It is easy to prove all of Apollo fraudulent.......
No, the quantitative research in stoichiometrics and diluent absorption didn't occur until later. I looked in my attic archive and couldn't find any printed papers, but I remember that they dated roughly to the period around Skylab. There was general presumption in the late 1960s that the diluent might have a small heat-transfer effect, but I don't know if there were any attempts until the mid 70s to develop a formal quantitative risk model. When they did, it was a surprise that the diluent had such a remarkable and non-linear effect.
The concern for the CM was that the ECS needed a gauge pressure of at least 3.5 psi to work. That means an absolute gas pressure of nearly 18 psia inside the cabin -- but any gas would work, they determined. Hence the goal was to determine the maximum amount of oxygen that could be sustained (see below) and use nitrogen to make up the rest of the needed overall pressure. There really wasn't any consideration given during Apollo to the role of the inert diluent in heat transfer and thermodynamics of combustion.
The MSC Flammability Board conducted a series of empirical tests (or asked NA Rockwell to conduct them -- I don't remember which) on a non-flight boilerplate CM at various total pressures and partial pressures to find the "sweet spot" concentrations for ignition and fire spread. Fire retardation was the primary goal, but there were gas toxicity concerns and other pulmonary concerns having to do with what the crew might suffer under various evacuation or abort scenarios that would rapidly expose them to ambient Earth atmosphere. Basically the 60/40 launch atmosphere is just inside the pulmonary constraints, and closely approximates the diluent response of nitrogen in ordinary air.
Again, for oxygen toxicity concerns. 5 psi, mostly oxygen, about 25% diluent nitrogen.
(Previously submitted version of this post had spacing/spelling problem. Please post this version if at all possible.)
It is easy to prove all of Apollo fraudulent.......That said, it does require a bit more than simple stoichiometric considerations.........
GENERAL OBJECTIVE
In this important post, I’ll review some basic principles of chemistry and in so doing, I will demonstrate beyond any doubt whatsoever that the Apollo 13 Mission was fraudulent. I’ll go into a fair amount of detail here, and so on some level the post may strike some as rather lengthy. However, the detail, the length is absolutely necessary. This presentation must be, can only be relatively thorough if it is to achieve its ambitious objectives. And indeed most readers will find that the presentation does succeed and succeeds quite well. The careful reading of this post, the careful study of the detail so provided, will be greatly rewarded. The post provides very solid analysis culminating in a strong demonstration of Apollo 13 Mission inauthenticity.
This presentation of some fairly simple scientific facts and Apollo 13 accident particulars assumes no prior knowledge of chemistry, nor does it assume any science background whatsoever. I’ll use some technical terms, but will explain as I go along. The discussion will be thorough but not overly technical. If one has ever had any doubts about the Apollo 13 Mission one way or the other, this post will settle any and all questions once and for all.
A QUICK POINT REGARDING THE TERM “STOICHIOMETRY”
First of all, I would like to make a simple point about a technical term being employed by some of the other posters to emphasize that it refers to an aspect of the Apollo 13 Problem NOT germane to my criticism. STOICHIOMETRY is a term referring to the simple bookkeeping concerns of chemistry, the simple arithmetic of reactants and products......For example; the stoichiometry of the Teflon combustion reaction will provide specific numbers in answering the question, “How many molecules/what amount of Teflon will react with how many molecules/how much oxygen to give a specified number/amount of product?” With respect to my criticism of NASA‘s Apollo 13 Oxygen Tank 2 Explosion Investigation, the stoichiometric details provided by the agency are not, nor have they ever been points in dispute. The stoichiometry of the Teflon combustion reaction as a matter of fact is a point that by definition almost cannot disputed. To get it correct requires only that one be familiar with the reaction of concern and additionally that one can add and subtract. It is not something that one can really argue about, not in any meaningful sense anyway.
I believe I have already mentioned in more than one of my previous posts that one of NASA's publicly available documents provides the Teflon combustion reaction and so plainly shows the relative numbers of products and reacts. As such, the document provides the details of the reaction’s stoichiometry. I have no problem with the Teflon combustion reaction stoichiometrics as NASA has presented it, and I have stated this explicitly previously. The NASA boys can add and subtract, no problem there. Additionally, at least one publicly available NASA document also provides the heat/energy released for a generic Teflon combustion reaction. This is not a point which I consider to be in dispute either, and I have previously and explicitly stated that to be the case as well. NASA would have to be crazy to lie about this sort of thing and I have stated that explicitly in a prior post as well. These are trivial points which merit no further mention.
NASA’S PROBLEM
AN INTRODUCTION TO A FEW DETAILS OF WHAT’S LACKING AND IN SO LACKING, DEMONSTRATES FRAUD
What is a problem for NASA, and what proves all of the Apollo 13 Mission fraudulent is that nowhere in the Cortright Commission's Report , nor elsewhere for that matter, is one able to find any meaningful/relevant details/specifics of experiments alleged to have been done by NASA which support their claim that the Teflon in Apollo 13 O2 Tank Two could have caught on fire/burned. Not only is it the case that documentation of experiments demonstrating Teflon combustion initiation is nonexistent, but additionally, there is nothing to be found in the “scientific literature” provided by NASA even outlining specifics of experiments done which might have demonstrated the release of energy requisite to result in the blowing up/loss of physical integrity of Apollo 13’s Oxygen Tank Number Two.
Any scientific claims require experimental support. First of all, to make the claim, one needs evidence. That evidence is one’s experiments. Secondly, if one makes a claim, especially a claim as important as the detailing of why it was Apollo 13 Oxygen Tank Number Two blew up, one must provide experimental detail/specifics so that one’s experiments can be repeated by others. A scientific claim is meaningless unless supported by repeatable experiments. As NASA supplies no details referencing the specifics of their experiments with regard to the Apollo 13 Tank Number Two explosion, their claims are vacuous, meaningless, wholly unscientific and not valid in any sense whatsoever. Their entire investigation of the “explosion” alleged to have occurred on board Apollo 13 is fraudulent. There is absolutely no question about this. It is now a “simple”, though heinous, startling and frightening fact.
A REVIEW OF SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY WITH A MIND TOWARD EXPOSING APOLLO 13 FRAUDULENCE
I'll now proceed with a rather detailed though fairly non technical discussion of some important chemical concepts that deal with why and how things burn/combust/combine with oxygen. Knowing a little bit of something with regard to why and how things burn will give readers some sense for what NASA should have been going after were any of this real. In providing these details, one will be able to glean a sense for the Apollo 13 Accident Investigation’s shortcomings and indeed, one will walk away from this little post with an excellent sense for why it is exactly that a simple examination of the LACK OF EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE PROVES BEYOND ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER APOLLO 13 MISSION FRAUDULENCE.
Keep in mind that everything I am presenting here is high school level chemistry. Nothing is advanced. I'll also use concepts every high school biology student learns to illustrate a couple of points about catalysts. I emphasize all of this here and now to disabuse all of the silly notion that high level expertise is required for this sort of thing, for understanding Apollo, for understanding its real history. As Apollo is fraudulent, it is most decidedly in its broadest sense NOT rocket science, though admittedly there was racketeering/not to mention rocketeering going on at various and sundry levels. Nevertheless, any reasonably attentive/industrious high school level chemistry student/ biology student will be able to follow along with me here in this discussion and by simply reading the next few paragraphs, powerful criticism in outline, be able to see and then confirm for himself or herself Apollo 13‘s inauthenticity.
There are many ways to go about this, but I'll focus for openers on a simple presentation which seeks to show why it is/how it is that a piece of wood in one’s fireplace might or might not start on fire. Going through this little exercise will help the average/attentive high school level science student to see how NASA is nailed here.
Wood burns spontaneously, once its combustion has been initiated. For the sake of this presentation, “combustion” refers to the combining of a fuel with oxygen and in so combining produce heat/energy and fuel waste products. In the case of organic carbon based fuels, the waste is gas/CO2 among other products. We are all familiar with the experience of getting a piece of wood hot enough in our fire place so that it will begin to and then continue to burn on its own. An important point that I wish to emphasize up front here and will continue to emphasize again and again is that the chemistry of wood and oxygen is such that wood’s burning/combustion is favorable. By that I mean the breakdown of a solid piece of wood ( wood for the most part is organic carbon linked to carbon linked to carbon ad infinitum by way of chemical bonds, wood features hydrogen linked to carbon as well) through its combining with oxygen to form carbon dioxide is something that has favorable energetics, is something that has a tendency to occur. It is like pushing a cart down a hill. Carts have a tendency to roll down a hill. The cart in a sense prefers to be at the bottom, will go there on its own if given a shove. But they do need a start, a push to get them going. Once you get a cart going, it will continue to roll down a hill, and as it continues to go, as it rolls down hill, its “stored“/potential energy is released in the form of the cart’s motion. The cart’s state, its elevation or “height”, is converted to its movement, both being forms of energy, and energy being a technical term for the ability to do work, or perhaps more simply the ability to change the state of things in the world by applying a force over a distance.
Just like a cart at the top of a steep hill possesses potential energy by virtue of its having being lifted to some height in a gravitational field by one means or another, say a mom simply pushing a baby carriage/cart to the top of a hill, so too the wood possesses potential energy by virtue of its chemical bonds being formed by the energy of light captured from the sun by the tree from which the wood is derived. The mom “fills” the carriage with potential energy by pushing it to the top of a hill. A plant’s photosynthetic apparatus fills the plant with energy by taking sunlight and using that energy to form carbon-carbon chemical bonds. When the carriage/cart rolls downhill, stored energy becomes actual energy in the form of motion. Motion is energy. When wood burns, chemical bonds are broken and stored energy becomes actual energy in the form of microscopic motion, heat of the gas so produced by the combustion, the oxygen and wood combining.
Energy, the ability to do work, has many guises, carts possess energy by virtue of their sitting at the top of a hill and in so sitting having the capacity to roll. Wood possesses energy in the form of the chemical bonds that connect its one atom of carbon to the next, or one atom of hydrogen to carbon. When oxygen combines with wood and breaks it apart, the “wood” and oxygen become CO2 gas(among other things), each molecule of the gas now moving very very fast. This is heat, molecules in the air moving very fast, and heat/movement as such is energy. The cart goes from a dead standstill to moving, and the cart’s potential energy becomes evident energy in the form of motion. The molecules of carbon in the wood go from a dead standstill to zipping around at high speed, the wood’s combustion/burning releasing the stored/potential energy of chemical bonds. The movement, the HEAT, of the CO2 molecules IS the energy of the once carbon-carbon chemical bonds the plant made by way of storing sunlight energy in the alternative form of chemical bonds.
A photon of sunlight is “pure” energy, energy in a raw form that is unconnected to matter as it flies through space, and this pure form of energy as sunlight is miraculously “captured” by plants and used to form the bonds between the carbon atoms of redwoods trees, broccoli, wheat or any other plant one might care to name or eat. When a person smiles, the energy making that grin possible is nothing less than the controlled burning inside a body of sunlight energy derived carbon bonds, captured once upon a time by a plant and bottled up only to ultimately be released again through a startling sequence of events culminating in a Mona Lisa-esque smirk.
If the energetic, the overall spontaneity, of wood burning, of broccoli burning, Teflon burning or gasoline burning is favorable, if it tends to occur more or less “spontaneously“, why doesn’t it simply in fact occur here there and everywhere? Why doesn’t the broccoli in a pile in your supermarket’s vegetable section start to combine with oxygen right there before you while you are bagging it up? Why doesn’t your gasoline in your car’s tank blow up like Apollo 13 oxygen’s tank number two blew up? Why is it that one has to coax wood in one’s fire place to commence burning with kindling? Why do people soak their barbecue charcoals in lighter fluid to get the Memorial Day Weekend party rolling? Burning things, combusting all of these things, including the Teflon alleged to have been in the Apollo 13 Oxygen tank number 2, is something that happens more or less of its own accord. That is, once started, it goes on its own. All of these burnings, all of these combusting, are reactions that nature favors to some degree because they release energy in the form of heat. These are reactions that more or less want to occur, nature wants them to occur on some level, nature’s laws favor their occurrence because NATURE FAVORS THE EXISTENCE OF THE REACTIONS’ PRODUCTS MORE THAN SHE FAVORS/DESIRES THE EXISTENCE OF THE REACTIONS’ REACTANTS.
(The notion of reactions tending to occur spontaneously because they release energy is not quit right, not true in an absolute sense. Actually, reaction tendency proves to be a more nuanced notion. Nature does favor chemical reactions in some general sense if the reaction releases energy in the form of heat, so called EXOTHERMIC reactions. The burning of wood, gas, flesh, broccoli, Teflon are all EXOTHERMIC. They all release energy in the form of heat/energy/motion. However, though the release of heat/energy does tend to make a reaction go, it turns out a reaction’s being exothermic(releasing heat/energy) vs. endothermic(consuming energy/heat) is not the most critical factor in determining whether or not any given chemical reaction will occur spontaneously. The most important determinant of whether or not a chemical or ANY REACTION of ANY KIND for that matter will occur has to do with the event’s ENTROPY. Entropy is “disorder”, and more than anything else, nature favors disorder. The more disorderly/disorganized the universe can become were a given reaction to occur, the more such a reaction is favored. The more likely it will in fact occur. Because the release of energy in the form of heat increases disorder in a general sense, chemical reactions such as the burning of wood or broccoli or Teflon are reactions favored by nature. They are reactions that tend to occur spontaneously once they get rolling because they are reactions that release energy in the form of heat and thereby increase the disorder or ENTROPY in the universe. That said, there are heat releasing reactions that are not favored because by virtue of other considerations the overall entropy in the universe is not increased on the occasion of their occurrence, but decreased. For now, for the sake of this limited and less nuanced discussion, one should consider heat releasing reactions as reactions that will tend to occur spontaneously given nature’s desire to see potential energy expressed.)
When I write that nature desires to see her potential energy expressed, I mean that if one pushes a cart perched at the top of a hill, if one gives it a START, the cart will roll down the hill and settle at the hill’s base. Things on the other hand most decidedly do not proceed the other way around. If one pushes a cart at the bottom of a hill, the cart doesn’t find a way to suck in some errant energy and push itself to the mound’s top. When I write that nature desires to see her potential energy expressed, I mean that if one gets a fire going in the fireplace, a piece of wood will tend to burn and burn until its carbon-carbon bonds are broken through the combination of the wood’s carbon with oxygen and its conversion into CO2 gas(among other products) and energy. One never sees CO2 gas suck in sunlight energy on its own and combine this energy and CO2 with rain water to form wood and oxygen. Once fuels such as wood are formed, nature’s laws favor the fuel’s breakdown. Nature’s laws do not favor the formation of fuel from pure energy and constituent gases except under the most extraordinary of circumstances, i.e. plant photosynthesis. Indeed, this is one of nature’s great mystery’s, how it is and why it is that such a system should come about, a living fuel forming system, a plant for example. Keep in mind that plants, in forming fuel from CO2, water and sunlight, do not violate any fundamental natural principle. This is so because as fuel is being formed within the plant, the order in the universe external to the plant, the entropy just referenced, increases. Another way to say this is that in making something as ordered as a living system, a plant or person for that matter, “inside that system” the degree of order is insanely high, high beyond belief, but in order for this to happen, the order of the universe as a whole must increase. So as a plant forms, or a person forms, it does so at the expense of creating disorder in the world/universe outside of the living system’s boundaries. To keep your body organized as highly as it is, your body pumps out tons of heat and this heat, random movement of this or that, contributes to the overall disorder of the universe. Your body is organized at the expense of disorganizing the rest of the world.
Though nature tends to favor the breakdown of fuels and the release of the fuels’ stored energy, these reactions do not occur until they are given this ever so critical first push. Wood, gasoline, broccoli, flesh even, all of these carbon based organic fuels are stable. Their burning requires initiation, a push. Chemists refer to the push as a reaction’s “activation energy”. This is the energy required to get the reaction started. One needs to push the cart to get it to the hill’s lip so that it may begin to roll. Once there, at the lip, the cart starts to roll. This event, the cart’s rolling downhill, is self sustaining thereafter. One need not keep pushing the cart. Likewise, once one heats up a piece of wood enough by lighting some kindling underneath the log, newspaper for example(which itself needs “activation” by way of heating it with a match) and the wood catches, combustion begins, wood and oxygen begin to combine, then the wood burning reaction becomes self sustaining. Just like the cart rolling down the hill. As the wood that has “caught” burns and releases energy/heat, that heat/energy serves as the activation energy for the adjacent bit of wood and the reaction propagates. It has become self sustaining, now being able to provide its own push.
Obviously, the stability of our entire familiar world is dependent on activation energies not being too low. If your house is made of wood as mine is, were the activation energy for wood’s combustion low, you might go off to work, only to return home to find your house a pile of ashes. Nature on some fundamental level wants your house to burn down. The energetics/overall thermodynamics favor your home‘s burning. One’s house never starts to burn, well never in most cases, because the activation energy is never supplied/applied. Our houses for the most part are carts that stay at the top of the energy hill, seldom if ever pushed to the lip. Their carbon-carbon bonds are fairly stable and won’t give in to oxygen unless the activation energy for their burning is supplied.
Were the activation energy for the combustion of broccoli too low, were one to ingest some broccoli, it might go off and start burning, literally so, in one’s belly. OUCH! The modern human enterprise, all of our 21st century modern activities, are very much dependent on our ability to control the burning of fuels, and this means on our ability to supply/apply activation energy when/where/how appropriate. We achieve much that we do because we are able to apply activation energy to fuels at the appropriate time and place. We do this BY CHOICE, such as when we mix gas and O2 in our automobiles’carburetors and set the gas off exploding with an intentional and well timed spark(judicious application of activation energy) in a controlled fashion. By the way, hypergolic propellants are rocket fuels that have no activation energy. Unlike wood and O2, when hypergolic reactants are combined, they react instantly/absolutely spontaneously, no push required. So activation energies are as one would expect, relative, and they are determined empirically, experimentally. They cannot be, can NEVER be, determined independent of experimentation.
Living systems are particularly slick with regard to activation energy concerns and manipulation. The “enzymes” of living systems are catalysts. A CATALYST IS ANYTHING THAT LOWERS THE ACTIVATION ENERGY OF A REACTION. Inside living systems one finds glucose, fatty acids, nucleic acids, amino acids, steroids and on and on and on and on. The formation and breakdown of these chemicals, their movement, their use in PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION OF BODY PARTS AND METABOLISM(CONTROLLED SPECIFIED BIOCHEMICAL SYNTHESIS AND CATABOLISM) is dependent on thousands of reactions occurring in mind boggling precise sequences, at precise times , in precise locations. ENZYMES ARE BIOLOGIC CHEMICAL REACTION CATALYSTS that provide for the occurrence, sequencing/timing of organic reactions. Life is not possible without enzymes, without catalysts that lower the activation energy of various biologic reactions in a highly directed manner, lowering activation energies in just the right way, at just the right time, in just the right place. This aspect of biologic system organization has yet to be explained despite previous and ongoing intensive efforts. At this point in time, much of enzyme science remains outside modern biology’s presently limited ken. There is no greater mystery in all the world of science.
Non-biologic reactions can be catalyzed as well. Something might be present that reduces the push needed for a reaction to occur. Another chemical might be present for instance that might make things go faster. I used enzymes as an example of catalysts as the example is so good/effective in terms of illustrating the point. Life is only possible because the activation energy for biologic reactions to occur is lowered by enzymes. They decrease the energy needed to push/activate the reactions required by living systems.
A BRIEF COMMENT ABOUT TEFLON
Teflon was chosen as a wiring insulator presumably because of its high activation energy. The wires in O2 tank numbers one and two were not covered with polyester, or wood, or just any old thing. The wire insulator was carefully selected. Teflon was chosen specifically because it tends NOT to burn. Its activation energy for combustion to occur is presumably sky high. One does not run a current through a wire covered with a chemical that has a tendency to ignite, through a wire covered with a chemical having a low activation energy with respect to its combustion. Indeed, one would choose a material with a very high activation energy. This is why Teflon was chosen as an insulator to begin with.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT/PHYSICAL CONDITIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE INITIATION OF COMBUSTION OR ANY CHEMICAL REACTION
Now, the energy required to start a fuel’s burning from Teflon to wood to flesh will be context/condition dependent. Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say you want to start a fire in your fireplace. It will take quantitatively so much energy to activate/ignite the wood assuming the wood is dry. Now let’s say the wood is damp, now say it is soaked through and through with water, now say the wood is frozen. The energy required to start something burning will be dependent on the physical circumstances, hot/cold, wet/dry and so forth. This is technically not “activation energy” in a strict chemical sense, but a closely related notion.
So as with wood in one’s fireplace, the same would be true in the case of determining whether or not it was the case that Teflon ignited in Apollo 13’s oxygen tank number two. According to NASA, 10 to 20 joules worth of energy initiated the Teflon combustion reaction. Let’s apply that to the case of wood in our fireplace, not quantitatively, but simply as an example to get one’s thinking going about the importance of context. 10 to 20 joules of energy would go a lot farther to ignite a piece of dry wood than it would damp wood than it would frozen wood. And so one can see here that were an honest investigation of the Apollo 13 O2 tank explosion ever to have occurred, it would be exceedingly important as the investigation was proceeding for the investigators to determine with the greatest accuracy, what type of Teflon was used, EXACTLY what type, what the temperature of the Teflon was at the time 10-20 joules was applied, how the activation energy for Teflon combustion would vary depending on temperature, how initiation of Teflon combustion might depend on temperature independent of activation energy concerns per se(recall the frozen wood analogy just above), was there any water or were there other contaminants present in the tank that may have dampened a reaction/kept it from propagating, were there any catalysts available that may have facilitated the reactions of concern?
NASA HAS NEVER PROVIDED DETAILS REGARDING THEIR ALLEGED EXPERIMENTS SAID TO HAVE DEMONSTRATED IT WAS NOT UNREASONABLE TO BELIEVE TEFLON COMBUSTION WAS PRIMARILY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE O2 TANK NUMBER TWO EXPLOSION
In my investigation of the Apollo 13 O2 Tank Number Two explosion, I have to date yet to see any important RELEVANT SPECIFICS whatsoever regarding Teflon energetic/thermodynamic/combustion considerations. The Apollo 13 Accident Report indicates only that 10-20 joules of energy were determined to be available for the initiation of the reaction and that experiments were done verifying that this energy was accurate to start/activate the alleged reaction. Even a high school science student knows, and knows quite well, such a claim is far from acceptable. NASA must show exactly what it is that they did in their arriving at this conclusion. If they do not so, if NASA did not/does not provide experimental details/specifics, their claim must be viewed as nothing more than vacuous speculation. Additionally, any reasonably attentive high school science student moreover is more than entitled to be exceedingly suspicious of NASA in general and this particular claim specifically. An investigation of this importance obviously demands documentation of experimental detail/specifics in such a degree that the experiments may be repeated by an individual with the requisite equipment, sophistication and interest. As detail/specifics are not provided, this is flat out in no uncertain terms NOT SCIENCE. As a matter of fact, we have less than details/specifics, we as a matter of fact know NOTHING of the experiments NASA allegedly performed. This is a fraudulent report, the Cortright Commission Report on the Apollo 13 Accident.
Any reasonably attentive/capable high school level science student can now see that indeed the entire Apollo 13 Explosion Investigation is nothing more than a charade, a contrived investigation. Along with this, any reasonably attentive and capable high school level science student is now able to see with absolute clarity that all of Apollo 13, the mission in its entirety was/is bogus. There is no documentation whatsoever that any relevant experiments were ever conducted. One concludes quite appropriately that there was no real explosion. An Apollo 13 cislunar explosion simply did not occur. One may now conclude this to be the case as absolute unmitigated FACT. If an explosion had occurred, there would have been experiments performed in support of NASA’s investigating committee claims, and detailed documentation of those experiments available to the public in the scientific literature.
As one concludes there was never a real explosion, one also concludes with absolute certainty that there was no Apollo 13 Mission at all, by that I mean not a real mission, not an authentic one. Finally, one may conclude without an iota of doubt that as the whole of the Apollo 13 Mission was bogus through and through, astronauts Lovell, Haise and Swigert were as a matter of fact NOT employed as super high level test pilots, but as actors in a staged drama that is nothing less than amenable to full on exposure as a scammy charade upon examination of the Apollo 13 Explosion Investigation details.
There are many other faults one can find with the “science” of the Apollo 13 disaster as presented by NASA, but one need go no further than this. There is no science without experiment. There can never be. Any scientist claiming this or that without experimental support is nothing more than a fraud as a scientist.
Apollo itself is fraud, nothing more.