Apollo Hoax FAQ as posted on sci.astro.
Sometimes reasonable, more often not. Probably in the top 10% of Twinkies in rationality, not that that's saying much.
Vulcan Administrator
Apollo Hoax FAQ as posted on sci.astro.
Sometimes reasonable, more often not. Probably in the top 10% of Twinkies in rationality, not that that's saying much.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Insert awesome title here
Give me a moment.
Vulcan Administrator
Maybe we could start a pool on:Originally Posted by Glom
Give me a moment.
- how long it will take JayUtah to respond
- how long his response will be
I say before I go to bed tonight and at least 150 lines (including quotes).
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Established Member
It is interesting how this author seems, although still irrational, more impartial to some of the evidence than other (read that as Nasascam) authors. So, are we going to e-mail this chump?
Vulcan Administrator
Interestingly, there weren't any responses on sci.astro at the time.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Established Member
This person really seems to have something against Clavius and BA. A old poster?
Established Member
Well he will want to make it good. So i say Two days, 4 hours, and three min from the time i hit send. (a one hour time buffer please)Maybe we could start a pool on:Give me a moment.
- how long it will take JayUtah to respond
- how long his response will be
I say before I go to bed tonight and at least 150 lines (including quotes).
Also two lines for every one line mentinoed by the "faq" (ha!) writier.
I will bet a drink on it. You just have to come up here to get it if i am worng. :-)
Insert awesome title here
This stupid software.
Anyway, having reviewed it in depth, I was rather apalled to see that he has taken no notice of anything the debunkers have said, he's just uncritically restated the original arguments. To be fair, he has accepted the no stars and the fluttering flag argument. Most of it seems like a little bit of Aulis, a little bit of Wozney, a little bit of Collier, etc, etc. It's a bit Davish. It's full of handwaving and irrelevant analogies. He doesn't say anything about professional qualification in the field of rocketry but he does presume to question Jay who is a professional in the field of rocketry. It also features a few circularities where he ignores BoP.
In short, no much is new here. I doubt Jay will waste the time I did on it, but I copied it into the posting window before reading it and a read and debunked at the same time.
Insert awesome title here
Oh and BTW
Order of Kilopi
Ask and ye shall receive.
In recent years there have been many criticisms and refutations made in various media of the Apollo record ...
First, the conspiracy theory is as old as the principal missions themselves. This is not a new phenomenon. This comment is not a nitpick; new readers pick up the old books and cling to their conclusions without searching for the easily-found debunkings. This illustrates the same failure in reason as initially prevailed when they were first published. As with many polemical subjects, the moon landing hoax theory goes in cycles. A new crop of naive readers picks up the latest rehash and there follows a period of excitement after which the topic dies down.
Second, the conspiracy theories published by the authors Mr. Jones is about to name are not "refutations". A refutation employs logic in a structured analysis of an argument entitled to expose flaws in its premises or inferences. The conspiracy theory -- often by its own admission -- does nothing of the sort. It merely offers a different explanation for the visible facts without necessarily showing any flaws in the prior explanations.
The criticisms and refutations by authors such as David Percy, Ralph Rene, the late James Collier, Bill Ka[y]sing ...
The whole gamut of conspiracy theorists, none of whom was qualified to study the topic and none of whom will engage in any serious public discussion of their findings.
... take the form of analysis of the photographic record and video footage shot by NASA astronauts
None of the named authors, save perhaps David Percy, has any expertise, training, or experience in photographic analysis. David Percy claims to be a photographer and filmmaker, but I submit that photography and filmmaking do not require the same set of skills as photographic interpretation and analysis. At any rate, the techniques employed by these authors (including Percy) are crude and ad hoc, and bear no resemblance to accepted, well-proven techniques of photographic analysis. The authors have simply formulated their own ad hoc techniques which, not surprisingly, lead to the authors' predetermined conclusions without exploring any real science.
These sources of [anti-hoax] information regularly deal with the
same questions and principles but in many instances they fail to
correctly describe the situation.
It will be interesting to discover whether Mr. Jones' definition of "correct" is "agrees with me." As I state plainly on Clavius, the reader is often referred to standard works on the various subjects with which my assertions can be corroborated.
... in order to conclude that the proof of the so called manned moon landings is no proof at all.
Irrelevant. As the conspiracy theorists are challenging the prevailing interpretation of historical events it is up to them to prove the case. They may not simply find fault or insufficiency in the traditional interpretation and then substitute -- without proof or substantiation -- some other arbitrary question. Mr. Jones from the start is attacking a straw man. He wishes to equate the question of whether the landings were hoaxed to the question of sufficiency of evidence to prove the landings. They are most certainly not identical questions.
I would remind the reader that It's up to scientists and claimants of this or that fact to provide proof of their claims.
Yes and no. While he who alleges a fact is responsible for proving it, the issue of falsifiability often introduces a presumption. You cannot assert a hypothesis which is impossible to falsify.
That's how it works in science. It's called the scientific method.
No. The scientific method is exactly about falsifiability. I hear many people talk about "the scientific method" as if they understood it, but if they are talking about the hypothetico-deductive method codified by Karl Popper and his forebears, and upon which most modern science is based, they are wrong.
The scientific method is exactly to find a hypothesis which can be shown true or false by some means -- frequently by empiricism. The conspiracy theorists do not understand this. They present a hypothesis which cannot be resoundingly disproven (to the rigor of deduction). Therefore they have the burden of proof in all cases.
If we find flaws or errors in their method or in the results of their scientific work then we may call in to question the validity of their claims.
Basically true. However calling the validity of one's claims into question does not immediately validate or even suggest some other hypothesis. Especially if that hypothesis is even more riddled with error and misconception.
Let us be clear: history is not science. While Apollo deals with both, it is not the requirement of historians that all their evidence be entirely consistent. That is simply not how historians work. Simply picking a nit here or there does not constitute a "refutation" of the Apollo claim.
Though it's correct that stars will have been absent from the lunar photographic images it is strange that none of the astronauts remarked on the stars in the sky. The stars really will have been a magnificent sight at all times from the Moon.
No. The same principles of physics which prevent the photographic film from capturing stars at daylight settings prevent the eyes from perceiving stars as "magnificent". This is simply Bill Kaysing's unsubstantiated argument. The human eye's mechanisms for photoelectric perception -- the iris and the chemical condition of the retina -- are, on the lunar surface, set for daylight.
The chances are that some hollows and crevices will contain trapped dust but all of the images I have seen look remarkably clean.
The author presumes that dust will be prominent or noticeable somehow in photography. If the dust forms a "patina" (quite likely if static electricity is involved), it may not be especially visible in photography. But still, the notion that the footpads and blowing dust were in the same place at the same time is easily contradicted by physics and by Aldrin's observations.
Aldrin testified -- and fluid dynamics research confirms -- that the blown dust from the exhaust hugged the ground in a sheet. Since the exhaust gas (and the particles it was driving) was moving on the order of 5,000 meters per second, the cessation of the exhaust at engine cutoff would cause the last particles it affected to leave the area of the LM at high speed before the lander had even descended more than a few inches from cutoff height.
The LM cabin will have been filled with the sound from the engine and control thrusters.
No, not really. You get ignition transients -- "pops" -- and a bit of propellant flow noise through fittings -- "hiss" -- but you don't get the roar of a rocket firing in the atmosphere.
Further, the astronauts had their helmets on. The microphones were inside that.
[b] [Quoting Wozney's site quoting Entering Space]"The forward primary thrusters sound like exploding cannons at thrust onset ..."
Yes, that's an ignition transient. Further, the photo reproduced from Entering Space has a caption clearly identifying it as an ignition transient. Wozney chose not to reproduce the caption because, as most laymen don't, he doesn't understand what an ignition transient is and how it fits into expected rocket behavior.
I have personally heard the engine noise during the captains air to ground radio broadcasts on many occassions.
Actually the microphones are specially constructed to cut engine noise. What Mr. Jones has heard is cockpit noise in CVR recordings, which specifically do not use filtering microphones in order to pick up forensic cabin noise. Aviation microphones -- including those used for Apollo -- have for years employed selected high- and low-pass filters to isolate human voices.
Well, I have never heard of a silent rocket engine.
That's because you've never been aboard a rocket in space.
rocket propulsion is essentially a form of controlled explosion.
True. Explosions are silent in space for the same reason that rockets are largely silent in space. Explosions are noisy on earth because they wreak havoc with the surrounding air. Ditto for rocket engines. The roar Mr. Jones expects is the interaction of the exhaust plume with the air.
However it is known that the LM engine and the space shuttle orbiter both use hypergolic fuel engines of the same type and same fuel
No. That's like saying a Diesel locomotive and a passenger car both use the same fuel. Diesel fuel, kerosene, gasoline, methane -- these are all hydrocarbons combusted with ambient air used for propulsion. They share a great deal of chemical similarity, but they are not identical. Nor are their combustion characteristics identical.
Aerozine 50 (UDMH/hydrazine) is not the same as monomethyl hydrazine, which the space shuttle uses.
and yet the space shuttle orbiter does produce a visible exhaust flame and the LM somehow did not.
Mr. Jones points only to the verbal descriptions of shuttle thrusters and to the photograph of the ignition transient. If he would consult videotape of the space shuttle's engines firing -- for example as seen from the ISS -- and with the other examples of Aerozine-fueled engines on my web site (which he has seen, but choses to cite selectively) he will see that the LM's behavior is entirely consistent with engines of this type.
As a matter of fact, the shuttle most frequently operates in "pulse mode" which rapidly turns the thrusters on and off. This results in several ignition transients during a particular manuever.
I don't expect laymen to understand or realize this. But then again I don't expect layman to pass themselves off as experts.
The Titan2 rocket used exactly the same fuel and oxidizer mix as the LM and yet it produced copious amounts of highly visible flame ...
Aerozine 50 was invented for the Titan 2, however the Titan 1 used a different fuel. Many people think all Titans are created equal.
There is a very large difference between burning an Aerozine 50 rocket in the air and burning one in a vacuum. My web site has video of an Aerozine-fueled engine burning flamelessly in a vacuum.
I wonder where Mr. Jones has seen "copious amounts" of flame from a Titan 2 launch. I have photos of Titan 2 launches on my web site, showing the characteristic invisible flame of that rocket very shortly after the ignition transient. I really don't think Mr. Jones has seen as many rocket launches as he suggests he has.
I say it's flawed because the exhaust bell in the "LM" type image is nothing like the real thing. The one in the picture flares out at 45 degrees thus diluting the luminosity of the exhaust flame greatly.
Duh. That's because this rocket -- like the lunar module's engine -- is designed to operate at high altitudes and even in a vacuum. That's why it's being tested in a high-altitude chamber! The need to flare the nozzle for an ambient vacuum is a well-known principle of rocket design. I'm surprised Mr. Jones doesn't know this.
Even so it is still visible even against what appears to be a bright background.
No. This is inside a building with the lights turned off.
... if a real exhaust bell had been used then the flame would have been much brighter and thus easily visible against a dark background like the lunar sky.
No. The camera settings were for daylight. My video of an Aerozine-fueled rocket firing against the blackness of space shows a flash only at the ignition transient, and then no flame.
Mr. Jones, like most laymen, equates "black sky" with "dark conditions." That is not true.
Also the exhaust bell on the LM will have been only a couple of
feet above ground
No. The engine cutoff was when the footpads were five feet off the surface. The engine bell was two feet higher than that.
NASA is still to this day having trouble with vertical take off and landing
rockets. The last known attempt ended in a crashed landing in 1996.
... after several successful test flights including VTOL tests. Mr. Jones is simply repeating what he's heard without checking any facts.
lunar landing research vehicles and lunar landing training vehicles but they were nothing like the LM.
That's right. They had to deal with atmospheric disturbances, increased gravity (increased moment from off-axis thrust), and had no computer. They were less capable craft, and they flew hundreds of times.
The LM also had 16 small (110 pound) thrusters for attitude control and
translation complicating matters considerably ...
That's like saying a rudder complicates sailing considerably.
however NASA claims that the regolith (the powdered rock and rubble) that covers the Moon is 5 to 15 metres deep.
But it is not at the same degree of compaction all the way down. Every engineer -- and anyone who's had to dig a post hole -- knows this.
In parts of the rover footage "vertical walls" or "curtain" formations of dust are seen to form in the wake of the dust kicked up by the rear wheels.
No, it's still simple ballistics. The conspiracists make narrow estimates of exit trajectories.
Small particles of dust encountering atmosphere will have their ballistic flight path impeded to the point where sideways velocity drops to zero.
But the same is true of vertical velocity. How is it that the "stopping" of the particles in the horizontal direction is evidence of an atmosphere, but the immediatel dropping of the particles to the surface is not evidence of a vacuum? In fact the horizontal "stopping" has a different explanation -- a largely vertical exit trajectory.
See also this image at htp://www.empusa.clara.net/lunar/lunar6.jpg and notice that clouds of dust form behind the rover's wheels. It looks just like there is an atmosphere!
That judgment cannot be reliably made from a still photograph. It is necessary to examine the 16mm DAC footage which shows a purely ballistic arc, in complex patterns due to the slight differences in exit trajectories.
You would only get random motions like that when factors due to atmosphere come into play.
False. You get relative motion from different ballistic conditions. Atmosphere creates chaotic motion. The observed motion is far from chaotic, it is purely ballistic. The dust patterns "roil" backwards exactly as ballistics suggests for particles with slightly different trajectories but almost identical velocities.
Jodrell Bank and sundry government scientists might have pointed their antennae at the Moon but none of that will prove man set foot on the Moon.
It is when the operators of that equipment have interactive conversations with astronauts over those dishes, with a time delay that precludes a double-relay.
The Russians deposited a reflector during their Luna (Lunakhod) series of unmanned missions to the Moon some time in the early nineteen seventies.
True. I never considered the LRRR a particularly sound proof. However the Apollo LRRR arrays are considerably better aligned and much more usefull than the Soviets'. This suggests greater skill at alignment.
Keep in mind that Mr. Jones said at the top that claims must be substantiated. Here he is simply contriving a hypothetical explanation. NASA claims to have landed a man on the moon. As partial proof of that, they can point you to a precisely aligned LRRR. Now you can say it might have got there by some other means, but then you're not proving anything. You're simply conjecturally trying to explain away someone else's proof.
The nature of historical evidence is not that it be impossible to fake. That's much too high a standard of evidence. If you allow me to employ purely conjectural explanations, I can dismiss proof of D-Day or of any other historical event.
The only means of detecting a fraud would have been from
the "leakage" that may have resulted in relaying communications from the Earth to the capsule in order to make it appear to originate from the capsule or from the lunar surface.
No, that's not the only means. Double-relay requires twice the transmission time. Over lunar distances that's significant. Double relays also require two transmissions for each message -- easily detectable.
microwave links are highly directional and thus inherantly very "leak proof"
Not with a one-meter dish. Even with Goldstone's dish the beam width is something like a 0.3 degree. That's enough to pretty much blanket the whole moon from earth. With a one-meter dish the beam is considerably wider, and you can't simply aim it at one point on the earth and expect it to be hidden from the other portions.
... frequency hopping, spread spectrum techniques, encryption and any other unusual modulation methods ...
All of which the Soviets knew about. And with SIGINT it's not necessarily what they're saying that's important. It's the fact that they're talking.
If the LM wasn't fit to land on and takeoff from the Moon then why would anyone risk any space manouvers with it?
Converting a conditional. If that were true, then the allegation would make sense. However, it's not true.
[quoting Aulis] "According to an expert at DERA in the UK: Radiation is the biggest show stopper affecting mankinds exploration of the universe. ..."
It is, but don't confuse general comments with specific circumstances. Quick jaunts to the moon and back don't expose the astronauts to an unacceptable risk of solar flares.
[b]"... travelled during a solar maximum period, a time when there was a likelyhood of three or four severe flares per mission."
Not according to any data on solar flare activity that I've seen. This "expert" is grossly overestimating the number of serious flares that occur during a solar max.
It's just not possible to accurately predict when a solar flare
will occur.
But that's not the problem. You can't say, "The next solar flare will occur on April 28, 2004." But you can say, "There's a 0.36% chance that a solar flare will occur during the two weeks of a particular upcoming Apollo mission." It's pure statistics, and it's not hard.
That's right, they gambled with the astronauts lives.
Only in the same way you gamble with your life when you climb into your car. Get over it.
But the command module didn't have the sheilding to protect against
a severe flare. Oops! Another NASA clanger.
The invective is right out of Ralph Rene. You can tell where Mr. Jones has done his "research".
That's basically true, however the CSM orbiting the moon with the tail toward the flare would have given the astronauts a fighting chance at survival.
[quoting NASA] "The Moon relects only 7% of the sunlight that falls upon it, so the albedo is 0.07."
7% of sunlight is still horrendously bright. I can easily photograph in that much light.
Albedo is a crude measurement of luminosity. The conspiracists have done no luminance studies. They expect us to do that to disprove them.
The hot spot is indicative of spot lighting and will not be caused by the Sun which illuminates all the ground equally and that is in spite of what they say on the badastronomy dot com website.
The sun does not illuminate a texture surface evenly.
Any "heiligenschein" effect in the above image should be invisible as the Sun is way off to the right.
Where has it been claimed that the effect is due to Heiligenschein? There are other effects which affect how light is perceived from a textured surface.
They must have used a spotlight to take that photograph because the hotspot cannot have been caused by the heiligenschein effect.
False dilemma.
In these images Mt Hadley is the back drop but with a small change in veiwing position and a slight increase in camera height of a couple of feet the top of Mt Hadley has completely changed it's angle relative to the
horizontal.
Parallax.
In some NASA film footage included in the late Jim Collier's video "Was it only a paper Moon?" Young and Duke of Apollo 16 can be seen against exactly the same backdrop on two different EVA's (EVA1 and EVA2)
Collier's video used the PR film Nothing So Hidden and pretended it was primary material. The narrator in Nothing So Hidden is, in fact, wrong. But that's not Apollo's fault.
[quoting another web site]"Ordinary ektachrome slide film will shatter at -4F"
That's because ordinary Ektachrome slide film is on the standard cellolose base, not on the high-altitude polyester Estar base.
At the distance of the Earth (and this goes for the Moon too) the amount of heat energy in the "vacuum" of space amounts to 1.36Kw per square metre also known as the solar irradiance.
True, but form factors and angles of irradiation affect this drastically.
Further, "heat" as used in the sciences of thermodynamics and heat transfer is not identical to electromagnetic energy from the sun. The latter may be converted to the former by absorption, but factors such as absorptivity and surface temperature apply.
Claims that astronauts landed on the Moon during the "lunar morning" in order to "avoid noon day heat" are ridiculous.
Not according to qualified thermal engineers.
surface temperatures (not the regular air temperature measurements) may reach 200 degrees fahrenheit on Earth in places like deserts and so forth.
The angle of insolation changes rapidly on earth. It does not on the moon.
If we consider that during the night the temperature may in all probability have dropped to freezing (-32F) or near freezing ...
The freezing point of water is 32 F, not -32 F. The lunar surface is cooled to about -200 F. It would take a considerable influx of energy to bring it to 32 F.
The same applies to astronauts standing on the lunar ground. They too will present a perpendicular side to the rays from an early morning Sun.
Hence the Chromel space suits, which reflect nearly all the incident light.
The curator at JSC claims that sample sizes are of the order of
a few tens of milligrams.
No. There are very much larger samples.
According to Jim Collier "30 billion dollars were spent in
sending man to the moon but all the paper work has been flushed
down the toilet".
No. I can find more information about Apollo that on nearly any historical topic. I have been able easily locate any technical material I have desired.
All claims require evidence and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (favourite skeptic/debunker terms of evidential proof).So where is it?
Right in front of your nose. You've spent considerable effort trying to explain it away with nothing more than bad science and conjecture.
Established Member
Antoher great one JayUtah! :-)
p.s. Dang less than a day. Where is that edit button before someone sees my above post? ;-)
Established Member
Quick question:
Could you please explain this for me?
Thanks.
Added: I mean the human eye part.
Vulcan Administrator
Obviously I was way too pessimistic in every respect.I say before I go to bed tonight and at least 150 lines (including quotes).
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Established Member
I count 439 lines. Who wins the pool?I say before I go to bed tonight and at least 150 lines (including quotes).
Established Member
Just a quick comment or two:
Also, there are more reflectors on the Moon than the Russians say that Lunokhod placed, (six, obviously) and they are too far apart to have been placed in their positions by Lunokhod.The Russians deposited a reflector during their Luna (Lunakhod) series of unmanned missions to the Moon some time in the early nineteen seventies.
True. I never considered the LRRR a particularly sound proof. However the Apollo LRRR arrays are considerably better aligned and much more usefull than the Soviets'. This suggests greater skill at alignment.
Agreed. It is rare to have three or four a month, let alone likely to happen in 10 days or so. [/b]"... travelled during a solar maximum period, a time when there was a likelyhood of three or four severe flares per mission."
Not according to any data on solar flare activity that I've seen. This "expert" is grossly overestimating the number of serious flares that occur during a solar max.
Also, even though the author continaully says the LM should produce visible exhaust, what would have seen this exhaust? Is he referring to 15, 16, and 17's LRV videos?However it is known that the LM engine and the space shuttle orbiter both use hypergolic fuel engines of the same type and same fuel
No. That's like saying a Diesel locomotive and a passenger car both use the same fuel. Diesel fuel, kerosene, gasoline, methane -- these are all hydrocarbons combusted with ambient air used for propulsion. They share a great deal of chemical similarity, but they are not identical. Nor are their combustion characteristics identical.
Aerozine 50 (UDMH/hydrazine) is not the same as monomethyl hydrazine, which the space shuttle uses.
and yet the space shuttle orbiter does produce a visible exhaust flame and the LM somehow did not.
What do you mean by "flare out"? Do you mean increasing diameter very quickly?The need to flare the nozzle for an ambient vacuum is a well-known principle of rocket design. I'm surprised Mr. Jones doesn't know this.
Neither of these statements offers either proof of the hoax nor any fact. Even ignoring the spelling error, I cannot see why the command module's lack of extremely heavy shielding proves we didn't go to the Moon. Mercury, Gemini, Soyuz, Vostok, Voskhod, the Shuttle, Salyut, Skylab, and the ISS did not have heavy radiation shielding (or any at all) and most of the mweathered space storms at one time or another.That's right, they gambled with the astronauts lives.
Only in the same way you gamble with your life when you climb into your car. Get over it.
But the command module didn't have the sheilding to protect against
a severe flare. Oops! Another NASA clanger.
What's the Heilgenschein effect?Where has it been claimed that the effect is due to Heiligenschein? There are other effects which affect how light is perceived from a textured surface.
This is also some of the stronger proofs, as it proves the mountains are three-dimensional objects. It astounds me this author would mention that- this is one of Apollo's supporting facts. In fact, this totally discards the notion it could be a backdrop.In these images Mt Hadley is the back drop but with a small change in veiwing position and a slight increase in camera height of a couple of feet the top of Mt Hadley has completely changed it's angle relative to the
horizontal.
Parallax.
As with many conspiracist quotes, I see no basis for that claim, nor how it would help if it were true.Claims that astronauts landed on the Moon during the "lunar morning" in order to "avoid noon day heat" are ridiculous.
Not according to qualified thermal engineers.
Even the sample at the Air and Space Museum is larger than that.The curator at JSC claims that sample sizes are of the order of
a few tens of milligrams.
No. There are very much larger samples.
Established Member
Jay said (about Apollo paperwork): "I can find more information about Apollo that on nearly any historical topic. I have been able easily locate any technical material I have desired."
Me too! On my little visit to the Tidbinbilla archives last week, I saw one volume of a handbook which was (I think) the operating manual for the Command Module. Thoroughly uninteresting reading for most people, but I would've loved to have a bit of a look and see how much I understood!
Another book contained photographs of EVERYTHING related to the station. Most of it was understandable - pictures of wiring, or of the construction of computers or the dishes, for the benefit of later engineers. But some of seems strange in retrospect: when someone had a prang near the station, they took a heap of photos of the car from various angles, and also the armco barrier the car ran into.
To suggest a lack of paperwork is to completely ignore the anal retentive world (to the rest of us) that engineers seem to live in (absolutely no disrespect intended!).
Established Member
If I understand your question correctly, it's like this: the iris opens or closes to regulate the amount of light admitted to the retina. At night time, your iris will open to admit more light, while during the day, your iris will constrict.Quick question:
Could you please explain this for me?
Thanks.
Added: I mean the human eye part.
During Apollo, the astronauts walked on the Moon while the Sun was above the horizon. Therefore, their irises would have constricted to limit the sunlight entering their eyes. Now this would have only been the case when they were facing the Sun and in sunlight. However, even if they were in shade, but looking at sunlit objects, their irises would still be constricted. There simply wouldn't have been any opportunity for their irises to open sufficiently to see stars.
When J mission (Apollos 15 to 17) Command Module Pilots did their space walks to retrieve stuff from the SIM bay, they couldn't see the stars with their gold faceplates lowered. This bugged Tom Mattingly on Apollo 16 so much that he briefly raised his faceplate, allowing him to see the stars.
So to say that the astronauts never commented on the brightness of stars is essentially wrong as well.
Established Member
Any attempts at a pool are usually pointless because Jay will always post before the bets can be made. :-) (PS: Glom is getting pretty good at it too. Sorry about your lost post.)
Actually, there are 3 ranging retroreflectors, placed by Apollos 11, 14, and 15. A15's is about 3 times the size of the other two.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apol...and_Status.htm
The astronauts gambled with their own lives. They were, for the most part, former test pilots who made a living gambling with their lives, and they were all volunteers. They knew the risks, better than anyone else I expect, yet they went ahead anyway. Heck, I probably would have done the same even if I didn't know all the risks.That's right, they gambled with the astronauts lives.
The BA describes it here. Basically, the lunar regolith contains innumerable glass beads created from meteor impacts that act like little reflectors. Light shone upon it tends to get reflected back towards it's source.
I think he's more talking about the change of angles between the photos. But I could be wrong, because all that requires is for the cameraman to tilt the camera a bit.In these images Mt Hadley is the back drop but with a small change in veiwing position and a slight increase in camera height of a couple of feet the top of Mt Hadley has completely changed it's angle relative to the
horizontal.
Parallax.
Established Member
Thanks Peter B. that was what i wanted. :-)
Now you braught up another question: Were they not able to see stars throught to gold faceplate because of the same effect, or because the gold faceplate dimmed the stars too much?
Established Member
Second reason I think. It's the same effect (basically) as wearing sun glasses: they block the light.
Order of Kilopi
Added: I mean the human eye part.
The human eye has two cooperative mechanisms for controlling "exposure". First, the iris opens and closes to admit more or less light as necessary. This is a fairly fast response. You can see it yourself in a mirror. Second, a chemical change occurs in the retina to adjust its sensitivity. This happens more slowly. This is why it takes time for your eyes to adjust to different lighting.
Order of Kilopi
His understanding of temperature and heat in a vacuum is non-existent.
I can tell that he has visited some of the BBs I belong to, because he's copied my posts word for word.
I especially love point (24).
It is impossible to determine the temperature of any surface whether in a vacuum or not without doing some sort of thermal analysis. Even Rene Ralph knows better.
The equilibrium temperature of the lunar surface or any other surface in a vacuum is a function of the optical properties of the surface, the sun angle, the amount of area that absorbs solar energy, the amount of area that rejects or absorbs heat from the surroundings. Solving for the temperature under these conditions requires numerical analysis techniques.
Order of Kilopi
Also, there are more reflectors on the Moon than the Russians say that Lunokhod placed, (six, obviously) and they are too far apart to have been placed in their positions by Lunokhod.
I don't think Mr. Jones means to say that Lunokhod placed all the Apollo LRRRs. The argument is typically that the LRRRs could have been placed by unmanned probes launched from the United States.
This argument lures people into accepting a lower standard of proof than would normally be required. Mr. Jones wants us to think that the LRRR is evidence only if it can be demonstrated that there is no possible way for it to have been deployed other than by an astronaut. That's not how it works. For any event or circumstance you can always postulate a number of hypothetical explanations, some more absurd than others.
The LRRRs are aligned to a much greater degree than their Russian counterparts. They are at the Apollo landing sites. Conspiracists cannot provide any evidence of the existence of the unmanned spacecraft they say could have placed the LRRRs. We have evidence of the existence of the spacecraft and crew we say put the LRRRs there. That's a lot stronger case.
Agreed. It is rare to have three or four a month, let alone likely to happen in 10 days or so.
Yes. And they're directional, and vary in intensity. The argument that several happen per week is simply not supported by any astronomical data.
What do you mean by "flare out"? Do you mean increasing diameter very quickly?
Yes, sorry. A picture is worth a thousand words. Nozzles intended for a vacuum are wider than those intended for atmospheric use. That is, the ratio of diameter to length is greater for vacuum nozzles.
The important measure is the nozzle ratio, also called the expansion ratio. It's the inside diameter at the exit plane compared to the inside diameter in the throat.
Remember, the nozzle's job is to convert pressure to velocity. The convergent-divergent nozzle wants to make all the exhaust gas leave the nozzle in a nice laminar, cylindrical flow. In a vacuum that's hard to do.
Neither of these statements offers either proof of the hoax nor any fact.
You're supposed to be appalled that NASA would do this. That they would "have" to do it is supposed to be evidence that they wouldn't and therefore didn't. I'm perfectly serious; you gamble with your life every time you get in your car, go swimming, climb aboard an airplane, or put food in your mouth. The conspiracists want you to think space travel is -- or should be -- plausible only when made perfectly safe. That's simply unrealistic.
What's the Heilgenschein effect?
Heiligenschein is German for "halo". It gets its name because it always appears around the head of a person's shadow who's seeing it, much like the halo (technically the "nimbus") around a saint's head in medieval art.
It's caused by two effects. Primarily it's because at a phase angle of zero, objects hide their own shadows, so you don't see any of it in a textured surface. The other effect, a lesser effect, is the reflection in translucent spherical reflectors, of which some of the lunar dust is composed. See the photo at the bottom of
http://www.clavius.org/a11rear.html
for an example.
This is also some of the stronger proofs, as it proves the mountains are three-dimensional objects.
If you look carefully, especially in Apollo 17 photographs, you can see parallactical shifts in the details of the distant mountains. Now recall that these are supposed to be "identical" backgrounds.
As with many conspiracist quotes, I see no basis for that claim, nor how it would help if it were true.
Mr. Jones apparently hopes that none of his readers are serious students of thermodynamics. And in most cases he would be correct.
Even the sample at the Air and Space Museum is larger than that.
The sample at my planetarium downtown is only a bit smaller than a Twinkie. The quotation from the JSC curator has to be taken out of context. There are numerous samples larger than dust grains -- the Genesis Rock being a notable example.
Established Member
Well, when in doubt, consult the ALSJ (Apollo 16, at Plum Crater): "Great Scott is a 9.6 kg piece of basalt that Dave Scott collected at the edge of Hadley Rille. At the time, it was by far the largest Apollo sample. Big Muley, sample 61016, is an 11.7 kg breccia with a dark matrix and light-colored clasts. The largest Apollo 17 sample is 70215, an 8.1 kg basalt. NASA photo S72-41545 is a post-mission portrait of Big Muley."
Insert awesome title here
The point I was going to make regarding his statement that NASA has BoP regarding Apollo is that they have provided photographic documentation, transcripts, scientific results and documentation of the development of the technology. They have satisfied BoP. If the conspiracists want to say the evidence is falsified, they have BoP. We can't operate on the idea that proof has to be incontravertible, because to a conspiracist, there is no such thing. Whatever is necessary for the conspiracy to have occured is possible, no matter how outlandish.
Established Member
In reference to one's ability to see the stars when in daylight, on the moon. I believe that your vision is impaired because the rods in your eye are in effect "shut down." In bright light the cones in the eye are the only active photo recepters. The cones are much smaller and less abundant then the rods. The rods are for night vision. In reality, even on the moon, the stars are not all that particualarily bright, and therefore, the cone receptors are unable to detects the photons from the stars easily. As for the camera's inability? do not know.
Established Member
IIRC, there is a chemical reaction responsible for the detection of light photons. When conditions are bright then the chemical will be present in small quantities in the retina due to it's conversion by light. When it is dark then large quantities will be present thus allowing the detection of fainter objects.
Order of Kilopi
I've posted two parts of a response to Nathan Jones' FAQ to sci.astro. We'll see how this goes.
I've deliberately introduced some minor errors into them. They're not really material to the arguments, but this is a calculated tactic. It gives "Mr. Jones" a choice. He can either respond to the material points raised, or he can nitpick and quibble about minor errors. Experience has shown that this is an effective method for flushing out people who simply like to argue and win "brownie" points by any means. Jones has claimed he's genuinely interested in being corrected; this will determine that.
For example, I've described the structure of hydrocarbons in a slightly simplified fashion.
I'm revealing the strategy here because it only works if you tell someone else about it ahead of time.
Established Member
Both rods & cones are photoreceptor cells containing visual pigments that enable them to process photons. Rods detect light at low intensity (or scotopic conditions), do not detect colour and have poor image resolution. Cones require higher intensity light (photopic conditions), detect light and have better resolution. Cones are preferentially located toward the centre of the retina in a region called the macula. Cone distribution decreases rapidly in the paramacular area (and accordingly visual acuity decreases sharply if you are not looking directly at an object - try reading this post with your eyes even a couple of degrees off!). Although the rods far outnumber the cones (roughly 10^8 as opposed to 6x10^7) they are found preferentially 'in the suburbs'. Their low intensity abilities are noted when using "averted vision" - we are better able to make out faint objects in low light by not looking directly at the object. By looking slightly to one side, we are allowing the photons to fall onto the region of the retina where the rods are more prevalent than the cones.IIRC, there is a chemical reaction responsible for the detection of light photons. When conditions are bright then the chemical will be present in small quantities in the retina due to it's conversion by light. When it is dark then large quantities will be present thus allowing the detection of fainter objects.
The amount of light entering the eye is controlled by the iris diaphram by opening/closing the pupil to an appropriate extent to provide sufficient light to maximise cone activation (thereby providing the best visual acuity).
I would hypothesise that in the relatively high light intensity environment that the astronauts encountered on the moon, there is sufficient reflected light to reduce the size of the pupil & also to activate the cones. Even if they were looking relatively upward towards the dark sky, there is still going to be reflected light from the lunar surface, LM, PLSS etc, entering the pupil. Given the cones provide a high-acuity signal, it would make sense that the brain will preferentially utilise signals from the cones if available in order to form an image. With the cones providing the data, only the brighter stars would form an image. I have seen no studies regarding this point and may well be completely wrong, but it would seem possible.
I will have a dig around & see if I can find anything about this. Interesting question though!
Established Member
I just read those posts.
All I have to say is:
Actually I do have something else to say...
I wonder what Mr Jones will say in response?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote