Moon Landing

[Plasma Snake[D]]

I could think of many ways to fake it involving only a select few and still have thousands of people working on that project.

[Scribbler1]

I can think of ways too. Pulling it off is another thing entirely.

[Plasma Snake[D]]

You doubt the power of our government? If its hard to pull this little scheme off, then I bet it would be even harder to send two fragile humans on their merry way to the moon and back on the first attempt. Especially since alien ruins litter the landscape of the moon. Not really.

[Mozart1220]

Quote by: Milton Bradley Not the suits my good man, the module. NASA is on record admitting that they had to rotate the vehicle to keep the side in direct sunlight from having complications. ( The difference in temperature from light to dark sides is like 350 degrees F. ) Thats why they rotated it on it's journey, ah, see, but when it landed it sat upright, and there was no way of dealing with the inevitable sunlight schedule dictated by the landers position on the orb. So, how do you climate control a small, thin, flimsy aluminum can in the vast, cold emptyness of space? ( Remembering the entire volume of the spacecraft was emptied into space every time they opened the door. ) Even the official NASA spokesman left the crowd with a "er, um, well, let me get back to you on that". Not saying it can't be done, but could it be done in 1969 on the first attempt?

Why not? It's all in the math, and the ability of the pilot to think on his feet. These guys were test pilots. They were used to getting it right the "first time" cause if they didn't there often wasn't a "second time".

[Compugasm]

Even the official NASA spokesman left the crowd with a "er, um, well, let me get back to you on that".

Probably a thousand scientists worked on launching something to the moon. Why does the inability of one guy to answer a question on the spot call into question an actual moon landing? Ask someone enough questions, and they're eventually bound to NOT know the answer to everything.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: Compugasm Probably a thousand scientists worked on launching something to the moon. Why does the inability of one guy to answer a question on the spot call into question an actual moon landing? Ask someone enough questions, and they're eventually bound to NOT know the answer to everything.

Nobody denies "we" went to the moon, but in 1969 was it man, or robot?


NASA's representative actually answered about zero questions at that event. That guys head was clearly spinning from the legitimacy of the questions posed, and he only made their case stronger in my opinion. I have a rather broad scientific knowledge, and my head was spinning right along wuth the guy from NASA. I was literally stunned. There were some very reasonable technical questions that has never truly been answered to the best of my knowledge.


The one mentioned above, and the question about how you exchange heat for cold in a vacuum are both very serious, legitimate questions that I think deserved an answer. They ( NASA ) had to know the tough questions were going to be flying around just because of the nature of the event. Why would they send somebody ill equipped to answer any of the questions posed that night? More importantly, why did they never make those answers available at a later date, as promised?


It's not like I wanted to believe those bearing the alleged bad news, but their case was so strong, and NASA's so weak that I was left with little chioce but to become skeptical.


To quote the group from The Breakfast Club, "if they would just answer the damn questions".

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: Mozart1220 Why not? It's all in the math, and the ability of the pilot to think on his feet. These guys were test pilots. They were used to getting it right the "first time" cause if they didn't there often wasn't a "second time".

Like Apollo 1? A simple little spark in a cabin atmosphere unnecessarily high in Oxygen and three men burned up.
These were easily preventable problems but as it is in any complex machine, it's damned near impossible to cover ALL the bases on the first go. There's a lot more than math involved.

The people who designed and built the thing weren't test pilots. They were MUCH better when it came to making the thing and they didn't cover all the bases. Even though NASA seems to put a higher priority on Safety than anyone else you still have to take chances. That's where "the right stuff" comes in. With the low fuel, the computer malfunction and the broken circuit breaker (which could have stranded them on the Moon) all plaguing the Astronauts, I think anything less than the ability to think quickly and calmly might have doomed the entire space program.

[RickSp]

There is a new ad on TV where the astronauts have a technical gliche during the broadcast from the moon. You hear the director's voice in the background, "Don't worry, we will just reshoot it in the studio."

Amusing.

[Chris]

Yep its an ad for Red Bull

[Nono]

They were damned lucky to make the Apollo programme a success (not counting Apollo 1, as Scribs points out).*

But faking it would have been a far greater challenge. And eventual revelation of the fakery (always an absolute certainty) would have done ten times more propaganda damage than the moon landings did good.

Think about it. Just ain't plausible.

* And if it was all faked, where did Grissom, White and Chaffee ever get to?

[Nathan Struth]

reeeer

[Scott]

Here is a good video that argues that Apollo was a hoax. The people who made it did make a few mistakes but I think it pretty much proves that we never went to the moon.

video.google.es/videoplay?docid=-7251089776146839385
video.google.es/videoplay?docid=8585273531105072202

[Mr.Vicchio]

You guys do know the easy answer to all"We didn't go to the moon!" arguments right?

If that were true, why didn't the USSR just embarrass us to the world, seeing as they were tracking the Apollo missions to catch us trying to cheat.

[Scribbler1]

Or maybe "who put that reflector on the Moon so the laser beams sent from Earth could bounce back?"

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Milton Bradley The one mentioned above, and the question about how you exchange heat for cold in a vacuum are both very serious, legitimate questions that I think deserved an answer. They ( NASA ) had to know the tough questions were going to be flying around just because of the nature of the event. Why would they send somebody ill equipped to answer any of the questions posed that night? More importantly, why did they never make those answers available at a later date, as promised?

How you exchange heat for cold in a vacuum is through a process called radiation. There are three methods of heat transfer, conduction, convection and radiation. The rate of transfer of each is largely due to the temperature differential between the transfer media.

Conduction is through direct contact. When you put your hand on a piece of ice, you are transferring your body heat to the ice through conduction. If you put your hand on something that is at room temperature, roughly 70 degrees F, you lose much less heat than when you put your hand on that piece of ice. Another factor has to do with the ability of what you are touching to take up heat and the ability of it to transfer heat away. Even if the object can take up large amounts of heat very rapidly, if it can't transfer it away through further conduction you won't lose much overall heat. The ice in question can take up a lot of heat, has a high heat capacity, but can't transfer it away quickly. If you were to place your hand, however, on a piece of copper of the same temperature, you will lose more heat. The copper, per unit mass, can't take as much heat, it has a low heat capacity, without changing temperature, however the thermal conductivity of copper is very high so it will rapidly transfer the heat to the entire mass of the copper. However, this isn't what we're concerned with here. In the vacuum of space, conduction has little impact.

Ok, so, the second method of heat transfer is through convection. Convection, at its margins, is similar to conduction, direct heat transfer from medium to medium. However, in convection, as opposed to conduction, at least one of the media are in motion. When you run water over something, you are no longer concerned with the thermal conductivity of the water because the heat doesn't have to transfer from atom to atom in a fixed medium, but each atom passes by, takes up heat, and then moves on. As in conduction, and other methods of heat transfer, absolute temperature differences have a high impact in rates of transfer, as do flow rates, method of flow (laminate or turbulent) and the heat capacity of the medium. However, of course, once again, this is irrelevant to dissipation of heat in space.

The third method of heat transfer, radiation, is what we're concerned with in space. Radiation is the transfer of heat through, as the name implies, electromagnetic radiation. The Sun heats the Earth through radiation, obviously, as there is no medium to promote conductivity or convection. (actually, that's not completely true, there is some convection in solar space through the "solar wind", however, the density of the medium is so low as to make the transfer negligible) The transfer of heat through radiation is, once again, dependent on the temperature differences involved. In the case of transferring heat through radiation on the moon.

Radiation on the moon would be impacted by three things. The Sun, the surface of the moon and space itself. The sun, obviously, is VERY hot, but it only makes up a small portion of the "sky" from the surface of the moon. A highly reflective surface can all but eliminate heat transfer from the sun to the spacecraft. I don't think much of this was done, but, by pointing a reflective surface toward the sun you can deflect a lot of the solar radiation.

The surface of the moon, in broad daylight, runs about 107C. Pretty hot. However, the conductivity of the lunar soil is likely fairly low. (actually, I just looked it up. It is VERY low, but no sense in getting too technical here) So, any shaded spot on the lunar surface would have a very low temperature. However, any heat radiated to the lunar surface would be trapped in a thin layer, due to the low conductivity of the lunar soil. So, we can't really get rid of the heat to the lunar surface.

So, that just leaves us with space. Space is effectively a black body (more thermal transfer talk, let's just say that it absorbs heat very effectively) with a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin, or -270 degrees Celsius, or -454 degrees Farenheit, or, let's just say damn cold. The full hemisphere above the moon, except for a 5 degree circle where the sun is, is open space. If you can isolate your radiators from solar radiation through a reflective surface you have a huge heat sink by simply pointing them to open space.

It's been over 25 years since I took a heat transfer course, and I haven't applied what I learned there since, but it's really not that tough of an equation to figure out how to dump the heat. I could probably still do it but it might take a day or so for me to work it out. It's not difficult at all for a scientist who does such a thing for a living.

So, the guy who didn't answer the question ... . There are a couple of possibilities here. Either he wasn't a scientist and wasn't there to answer such questions. Or, he wasn't prepared to give a course in heat transfer to a bunch of yahoos that obviously don't know much about science to begin with.

Keith

[gw120]

What I want to know is why are there no stars in any of the pictures taken?

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: gw120 What I want to know is why are there no stars in any of the pictures taken?

Because the contrast of the brightly sunlit scenes to the dark of space with pinpoints of stars wash them out.

Take a flash picture on a night with lots of stars in the background and see if any of them show up.

Keith

[Scribbler1]

It would be more productive to FIRST address what supposedly DID happen and after those questions are answered we can turn to "why don't..."

[Century 25]

You bet your bippy we went to the Moon.. and drove cars there.. (moon buggies) - they are still there.. and a golf ball too..

The Saturn V also launched our Skylab.. all 85 tons of it.. into orbit back in the '70's.. it had the volume of a 3br house..

The engineering specifics for Apollo were worked out in the early '60's.. and the Shuttle's origins too date back to the 60's.. it was called Project Dynasoar.. Recall too that the SR-71 (Blackbird) came from that progressive era.. and to this day remains the fastest.. highest flying jet aircraft.. one flew DC to LA in 64 minutes.. Look here: SR-71 Blackbird

Consider too.. how intricate the moon flights/missions were.. and no one was killed.. yes.. the computers of that era were bulky and primitive.. but.. they were rapidly improving.. Now think of the shoddy Shuttle.. it was bastardized from the original plan.. blame the penny-pinching repub's.. they wreaked havoc on the most shining example of America.. NASA.. and have steadily trashed science.. welcome to the new dark-ages..

Jules Verne wrote a novel.. "From the Earth to the Moon" - look it up.. also was a movie based on it.. these days look more and more like Verne's book..

[Scribbler1]

Technically, people DID die. The Apollo program was created specifically for a Moon shot. Apollo 1 was the one that burned up on the launchpad and killed Grissom, Chafee and White. And the actual flights didn't go without a hitch either (Apollo 13). But, amazingly, nobody died in Space.