Some small facts which help prove the moon landings.

[jrkeller]

I found this site,

http://www.tak2000.com/data/planets/luna.htm

The information is taken from a JPL document. Anyway, if you read you will see that the thermal engineers for Apollo overlooked some minor effects (shadowing and heating from mountains) in their analyses and designs.

In other words, if there was a group who faked the landings, I doubt they would have included these minor effects in their faked data, not to mention the data would have to be good enough to fool the hundreds of thermal engineers who worked on this problem.

[Richard of Chelmsford]

Yes

[JayUtah]

I certainly never would have considered the radiative IR load from nearby terrain. From the whole moon, yes, while in orbit, but not from a mountain while on the surface.

A 10 C difference in radiatior temps? Am I reading that right? Eep!

I would have considered lunar dusting, but I probably would have underestimated its effect.

[jrkeller]

I certainly never would have considered the radiative IR load from nearby terrain. From the whole moon, yes, while in orbit, but not from a mountain while on the surface.

In all my years, I've only seen one analysis that included these types of effects. It was to determine the heat rejection of the PLSS when an astronaut went into a large crater (500m).

I would have considered lunar dusting, but I probably would have underestimated its effect.

Some folks at NASA have done this work. A little bit of dust can have a detrimental effect on a radiator.

[JayUtah]

I didn't read carefully enough. I thought the dust was affecting ordinary surfaces to the point where their thermal condition was significantly different. But the paper is specific about the effect of dust on radiators, which makes perfect sense. If you affect the optical properties of a radiating surface you drastically affect the ability of that radiator to reject heat.

[AGN Fuel]

I didn't read carefully enough. I thought the dust was affecting ordinary surfaces to the point where their thermal condition was significantly different. But the paper is specific about the effect of dust on radiators, which makes perfect sense. If you affect the optical properties of a radiating surface you drastically affect the ability of that radiator to reject heat.

A question for the thermal experts....

I assume that reflected IR will be primarily specular. However, stored IR that is re-radiated once the object is cast into shadow - is that diffusely radiated or does it have a preferred direction of emission? If the latter, what are the factors that dictate that direction?