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Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

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Correct me if I am wrong, Jay, but AFAIK, the equipment to read such tapes is dead and gone by now?

No, there is one machine being maintained in private hands that can read the old half-inch Memorex telemetry tapes. But NASA doesn't have one, as far as I know. These reels are some 18-20 inches in diameter, and the recorder/reader is the size of a refrigerator.
 
I just saw a TV program about our satellites, with Dr. Kaku as one of the commentators. They said the satellites in the Van Allen belts would likely be destroyed by the intense radiation there, but on our moon missions, we sailed right through them with no mention I can recall.

What gives?
 
I just saw a TV program about our satellites, with Dr. Kaku as one of the commentators. They said the satellites in the Van Allen belts would likely be destroyed by the intense radiation there, but on our moon missions, we sailed right through them with no mention I can recall.

What gives?

not sure what he's talking about. We have satellites that spend their entire working lives within the belts.

As for the astronauts, they went through the thinner outer edges and weren't in those very long. Plus they weren't unshielded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuH4rxda3Z4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4gSRy1tHls
 
I can't really add much to what Frenat has already said. He got the right answer first.

We've been operating satellites for decades within the Van Allen belts. Not the same satellites for decades, but we have decades of experience placing spacecraft there and operating them there with predictable and consistent reliability. Yes, if you place a satellite there that was not designed for it, then it won't last as long. But if Kaku conveyed to you the idea that we cannot operate satellites in the Van Allen belts, then he's very wrong.

The Apollo trajectories skirted the Van Allen belts. Dr. Van Allen himself helped to design those trajectories. One of my good friends and colleagues, Bob Brauenig, recreated those orbits numerically from published figures to show their compatibility with trapped-particle models. The links Frenat posted animate a similar demonstration. I prefer mine, accomplished with a donut and some stiff paper. Science should be tastier.

The key is realizing the Apollo translunar orbits were relatively high-inclination orbits, although the inclination is often not depicted in illustrations of it for popular consumption. With a high inclination, you have a three-dimensional solution to the problem of avoiding harsher regions of trapped radiation.

Sadly I've had to clean up after Michio Kaku before. He's a celebrity theoretical physicist, not a practicing engineer, and he harbors a few weird ideas.
 
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I can't really add much to what Frenat has already said. He got the right answer first.

We've been operating satellites for decades within the Van Allen belts. Not the same satellites for decades, but we have decades of experience placing spacecraft there and operating them there with predictable and consistent reliability. Yes, if you place a satellite there that was not designed for it, then it won't last as long. But if Kaku conveyed to you the idea that we cannot operate satellites in the Van Allen belts, then he's very wrong.

The Apollo trajectories skirted the Van Allen belts. Dr. Van Allen himself helped to design those trajectories. One of my good friends and colleagues, Bob Brauenig, recreated those orbits numerically from published figures to show their compatibility with trapped-particle models. The links Frenat posted animate a similar demonstration. I prefer mine, accomplished with a donut and some stiff paper. Science should be tastier.

The key is realizing the Apollo translunar orbits were relatively high-inclination orbits, although the inclination is often not depicted in illustrations of it for popular consumption. With a high inclination, you have a three-dimensional solution to the problem of avoiding harsher regions of trapped radiation.

Sadly I've had to clean up after Michio Kaku before. He's a celebrity theoretical physicist, not a practicing engineer, and he harbors a few weird ideas.

To Dr. Kaku's credit, I don't think it was he who said the belts would destroy satellites. It was the narrator IIRC. From what I know about documentaries, Dr. Kaku may have been completely unaware of other parts of this video that did not include him. They likely set up the camera and lights, asked him a few questions, then departed.
 
No, there is one machine being maintained in private hands that can read the old half-inch Memorex telemetry tapes. But NASA doesn't have one, as far as I know. These reels are some 18-20 inches in diameter, and the recorder/reader is the size of a refrigerator.

I have worked with many types of tape recorder in my time, do you know
what model it might be or a type number.
 
To Dr. Kaku's credit, I don't think it was he who said the belts would destroy satellites. It was the narrator IIRC.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that. If that's what happened then it would be unfair to lay that at Kaku's feet. In the past I have had problems with his statements made directly, but it appears this is a different case. Do you remember the name of the program? It would be best to see firsthand what was said and how.

From what I know about documentaries, Dr. Kaku may have been completely unaware of other parts of this video that did not include him. They likely set up the camera and lights, asked him a few questions, then departed.

Yes, that has been the case with every documentary I have been interviewed for. The producer typically briefs the expert on what questions will be asked and what the overall character of the program is, but the final edit (including narration) is not part of the expert's participation. Hence an unscrupulous editor can warp an expert's meaning by carefully crafting the before-and-after narration. Not that this is what has necessarily happened here (I think it may be an honest mistake), but it happens a lot when experts are interviewed for fringe programs.
 
No, there is one machine being maintained in private hands that can read the old half-inch Memorex telemetry tapes. But NASA doesn't have one, as far as I know. These reels are some 18-20 inches in diameter, and the recorder/reader is the size of a refrigerator.

I have worked with many types of tape recorder in my time, do you know
what model it might be, or a type number. The dimensions of the tape are
not really important, rather the number of tracks the tape heads can record/erase,
or play back, and tape speed.
 
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I have worked with many types of tape recorder in my time, do you know
what model it might be, or a type number. The dimensions of the tape are
not really important, rather the number of tracks the tape heads can record/erase.

See daggerstab's link above. And I'm not sure the "half-inch" figure is correct anyway; I'm going from memory.
 
Can't help you there. I was channel-hopping...

Okay, it's no bother. I'm inclined to accept your careless edit theory.


Can't disagree with him at all on this one. The larger stuff is likely to de-orbit soon by itself. The smaller stuff not quite so much. We have very stringent requirements now on what kinds of debris and how much we can release from launch vehicles. Frangible fasteners etc. have to be fitted with captures to keep the fragments from escaping into orbit.
 
To Dr. Kaku's credit, I don't think it was he who said the belts would destroy satellites. It was the narrator IIRC. From what I know about documentaries, Dr. Kaku may have been completely unaware of other parts of this video that did not include him. They likely set up the camera and lights, asked him a few questions, then departed.

I think I saw that and noticed that they had the narrator say things right after Kaku and which seemed to imply it was a summary of what Kaku said when in fact he said nothing of the sort.
 
I think I saw that and noticed that they had the narrator say things right after Kaku and which seemed to imply it was a summary of what Kaku said when in fact he said nothing of the sort.

Do you know the name of the documentary? I didn't catch it while I was channel hopping.
 
I have worked with many types of tape recorder in my time, do you know
what model it might be, or a type number. The dimensions of the tape are
not really important, rather the number of tracks the tape heads can record/erase,
or play back, and tape speed.

The slow scan video from Apollo 11 was recorded using an Ampex VR-660C, if that helps. Most of the other telemetry was recorded on Ampex FR-900s.
 
The larger stuff is likely to de-orbit soon by itself. The smaller stuff not quite so much.
I think it's the other way around. Volume (and mass) scales with the cube of an object's size while cross sectional area (and drag) only as the square.

So larger objects have higher ballistic coefficients than smaller ones, everything else (such as material density) being the same, and smaller objects are therefore affected more by residual atmospheric drag. Small objects are also blown around more by solar radiation pressure. So large objects tend to be longer-lived in a given orbit.

The real problem with smaller debris is that there's so much of it in high orbits that will be long-lived despite its small size, and it's very hard to see with space surveillance radars. It's much better to keep a spent rocket stage from blowing up and/or losing fasteners, bits of insulation and paint, etc.
 
For those who are interested, Anders Björkman - a former member here known as Heiwa, and a conspiracy theorist - has shown up on Apollo Hoax trying to claim that not only Apollo, but all manned spaceflight - and in fact any reentry - is fake.

Thread is here for the interested.

Among the things he gets wrong in the thread (and naturally refuses to correct):
  • He doesn't seem to understand spacecraft attitude adjustments, in particular the manoeuvre used in Apollo to remove the LM from its shroud by the CSM, as well as the idea that the Space Shuttle could re-orient itself after a de-orbit burn so it enters the atmosphere nose-first.
  • He doesn't understand orbits at any level; the idea of a capture or free-return trajectory by spacecraft seems to elude him.
  • His research skills are ... lacking. He claims that the fuel composition and usage for the Apollo flights is secret and that the composition and structure of the heat shield is also secret. Neither is true; fuel consumption, in particular, is available in vast detail.
  • Apparently any object re-entering the atmosphere will "melt" (his words). No distinction is made between LEO velocities, moon-return velocities, or other, as far as I can see.
  • Most spectacularly, he uses kinetic energy relative to Earth-rest to calculate energy requirements for course changes. When it was pointed out to him that this would mean a person on an aircraft would require an enormous amount of energy to start walking forward, he respond that the person's legs "were strong enough to hold him up".

As with his 9/11 looniness, he claims to offer a 1 million Euro prize for anyone proving Apollo is real. Even leaving aside the fact that he probably doesn't have the money, it's unwinnable as he is unwilling to correct his errors. (He did take on board one correction from this discussion: a spacecraft performing a burn changes mass. He still used that in the not-even-wrong calculation of energy requirement via KE.)
 
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