Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[Jack by the hedge]

All this hysteria. All this gurning and shouting and eye-rolling. All because Aldrin remarked that he didn't know if his LM map used the same grid as Collins' CM map. Who cares?

Is Patrick posting not-worth-responding-to dregs now in the hope everyone gets so bored they leave the thread, and he can proclaim victory by posting unopposed?

 

[nomuse]

and it's getting to be more than just a bit of a bad habit. Wait 'til ya' hear this one.......

Yet another one of my reports on utter nonsense from the annals of the Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing, July 31 1969.

Section 17.0, GEOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTS, features a discussion by the "astronauts" with respect to the maps that they carried. Collins opens with a comment to the effect that the LAM-2 Map's gridding system could have been/could be improved upon. Then Aldrin comments, unbelievably, that he did not know whether the maps he and Armstrong "carried on the LM" were gridded/numbered/lettered as was Collins' LAM-2 Map.

So here we have "the first moon landing", and as it turned out, there was landing site coordinate uncertainty, at first blush the uncertainty not entirely unreasonable given its initially alleged degree, 4-5 miles. Regardless, were any of this real, one would of course expect the astronauts on the ground moonwalking to have at least one map that Collins had as well so that were there any uncertainties, had one party determined the landing site's coordinates, those coordinates could be communicated to the moonwalkers, or Collins, as the case may have been, by way of simple direct communication via S-band relayed signal with REFERENCE TO A COMMON MAP.

Why? What was Collins going to do; fly down and rescue them?

Collins had no need to know where the LM was, or the EVA team was. THEY didn't need to know where they were! They only needed to know one thing; the location of their ride home. As in; the location of the LM while they were on EVA, and the location of the C/SM during rendezvous.

By the by, have you withdrawn the claim the launch had to be in micro-second accuracy in order to successfully rendezvous? Have you understood and accepted yet that they only need to know where the C/SM is; that for all respects and purposes the launch and rendezvous would be the same if the Moon was an unmarked, featureless globe?

It not only makes simple sense, the fact that there was no ongoing/regular s-band relayed communication between the alleged moonwalkers and alleged lunar orbiter,

You mean, including the rather over 50% of the orbit where Collins was out of line-of-sight communication regardless? But dis-including, of course, the near 100% of the time some Earth-bound station had line of site to Tranquility Base...

AND given the lack of any planning/certainty with regard to preparation for location communication by way of providing Collins and the alleged moonwalkers with THE SAME MAP, at least ONE common map, a common frame of reference, we may conclude, with unmitigated metaphysical certainty, that the Apollo 11 Mission was Fraudulent , top to bottom, front to back, north to south and east to west. CHARADE!!!! PHONY!!!!! Not even remotely credible this is nothing more than a joke of a C rate Italian Space Spaghetti Western.

No certainty about having common maps, ONE lousy common reference frame, ONE COMMON PICTURE OF THE MOON ? ! ! ! No ongoing communication Collins with alleged space walkers ? ! ! !

PHONY!

Wait, it gets even better......

Get this......

Armstrong says at the end of that section that it would easier to sort this all out, whether they even did have common maps if they had the actual pictures. So the "astronauts" don't bring the maps to the debriefing, and no independent party, say navigation people, brings the maps there to the debriefing so that it might have been possible to at least quickly check to see if one map was or was not common to those carried in the LM and command module.

Obviously, not bringing the maps, was a way to avoid having very incriminating evidence entered into an official record when a simple straight forward visual analysis of the maps would have shown there to be no commonality gridding/reference frame wise. I say this of course because there would have to be a common map, at least ONE, carried by Collins and also carried in the LM, no question. That is, were any of this real.

How much worse can this get? Just douse me, hose me down matter of fact, drown me for God'd sake, with a compazine/Zofran cocktail before I puke my insides out. UGGGHHHHH, this is bad.......just sickening.......

So Apollo 11, whose mission was "Touch down, get out, get back in, launch again and return safely" brought up in debriefing that it would be nice to have better maps for the missions that would make more extensive EVA's?

Wow. One would think nothing was ever learned on test flights, trials, and pioneer missions.


Oh, and you still are punting about the Doctor Claw conspiracy; "Hey, let's make up something really stupid to claim we did, so...well....well, so just because!"

Even if we accepted that this is a legitimate error, what would be the benefit to the conspiracy in trotting it out?

 

[tsig]

Just when one thinks the Apollo narrative cannot get any more obscenely unbelievable, one comes across a fact that reinforces the reality of Apollo's fraudulence all the more, and the thought crosses one's mind, "Do I REALLY look THAT STUPID?" And the answer is, "YES!", They really do think we are THAT DUMB. They think, the Apollo script writers do, that they can tell us anything, no matter how RIDICULOUS, and we'll buy in based on NASA's fraudulent authority.

Wait until you get a load of this……you so ain't gonna' believe it……..

Over the last couple of days I have reread the Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing said to have been made 07/31/1969, and in doing so, I came across one of those little pieces of circumstantial evidence that perhaps doesn't make a sign sealed and delivered case for Apollo 11 fraudulence in and of itself, but mulling it over in one's mind, the Apollo researcher can do little else but walk away shaking his/her head muttering, "What nonsense!………How can they expect anyone in his or her right mind to think that this cock and bull story is anything other than a cock and bull story?"

In section 11.10, MONITORING LUNAR ACTIVITY, Michael Collins states that the preflight plan was for all of his transmissions to be relayed to the LM and vice versa, the astronauts' transmissions relayed to Collins. Collins says the relay was rarely enabled due to a ground switching problem. Collins stated he would have preferred the S-Band relay be continuous. He went on to state that as this continuous relay was not in effect, he felt somewhat cut out of the loop, "THOUGH IT WAS NOT A SAFETY PROBLEM".


NO KIDDIN' MIKE?????! NOT A SAFETY PROBLEM!!!!!???? Can any of you actually believe this cringing, shameless, preposterous NONSENSE!!!!!!!!??????? Not a safety problem? It is the first moon landing. The ground and Collins himself wound up "not knowing" where the astronauts were. Collins was supposed to be the moonwalkers' bloody lifeline, and he was not patched in to them by continuous S-band relay, nor the moonwalkers patched in to Collins. What if there had been a problem? What if there had been a need for an immediate abort upon touch down and the response to "STAY?" was a resounding "NO GO! ABORT!"

This is such a moon load of bogusly bogus lunar jive. One can only scream, vomit or both in abject disgust.

I imagine they, the Apollo 11 script writers, perceived great potential for the fraud's exposure were they to risk "cross talk". Say geologists/mappers pressed the capcom, and to be sure they would have, to ask Collins to "directly" interact with, DIRECTLY COMMUNICATE WITH, the moonwalkers as regards the mystery of their location(such as direct communication was possible under s-band relay circumstances). Were this to have occurred, were the moonwalkers and Collins to actually have spoken between themselves in "real-time", the fraudulent Apollo scripted nonsense would have been exposed as the insanely ludicrous narrative that it was/is, and NOT the great adventure/journey it was pretended to be. And what a weak and ever so feeble pretense Apollo was.


LANDED ON AND WALKING ON THE MOON, YET THE COMMAND MODULE IS NOT IN CONTINUOUS RELAY COMMUNICATION WITH THE MOONWALKERS, AND THE MOONWALKERS NOT IN CONTINUOUS RELAY COMMUNICATION WITH THE COMMAND MODULE?

I say BULL ! BULL ! BULL ! Patently fraudulent ! ! !

Pure unadulterated lunar bull my friends, nothing more than pure unadulterated lunar bull…….. those astronauts should be ashamed of themselves……..

Guess they should have spent some of those billions on better scriptwriters and someone to ensure continuity.

 

[JayUtah]

What's so uncertain about these numbers given to Aldrin by the PNGS immediately after touchdown and the P68 run's completion?????? NOTHING!!!!!!

Product of dead reckoning. Asked and answered, months ago at Apollohoax.

They should anyway. Good enough idea, close enough idea, to easily verify that location with a 2 mile wide laser beam targeting an LRRR.

Supposition presented as fact.

Why does Collins state in the Apollo Technical Debriefing section 11, CSM CIRCUMLUNAR OPERATIONS, that he didn't know where the LM was and the ground did not know either? The PNGS sure knew.

This is the same hogwash you started 100+ pages ago here, that you argued on Apollohoax and got banned for, and at BAUT and got banned for. You haven't changed your approach despite 100+ pages of refutation. For all the explanation, you still wrongly believe that location for navigation purposes is identical to location for secondary scientific and observation purposes.

You're not listening.

And we know Surveyor VII was tracked by MSFN right to its landing site...

Asked and answered.

Now I hate to interrupt your Gish Gallop, but there are quite a lot of open questions from posts you've already made. I can only assume that this latest flurry of fly-by posts are meant to distract from your inability to address refutations.

 

[JayUtah]

All this hysteria. All this gurning and shouting and eye-rolling.

My friends who are lawyers have a saying: "When the law is against you, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the law. When both are against you, pound the table."

Yes, in addition to the hyperbole we also could draw attention to Patrick's obsession with self-congratulation. It all amounts to a pretty transparent attempt at emotively overamplifying the import of some particular statement.

All because Aldrin remarked that he didn't know if his LM map used the same grid as Collins' CM map. Who cares?

Indeed, it's a tempest in a teapot. The crew debriefing is basically just a gripe session. Collins, for example, notes that TTL light meters are available on some cameras, so why not theirs? It's not a big deal. It's not as if lives are on the line. But it's worth writing down.

And it's not as if they're going to send an urgent telegram to Hasselblad telling them to drop everything and put a light meter in the camera, obsoleting all the existing models, and hold all flights until it's done. (In fact many items discovered prior to an imminent mission were slated for later missions, since the pending one was too far along.)

Is Patrick posting not-worth-responding-to dregs now in the hope everyone gets so bored they leave the thread, and he can proclaim victory by posting unopposed?

Who knows? But it's growing ever apparent that his approach is just one elongated Gish Gallop, with lots and lots of CAPS and punctuation. Perhaps at some point he'll stop swinging the scalpel blindly and notice that his patient expired long ago.

 

[Patrick1000]

I am hardly hysterical Jack by the hedge......

All this hysteria. All this gurning and shouting and eye-rolling. All because Aldrin remarked that he didn't know if his LM map used the same grid as Collins' CM map. Who cares?

Is Patrick posting not-worth-responding-to dregs now in the hope everyone gets so bored they leave the thread, and he can proclaim victory by posting unopposed?

I am hardly hysterical Jack by the hedge......though not infrequently, my state of nausea does grow and grow to become rather profound and attains nothing less than a state of the very grandest of existential dimension. Shall I run the facts by you and the others again for emphasis?....

I'll take that as a yes.....Grab your air distress bags and give me a thumbs up when you are ready....

I'll now take off.....

Keep in mind, not a one of these FACTS! is in dispute. Matter of FACT, they all come right out of NASA's own documents as referenced quite explicitly above.....

Fact #1) Aldrin claims to have run a P68 program after the alleged Apollo 11 touchdown yielding an Eagle landing site latitude/longitude/altitude. Those latitude and longitude numbers turn out to be very accurate as below.

Fact #2) The Apollo 11 Mission Report lists the latitude and longitude so obtained by Aldrin's running the P68 as lunar coordinates 0.649 north and 23.46 east(if one employs trajectory to map correction factors then the PNGS determined coordinates are 0.689 north and 23.39), VERY CLOSE to the alleged actual landing site coordinates 0.6875 north and 23.43 east whether corrections are employed or not

Fact #3) Collins claims, despite this remarkably accurate assessment/determination of the Eagle's landing site coordinates as per Fact #2) above, no one knew where the Eagle was, not he, Collins, not "Houston Flight", not the geologist/mappers. NASA claims this generally, as do Armstrong and Aldrin explicitly. Many books and documents make reference to this notion that the Eagle's whereabouts were not known with any degree of certainly. This, despite the VERY VERY ACCURATE P68 RESULTS as above.

Fact #4) Collins and the moonwalkers were not patched in to be able to speak with one another by way of s-band relay. This of course might have been a tremendous help in terms of finding one another depending on circumstances.

All of the above are NASA's FACTS!, not mine, not those of anyone else. These facts of NASA speak for themselves in that they are internally inconsistent, internally incoherent. After touchdown, the Eagle cannot be located with such a high degree of accuracy by way of Aldrin's running a PNGS/AGC P68, and at the same time have a situation in which no one knows where the Eagle has settled.

NASA's facts speaks for themselves. They, the NASA script writers, never anticipated narrative analysis. They thought people would foolishly fight over the authenticity of rocks and photos 'til kingdom come. Well, guess they anticipated wrong.

No hysteria on my part Jack by the hedge, just pointing out the FACTS!, not a one in dispute, just ask NASA. No hysteria, but quite a bit of nausea and there is great potential for associated upchucking. It is true for so very many, there is always a sense of imminent emesis when reading this Apollo junky jivey hokum. So benzos and/or other anxiolytics aren't needed for the most part Jack by the hedge, but I do like to numb my area postrema before settling in to read a bit of Collins or Buzz. Apollo so tweaks my M1, D2, H1, (HT)-3, NK1 receptors. Perhaps you find me delicate in this regard?

 

[R.A.F.]

NASA's facts speaks for themselves.

Yes they do. The astronaut testimony, plus the thousands of images taken on the surface, plus the hundreds of pounds of documented samples...all these and other facts that you have chosen to ignore, combined point to the same conclusion...that between July '69, and December, '72, six men walked on the Moon.

...and there is nothing you can do to change that...history will survive despite your willfull ignorance...

 

[JayUtah]

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Discussion purely of the OP's mental/physical state deleted as off-topic.

Shall I run the facts by you and the others again for emphasis?...

Not necessary, since they've been adequately refuted. Everyone but you seems to notice that.

Your time is better spent addressing those refutations, and the many others you've ignored. You keep repeating the arguments they refute as if nothing had happened. It's puzzling to others why you spend so much time on the fluff around your point and so little on the point itself -- but not puzzling to me. I see such evasion and bluster eventually in every Apollo hoax theorist for the past ten years.

I'll take that as a yes.....Grab your air distress bags and give me a thumbs up when you are ready...

No amount of clever distraction can mask your inability to do more than repetition and mockery. Your arguments are a one-trick pony.

So no, we don't want you to keep saying the same things over and over again. We want you instead to acknowledge that there exists a reality outside your imagination.

Keep in mind, not a one of these FACTS! is in dispute.

Of course they are. You just ignore the disputation.

The structure of your arguments is no different than that of any other conspiracy theorist. You measure some innocent fact from the record against your uninformed and contrived standard, whereupon it naturally fails. Then you attribute the failure to some sort of fraud.

You provide only begged questions and appeals to intuition to substantiate the standard, revealing it to be the lynchpin of your claim -- not the fact itself. Hence proposing to dwell on only half your argument is dishonest.

These facts of NASA speak for themselves in that they are internally inconsistent, internally incoherent.

No, they are inconsistent only with your naive expectations. And since you never consent to a discussion of your expectations that progresses beyond feeble pleas for belief, there is your answer. Emphasizing the fact in question does not justify your contrivance of the standard of proof.

And of course several people have pointed out that your own theory of the Apollo missions is also internally incoherent and inconsistent with the facts. But you don't seem bothered by it. You have one standard for your own theory and a completely different standard for what everyone else believes.

No hysteria on my part Jack by the hedge, just pointing out the FACTS!

And failing to understand them. This is why all the experts, whom you acknowledge to be better informed than you, disagree (by your own admission) with your claims. You're unprepared to discuss the facts in the proper context and with the proper background. That's why you get the wrong answer.

 

[Loss Leader]

Fact #4) Collins and the moonwalkers were not patched in to be able to speak with one another by way of s-band relay. This of course might have been a tremendous help in terms of finding one another depending on circumstances.

Under what circumstances would real-time communication between the lander while it was on the surface and the command module have been of "tremendous help in terms of finding one another"? It's your statement. It's something that you assert. All I am asking is that you clarify your statement. What are the circumstances in which real-time communication would have been of "tremendous help"?

I'll even broaden the criteria to make it easier for you. Under what circumstances would real-time communication between the LM on the surface and the CM have been of ANY HELP WHATSOEVER to anybody?

they are internally inconsistent, internally incoherent

Why does internal inconsistency mean that one interpretation is necessarily right and one is necessarily wrong? Can you give me an example of just one internally inconsistent argument that, within the argument itself, indicates that one inconsistent statement is true and one is false?

Example:

1. I am six foot three inches tall.
2. I am five foot one inches tall.

Obviously, both statements cannot be true at the same time. At least one of the statements is false. But can you say that one is necessarily false and the other necessarily true? Without knowing anything but my two statements, you cannot.

Yet, your moon arguments of late follow this same formula:

1. Collins knew the location of the Eagle.
2. Collins did not know the location of the Eagle.

No hysteria, but quite a bit of nausea and there is great potential for associated upchucking.

What is the reason for your nausea? Assuming the lunar missions were faked, what does this tell you about our world? What conclusions do you draw that make you so nauseous?

 

[PhantomWolf]

All of the [these] are NASA's FACTS!, not mine, not those of anyone else. These facts of NASA speak for themselves in that they are internally inconsistent, internally incoherent.

If they speak for themselves, why all the commentary and your need to put your spin on them?

Fact #1) Aldrin claims to have run a P68 program after the alleged Apollo 11 touchdown yielding an Eagle landing site latitude/longitude/altitude.

This bit is fact

Those latitude and longitude numbers turn out to be very accurate as below.

This bit isn't. How accurate is very accurate? What is the distance between the real number and the one the AGC gave?

Fact #2) The Apollo 11 Mission Report lists the latitude and longitude so obtained by Aldrin's running the P68 as lunar coordinates 0.649 north and 23.46 east(if one employs trajectory to map correction factors then the PNGS determined coordinates are 0.689 north and 23.39)

Again, fact.

VERY CLOSE to the alleged actual landing site coordinates 0.6875 north and 23.43 east whether corrections are employed or not

Again not. You claim they were very close. What is the distance between them in miles? Even if that was just a single mile, they were looking for a 9 foot by 9 foot object in the middle of 4 square miles of lunar surface. How would this be anywhere near an easy task?

Fact #3) Collins claims, despite this remarkably accurate assessment/determination of the Eagle's landing site coordinates as per Fact #2) above, no one knew where the Eagle was, not he, Collins, not "Houston Flight", not the geologist/mappers. NASA claims this generally, as do Armstrong and Aldrin explicitly. Many books and documents make reference to this notion that the Eagle's whereabouts were not known with any degree of certainly.

Fact

This, despite the VERY VERY ACCURATE P68 RESULTS as above.

Again, not fact, exactly how accurate? What is the distance? What was the size of the view through the optics Collins was using? Again even if they were just a mile off target, that means that they certainly weren't sure at all where they really were. The AGC gave them a value, but how close did it actually get it in miles?

Fact #4) Collins and the moonwalkers were not patched in to be able to speak with one another by way of s-band relay.

Fact

This of course might have been a tremendous help in terms of finding one another depending on circumstances.

Pure speculation.

Good job letting the Facts speak for themselves. How about you come back with those distances for us, hmm?

 

[Patrick1000]

Speculation on Apollo's Offensive Capabilities

Looking at an assortment of resaurces/references this evening, I got to speculating some about how the Apollo Program's activities may have included the instrumentation of the moon and space itself, such that U.S. Military interestes were provided with important OFFENSIVE capabilities.

For example, I read in Michael Muolo's SPACE HANDBOOK, A WAR FIGHTER'S GUIDE TO SPACE(pagees 12 and 13), that using satellites for military navigational puposes was very much a real world/real life, not hypothetical, not experimental, activity very early on in the US ICBM Program development history. The submarine launched Polaris missiles tracked the transmissions of the Transit 1A satellite much as the Polaris missiles would track starlight in their conventional celestial navigational mode. The "artificial satellite/star celestial navigation" by way of Transit 1A transmission monitoring increased the accuracy of the submarine launched Polaris missiles to within one mile of their target. Now that is pretty dang good accuracy wise given we are talking the early 60s for testing and deployment.

Why not put trackable emiters/artificial stars for ICBMs to orient themselves on the moon itself and at at least the stable libration points of the earth moon system? These emitters/artificial tracked stars would move more slowly than Transit 1A, and would be out of reach in terms of their vulnarability to being "taken out".

I read a little article in FLYING MAGAZINE from August 1960 with the same basic report, that subs themselves along with their ICBMs were locating themselves by way of "tuning" to artificial satellites. These satellites being more or less electronic stars. The placement of signaling devices to which the subs and their ICBMs could tune on the moon and at the libration/Lagrangian points only makes eminent sense, does it not?

Tom Clancy discusses this type of thing in his book SUBMARINE. The subs would come up and get a whiff of where they were by way of sending up an antenna of sorts that could read a signal from satellites. In this way, subs could/can/do locate themselves, and what's more, feed this location data into their intertial systems so that when the antenna comes down and they are once again fully submerged, subs can continue to keep tabs on where they are having their position updated by way of "satellite sighting" periodically. This is more or less what Apollo claimed to be doing with the rockets of that program, though of course it was stars that were tracked/sighted. Clancy says subs can locate themselves to within 9 feet of their "true" position employ such a method for location determination.

Anyway, I am almost positive that as I go along, I shall find ample evidence for this type of "offensive" activity, planting transmitting devices on the moon and at libration points for sub and missile sighting, location determination, and in the case of the missiles themselves, accurate targeting. Polaris missiles tracked both stars and satellites I have learned. Why not have your satellite out of reach? Makes sense big time.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Anyway, I am almost positive that as I go along, I shall find ample evidence for this type of "offensive" activity, planting transmitting devices on the moon and at libration points for sub and missile sighting, location determination, and in the case of the missiles themselves, accurate targeting. Polaris missiles tracked both stars and satellites I have learned. Why not have your satellite out of reach? Makes sense big time.

If you want your "satellite" well out of reach, why not put it on Mars?
But no, of course that's a stupid idea. Have a think about why.

 

[Patrick1000]

The beauty of my moon plus libration point model is.....

If you want your "satellite" well out of reach, why not put it on Mars?
But no, of course that's a stupid idea. Have a think about why.

Jack by the hedge, the beauty of my instrumented moon plus instrumented libration point model is one can "listen in", and "see" all the way around the earth from the moon and libration points L3, L4, L5. The former backside libration point being "unstable", but perhaps manageable, manageable by way of "adjusting" an instrument that had drifted a bit from L3, or manageable by way of L3 being a "point/position" one could "substitute for" with a small constellation of geosynchronous satellites. One can precisely range my objects, my moon and libration point constellation of satellites in two seconds time.

This system could provide excellent reconnaissance and surveillance, could provide for the relaying of signals, and, as just above, could provide an artificial star function to be used in position determination for both earth grounded objects and ICBMs of the Polaris variety that track stars as a component of their navigation mechanism.

Say you are a sub captain and you've been ordered to take out the Bolshoi, or perhaps your are Captain Ivan working for the other side and you have been ordered to take out Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers, they win so often, so consistently, it's worse than a "Damn Yankees Scenario", how do the captains align their Polaris missile platforms just before lift off? You've got it Jack by the hedge, they SIGHT! AND if it is the middle of the day, they ain't gonna' find a star in the sky to do this. Enter DrPat's constellation of moon based stars and libration point emitters.

Can't do this with your mars thing Jack by the hedge.

AND this really must have happened and this system must exist today real-time, in our world this very minute. Has to...... It is all too obvious..... It was and is they ONLY solution of this type, so so so so good, so so so so effective, so so so so available to these guys. Wasn't cheap, 20% of an annual US federal budget paid out over 11 years give or take.

Neil Armstrong jumped ship............ Air Force? Civilian? Why during Apollo, he was perhaps more than anything else working for the US Navy Jack by the hedge.....

 

[Loss Leader]

Jack by the hedge, the beauty of my instrumented moon plus instrumented libration point model is one can "listen in", and "see" all the way around the earth from the moon and libration points L3, L4, L5.

How would this have been better, cheaper or more reliable in 1969 than just putting a network of satellites in earth orbit?

It was decades from the first launch of an earth-orbiting satellite before anyone successfully used force to bring one down.

Furthermore, why don't you answer any of the questions posed to you?

 

[JayUtah]

First you say

Looking at an assortment of resaurces/references this evening, I got to speculating some about how the Apollo Program's activities may have included the instrumentation of the moon and space itself...

Then you say

AND this really must have happened and this system must exist today real-time, in our world this very minute. Has to...... It is all too obvious...

You missed a step in between. The part with all the proof in it.

 

[nomuse]

This system could provide excellent reconnaissance and surveillance, could provide for the relaying of signals, and, as just above, could provide an artificial star function to be used in position determination for both earth grounded objects and ICBMs of the Polaris variety that track stars as a component of their navigation mechanism.

As for reconnaissance... there are asteroids caught in the Lagrange points that are larger than any Soviet missile silo. Question is...how big a telescope do you need to see them? How many of them have been directly observed?

Now think about putting equipment of that scale in your payload, and adding batteries and station-keeping fuel and all that. Not a trivial satellite to launch!

 

[Patrick1000]

LBJ was a huge Van The Man Cliburn Fan......

If you want your "satellite" well out of reach, why not put it on Mars?
But no, of course that's a stupid idea. Have a think about why.

LBJ was a huge Van The Man Cliburn Fan......

Let me put this into further perspective for you Jack by the hedge, if I may be so bold. As you know, LBJ was a Texan through and through, ferociously devoted to his state and its people. As you know as well Jack by the hedge, Van Cliburn was born in Shreveport Louisianna, but grew up in Kilgore Texas. LBJ was a huge fan of Van's, and after the great Romantic specialist won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958, an event with an out come that flat out backfired on the Ruskies, their having staged the thing to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority, LBJ set his mind to leaving nothing further to chance. He had his heart set on vaporizing the only real competition left in the field, Sviatoslov Richter.

By 1967, the U.S. Minuteman Missile Force had reached its targeted goal of 1,000 fully operational ICBMs. Richter could play his Russian fingers off and perhaps run, but he surely could not hide.

The logistic problem here Jack by the hedge is that say one wishes to launch 250 ICBMs in an effort to eliminate Richter from the next "piano competition". How does one go about aligning all 250 of those dang rocket interitial platforms? The solution is far from obvious at first blush.

I am sure you recall the Public Address Officer saying at roughly 15 seconds before the Apollo 11 launch that, "guidance is internal". This means that at that time, when guidance becomes internal, the Saturn V's own inertial platform has taken over and assumes responsibility for guiding/navigating the great rocket.

As the earth is turning, the Saturn V requires that its platform be constantly realigned as it is ever moving away, moving moving moving, moment to moment moving, away from its previously aligned state. They cannot allow the Saturn V bird's own independent system to take over alignment duties until roughly 17 seconds before lift off. Otherwise, the ongoing movement of the Rocket due to the earth's rotation thows everything way way way out of whack.

Now I imagine that you must be catching on here Jack by the Hedge. Let's dispense with the satire. After all, some of you may know Richter was a judge in the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition, and he gave Richter a higher than the highest score allowed mark. Let's go with a more plausible scenario.

Imagine it is 1970, and our ICBM early warning system has picked up on the more than startling and sobering fact that the Soviets have launched 300 ICBMs in a first strike effort. The red birds are coming, 15 score of them, very fast and very hard. We have 20 minutes to get our act together. The earth is turning turning turning. We must align the platforms of our own ICBMs in preparation for our response. It is the middle of the day here in the United States. How do we align the platforms of those 400 birds of our own, the nasty ends of which we would like very much to park in various Soviet strategic and scenic lots? Our subs need to know precisely where they are themselves for starters, and the sub captains must align the platforms of their sea birds as well, and do this very very quickly. Our subs represent our best retaliatory asset in a sense, as they are hidden, at least hidden as of this dramatic, albeit imagined, moment.

Stars would be great, but the ground based missiles cannot "find a star" in the day time on the under the bright sky, nor can the subs find stars at sea when they are submerged. We sight our artificial stars, our satellite emmiters, on the moon, at key libration points, and elsewhere in space/in earth orbit as need be and so gain the data within moment's notice to align our ICBM inertial platforms, and away our own glowing red, white hot, and cobalt blue birds go.

Frightening isn't it Jack by the hedge? Not just running the scenario through one's head, but the realization that in order for the Polaris and other celestial guidance assisted ICBM navigation systems to work, a system of some sort like the one I just described was/is needed. Bad satire aside, talk about sobering.......

This is Apollo, then and now, what they prepared for, not to mention what exists today as Apollo's legacy.

Unbelievable because it is so frightening. Yet true, because after all, there really is no other alternative explanation for things.

 

[Garrison]

How would this have been better, cheaper or more reliable in 1969 than just putting a network of satellites in earth orbit?

I second that question.

It was decades from the first launch of an earth-orbiting satellite before anyone successfully used force to bring one down.

Not to mention the demonstrated ability of the Soviets to reach the moon meant that there was no security benefit to a lunar facility

Furthermore, why don't you answer any of the questions posed to you?

Consider that one seconded as well.

 

[Patrick1000]

Theoretically, one can take out an earth orbiting satellite.....

How would this have been better, cheaper or more reliable in 1969 than just putting a network of satellites in earth orbit?

It was decades from the first launch of an earth-orbiting satellite before anyone successfully used force to bring one down.

Furthermore, why don't you answer any of the questions posed to you?

Theoretically and PRACTICALLY, one can take out an earth orbiting satellite. The satellite is identifiable, targetable, nukable.

Such is not the case with DrPat's moon based/libration point based constellation of artificial stars. The Ruskies could not identify them as targets, and would not be able to take them out, not readily anyway.

It may have been decades before anyone demonstrated a satellite could be brought down. But Loss Leader, do you honestly believe for a moment that in the late 60s we were incabable of disabling and/or outright destroying Soviet satellites? Of course we could knock out the earth orbiting Russian satellites back then in the 60s and 70s. We could track the satellites. We did and do track them. We could target them. We did and do target them. And we could nuke them. Some "atmospheric testing' was of course anti-satellite testing. This is precisely what some of those 1,000 Minuteman ICBMs were intended for. They were/are the anti-satellite weapons.

It would be foolish to think we could not take out the Soviet satellites back in the 60s, and even more foolish to believe the Russians would not be able to take out our earth orbiting satellites.

Hope that response is direct enough for you.

 

[R.A.F.]

Say you are a sub captain...

Please stop making "analogies" based on things you know nothing about.

Why during Apollo, he was perhaps more than anything else working for the US Navy...

Talk is cheap...why don't you prove that claim with evidence that Armstrong was "working for the Navy" during his astronaut career?


Either that, or you have another claim to retract...