidently conclude, it simply did not occur.

It is as simple as that Garrison.

Apollo, all of it, must be fraudulent in the sense that the missions were unmanned. They had to be. The system simply was not safe for the complexities, requirements of manned space flight. Witness this profoundly disturbing lack of communication redundancy.

 

[PhantomWolf]

It is well documented that the LM could land on its own, that is by way of autopilot.

You do realise that it required a human to enter the correcy program into the AGC? That there were a number of "autopilot" programs that had to be cycled through at various stages of the landing, and that this was done by a human pilot?

 

[mercatormac]

Obvious attempt to weasel out of using unmanned LM noted

Who says these unmanned missions are of higher technical complexity?

Manned missions seem the most complex to me, given the safety concrens[sic], and if an unmanned mission fails, there is no fallout. With manned missions, people die. I do not understand your rationale nomuse.

Unmanned parking of a military instrument a' la a big version of Surveyor seems a heck of a lot easier than landing men on the moon if you ask me, and if you ask the Ruskies as well.

Except you aren't talking about a big version of Surveyor you're talking about the LM. You chose to make your fake landing based on the LM to accommodate all your nefarious secret missions and that makes it of higher technical complexity simply because it wasn't designed to do that.

You seem to want it both ways: the simplicity of an unmanned landing plus unlimited capabilities when it gets there. The real world doesn't work like that.

 

[Patrick1000]

Jay said the LM could not auto land, I showed him, proved him to be WRONG

You do realise that it required a human to enter the correcy program into the AGC? That there were a number of "autopilot" programs that had to be cycled through at various stages of the landing, and that this was done by a human pilot?

Jay said the LM could not auto land, I showed him to be, proved him to be WRONG. The point is as simple AND AS IMPORTANT! as that.

We all know Lovell had stated he was going to allow the LM to auto land. We all know the story about the Grumman engineers and their confidence in their "bug". I hardly need to remind you guys of this stuff.

 

[Patrick1000]

Correction to my post at # 4475.

Madrid is of course 112 degrees EAST not west of Goldstone.

 

[JayUtah]

Who says these unmanned missions are of higher technical complexity?

I do, the professional engineer.

Manned missions seem the most complex to me, given the safety concrens...

Manned missions are more expensive because you have to add equipment and consumables to keep the pilot alive. They are not more complex, because a manned mission has a skilled human pilot. The complexity of an unmanned mission arises out of the automation that's unnecessary if you put a pilot in the cockpit.

It's easy to engineer a car that is meant to be guided by an onboard human pilot. It is fundamentally more difficult to engineer a car meant to drive itself.

Consider the Mars probes for instance nomuse.

Yes. Please investigate the success rate for unmanned Mars exploration. It's kind of a running joke in the industry. Then investigate how many of those missions would have been successful had there been a human pilot on board.

You are a bright guy nomuse, but you are way way way way off target here with your general point of counter.

Nope, he isn't. You confuse the problem of keeping the human organism alive for lengthy periods with the problem of operating a mission remotely or by automation. They are not equivalent problems.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union solved the problem of landing small unmanned spacecraft on the Moon, as long as we didn't really care where they landed. And we were essentially neck-and-neck on that basis. Both the U.S. and the Soviets solved the problem of keeping humans alive in space -- again, no more than about a year apart in their national states of the art.

However, after some rather high-profile fatalities in the Soviet space program, the Soviet government decreed that no cosmonaut would be allowed to fly in a spacecraft that hadn't first accomplished the mission unmanned, by automation. This severely hobbled their Moon-landing program.

They could get the Zond spacecraft to fly under basic automation. But they were never able to get their lunar lander to work as an unmanned spacecraft. In essence, the Soviets never made it to the Moon because their government gave their engineers a harder problem to solve than Apollo engineers had to solve. Apollo engineers were told build a spacecraft meant to be flown by skilled human pilots. After all, the goal was to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth. The mission presumes a human occupant, so make him a skilled pilot. The Soviet engineers had to solve the equivalent problem with no pilot, and they never succeeded.