Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[R.A.F.]

It would appear that in the world of Apollo nomuse, I indeed understand chemistry quite well.

Translation..even though I don't have a clue about anything chemistry related, I'm right because I say I'm right...

 

[R.A.F.]

If you're so annoyed that your 'victims' won't talk to you, why not take the opportunity to do so in person?

Interesting that the astronauts were brave enough to risk their lives to fly to the Moon, while Patrick can't even come "face to face" with those he calls "liars".

 

[Patrick1000]

OH MY!!!! How Exciting!!!!!!

Translation: I wasn't aware that context affected my claim, so I'm going to pooh-pooh the notion of context.



No. The reader is expected to know what the context is. Engineering analysis does not go back to first principles every time. You don't get to reframe your layman's misconceptions as if they were someone else's shortcomings. The world is not obliged to compensate for you.



Nope. You admitted you didn't have the engineering background to determine whether Apollo was fradulent. Therefore you are most certainly not entitled to pass judgment on technical evaluations. You are a self-proclaimed layman, and you don't know what you're talking about. Nor is anyone else responsible for your education, to "provide experimental details." Your laziness an inept research are not points in your favor.

These reports have been studied and dissected ad nauseam by an entire industry of professionals. Your uninformed bluster is therefore rejected.

OH MY!!!! How Exciting!!!!!!

Don't worry Jay, I will not rub it in TOO much, not pile on TOO much. Why don't you go with the language of your own choosing. No need to use the word "context", simply providing us all with NASA's phony experimental details will do just fine....

Since you are so well connected, you should have no trouble coming up with the descriptions of the experiments that NASA did to prove their bogus claims about the Apollo 13 staged "explosion". Don't forget to include the details about their quantification of the activation energy for the combustion of their Teflon under this that or the other experimental circumstance.

OH WHOOPS!!!! I forgot, Jay doesn't know what "activation energy" is. OH MY!!!! Isn't that a surprise? On second thought, perhaps not a surprise after all.

HINT!!!!; Jay, activation energy is not something you or I would be able to calculate. Good luck, give Neil my regards.....

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

(Neil Armstrong) had his chance to respond to me and did not, so no big deal from my end. I can mop the floor with Armstrong regardless of his participating or not.

Yes, you've made this claim repeatedly, but since you lie habitually no one believes you. Making another unsubstantiated claim does not substantiate the first claim. Given your proven track record over the past eight months, it's far more likely that this latest claim is just another strand in a vast web of inter-supporting lies.

Given the amount of nonsense, backpedaling, and contradictory stories posted, I tend to agree, he's just making it up.

However, if he did write, it's no wonder he wouldn't get a response. Can you imagine someone of Armstrong's experience and learning getting a letter full of Patrick's foolish arguments? And couched in his typical junior-high-school-girl writing style which would show his 'ever so, ever so, MIND-BLOWING, metaphysically proven, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong-headed!!!!!!!!' ideas?

Armstrong probably would have read the first couple of sentences, laughed out loud, tossed it in the trash, and forgotten about it ten seconds later.

 

[AdMan]

Looks like I am going to be anonymously famous after all nomuse.

Perhaps in the annals of Apollo CT nuts, and even then you'll probably only be known as the nutter who couldn't learn how to use commas.

When are you going to put up or shut up, Dr. Tea?

Despite all your anonymous bravado, how come you are too cowardly to face those you accuse of lying?

 

[threadworm]

Under these circumstances NASA would be expected to determine the activation energy for THAT PARTICULAR TEFLON and document in the greatest of detail how the determination was made. It would obviously be one of the most important features of an appropriate evaluation.

The Cortright Report features no such details. Perhaps they exist, though I have yet to find them. At this point in time, I find the Cortright Report to be nothing more than a JOKE.

By the way, I am not writing these posts for Neil Armstrong threadworm. He had his chance to respond to me and did not, so no big deal from my end. I can mop the floor with Armstrong regardless of his participating or not.

We're not asking the Cortright report to do anything, we're asking you to, and I note that again you studiously avoid doing that. If you spent as much time answering questions as you do hitting capslock we might get somewhere. As for your claim that Cortwright would have to prove the specific Ea of the Teflon on Apollo 13, that is a neat way of you avoiding doing any research isn't it? If you are arguing that the specific circumstances of Apollo 13 caused some sort of unique Teflon reaction, then it becomes inadmissible evidence as no-one can reproduce those exact circumstances or state what they could have been without launching another mission and doing it all again. The reality is that the behaviour of the material is known within certain parameters. People who understand it can draw on that knowledge and make informed judgements, people who don't just tilt at windmills.

I also never said that you were posting for Armstrong's benefit, I'm asking you to post what you wrote for our benefit. Unless they were proclamations of deep and unrequited love I don't see what could be in your alleged letter that wouldn't be public - most landing denier garbage is already out there. Is that what all this is about? He never replied? Awww....

 

[Multivac]

I see two motions here, that I will second:

All those in favor of Patrick supplying the requested information regarding PTFE and liquid O2 before he changes the subject again, please say "aye".

Aye.

All those that believe that Patrick should agree to publicly confront Kranz, Liebergott, et al for attribution, please say "aye".

Aye.

 

[Multivac]

That's not what McDivvitt thought in real time.....During the middle of the night Apollo 13 disaster press conference, given early am April 14 1969, McDivitt is asked what it was that happened to the service bay and he emphasized ANYTHING was possible pointing our many systems were under pressure not just the O2 tank, but also the nitrogen system, hydrogen system and the fuel cells themselves. AND if this were real, Lovell would have been thinking the same thing. HE would have said, "I saw gas venting from the service bay and realized it could have been anything coming from any of the tanks/sources, fuel cell mixture, hydrogen, O2, nitrogen".

Wow. Didn't know that McDivitt was psychic. How else could he answer questions about the explosion on Apollo 13 a year before it happened?

To contribute: It is unlikely that McDivitt knew the details of the instrumentation readings that were available to mission control. As has been pointed out before, there was a fluctuation in the O2 readings, followed by a bang and the O2 and voltage readings dropping fast. Jim Lovell then reported that something was venting from the spacecraft. Once you have realised that it is a n instrumentation failure, you can put these facts together and make a diagnosis that O2 is venting. Especially if the readings for nitrogen and hydrogen were stable.

Does anyone know whether or not the readings for hydrogen and nitrogen remained stable? It might help Patrick if someone could post a reference to these readings.

This thing is so fake Erock , it boggles the mind. Boggles, because once one starts actually reading this BULL, you wonder in retrospect how you could have missed it for a minute as the complete BULL is.

Are you refering to Apollo13, or your bizarre arguments of fakery?

 

[Multivac]

Quick poll:

Does ANYONE here believe Patrick wrote a letter to Armstrong et. al. 8 months ago and only forgot to mention it lo these past months and 7000 posts? And only remembered to mention it when the pressure really started to build regarding a face to face with Kranz?

Unfortunately, I can imagine patrick writing to Neil Armstrong and others that he believes to be "perps". I can also imagine Neail Armstrong and the others reading the first few paragraphs, sighing and putting it with the other crank letters they receive.

Having said that, you are almost certainly correct that he would not have kept it quiet for 8 months.

 

[Multivac]

First you have to prove they were not fictitious. You say they were sent registered mail. Post scans of the return receipts.

Seconded.

 

[KA9Q]

Apollo suits did have injection ports

Even granting for the sake of argument that the additional risk could be justified, how was Shoemaker going to inject himself when he was wearing a vacuum suit??

The Apollo suit actually did have provisions for hypodermic injections into the leg. Small suit leaks were expected and routine. I believe it could even be done under vacuum conditions though I'd think the injector would have to be specially designed to keep the contents under pressure. I'd have to check this part.

That said, astronaut selection in the Apollo program was extremely competitive. I would have liked to see Shoemaker go too, but given that they had another candidate geologist without his medical problems, I suppose they didn't feel they had to take the risk.

 

[KA9Q]

Mueller was a key figure in the decision to send Apollo 8 on its simulated mission to the moon after the Saturn V Apollo 6 problems were ignored and a Saturn IB rocket was used for Apollo 7. Were Apollo a real program, Mueller and colleagues would have tested the Saturn V UNMANNED after the Apollo 6 debacle.

Absurd. The Apollo 6 problems were hardly "ignored", as you'd know if you'd read any of the history of that period. Every single Apollo flight, with or without a crew, had an extensive mission report that included a section on anomalies -- unexpected failures or behaviors that were examined in great detail, fixes worked up and implemented. There was a separate report for each flight of the Saturn booster, including any recommended fixes for problems it may have encountered. The latter report for Apollo 6, which you can obtain in its entirety from the NASA Technical Reports Server, runs 630 pages!

This included the main problems with the Apollo 6 flight: the early shutdown of a S-II engine, miswiring of the two engines on the S-II that caused a good second engine to shut down, and the failure of the S-IVB to reignite. All the J-2 failures were traced to the same root cause: failure of an igniter line because a protective layer of frost that formed in ground firing tests did not form in a vacuum.

Rockets are expensive, with the Saturn V the granddaddy of them all. Given the cost of each test flight in both money and time, you simply don't test-fire any more than you absolutely have to. Even after Apollo 6, which experienced serious (though not catastrophic) failures, when you're confident that you've identified and fixed the cause(s) there's little point in spending the time and money on yet another test flight just to prove that you did. It was much better to actually do something with that third Saturn V.

And by mid 1968, NASA had just the use for it. They'd finally completed the Apollo 1 fire recovery with a successful Apollo 7 flight. They were under serious time pressure not only to land men on the moon by the end of the decade but also to beat a rumored circumlunar (non-landing, but scene-stealing) trip by the Russians. This, and the LM schedule delays, led directly to the decision to fly Apollo 8 mission. And it worked.

So, Patrick1000, I'd say this is just another of your "If I Ran The Zoo" arguments. You're not an engineer of any kind, much less experienced in the development and test of very large rockets. Yes, Apollo 8 was a gutsy call, but it was not a reckless one. Had Bormann, Lovell and Anders declined to fly on safety grounds, I'm sure NASA would have had no trouble finding others to take their place.

 

[KA9Q]

Charlie Duke was describing casual observation of the sky in the excerpt you discuss. At all other times, when giving primary testimony regarding his navigation duties aboard the LM, he described the visibility of stars very differently. That's because they are two different cases with different circumstances. Looking through the optics for a few seconds produces the needed dark adaptation.

Quite a few Apollo CMPs using the CM optics complained that the stars were often difficult to see. It would seem that just a few seconds was not usually enough for dark adaptation.

And that was with the desired (mostly 2nd magnitude) Apollo guide star already in the reticule, as you said.

I don't know if the LM's AOT was better or worse, except of course on Apollo 13 when the debris made the optics unusable.

And if there is any uncertainty, you mark three stars instead of just the two required by the degree of freedom.

Even two stars gave you a good error check. The computer compared the angle you measured between them to the known value in its catalog. If you mis-identified one or both stars, there'd be a significant error. Many CMPs competed for the coveted "all balls" (all 0's) i.e., no measurable error between measured and known angle between chosen guide stars.

 

[JayUtah]

OH MY!!!! How Exciting!!!!!!

How puerile!!!!!

...simply providing us all with NASA's phony experimental details will do just fine.

Translation: I'm stuck and I need someone to give me another fact I can take credit for.

Sorry, Patrick. You're on your own for this one. You don't get to try to make it seem like your ignorance is everyone else's fault for failing to bring you up to speed.

OH WHOOPS!!!! I forgot, Jay doesn't know what "activation energy" is.

Or so you're trying to make it seem. Of course I know what "activation energy" is. I'm a professional engineer. You, however, are the one trying to make it seem like someone who wanted to use that value in a computation would have no choice but to derive it empirically each time. That's nonsense, and it proves that you are unfamiliar both with the theoretical models for it and with the practical references chemical engineers use to look it up. Since the Wikipedia article doesn't give you much information about how activation energy is derived, you're sort of winging it and hoping you won't get caught.

HINT!!!! Jay, activation energy is not something you or I would be able to calculate.

I never said it was. Here is the post in question, wherein I said

"Yes, you made exactly that claim [that Teflon would not burn]. You made it, emphasized it, belabored it, and tried to take us to task in your typically childish way for not agreeing with us.

Then after the deluge of refutation, you softened your position into saying it may burn, but that it would depend on the specifics of the situation. You made a vague reference to "activation energy" and promised to investigate and calculate it. That was seven days ago."​

The "it" you are meant to compute is the combustibility of Teflon. In fact, I never said a word about computing anything until you did. Here's what happened:

You flatly claimed that PTFE was non-combustible. When faced with other references clearly indicating that PTFE presented a combustion hazard, you claimed that it may, but probably wasn't under the Apollo 13 circumstances.

Then under further pressure, you admitted you would need to perform computations to determine the potential for ignition. You assured us that you were an expert in this kind of work. After a day or so, you mentioned "activation energy" was something you would need to know in order to make that calculation, and you asked around to see whether someone could help you with it.

No one did, of course. But they demanded that you complete the calculation you promised. I joined that chorus of demands, because -- as you well know -- I think you're a complete charlatan and I fully intend to keep you on the hook for any display of expertise you promise to provide.

For nearly two weeks you evaded that requirement, posting a number of irrelevant distractions and promising you'd look into it. After handwaving briefly about irrelevant points of potential energy, you've now declared that you'll never be able to complete your computations because you don't have the lab facilities to determine activation energy, and you're protesting that you've been asked to do something unreasonable or impossible.

Here's what I think really happened. Faced with another situation in which you were flatly wrong, you took the only available avenue, which was to insinuate correctly (albeit evasively) that while Teflon could burn, it was a complex matter to determine whether it would burn in any case. You probably hoped that would settle the matter, as no one would want to pursue that complexity just to refute you.

But then when it became clear that you were on the hook to provide expertise, you dragged your feet in order to get more time for ad hoc research. You quickly got in over your head and realized that there were several values and concepts that you didn't have and didn't understand. But you'd already postured yourself as an expert, so you couldn't simply plead ignorance any further.

In a fashion that has become your hallmark, you tried to shift the burden onto others to provide information to help you. You suggested that the activation energy for this reaction was too obscure to be easily found, and tried to make it everyone else's problem to help you over the obstacle. You tried a different pseudo-technical tack, using elementary concepts that were Googlable, but you got shot down very quickly by a host of knowledgeable experts.

Then you latched onto one ambiguity in my post as the lifeline you've been hoping for. You are now going full steam trying to make Jay sound like an ignoramus in hopes that it will distract from the very real fact that you are still on the hook to provide the technical discussion you promised us. You don't realize that in the middle of this frantic scramble, you're still making elementary science mistakes. You are the one, in fact, who doesn't know how activation energy is derived for practical engineering. You are the one suggesting that the temperature of the entire mass of reactants must be raised.

No, I'm not asking you to compute the activation energy for this reaction (although it can be computed for this reaction using standard models and the data from other O₂-PTFE reactions). I'm asking you to compute whatever you had in mind when you said you would do it. If you believe activation energy is something you need in order to compute what you promised to compute, then you're on the hook to provide it. Why is that so hard for you to understand?

 

[SpitfireIX]

So if all this is a matter of public record Spitfire, perhaps you would provide us with a few facts about the reaction in question; its activation energy, its free energy, any relevant details regarding the presence of a catalyst or lack thereof.

As noted, they're your extraordinary claims, therefore you have the burden of proof. We're not doing your homework for you, though we'll be glad to give you a few hints if you need them.

Not a one of you understands a single thing about chemistry. I know I sound like a broken record, but to be honest, I am rather surprised. Not an undergraduate level chemical engineering student in the lot? Not a high school level chemist among you?

What's your evidence that no one here understands anything about basic chemistry? The fact that we won't uncritically accept your demonstrably erroneous claims? The fact that we won't do your homework for you?

 

[Garrison]

OH MY!!!! How Exciting!!!!!!

Don't worry Jay, I will not rub it in TOO much, not pile on TOO much. Why don't you go with the language of your own choosing. No need to use the word "context", simply providing us all with NASA's phony experimental details will do just fine....

Since you are so well connected, you should have no trouble coming up with the descriptions of the experiments that NASA did to prove their bogus claims about the Apollo 13 staged "explosion". Don't forget to include the details about their quantification of the activation energy for the combustion of their Teflon under this that or the other experimental circumstance.

OH WHOOPS!!!! I forgot, Jay doesn't know what "activation energy" is. OH MY!!!! Isn't that a surprise? On second thought, perhaps not a surprise after all.

HINT!!!!; Jay, activation energy is not something you or I would be able to calculate. Good luck, give Neil my regards.....

I hate to break this to you Patrick1000 but it's not Jayutah's understanding and expertise that's under scrutiny here but yours. You are the one who has made fantastic claims and been asked to show that you have the knowledge to back them up. Instead you resort to these hysterics while trying to dodge the basic issues; your assertion that Teflon wouldn't burn, your dismissal of the dangers of an Oxygen rich environment and your failure to take up the offer to face those you so readily accuse of deception, while you yourself flip-flop on your claimed medical qualifications.

It's YOU Patrick who has to do the work here, to make a convincing argument and back it up with data. Despite the length of this thread you have yet to do so.

 

[JayUtah]

...though we'll be glad to give you a few hints if you need them.

I vote not to. The reason is because when I read the rest of this thread I see how Patrick fishes for hints, then uses those hints to limp along to the next step. When he is finally dragged to something approaching the right answer, he turns around and claims credit for having educated the rest of us in how to get there. One of his strategies seems to be to commit an egregious error that causes someone to post a comprehensive correction, so I vote we hold off on the comprehensive debunking until it's clear Patrick is hopelessly wrong.

My strategy, on this question at least, has been to let him establish what he thinks is necessary, then hold his feet to the fire to provide it, whether I think it's the right thing or not. Knowing the right models and methods is the lion's share of the task. The rest is just arithmetic. Hence I vote no more hints. He is, after all, an "expert."

What's your evidence that no one here understands anything about basic chemistry?

He latched onto a sentence in one of my posts that can be read to say I want him to compute the activation energy for the cryogenic PTFE combustion problem -- a task he maintains is impossible. In fact I'm only asking him to compute what he said he would: the likelihood of PTFE igniting in a cryogenic oxidizer from an electrical arc. But now that he has perceived one of his critics to have make a mistake, he's all about shifting the focus of the discussion onto that, and away from any responsibility he may have.

 

[SpitfireIX]

Mr. Kranz is more than a liar.......

No.

He is party to an act of treason.....

As noted, you don't have the faintest clue about what constitutes treason.

US Constitution, Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Further, your contention has been that Apollo was faked as a cover for clandestine weapons testing, and the placement of weapons and control systems in outer space, in order to gain advantages over the Soviet Union in the arms race. How would that remotely fit even a rhetorical definition of treason, let alone the actual definition??

Epic fail.

Think about that Jay, encouraging everyone not to blow it and lose the remaining AC Bus and fuel cell while in the same breath reminding everyone they have the LM if/as needed. This is 15 minutes from the time of the first intimations there was a problem.

Why you would find this even remotely inappropriate or suspicious is far beyond me. I strongly suspect that, as noted, you are making and repeating this claim in an attempt to avoid having to admit to having been mistaken in asserting that the so-called "LM lifeboat" scenarios were never considered or planned for.

Who needs a LM if one has a fuel cell, just one fuel cell and an AC bus? Answer, no one, certainly not pretend astronauts in pretend outer space. And certainly not their pretend flight director.

First, as usual, you are not qualified to offer any such opinion. Second, the fuel cell and the AC bus won't help if there's no oxygen to power the fuel cell. Finally, how did they know that the remaining cell wasn't going to fail for the same reason that the other two had failed?

I guess once this all comes out . . .

First, there's nothing to come out. Second, granting for the sake of argument that the missions were faked in the manner you describe, how is it that no other conspiracy theorists have managed to get anyone in the mainstream media to take them or their claims seriously, but you're going to blow the whole thing wide open?

. . . they'll say it was a matter of national security. But for my money, it is treason, plain and simple....

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I want my money back!!!!!

Why you believe such childish comments do anything to increase your nonexistent credibility is also far beyond me.

 

[R.A.F.]

...it's not Jayutah's understanding and expertise that's under scrutiny here but yours.

I'll say, and second that...Jay is a recognized authority re. things Apollo, particularly the "supposed" Apollo hoax.

On the other hand, Patrick, you are very fast becoming infamous as someone who simply can not discuss this topic in good faith.

When will you acknowledge your numerous errors?...ya know, like an actual scientific researcher would do?

 

[R.A.F.]

OH MY!!!! How Exciting!!!!!!

I must join the others who have asked...why do you behave so childishly???

Do you think this somehow makes your arguments, more believable?, because it does just the opposite.

You wouldn't last 10 minutes in a real debate, because you refuse to acknowledge your errors.

...and that is simply not allowed in a real debate.