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Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion - continuation thread

JayUtah said:
That's the essence of this entire thread. There are many things you don't know about space and engineering for that environment. Until you've corrected that deficiency, no amount of doubt on you part constitutes anything that the rest of the world is obliged to grant attention.
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Do you have any source for ordinary photos from satellites being taken down to Earth via reentry into the atmosphere? Even the earliest satellites used radio communication:

"Explorer 6, or S-2, was an American satellite launched on August 7, 1959. It was a small, spheroidal satellite designed to study trapped radiation of various energies, galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetism, radio propagation in the upper atmosphere, and the flux of micrometeorites. It also tested a scanning device designed for photographing the Earth's cloud cover, and transmitted the first pictures of Earth from orbit.[1][2]" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_6
 
Keyhole_capsule_recovery.jpg


I wonder what this is a picture of?
 
Yep - ablative shielding is good for all sorts of payloads, manned and unmanned. (And RTG heat sources, too.)

It's also why meteorites, contrary to the popular image, aren't glowing red hot when they land.

It's funny to think that two of the 20th Century's most advanced technologies, ablative shielding and nuclear fission reactors, were both developed and tested by Mother Nature billions of years ago.
 
Anders Lindman said:
Ok, let's say that the heat insulation was enough for traveling to the moon and back, but what about the reentry into Earth's atmosphere? The claim that a heat shield could protect the astronauts seems dubious to me. The Apollo capsule would have burned up in its entirety! Like a meteorite.
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I just have to quote this one, for the near perfection of its contradiction.

Meteoroid: a rocky body drifting in space

Meteor: the same object upon entering Earth's atmosphere, where aerodynamic heating acts on it to make a nice light show for those of us on the ground.

Meteorite: the part of the above that remains intact after ablation.

Meteorites do NOT burn up in their entirety. The very term is specific in meaning to "didn't burn up!"
 
nomuse said:
I just have to quote this one, for the near perfection of its contradiction.

Meteoroid: a rocky body drifting in space

Meteor: the same object upon entering Earth's atmosphere, where aerodynamic heating acts on it to make a nice light show for those of us on the ground.

Meteorite: the part of the above that remains intact after ablation.

Meteorites do NOT burn up in their entirety. The very term is specific in meaning to "didn't burn up!"
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Ok, meteorite means the rock that remains intact/left. I doubt that ablation could do much though. If the ablation theory was correct then we would have small meteorites raining down like hail on us here on Earth. :D
 
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Anders Lindman said:
So the ablation made the Apollo capsule so cool that when it landed in the ocean no big cloud of steam was produced? :rolleyes:

Apollo 15 Splashdown -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Vd75Ptg9I
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The whole idea of ablative cooling was that the heat was carried away as the heatshield was "ablated". So there was no enormous amount of heat stored in the remaining heatshield or spacecraft skin on splashdown.

No steam cloud...
 
I remember a similar question coming up on NASA's Ask an Astrobiologist page, when someone asked about extraterrestrial microbes in meteorites surviving reentry.

"Study of meteors has shown that the heating from atmospheric entry does not penetrate below a very thin crust. A few centimeters down, the rock remains as cold as it was in interplanetary space. That is why meteorites land cool and cannot start fires or even melt snow."

I imagine that something similar to the Leidenfrost Effect comes into play as well, with the layer of ablated material providing insulation for the underlying surface.
 
Anders Lindman said:
Ok, meteorite means the rock that remains intact/left. I doubt that ablation could do much though. If the ablation theory was correct then we would have small meteorites raining down like hail on us here on Earth. :D
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Does this mean you also disbelieve in strategic nuclear weapons?
 
Anders Lindman said:
So the ablation made the Apollo capsule so cool that when it landed in the ocean no big cloud of steam was produced? :rolleyes:

Apollo 15 Splashdown -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Vd75Ptg9I
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They were refrigerated, don't you know. The ocean froze around the capsules once they splashed down.

I would be more concerned with the lack of evidence of rice pudding in the Apollo missions. That doesn't seem right to me.

I think rice pudding would have been an excellent insulation material against heat and comic rays.
 
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