
Originally Posted by
nomuse
I'll take this in inverse order, Waynee. First, of course, none of this is new. It has been discussed in detail on this board, also at ApolloHoax, explained at Clavius (and other excellent sites I'm too lazy to provide links to at the moment).
The contractors may not have known all the details of the program. They did know enough, however, to know if it is not possible. Let's take for an example the folks at Hasselblad who modified one of their cameras for the mission. Experts in photography, presumably in optics and film as well. When the pictures came back with no stars and funny shadows, did they think it was odd? No -- because they knew what to actually expect. When asked if the film melted or the casings outgassed they can also answer in the negative. That was their department. They did their job.
Same story can be followed for any of the subcontractors. Imagine someone stitching the zipper into an overgarment. "Won't this fail in vacuum?" they ask. So either they have explained to them the pressure bladder UNDER the zippered overgarment, or they blow the whistle on the insanely stupid space suit.
Now, a subtler point. You have all these contractors who believe their subsystems work. In fact, they have each delivered a workable subsystem. For every major HB argument, there is a company that supplied dosimeters or a team that hand-crinkled foil. Either these people were ALL wrong, wrong about something that fell within their specific technical field, or they were all right....and by their efforts NASA was delivered with a functional vehicle.