Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[Patrick1000]

Correction to the compact car thing

Go back and get a refund for your physics and maths degrees Pat - they taught you the wrong formula for deriving kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy is derived from the formula e=1/2m*v² where m is the mass in kg and v is the velocity in metres per second.

Using your velocity for the drop of the lunar lander, we get

e = 7600* 40.0689 = 304,523.64 joules of energy

Now your compact car, the speed of impact is a lot different from what you've derived:

In this case we're solving for v, so your formula is

v² = e/(1/2 m)

or

v = square root of the energy divided by one half the mass

using your mass for the car, I derive a velocity of 13.366 m/s or 29.83178 miles per hour.

All this of course is an exercise in remembering my high school physics from 1986 and pointless unless I knew what is the level of energy that the legs of the lander were designed to withstand?

Much thanks to Jay at Clavius for his section debunking the CT blast crater objection. http://www.clavius.org/techcrater.html

In that segment, one learns the mass of a lunar lander without fuel is 7,184 kg. I had done my calculation above assuming the mass of the lander to be 15,000 kg roughly, so twice what the number should have been.

Running my numbers again 7,184 X 9.8 X 12.20 all divided by 6 gives 143,153 joules. So a 40 foot or 12.2 meter drop for an unloaded lander would find the lander moving at square root of 2gh or about 6.3 meters per second, or 20.7 feet per second or 14 miles per hour.

For the compact car with the lander's legs attached one finds for a terrestrial solution;

square root of 2 X energy divided by the mass or square root of 143,153 X 2 divided by 1705 or roughly 13 meters per second or 29 miles per hour.

I think that is the first answer Border Reiver got, though I believe he used 300,000 joules for the energy. Anyway, my apologies regardless Border Reiver. I suspect your errors cancelled. You used twice the correct energy given we both did the calculation assuming the lander's fully loaded weight. Thanks to the Clavius details, we now know that the mass of the lander is half of its fueled up mass. I suspect your error was with your "2" in your calculation above and this cancelled your having used twice the correct energy.

Anyhoo, we agree now......

 

[sts60]

... The alignment was performed using the REFSMMAT transfer procedure, which is just as well documented as the AOT optical alignment procedure.

And exercised for the first time on Apollo 9 (ref. Apollo 9 Flight Plan, Day 3):

Docked LM IMU Alignment
The procedure for aligning the LM platform does not require star sightings,
thus saves RCS propellant. It takes advantage of a known CSM inertial
attitude and known CSM/LM geometry to coarse align the LM IMU to the
inertial frame. The LM platform is coarse aligned by 47:38 and the CSM
and LM gimbal angles are voiced to MCC. MCC calculates the fine align
torquing angles.

After RCS pressurization and cold fire check, the LM DAP is set and the
DPS gimbal drive is checked. While driving the gimbals, the DPS throttle
check is performed. The RCS engines are then hot fired.

At 48:10 GET over Bermuda, the MCC updates the LM and CSM state vectors to the CSM and the LM state vector to the LM. The LM MNVR PAD is voiced to
the crew for the Docked DPS Burn. REFSMMAT is uplinked to the LGC....

If I might jump in: it was a known emergency scenario (called the "Lifeboat" scenario.) Gene knew about it just as he knew about the "fire in the hole" scenario for a near-surface abort using the ascent engine while the lander components were still coupled. It is exactly his business to know about some of the options available for emergencies.

Using the LM in this manner was practiced to some extent on Apollo 9, where the CSM/LM stack was controlled by the LM AGC and the orbit raised by burning the DPS. See the same section of the flight plan, under "Docked DPS Burn".

 

[Garrison]

Actually Patrick1000 needs to reduce his counter by one. After all since he admitted his claims of medical expertise were 'satire' all his allegations about Apollo 8 based on said expertise are null and void.

 

[nomuse]

I wonder what the worst-case survivable drop is for the LM. Not as a functional system, but as a "get the astronauts home alive." My scenario would be a fall severe enough to crush the DPS skirt and even spring the cabin hull...the only limitation would be that explosive separation from the descent module and firing of the ascent engine is still possible.

 

[abaddon]

Much thanks to Jay at Clavius for his section debunking the CT blast crater objection. http://www.clavius.org/techcrater.html

In that segment, one learns the mass of a lunar lander without fuel is 7,184 kg. I had done my calculation above assuming the mass of the lander to be 15,000 kg roughly, so twice what the number should have been.

Running my numbers again 7,184 X 9.8 X 12.20 all divided by 6 gives 143,153 joules. So a 40 foot or 12.2 meter drop for an unloaded lander would find the lander moving at square root of 2gh or about 6.3 meters per second, or 20.7 feet per second or 14 miles per hour.

For the compact car with the lander's legs attached one finds for a terrestrial solution;

square root of 2 X energy divided by the mass or square root of 143,153 X 2 divided by 1705 or roughly 13 meters per second or 29 miles per hour.

I think that is the first answer Border Reiver got, though I believe he used 300,000 joules for the energy. Anyway, my apologies regardless Border Reiver. I suspect your errors cancelled. You used twice the correct energy given we both did the calculation assuming the lander's fully loaded weight. Thanks to the Clavius details, we now know that the mass of the lander is half of its fueled up mass. I suspect your error was with your "2" in your calculation above and this cancelled your having used twice the correct energy.

Anyhoo, we agree now......

Eagle dropped less than six feet. Why do you continue to use the 12+ meter figure?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Eagle dropped less than six feet. Why do you continue to use the 12+ meter figure?

It's taken such a long time to get his numbers straight that Patrick's original intention has sunk without trace into the morass of this thread. His point was, as best I recall, that in the Big Book of Spacemen someone gave him for Christmas, there's a remark attributed to Neil Armstrong to the effect that he believed the LM would be capable of landing safely from about 40 feet up if it ran out of fuel.

Patrick then proceeded to attempt to demonstrate that this notion was so completely and utterly absurd as to undermine the entire Apollo program.

In fact, the 40 foot drop would require the LM to survive landing at double its rated impact speed. Not a good idea, but hardly inconceivable and somehow exactly the kind of thing I'd expect a test pilot to say.

I thought it was particularly pleasing that the margin of error Armstrong considered feasible (a mere factor of 2) was distinctly smaller than the margin of error in Patrick's "mostly correct" calculation.

 

[abaddon]

It's taken such a long time to get his numbers straight that Patrick's original intention has sunk without trace into the morass of this thread. His point was, as best I recall, that in the Big Book of Spacemen someone gave him for Christmas, there's a remark attributed to Neil Armstrong to the effect that he believed the LM would be capable of landing safely from about 40 feet up if it ran out of fuel.

Patrick then proceeded to attempt to demonstrate that this notion was so completely and utterly absurd as to undermine the entire Apollo program.

In fact, the 40 foot drop would require the LM to survive landing at double its rated impact speed. Not a good idea, but hardly inconceivable and somehow exactly the kind of thing I'd expect a test pilot to say.

I thought it was particularly pleasing that the margin of error Armstrong considered feasible (a mere factor of 2) was distinctly smaller than the margin of error in Patrick's "mostly correct" calculation.

It is far more misleading that he tries to pose a hypothetical 40ft drop as the real deal, when it was only a 6 ft or less drop. That is just misrepresentation.

 

[JayUtah]

He is a perp Suspilot. Live with it.

When your argument consists entirely of name-calling, no one has to live with it. Gene Kranz proved himself time and again as a combat pilot and as an engineer who invented the science and art of flight control. He has earned the respect of many, many other highly-qualified people who have worked with him. You're not an engineer or an historian -- live with it.

Kranz would not last an hour in a debate over this issue.

I will put you in contact with Gene Kranz so that you can debate him. Do you agree to those terms?

He is now officially busted.

What about your ignorant presumption constitutes anything "official?" You keep calling these people "perps," but you provide no evidence other than their departure from your uninformed expectations. And you categorically refuse to "bust" them except anonymously in a web forum. Why are you so afraid of taking your claims into the real world where the rest of us live?

 

[fess]

Shall we move on to number 14? I already have begun to bust Duke's chops with regard to his bogus lines about navigating pretend ship # 16.

Before moving onto another worthless theory, it would be nice to see you answer the questions posed to you by other members of this forum that are clearly more knowledgeable in this subject than you. Every time you get trapped in one of your theories, you jump onto another horse in hopes of escaping the ridicule you so richly deserve. However, you sometimes return to one of your theories only to receive more ridicule. This is not healthy.

So, before you move on to another failure, would you please answer the questions posed to you on your other failures?

BTW, the only chops I see getting busted here are yours. Over the past years, thousands of experts have followed and studied the Apollo Moon missions and not one of them claims any falsities. Then you come along, with no knowledge or training whatsoever and try to convince us that you know otherwise. So go ahead and switch to another theory, there is plenty of room in the hopper for another one of your failures.

 

[Loss Leader]

Patrick won't be around for a couple days. It's a shame because he finally moved on to Apollo 13, the mission that that invites us to ask that age-old question, "Why would anybody fake a failed mission?"

According to Patrick, the lunar launches were unmanned robotic military missions to the moon and beyond. According to Patrick, the lander never returned from the moon. Instead, a helicopter or airplane dropped the capsule with the astronauts into the ocean.

So, why fake a failed mission? Even if the entire ship had exploded into a billion pieces on the way to the moon, NASA still had the capability of pretending the mission was successful, pretending to be on the moon, and then pretending to recover the astronauts.

It is important to some people to believe they are being original. However, an original idea that makes no sense still makes no sense.

 

[AdMan]

So, why fake a failed mission? Even if the entire ship had exploded into a billion pieces on the way to the moon, NASA still had the capability of pretending the mission was successful, pretending to be on the moon, and then pretending to recover the astronauts.

Yes, this is interesting. I am not really familiar with the usual arguments from the Apollo hoax nutters, so how do they usually explain Apollo 13? Just another elaborate complication to make the whole Apollo "theater" believable?

I suppose for the hoax proponents this is just an extension of it being necessary to pretend we went to the moon six times, huh? One or two or three or four pretend trips were obviously not enough.

I still don't get how rational people can believe that hoax crap. Perhaps "rational" is a stretch...

 

[nomuse]

It's a Goldilocks condition. Conspiracy theorists love those. If there had only been two Apollo missions and no major failures, it wouldn't be convincing. If there were more than six missions, or if one of the first two missions was a failure, it wouldn't be convincing. The Goldilocks requirement is, oddly enough, exactly what was observed.

One has the feeling that conspiracy theorists arrive at their necessary conditions via the Texas Sharpshooter method.

 

[SpitfireIX]

Yes, this is interesting. I am not really familiar with the usual arguments from the Apollo hoax nutters, so how do they usually explain Apollo 13? Just another elaborate complication to make the whole Apollo "theater" believable?

When cornered, that's the explanation they usually give, though I once saw a claim that the purpose was to rekindle the drama of the "fake" moon missions. IIRC this particular conspiracist was big on the "hoax to increase national pride" angle.

 

[Belz...]

I had for the most part thought Kranz was clean, but now I know almost certainly otherwise.

I was watching NASA A RETROSPECTIVE disc 3, the part on Apollo 13. This is all NASA's own material. 7 minutes and 20 seconds or so into the Apollo 13 section, Kranz says even though there is a problem with the Apollo 13 command module, they have the LM and they can count on the lander to get the astronauts most of the rest of the way home.

This is BEFORE any formal decision is made to move the astronauts into the LM, BEFORE any technical assessment has been made with respect to the LM's capabilities.

So here in this regard, we have Gene Kranz, absolutely unqualified to make any determination about such matters, cluing us in on the "script" as it will play out well before the alleged problem for the alleged cislunar ship has even been assessed.

Kranz knows the script BEFORE!!!! the play. He is more likely than not, an Apollo Program Fraud insider. I will add him to my ever growing list of perps. Counting all of the astronauts, I must have 40 or maybe even 50 perps by now. I'll make a new list soon and post it.

They DID practice using the LM as a lifeboat, so it wasn't a secret that they could.

 

[JayUtah]

Yes, this is interesting. I am not really familiar with the usual arguments from the Apollo hoax nutters, so how do they usually explain Apollo 13? Just another elaborate complication to make the whole Apollo "theater" believable?

Yes, variations on that theme. But always a scripted drama. The various hoax theories vary on the purpose for doing it.

The Goldilocks interpretation is salient, but I think in the minority. The majority interpretation seems to be that the drama was scripted in order to renew interest in the Apollo program. The argument goes that since public reaction was so very low to Apollo 12, NASA needed to create a reason for the public to be glued to their televisions again.

The obvious dissonance arises when it is simultaneously claimed that care must be taken not to give away the hoax, which is the claim Patrick has made. He attributes the paucity of Armstrong stills and the abbreviated television coverage on Apollo 12 to a perceived need to restrict how much attention and information is made available to the public, lest the fraud be discovered. That's incompatible with grandstanding to attract more attention.

So I suspect Patrick will opt for the Goldilocks approach: a certain number of missions had to be "disasters" in order to make the program seem more realistic. Unfortunately this butts up against his familiar, "In a real space program, this-or-that would be done...," generally asserting that what was documented for Apollo wasn't up to snuff. He argues that a real space program would take all conceivable precautions and therefore not have any problems. Naive? Yes. Contradictory? Yes. So look for a tortured attempt to draw a comically squiggly line between the two previously-stated viewpoints.

I still don't get how rational people can believe that hoax crap. Perhaps "rational" is a stretch...

Compartmentalization. The same way physicists can go to church.

 

[Robrob]

One has the feeling that conspiracy theorists arrive at their necessary conditions via the Texas Sharpshooter method.

Without a doubt. The same as their use of "convenient" to describe anything which contradicts their claims.

The Goldilocks interpretation is salient, but I think in the minority. The majority interpretation seems to be that the drama was scripted in order to renew interest in the Apollo program. The argument goes that since public reaction was so very low to Apollo 12, NASA needed to create a reason for the public to be glued to their televisions again.

That and they knew they could make millions with the Tom Hanks movie.

 

[JayUtah]

That and they knew they could make millions with the Tom Hanks movie.

Those endless product tie-ins! What with Tang and Fisher, Imagine Entertainment will make out like gangbusters.

One fact I forgot to mention earlier was that the theory of Apollo 12 getting cruddy ratings, which leads to Apollo 13 being a staged disaster, runs afoul of the actual Nielson ratings, which peg Apollo 15 as the most boring Apollo mission ever, from the television audience perspective. So why didn't NASA fake a new disaster on Apollo 16?

With regards to Fisher, I spoke to one of their people and they are sticking by their story even though the facts are known to be otherwise. I spoke to Aldrin about the circuit-breaker story, and he is adamantly certain that a Flair felt-tip pen was the implement used to depress the stub of the breaker button. Does everyone know what kind of circuit breaker I'm talking about? They're used all over in aerospace, but not so much outside that industry. The Fisher pen was way too big to fit in the hole, whereas the slim end of the Flair fits right in. Nor would Aldrin have shoved anything conductive in there.

 

[abaddon]

I spoke to Aldrin about the circuit-breaker story, and he is adamantly certain that a Flair felt-tip pen was the implement used to depress the stub of the breaker button. Does everyone know what kind of circuit breaker I'm talking about?

AFAIK, those are the push-to-make, pull-to break type.
So if you break off the k-nob, you can use pretty much use anything to carry out a push to make the circuit, but then have no means to pull to break.

IOW, once you push that baby in, you can't turn it off again.

I seem to have a distant reccolection of there being a hollow centre, into which a self-tapper could be carefully screwed restoring the pull capability (for a while at least). But that was long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

In any event, I doubt the guys were equipped for such an undertaking.

 

[Patrick1000]

Interesting Loose End, ? Missing Antenna ? Meteor Protecting Visor Up ?

I have brought up the topic of the odd "visor up" Neil Armstrong image previously. Here is the image for those unfamiliar.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...to-shows-Neil-Armstrongs-face-walks-moon.html

Last evening, a couple new things came to mind for me with regard to this extraordinary image.

One was that I learned in watching the British Production/Patrick Moore Hosted video/film, APOLLO 11 A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, that there was actually another visor underneath the gold one. This other/under visor allegedly provided the "astronauts" with protection from meteorites. As best I can tell, Armstrong not only has the gold light protective visor up in this famous photo, but the meteor protective visor as well. I need to study the image a bit more closely to confirm this is the case. Assuming it is, it would prove Apollo 11 fraudulence as Armstrong had the visor up the whole time during the contingency rock/soil sample collection and perhaps at other times as well. In so doing, he would have exposed himself to the unacceptable risk of being struck by a meteorite in the face.

Indeed, it is actually somewhat difficult to convince oneself that Armstrong ever has his visors down much at all. Take a look for yourself. It may be one of the reasons that they do not photograph him/Armstrong. At any rate, if one is able to demonstrate the meteor visor that is referenced and demonstrated in the British Patrick Moore film , APOLLO 11 A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, is in fact not in place over Armstrong's face as it should be, then one may conclude the entire Apollo 11 Mission to be fraudulent.

Even more interestingly is the apparent lack of an antenna on Armstrong's PLSS. One can see an antenna pretty well on the famous shot of "Armstrong" when he has his back turned to the photographer;


http://moonpans.com/a11neilmesa.htm

See the anenna there on the top of the PLSS? On the visorless shot one cannot find an antenna. However, there does appear to be a slender shadow across the top of the PLSS in that shot that might be cast from an antenna. Obviously this shot merits great scrutiny. If one can confirm the absence of an antenna here and in the 16 mm sequence generally, which by the way can be seen in the Patrick Moore film, one would have confirmed Apollo 11 fraudulence with utter certainty as obviously Armstrong cannot talk to the ground team in Houston or anywhere for that matter without an appropriate transmitting device.

 

[Patrick1000]

Antenna, Loose End Addendum......

Running through the 16mm "video"(1 frame per second) of the contingency sample collection on my copy of the Patrick Moore hosted film referenced above, one can see the antenna on Armstrong's PLSS pretty well most of the time and that shadow I pointed out in the previous post of mine is indeed the antenna, so there is no objection there, no objection with regard to the antenna. It is definitely there.

That said, the objection with respect to the visors being up and in particular the meteor guard bering up, stands. I will have to scrutinize these images to see if a definitive determination can be made. Is Armstrong's meteor visor up? If it is, Apollo 11 is proven fraudulent right there.......