GIGANTIC Moon Hoax page written by one Brad Guth. It just go

This Moon Hoax page is written by one Brad Guth - and it just goes on and on and on and on .....

Rip the next 3 hours out of your calendar - and chew your way through this Mother of Moon Hoax pages .... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

URL:

http://geocities.com/bradguth/moon-02.htm

PS: I am looking forward to Jay debunking the page - sentence by sentence by sentence by sentence ... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

PS2: A warning - The above page is truly gonna make your ** detector go off the scale !!!



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cyberspaced on 2002-06-15 19:16 ]</font>

Brad Guth posts the link to this picture

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/...7/10075941.jpg

A picture for which, he has these comments:

"This next official NASA photo (from the Apollo-17 mission, as that indirectly linked by the previous URL) may represent something like that infamous "C rock" image, as that representing yet another mistake or oversight that somehow released an image which NASA did not intend, as this official image (taken by an official Apollo camera using the very same film) clearly demonstrates that stars most certainty could and should have been sufficiently captured in most of the lunar landscape photos"

"What can one say about this following image but "OOPS!"

One can see the very same image at:

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/...7/10075941.htm

... where the text informs us that

"The white dots surrounding the Lunar Module are debris from the Saturn S-IVB stage separation"

In other words: The white dots are not stars, but "debris from the Saturn S-IVB stage separation".

However, please note that Brad Guth does NOT link to http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/...7/10075941.htm, where one can read the description. No, he links to http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/...7/10075941.jpg, where one can only see the image and not read the text, which explains the white dots.

A coincidence ? I think not !! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cyberspaced on 2002-06-15 19:51 ]</font>

[JayUtah]

I'm not going to go sentence by sentence. It's about 90% rhetoric (much of it about non-Apollo topics) and 10% evidence.

This is not representing something of any conspiracy, more like that of "damage control" (spin) defending the hidden agendas ...

The typical approach. If NASA and Apollo supporters say nothing, that's because they're hiding the truth. If they speak out and address the hoax, it's with the intent of deceptively hiding the truth. Most conspiracy theorists want to have their cake and eat it too. If a proponent can't accept the possibility that his conclusion is wrong, then he won't understand what's necessary to prove it true.

After a few initial insults, the author settles down into the case.

NASA is requesting that you please disregard those stars, just like that infamous "C" rock ...

Of course anyone who has studied the alleged "C" rock argument in any detail realizes that the preponderance of evidence favors the C-less photo. The mark is found on only one print (and, obviously, the scans made of it) and not on the master and not on the original. Besides, if an embarrassed NASA is trying to make the "C" go away, why can you still get the version with the "C" from the same NASA web sites as before? Pulling the ol' switcheroo necessitates removing the "bad" image.

The photo in which we are supposed to ignore the "stars" is of an S-IVB from which an Apollo CSM has just separated. The explosive and frangible fasteners that secure the panels of the SLA and the CSM break into pieces, and those pieces have to go somewhere. The author has simply concluded that the specks are stars, without considering any other possibility.

Strangely enough, all he had to do was take this photo to a competent astronomer of his choosing and have that person point out one or more common constellations in the pictured group. If any reasonably coherent constellation groupings could be identified, that would be irrefutable proof that the specks were stars. But it's hard to find constellations in the floating remnants of fasteners and insulation.

From my considerable photographic experience; those lunar photo issues offer all sorts of questionable content, including lighting hot spots which are impossible to occur naturally ...

Strange, I have no problem producing them.

... insufficient contrast issues that simply can not explain why and how so much back-lighting so effectively illuminated what should have been more deeply shaded ...

Someone with "considerable photographic experience" would understand the use of reflectors.

by using an artificial illumination, you will in fact obtain a very similar hot-spot and vertually little if any fill-in lighting.

That may be true, but whether it is or not is largely irrelevant. Showing that X can cause Y in the general case is a very long way from showing that X must have caused Y in a particular case. Especially when other causes can be theoretically propounded and empirically verified. In that case, a rigorous, falsifiable scientific method must be used to distinguish between potential causes.

... as these issues have never been fully explained.

Sure they have, and decades ago. But as with "Cosmic" Dave Cosnette, some people are simply unwilling to consider any possibility other than their original conspiracy theory.

a 10% reflective lunar terrain may have been photo graphically bright although, nearly ideal for permitting a little increased exposure that would have easily captured such vibrant stars above the horizon

A little increased exposure? It requires several orders of magnitude more exposure to register stars. Apparently this author buys fully into Bill Kaysing's argument that there should have been "trillions" of unbelievably bright stars, despite the well known fact that clean air doesn't attenuate the visible spectrum much.

there comes the most basic foundation of establishing "extraordinary" proof

This assumes NASA's intent was "extraordinary" irrefutable proof that they went to the moon. NASA intended to document a set of missions that they understood would be presumed to have succeeded.

those original negatives must be allowed to be analyzed by a commercial lab

Technically they were transparencies, for the most part. But that's beside the point. Why must an irreplaceable historical resource be subjected to analysis and possible inadvertent damage simply to satisfy the ill-supported paranoia of a few malcontents? If they could provide credible evidence that there was something amiss, that might be a justification.

extreme thermal cycling ...

The case for such cycling is based on a very naive thermal model.

then what about all that radiation exposure issue alone being near lethal photographic limits ... ?

Yes, what about them?

Apollo-16 should have received several rads, perhaps 10 rads

At least he's willing to state a number. Now how about a computation to support it?

there is the question as to those lunar samples, which seem now as being authenticated as being quite Earthly

An odd claim. No geologist (except for Kaysing's unnamed alleged Seattle geologist) has said that the moon samples could be from earth. In fact, most of them can speak at length and with great enthusiasm about what is so different with moon rocks.

manned/pilot test flight(s) of the lunar-lander fiasco was in fact totally disastrous, with each attempt ending with near lethal pilot ejection and one hell of a subsequent crash and explosion.

"Each attempt"? What a bald-faced lie. The LLTV made hundreds of test flights with only three crashes and no fatalities.

all we know is that never one succeeded at safely performing the most basic task

Totally, completely false.

if so there would have been considerable film documentation of such and hords of publications and news coverage

Thousands of commercial airplane flights occur every day, yet none are documented in the news. Why? Because it's reasonably commonplace. But when one crashes, it's all over the news. Similarly, when the LLTV was first rolled out there was coverage, and on the rare occasion that one crashed there was coverage. But why would there be coverage of successful LLTV flight #72?

The failure of someone to have different motives than those supposed by the author does not constitute proof.

over-kill documentation was NASA's middle name.

Yes. That's how we know this author is lying. We've seen the documentation, but apparently this author hasn't.

As far as I can sofar determine (please correct me if I'm wrong), the required technology to stabilize and pilot such a purely rocket powered craft is still (33+ years after the fact) under development

You're wrong.

Modulated rocket thrusting of sufficiently large thrusters is still undergoing development as of today

Total crap. The "modulation" (i.e., thrust vectoring) of large-scale rocket engines has been possible since the 1930s, practical since the 1940s, and a feature of every single rocket built since then. It's one of the most well-understood, well-established technologies in the industry.

Anyone who has seen a shuttle launch (and that's most of us) has seen the orbiter's engines swivel about prior to ignition. That's exactly what we're talking about here.

Even at the raw (minimum) of 3.85 meters resolution, that's clearly capable of identifying each of our lunar lander base units as well as lunar buggy

Ah, except that the angular resolution of radar doesn't have anything to do with its distance resolution. Mapping canyons and mountains that are thousands of feet deep (high) is a much easier problem than using radar to identify a structure that's only ten feet off the surface.

how about some of that dry magic clumping lunar soil/dust

It's not magic, as anyone who knows anything about particulates can attest. It's fully expected. Just because it mystifies a few non-experts doesn't make it suspicious.

where my experience with owning such commercial (70mm) photographics (including owning multiple other equipment, lenses and enlarger plus doing film developing as well as accomplishing my own enlargements) can not understand how any "hot-spot" can even exist on the lunar surface

A non sequitur. The ownership of expensive photographic equipment does not insure one can use it correctly or expertly. The ability to operate an enlarger does not qualify one to comment expertly on the physics of lighting.

nor can my direct (hands on) experience explain how a 10% reflective horizontal surface can possibly produce any significant amount of reflective fill-in

"I can't do it, therefore it can't be done." Strange, it seems to work just fine for me, and for anyone else who's ever lit using reflectors.

nor can I imagine how any one charged with such responsibility of official documentation via photographic means could have intentionally avoided recording such vibrant stars within the lunar landscape in the same image

Perhaps because it's provably photographically impossible to do so with the equipment they had. Of course the astronauts did eventually take suitable equipment -- the Schmitt camera for ultraviolet photography.

as these stars were at least twice as bright as viewed from here on Earth

No.

and the lunar landscape was at best 10% reflective

No, the lunar landscape is at worst 12% reflective and at best 30% reflective, according to published figures. This is, as we have shown, roughly equivalent to aged asphalt. I've photographed aged asphalt, and sunlight exposures apply.

Besides, if the author's assertion is that the atmosphere attenuates half of the luminosity in the visible spectrum, wouldn't this also apply to the sun? Wouldn't he also have to agree that the sun would be twice as bright and therefore the reflection from the surface twice as bright as sun off earth asphalt? But of course consistency is never the conspiracist's strong suit.

why not elect to being protected from all that additional solar heat [250+°]

The good old heat argument. The figure cited is not "solar" heat, but the surface temperature of the dirt and rocks. Now if the author continued his 10% reflectivity to its logical conclusion, he'd have to admit the lunar surface was therefore absorbing 90% of the solar energy. And that would obviously be different than the measly few percent absorbed by polished aluminum.

every time I've tried to acquire such fundamental data, as pertaining to space travel radiation, with having any association with NASA's foundation of "extraordinary proof", I've come up empty.

AE8 and AP8. They're in every university library. But they're pretty technically dense. There's no market for Cislunar Radiation for Dummies so either he has to make friends with the science or else respect the opinions of the experts who don't question Apollo's success.

... especially when Earth recording (mostly images) of such solar flares indicated the largest ever recorded outburst during the Apollo-16 mission

Another bald-faced lie. No such event occurred during the Apollo 16 mission, however a few events occured in between the J-missions.

as I've read from pro-NASA supporters, that most space radiation is not the type harmfull to life

False. In fact, particle radiation is the most harmful to life, if it should reach the blood-forming organs (BFOs). However, the properties which make it most harmful also conveniently make it easy to shield against.

I guess that happens to include supernovae and whatever a massive solar outburst can deliver

When did we start worrying about supernovae? And of course we don't simply lump solar particle events into the cislunar ambience. But we consider them a separate problem. The solution to that is primarily probabilistic. You can shield against the rest.

We can see where this is going, though. Hoax believers want the radiation to be all or nothing. If Apollo defenders say the shielding was sufficient for the Van Allen belts, hoax believers think we mean that Van Allen radiation is insignificant. If they find something that says the Van Allen belts are "hazardous", they assume that means instantly lethal.

Simply trying to obtain such documentation from the vast base of knowledge offered by NASA moderated sites, has been a thorough waste of time

"I couldn't find it, or didn't want to find it, therefore it doesn't exist."

I have no problem finding information about Apollo's dealings with radiation. In fact, I found a paper recently about a simulation model for human radiation absorption for space suit design. Pretty cool stuff.

But the author's suggestion is valid. Why not go ask the Russians how much radiation there is up in space? They sent lots of Zond missions through the Van Allen belts, some with live specimens. I bet they know a whole lot.

I know we had electron microscopes back then, and yet, not even one closeup of any of that so called interlocking super sand or soil

Uh, there's just such a photomicrograph on my web site. It took me all of twelve seconds to find.

the greater potential of later accomplishing robotic flight technology

The lunar module did not provide "robotic" flight technology in the sense intended by the author, such as for unmanned exploration. It simply provided a digital attitude control system (well documented) that a human pilot used to simplify his task. Landing by remote or purely by automation is a significantly more involved problem. And of course the technology developed for the LM's digital autopilot is still being used today.

This following URL I recently found somewhat interesting

The URL in question is the infamous NASAScam web site which has been linked here. You'll recall it is the most ignorant and arrogant tripe on the planet, written by someone who apparently has a lot of hostility toward Apollo. Interesting? Only if one is interested by a long list of insults and zany assertions.

this lander test flight consideration never was seriously brought up until I recently gave it some thought

Every hoax believer thinks he's the first to think of this alleged inconsistencies.

have since failed in my research efforts to acquire one supporting film, documenting actual capability of even sustaining tethered controlled test flights

The tedius litany of what this author is unable to find is not proof of anything. If he could say that he spent a week at the National Archives and another week at the Johnson Space Center and failed to turn up anything, I might have reason to pay attention. But these days, "failure to find information" is too often simply having typed something into a search engine and not getting what you want in the first ten links.

I still have my professional (personally experienced photographic) questions as to how that film survived the +/-250 degrees

Well, to that I have my professional answer: the film itself was not subjected to that temperature cycle.

Unfortunately, I, as well as so many others (outside as well as inside of Club NASA) simply have not one solid irrefutable piece of evidence (other then what had been filtered through NASA)

Hoax believers have a very strange definition of "irrefutable". When applied to their own arguments, it means a house of cards that depends on highly questionable assumptions and expectations, specious logic, and invented fact. When applied to their opponents arguments, it means evidence which can be sidestepped by a conjectural (though unsubstantiated) explanation.

The authenticity of evidence is judged not based on whether it could be falsified, but whether it was in fact falsified. An attorney in court who attempted to rebut eyewitness testimony by saying, "Your Honor, the witness could be lying," would be laughed out of the courtroom.

This author, like most hoax believers, will only accept pro-Apollo evidence if he is unable to find some conjecture that would otherwise explain it. He will accept only "perfect" evidence. Sorry, but in the real world evidence must be actually impeached. It is not enough merely to suggest a way by which evidence could be impeached. It's the difference between a blueprint and the actual building.

the mere threat of deployment thereof or at least imposing the illusion thereof (illusions are nearly always cheaper then the real thing ...

I don't agree. And earlier the author talks about an essentially unlimited budget. Which makes the issue of cost irrelevant. The question is whether it's easier to create an illusion than to actually accomplish the thing. And in terms of the lunar landing, the elaborate techniques allegedly used to fake the landings would rival the landings themselves.

Here's the funny thing. Despite certain elements of secrecy, vast amounts of Apollo information was available to the public and has survived. Using this information we can duplicate the work of the original mission planners and engineers and verify that what NASA said it was going to try, would actually work.

That's interesting. NASA was able to come up with a completely plausible Apollo mission plan that has satisfied hosts of international engineers for decades. A pretty good cover story.

Further, we have space hardware. We can go see a Saturn V. We can see the engines. We can see the Apollo spacecraft and their technology. The plan was actually executed and the hardware was built. Something went to the moon, as tracked by all the amateurs (and quite likely by the Soviets; we tracked all their moon-bound spacecraft).

In addition to all this, there was supposedly the hoax. The soundstages, the locations, the microwaved moonrocks, the huge vacuum chambers, the methods for simulating low gravity, the tens of thousands of photos that would have to be staged, shot, carefully retouched, and released. All this would have taken time, money, and people.

So we have a moon landing plan and its associated hardware that, by all experts' opinions, would have been perfectly capable of landing on the moon. But beyond this we have the additional expense and effort of faking the missions. How can this possibly be cheaper and easier than just saying the putative plan succeeded?

Ah, it's the radiation. It always comes back to that. No matter how capable the equipment, they couldn't get past all that super-lethal radiation; it's just impossible. That makes the radiation argument the key point to the entire hoax theory. And unfortunatley that's the point on which they handwave the most.

If we set aside the radiation argument as unproven, we're left simply with the notion that a simulation is simpler and easier. We've dispensed with that possibility as it might relate to Apollo. We have to consider one important fact of actually doing something as opposed to faking it: if you really do it, it's hard for someone else to prove it was faked. Any falsification runs a risk of being discovered, and we know the Soviets were very closely watching our efforts. What possible political advantage would be gained by cutting corners and not actually performing the landings? The potential political damage from being caught faking it would have been tremendous.

So, perhaps you guys should stop doing that, stop insisting those Apollo images are so damn great

But they are. To those with the scientific ability to see what's in them (as opposed to pretentions of such) they clearly depict an alien environment.

I am told the resulting lunar resolution (of supposedly 80 meters) is and/or would be essentially the exact same as if a 1 pixel/cm CCD verses a 1 million or perhaps even a billion pixel CCD sensor (all this response is absolutely false and obviously intentionally misleading)

No, it's very solidly based on the science of optics. At this point the author goes into an essentially irrelevant diatribe on the supposed virtues of digital imaging, completely ignoring the optical resolution issue.

another issue is that each image as well as of any combined result can further be re-sampled or reliably enlarged by at least a factor of 5 (10X is fully supported by the digital software industry and, I've seen and accomplished 20X without my experiencing distortions nor seeing one damn unexpected thing added or subtracted).

Total crap. Interpolation does not supply information that was not originally sampled. This is the absolutely key fundamental of sampling theory. The idea of using overlays for interferometry-type analysis is reasonably sound, but that's not what he's talking about in this sentence.

Each digital image can also be altered by otherwise condensing (sort of focusing) each pixel represented, by a factor of 10

Irrelevant.

For some reason, you braille guys want me as well as all others believing that your God (NASA) could have had nothing whatsoever to do with any such cold-war issues.

The author's entire rebutal is simply a paragraph of name-calling.

He is obviously referring to some prior discussion he's had with other apologists and so we are left with having to infer the substance of it. The standard hoax believer argument is that the Kennedy and Johnson's political pressure established an unrealistic time frame. Against this is the very well-documented Apollo development process, which is detailed in daily journals of key officials.

The other applicable standard argument is that Kennedy was only interested in the political advantage that Apollo would provide. And that's undoubtedly true for Kennedy, but to extend that to NASA is unwarranted. We can't assume that NASA's interest in a manned moon landing was also strictly political (i.e., so that they wouldn't care if they actually did it.)

We presume the Department of the Interior people have a pretty keen interest in protecting America's natural resources. And we assume the Department of Education gets excited about teaching kids. And similarly we assume people join NASA because they are interested in space travel. Sure, politics pervades all those agencies, but you can't assume that only political goals are pursued there. Hoax believers tie everything up into politics, into the machinations of wielding power. It's hard for them to believe that people can be uninterested in politics.

From NASA's point of view, they were being given a blank check and told to develop a whole lot of space technology. That would be very exciting to someone who joined NASA in order to work on space technology. Would an Interior Department employee be as excited about faking a national park for political purposes as he would about establishing an actual one?

It's reasonable, despite Kennedy's interest solely in politics, to suppose that NASA took him seriously and developed the technology that interested them. And it's reasonable to accept their documentation of that process as a suitably accurate record of it.

Therefore the author's name-calling sidesteps a very important point.

After this follows a rather lengthy and irrelevant rant regarding Venus and the postulated cabal involving NASA, the CIA, the NSA, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Why stop there? Why not bring in crop circles and the fluoridation of water? Where are the Illuminati and the Freemasons in all of this?

The fact that some of you have been so willing to blindly place such undying faith into your beloved NASA ...

See, that's the thing. I don't put faith in NASA. I put faith in Apollo, which is a somewhat different thing, to the extent that I believe it succeeded. And my faith is not pure -- as an expert I have studied the Apollo record very closely and have found everything in order.

I'm more amused by those who put their blind faith in conspiracy authors who have no substantial information or suitable expertise. They simply tell interesting stories.

Where exactly are those astronaut film-badges, or if no longer available, why did NASA not utilize and/or keep them?

This argument doesn't even make sense. The author simply assumes that because NASA doesn't hand over the original dosimeters, none of them ever existed. The dosimeters were provided to obtain skin dosage information. Those dosages have been published and are readily available both online and in print.

How would this author be able to authenticate any dosimeter NASA would hypothetically hand him? At some point you have to either believe the information you're given, or provide substantial proof that it's not authentic. This leads into the next point in this line of reasoning:

where exactly are these "proof-positive negatives"? and, why has NASA failed to re-access them?.

The Apollo transparencies are carefully preserved in a facility designed to protect them for future generations. We do not propose to hand out the invaluable original transparencies to every joe who has some wacky notion they were faked.

NASA hasn't failed to access them. In about 1996 they made a completely new set of duplication masters from the original transparencies.

But let's say, hypothetically, NASA hands this author the transparencies. What assurance would the author have that he had the originals? Why wouldn't he simply argue that NASA had handed him some other strip of film?

Scans don't satisfy this author. Prints don't. Contact transparencies don't. Because he can speculate that there's some doctoring going on, he won't trust anything that allows for that possibility. Unfortunately that's a ridiculous standard of proof. If he's gone to all these lengths to reject the published data, we have no assurance he'll respect any other form of evidence.

But it's a standard feature of most hoax arguments to demand more information than they believe can be provided. It conveys the idea that they might change their minds, but their opponents (us) are simply unwilling or unable to provide a suitable body of evidence. And that's been this author's contention all along: "I can't find it; they won't provide it; I need more."

It's just a ruse. They don't want more. They just want everyone to think the ball's in someone else's court.

could really use this type of anti-star film so that those pesky stars are automatically eliminated.

Hm, the "magic" anti-star film seems to be readily available. That is, just about any film on which I try to expose both stars and sunlit objects fails to expose the stars.

As pre-Radio Shack or at least pre-PC, quite possibly they had to make do by utilizing relatively crude fax machines in order to scan images for the public to see ... Issues such as the "C" rock, obvious other intentional smudges, excessive lighting hot-spots, fairly intense backlighting (? supposedly as light reflecting off a medium dull gray 10% reflective lunar surface ?), multiple visor reflection errors, random/multiple shadow angles and further (total) star removals (even from their time exposure shots)

Straw man. The relatively crude quality of the first scans affects apparent color, spatial distortion, and apparent contrast. But it is not argued to produce the effects the author names. Those alleged anomalies have answers, and the answers have been provided, but talking about scanners is not a suitable discussion of those answers.

never one good shot of Earth

Um, there are hundreds of shots of the earth taken by Apollo astronauts. Taking a photo of the earth from the lunar surface with a wide angle lens is a bit stupid.

... so many of those official NASA photos have lately become so easily detected as potentially bogus

... and vindicated with equal ease.

These days; always a massive assortment of sensors are integrated and must be employed in order to safely control the likes of the Osprey as well as Stealth fighters ...

This is because high-performance aircraft intended for combat derive their maneuverability from their inherently unstable aerodynamics.

I can ascend in a Piper Arrow, trim everything up, and the aircraft will fly straight and level without the benefit of an autopilot. If I turn the yoke, the aircraft banks. If I release the yoke, it snaps back to center (aerodynamic pressure on the control surfaces) and the aircraft will fairly quickly right itself. I can push a rudder pedal and it will yaw. When I release the pedal, the yaw corrects itself.

This is all due to inherent features of the design such as wing sweep and dihedral. The aircraft actually resists departures from straight and level flight. This is unsuitable for an aircraft that must execute quick manuevers. Airframes designed for high-performance combat require constant adjustments to keep them straight and level. They inherently want to bank, to pitch, and to yaw. This is so that when they are called upon to do just that, they will do it quickly and effortlessly.

A good analogy is a marble in a bowl. It will find a detent, and you can push it up the side and when you release it, it will find its stable equilibrium. A fighter is like a marble on an upturned bowl. If you want to keep it on top, you must constantly adjust it, for it will want to roll down the side.

That's why modern airframes require computers to constantly adjust the aircraft's attitude and keep it within a safe operating envelope. You must also wash the pilot's input through the computer so that he will not inadvertently throw it out of control.

All this is cheerfully admitted, but the relevance is at stake. The fact that high-performance aircraft require computer assistance is not proof that flight without computers is impossible. A Piper Arrow is flown by the pilot's muscle power transmitted via linkages and cables to the appropriate control surfaces. No computer.

Sufficient computer capability in the late 60's and early 70's (for such flight stability issues) would have consumed kilowatts ...

Ah, we have another computer expert. Kilowatts? Perhaps if you factor in all the extraneous equipment that a room-sized general purpose computer of the era required, and which is completely irrelevant to the task of flight control, you'd have kilowatts.

The author represents that a certain degree of computing power would be required for flight control, but fails to quantify it. That makes it impossible to verify or refute any arguments about what would be necessary to satisfy that requirement, and whether the AGC did it or not.

It's really a very simple issue. The AGC is fully documented. There are numbers quite easily available to describe all the aspects of its operation. That's a known quantity. If the hoax believers wish to argue that it was insufficient, they must come up with a quantification of the problem they say wasn't being solved. They can't. They can only wave their hands and express, at length, their relative ignorance of guidance computers.

As far as leaving items behind and others photographing them, several up close, such as even that first foot print.

NASA has never claimed that the first footprint was photographed. The photograph widely circulated as "the first step" is Aldrin's intentional footprint taken well into the EVA and quite a distance from the LM.

took a whizz so that the otherwise in-total-vacuum bone-dry magic-moon-dust would not only clump, but it would poof-upward and, so much so that the imprint would actually be clearly situated on top of the ground...

The notion that particulates are impressible only when wet is pure crap. As for whether it's situated above the ground, that's a matter of interpretation.

Too bad for all you braille NASA lovers; Sorry you can't seem to take a little criticism.. Just for your sake, I guess I should have stated SATAN and NASA/CIA/NSA/DoD are one in the same

Criticism we can handle. Name-calling is inappropriate.

Now, I'm not the one being RUDE!

I beg to differ.

those within the powerful NSA/DoD agencies would have had a clear and perhaps pre-authorised motivation as to concealing whatever, so that the cold-war perception of an American threat from space could be fostered and, doing whatever it took to make that happen ...

The so-called "Plan B" argument. This simply presumes that everyone believed faking it was a suitable alternative. That may be the hoax believers' presumption, but it's not mine.

I do not believe that at the time Russia had anything sufficiently capable of independently detecting our Apollo landings or even intercepting NASA data streams

Interesting. We could detect theirs. And our technology was supposed to be inferior, right? And all through the free world people were aiming dishes toward the heavens -- amateurs, students, college classes -- and hearing Apollo conversations. And we're suppose to believe that a country as technically advanced as the Soviet Union (better than the U.S. according to some hoax believers) wouldn't have been able to track our spacecraft? Especially when we were so kind as to publish the frequencies and trajectories in advance?

Now I'm not a rocket scientist ...

Obviously. Good thing I am.

those excellent closeups of the lunar-lander main engine nozzle ... Now I think that part of the engine gets hot, really hot. You tell me otherwise, PLEASE ... there is a total lack of any discoloration or discernable heat distortions

You're looking at the skirt, not the nozzle.

totally quiet from inside when in operation

No, not totally quiet. Just not able to be picked up by close-range flight mikes sealed inside quarter-inch Lexan helmets. The characteristic roar of a rocket at steady-state comes from the interaction of the exhaust gas with the surrounding air. If there's no surrounding air, all you get is flow noise through the throat. And since the throat is designed to reduced flow impediments (for obvious reasons), flow noise is negligible.

the moon color or surface tint was supposed to be ... nearly as gray ... as compared to that main rocket nozzle (approx 10% reflective)

Huh? Since when have color and albedo been equivalent concepts?

... and therefore this is nowhere as white as within many of the images

Exposure? Hello, Mr. Expert Photographer?

So, purely reflective fill-in back-lighting effects are not as likely to explain how all of those deeply shadowed areas were so extremely well illuminated

Phase? Backscatter? This author has a very simplistic notion of light, how it reflects, and what affects that.

NASA further stated the lunar exposure time was limited to early mornings and I believe I recall late afternoon, RIGHT! (I don't think so!)

Afternoon, no. Morning, yes. Where's the counter argument? The author simply says he doesn't believe it and leaves it at that. The mission profiles are all well-documented and the technology to determine accurate sun elevations is within the average preson's grasp. The author could have provided a counter argument. He simply chose to hide his head in the sand instead.

If there is in fact nothing in the way of the sun, it only stands to reason that the solar impact would be nearly (exactly) the same at high noon as it would have been at lunar sunrise ...

Totally false. The angle at which the light rays strike a surface have a profound effect on how much energy is transfered. Why do you think we have seasons?

full sun exposure represents +250 degrees and one foot or so above the lunar surface or in the shade is -250 (because there is no atmosphere)

No. Full sun exposure for a period of several days results in an equilibrium temperature for the lunar surface materia of approximately 250 F.

"A foot or so above the lunar surface" has no meaning unless there is an object at that point. If there is, the thermal properties of that object dictate its eventual equilibrium temperature.

I guess I just don't understand, what was NASA thinking when I recall they made statements to the contrary, stating that our crew(s) were somehow better protected by staying out of the mid-day solar exposures, as though early lunar mornings or late lunar afternoon sunlight was somehow less hot.

Well, I know what NASA was thinking. They were thinking of the correct principles of insolation as they apply to radiant thermodynamics and which is a basic element of any serious study of radiant heat transfer.

Another thing, if the Earth offered 16 times the light of our full moon here on Earth, then why was that not of sufficient lighting to work in.

For the same reason you don't try to park your car in the garage at night with the lights turned off. Visual landing was hard enough with full sun and appropriate shadows to work with.

that of being mostly flat terrain and, therefore not sufficiently acting as would any good photographers reflective (vertical) backdrop

The reflection is partly diffuse and partly backscatter.

I know that from my personal photographic work, which included backlighting effects

Backlighting has nothing to do with reflection. At any rate it's the same old argument: "I haven't been able to do it, therefore it's impossible."

At this point the author reiterates many of his previous arguments with a smattering of insults and condescension. Finally:

I sure hope none of you out there truly believe that every US government agency, as well as every department within, are all a bunch of joy-joy do-gooders ...

I don't, nor do I have to in order to believe that Apollo was successful. Neither must I believe that Apollo was falsified just because this author says he believes so. And of course demonstrating malfeasance in one case, or even a general trend of malfeasance, falls far short of proving malfeasance in a specific case without specific evidence.

The author keeps returning to the point of why there aren't any photographs showing both the lunar landscape and the supposedly really bright stars. I suggest he research the albedos of common earth surfaces (e.g., concrete, grass, dust, asphalt, forest) and see how much atmosphere-attenuated solar illumination they reflect, and empirically determine how that translates to photographic exposure. And then I suggest he experiment, as has Craig, with what kind of exposure would be required to expose stars, even given that he believes they're twice as bright. He talks a lot about his supposed photographic expertise. That means we should expect more from him than just handwaving. We should expect hard data like shutter speeds and f-stops.

The author has taken pains to establish himself as a somewhat expert photographer. Yet he won't put his money where his mouth is.

[Jigsaw]

Egad. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] Jay, if you aren't a Saint, you are certainly a Hero. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[I can't believe he rebutted the whole thing...]

[JayUtah]

I hope it was worth it. Refuting the assertions isn't a big deal. It's the same old naive garbage. It's the tedium of having to read that whole thing that really gets you. It's so redundant. And he needs an editor worse than I do. Somewhere in a huge paragraph of invective and name-calling and extraneous verbage might live a statement that merits an answer, but you have to wade knee-deep through all that muck to see if it's there.

I find it very amusing that someone who goes on at length about albedo hasn't tried to see if it applies to any of the earthly surfaces he's been photographing with stopped-down lenses and split-second shutter speeds. He seems to think that 10% of the light from the sun is a very small amount, photographically speaking. Most assuredly it is not.

Oh, there's an addendum to the issue of why you can't work on the earthlit nightside of the moon. The equipment does have to be kept at certain suitable temperatures. The ascent fuel, for example, has to stay at room temperature. In the dark all the heat will radiate away and there essentially won't be any. So for that equipment that has to stay above -250 F, you'd have to provide heaters. (You do anyway for some of it, but you'd need them everywhere.) That makes it heavier and use more electricity, and that means heftier batteries.

It's not very hard to control how much radiant energy something absorbs. You have isolation techniques, coatings, etc. So the sun essentially provides free heat. For equipment like electronics which generate heat, heat rejection is something of a problem. (But it would be anyway.) For biological systems (i.e., astronauts) that generate heat, heat rejection is the same problem. (Again, solvable.) But for things that don't generate heat and, but for the influx of heat from some other source, would freeze solid, there's the sun. You simply apply whatever coating brings your equipment to the desired equilibrium. You don't need to heat the ascent fuel or the gaseous O2 tank or any of the other stuff that was intentionally placed where the sun would shine on it and impart some heat.

[Geo3gh]

Cool. I never thought about needing heat in terms of why they didn't land in the dark. I always chalked it up to needing the light.

But that's why I read this section of the board. The HB's annoy me, but reading Jay's, et. al., rebuttals always educate me.

Keep up the good fight, Jay. The HB's might not learn anything, but rest assured I will.

[JayUtah]

I always chalked it up to needing the light.

That's the primary reason, but I realized I hadn't really addressed the author's argument, which was about thermal design. The problem is not always about getting rid of heat. The problem is about making sure you have the right amount of heat. That means rejecting it when you don't want it, and acquiring it when you do. When you have such a nice solar source of heat available, it's a simple matter of taking as much of it as you want and ignoring the rest.

As I recall, the Voyager spacecraft cooled its electronics by simply letting the heat radiate away through vanes into space. But if things started getting too cold, the vanes would close and simply reflect the heat back into the interior of the spacecraft.

I've seen spacecraft designs where a coolant loop simply takes heat from the sunlit side and radiates it out the shaded side. JRKeller is much more familiar than I am with the particulars and needs of thermal design, so I'll defer to him to elaborate or correct any of this.

[pvtpylot]

On 2002-06-15 23:12, JayUtah wrote:

I can ascend in a Piper Arrow, trim everything up, and the aircraft will fly straight and level without the benefit of an autopilot. If I turn the yoke, the aircraft banks. If I release the yoke, it snaps back to center (aerodynamic pressure on the control surfaces) and the aircraft will fairly quickly right itself.

While the the yoke will return to center when released, and the ailerons will return to a neutral position, the aircraft will remain in a bank until the pilot takes positive action (a reversal of the ailerons) to correct it. And, while in a bank if there is no pitch up on the Arrow's stabilator the plane will enter a downward spiral at the speed it was trimmed for. This is the "death spiral" which has claimed many an inattentive IFR pilot.

I can't believe I was finally qualified to do that! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Great write up, Jay! I've started saving some of your stuff for my son to show his friends when this subject comes up,as it seems to do more and more among young people, unfortunately. I've said it before, your posts may not impress your target audience, but I appreciate the time you spend on them!


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pvtpylot on 2002-06-16 01:49 ]</font>

[JayUtah]

While the the yoke will return to center when released, and the ailerons will return to a neutral position, the aircraft will remain in a bank until the pilot takes positive action (a reversal of the ailerons) to correct it.

Well, yes a lot of the time. I chose the Arrow specifically because it's got enough dihedral to do half-pipes on a skateboard. And I'm talking about small bank angles, not necessarily ones that would indicate a turn. (Perhaps a high-wing aircraft would have been a better example because of the pendulum effect.)

With the ailerons neutral in a shallow bank, the higher wing generates a horizontal force component. This causes the aircraft to slip. The slip alters the slipstream vector, which causes a lesser angle of attack on the upper wing and thus induces a corrective roll moment.

Now this doesn't happen on all aircraft types and at all airspeeds and air densities. This is because directional stability (chiefly the vertical stabilizer) yaws the aircraft into the new slipstream. It simply becomes a race between lateral stability and directional stability (i.e., roll moment versus yaw moment).

For fighter jets (e.g., the F-104) we introduce anhedral (the opposite of dihedral) so that the wings appear to droop. This helps induce faster roll rates. It also helps eliminate Dutch roll when the lateral stability exceeds directional stability in other aircraft. That's why we have yaw dampers on jet aircraft.

And, while in a bank if there is
no pitch up on the Arrow's stabilator the plane will enter a downward spiral

Quite true, but I hadn't intended this to be a complete flying lesson, just a discussion of the factors that affect aerodynamic stability. There's more than just computers tweaking the control surfaces 20 times a second.

[pvtpylot]

On 2002-06-16 03:00, JayUtah wrote:

Quite true, but I hadn't intended this to be a complete flying lesson, just a discussion of the factors that affect aerodynamic stability. There's more than just computers tweaking the control surfaces 20 times a second.

Much more complete explanation of dihedral stability than any I'd received to date. And, apologies for an unnecessary addition to your point. Should've known you'd left it out deliberately.
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[johnwitts]

So, all these fancy fighters have super fast computers keeping them flying straight an level, as they are inherently unstable? Can they land on their own, or do they need a pilot?

Jay, you truly are one amazing dude !!

Thanks for this extremely thorough debunking of Brad Guth´s Moon Hoax page.

There is - as always - so many good points in your debunking, so ....

Have you considered or would you consider to save these gems, debunkings of specific webpages, on Clavius ?

Sort of what you have done with:

Sibrel
(http://www.clavius.org/bibsibrel.html)

and

Collier
(http://www.clavius.org/bibcollier.html)

I would hate if some technical error occurred in Phil´s forum software and we lost all your debunkings posted here at the BA forum.

Could you "mirror" some of your best stuff, such as the above Brad Guth debunking, on Clavius ?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cyberspaced on 2002-06-16 10:07 ]</font>

[JayUtah]

Much more complete explanation of dihedral stability than any I'd received to date.

Aerodynamics sounded really simple when I was in ground school. And then when I started talking to people who practiced it for a living, I realized there was much more depth to it. Everything affects everything else. My first day on the job was a day-long seminar on supersonic airfoil flutter modes. I just sat there thinking, "Oh, crap, I'm in over my head."

As you can imagine, the Wright flyer had very poor lateral stability (no fuselage). And so the Wrights built it with anhedral wings. We tend to think of the Wrights as some bicycle makers who got lucky. On the contrary they knew a lot about what they were doing.

And, apologies for an unnecessary addition to your point.

Not at all. In truth I haven't flown an Arrow in years, so I could be remembering its handling characteristics wrong. In any case it's not hard to find other examples of passive aerodynamic stability.

[JayUtah]

Can they land on their own, or do they need a pilot?

They need a pilot. It's not an impossible problem to program a computer to land an aircraft. What happens aerodynamically and dynamically are well enough understood. But the big problem is finding the ground. Commercial airports use very sensitive and complicated equipment to provide radio "glide slopes" that can be followed by instruments on the aircraft. That's so that commercial aircraft can carry out scheduled operations even in abysmal weather (i.e., when you can't see the ground). The sort of regularity is not as important to military operations.

And there is actually a big difference in the software required for attitude control and envelope management. That's pretty simple software. But of course approach and landing requires more intelligent software.

Never fear: there is an ongoing research effort to remove the pilot from the fighter cockpit. Pilots aren't necessarily happy about this, but the problem is that aerial combat is approaching the point where the pilot's fragility is an impediment. Airframes are capable of manuevers that would injure the pilot or render him unconscious. The "edge" in future combat may be keeping the pilots on the ground and letting the high-performance aircraft duke it out.

[JayUtah]

Have you considered or would you consider to save these gems, debunkings of specific webpages, on Clavius ?

Yes, Clavius started out as a collection of such specific refutations. But in that it tends to get very repetitive I've determined only to specifically address essays that are less ephemeral. Collier's and Milne's articles appear widely and were in print. Web pages are here today, gone tomorrow.

Of course it's probably a good idea to keep something I spent hours on, whether it's ephemeral or not.

[Kaptain K]

]Never fear: there is an ongoing research effort to remove the pilot from the fighter cockpit. Pilots aren't necessarily happy about this, but the problem is that aerial combat is approaching the point where the pilot's fragility is an impediment. Airframes are capable of manuevers that would injure the pilot or render him unconscious. The "edge" in future combat may be keeping the pilots on the ground and letting the high-performance aircraft duke it out.

Dang Jay, you beat me to it.

I am sure that telefactoring is the way of the future in combat aircraft. The first time a fighter pilot goes against an RPV (remotely piloted vehicle) capable of 20+ g's in any direction will convince him. Whether he will live long enough to tell anybody is another story.

[JayUtah]

The problem is providing a ground-based pilot with sufficient information to build situational awareness of the battle. Immersive environments seem to be the best tool, but that requires considerable sensory capability in the remote vehicle and considerable communication bandwidth.

This reminds me of the ongoing debate whether manned or unmanned space exploration is better. Each side has very good points. You can send remotes much farther than humans, and much more cheaply. But the quality of the exploration benefits immeasurably from the onsite presence of an adaptive human explorer.

I'm also reminded of Wernher von Braun's comment that a human pilot was the most effective computer you could put in a spacecraft, and how they could be mass produced with relatively unskilled labor.

But of course combat and exploration have different goals and therefore different requirements.

[Conrad]

Ah, once again! Match over, scores:
Jay 100 Guth 0

I worry about Jay not being here one day - where else will we find someone who can debunk so effectively? An archive of his rebuttals would be a public resource. Lang may his lum reek.

[M_Welander]

It's quite interesting what can be done with autonomous aircraft. At Linköping University, where I study, there is at least one project going on that deals with autonomous aircraft. As my field is artificial intelligence, I've been in contact with this project a couple of time, although I haven't been involved in it directly. But the results are very impressive.

Of course, what I've seen is for civilian (traffic control, for instance) use, and not a replacement for military fighter aircraft, so it might not be entirely relevant here.

[Jim]

On 2002-06-17 05:36, Conrad wrote:
I worry about Jay not being here one day - where else will we find someone who can debunk so effectively? An archive of his rebuttals would be a public resource. Lang may his lum reek.

Well, as Jay points out, most of the HB sites are very repititious. Just save three or four of Jay's best, and then cut-and-paste as needed.

(Jay, this is not intended as encouragement to retire from the field. It's just in case your CIA-employers find something dangerous for you to do. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] )

[pvtpylot]

On 2002-06-16 12:45, JayUtah wrote:
As you can imagine, the Wright flyer had very poor lateral stability (no fuselage). And so the Wrights built it with anhedral wings. We tend to think of the Wrights as some bicycle makers who got lucky. On the contrary they knew a lot about what they were doing.

Wandering a bit OT here, but there was a news brief on AvWeb last year.

http://www.avweb.com/newswire/news0128a.html

about building the one of the replicas of the Wright Flyer to be flown at next year's celebration. Seems that no one wants to fly it as originally designed, a quote from one pilot stating, "It's like balancing a yardstick on one finger, two at one time. If you lose it, it goes -- quickly." Does make you admire the Wrights all the more, since by all accounts after their glider tests they were fully aware of the problems.

[SpacedOut]

Here is an article from Popular Science diccussing the project commissioned by the Experimental Aircraft Association of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to reconstruct the Wrights' plane for an anniversary flight at precisely 10:35 on December 17, 2003.

[pvtpylot]

On 2002-06-17 12:23, SpacedOut wrote:
Here is an article from Popular Science diccussing the project commissioned by the Experimental Aircraft Association of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to reconstruct the Wrights' plane for an anniversary flight at precisely 10:35 on December 17, 2003.

Hey, the Wright Brothers didn't save all of their blueprints and technical documents. Wonder why some conspiricist hasn't claimed the Wright Flyer was a hoax? Besides, I'm sure there has to be anomolies in those box camera photographs! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Martian Jim]

The wright flyers was a hoax, it was made by
us martians and given to you earthlings as a birthday present. your goverment then covered it up by saying some drunkards made it.

[JayUtah]

The article says the French believed the Wrights' flight was a hoax.

Modern flight management systems are quite impressive. The pilot performs the takeoff and shortly thereafter the FMS flies the aircraft from Point A to Point B at the correct altitude and keeps it from crashing. In fact, the joke goes like this: a modern airliner can be flown by a single man and a dog; the man's job is to feed the dog and the dog's job is to bite the man if he tries to touch the controls.

The FMS can even line the plane up to the correct runway at the destination airport and execute most of the landing. We are on the cusp of having ground-based flight controllers directing aircraft by means of connecting via radio to a FMS and giving the airplane commands to ascend, descend, turn, etc.

Of course this automation is a mixed blessing. While it vastly improves safety by relieving the pilot of tedious flying and by its capacity to maintain a safe flying attitude with senses and reflexes dozens of times more acute than any human pilot, at the same time it cannot (and probably should not yet try) to replace human intuition in the case of an emergency. Numerous airliner incidents have been averted or ameliorated by the human pilot's ability to defy common sense, seize the absurd, and from it extract a measure of survival.

This again speaks to the question of manned versus unmanned space exploration. The ability of a human to adapt to the situation and reach back through a lifetime of experience and alter the parameters of control in an unforeseen way is a key advantage to the exploration of unknown territory.

[jrkeller]

Well, after much thought I went to this website. Boy was it bad. Some thoughts on the "extreme thermal cycling"

I don't know if I would agree with Jay when he states "The case for such cycling is based on a very naive thermal model." I think he's being too nice. To achieve the results that Brad Guth claims his thermal model would need to have no mass, no conduction to (or from) anything, no thermal radiation to (or from) anything, absorb the same amount of solar energy as the lunar surface and emit the same amount of infrared energy as the lunar surface. I wouldn't even call these poor assumptions. This is, I need an answer, so I'll make assumptions which will give me the answer I need. One might as well just use a print statement.

On to thermal control systems. I would say that Jay is correct in stating that the landings occurred during the day at least in large part for thermal control system considerations. Once the sun stops shinning the temperature of the surface drops off quickly to -155°C (-247°F) and stays that way for the entire lunar night. At least during the lunar day, the temperature increases slowly and predictably. In the early 1990's NASA did some lunar base studies and we found that at least for the thermal control system, the night side presented more problems than the daylight. Add the fact that power from solar energy isn't available during the 14 day nights for things like heaters made for some interesting conceptual designs.





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-06-18 23:01 ]</font>