The Moon Landing Hoax show is definitely over

[solomarineris]

I had this little nagging doubt, for which I was viciously attacked, (which is fine, I wouldn't take any doubts away if I could then).
The pictures of artifacts, Rover tracks we left behind is unmistakable, it is as factual as it gets.
Personally my doubts (5%) were justified, when I heard hair-rising, close calls in every Moon voyage courageous astronauts attempted, delivered.
I don't believe in luck, prayer or anything extraordinary, beyond human capability but this whole Apollo Moon project was riddled with good luck after good luck, (I am grateful for it).
In today's strict NASA standards, Apollo program would never allowed to take shape. Personally I am glad that we didn't have those checks/balances otherwise we'd never land the Moon.
Over the weekend I went to Space Center (one of the perks I have living in Houston), it is like a kindergarten there, fun for the kids, they do a great job appealing to future generations but artifacts were the reason why I visited; spacesuits, moonrocks. A15 Command Module was something to see; all those burned marks seemed fresh.
But nothing prepares you to digest Saturn5 image, it is beyond anything I could visualize, Ive seen before her restoration. She is as beautiful as any Spaceship I've seen in Sci-Fi fantasy movies or TV. If you go there hoping to see pictures, you need a fisheye lens to get whole spaceship, even then, no lens does adequate job IMHO, I'm sure professional photographers can do a better job than me;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7528526...0sbcglobal.net
If you enthusiasts haven't seen her, you won't know what you are missing.

[ginnie]

beyond human capability but this whole Apollo Moon project was riddled with good luck after good luck, (I am grateful for it).

Do you have some good examples of this?

[Swift]

I don't believe in luck, prayer or anything extraordinary, beyond human capability but this whole Apollo Moon project was riddled with good luck after good luck, (I am grateful for it).

I suspect that the astronauts of Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 would not agree with that statement.

But, if I understand correctly, you now completely believe that the landings were not hoaxed. Good for you.

[KaiYeves]

Yes, I agree that everyone should have the experience of seeing a Saturn V.

[solomarineris]

Do you have some good examples of this?

Yes I do;
1# If you went to NASA today with the same Apollo Mission print in your hand & time frame they would look at you like a lunatic.
2# Apollo 11 developed a hydrogen leak day before, imagine what a spark could do.
3#Somebody even circulated a memo warning them the ejection module would never work because 2 seconds would not be enough to get Astro's out of harms way. An explosion would devour whole thing in less than a second
4# Some guys were working 20+ hours every day, imagine the burn-out
5# Computers were amazingly primitive, Mission Control had mainframes laid all over the place, most of them were useless and the ones worked would not equal to a laptops intelligence.
6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today. Can you imagine playing an Atari 800 game on it? The car I am driving daily basis has manyfolds more computing power.

But they did it, what a feat to accomplish. Do I care what kinda limitations they had, it looks even more fantastic
I got this information
Skeptics Guide #209 - Jul 22 2009 podcast Most of these guys are physicians, they had numerous interviews with Phil Plait. Just do your independent research.

To me nothing diminishes, takes away what they have accomplished.
It is the greatest human story, perhaps equaled by Columbus' voyage to discovering of Americas.

[solomarineris]

I suspect that the astronauts of Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 would not agree with that statement.
But, if I understand correctly, you now completely believe that the landings were not hoaxed. Good for you.

Comeon, swift, cut me some slack. I don't go to bed with these conspiratorial stories, this whole mission was too perfect, too good with the exception of #13, even then we didn't lose those guys. It was as good ending as any Star Trek Movie.

Orbital pictures were great, if any of you guys come across bizarre explanations of hoaxers let me know. It would be entertaining to raed.

[tofu]

1# If you went to NASA today with the same Apollo Mission print in your hand & time frame they would look at you like a lunatic.

On the other hand, if you went to NASA today with the same mission plan, and you had a check to pay for it, I think they would deliver.

6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today. Can you imagine playing an Atari 800 game on it? The car I am driving daily basis has manyfolds more computing power.

Yeah, I hear that a lot, but I have a graduate degree in the field and I don't have the same reaction to descriptions of the computers or the tasks they performed. I mean, ginnie ask you to provide examples of luck, and I just don't think that using the computers they used constitutes luck.

[Swift]

Comeon, swift, cut me some slack.

OK, now I'm confused as to what you are saying / claiming.

What do you mean by "The Moon landing hoax show is definitely over"? Are you claiming there is no proof of a hoax, or are you claiming it was so perfect that it proves it was a hoax? I am genuinely confused.

[NEOWatcher]

Yes I do;

Of course, by todays standards some of those things are inconceivable only because we have learned to live with the better technology.
1# If you went to NASA today with the same Apollo Mission print in your hand & time frame they would look at you like a lunatic.
Yes; they would. But back then, they risk was a lot more acceptable, not only for the sake of the program, but general attitudes in general. Just think of the OSHA regulations that has arisen since then.
Heck, just about everyone smoked then (said in a light tone).

2# Apollo 11 developed a hydrogen leak day before, imagine what a spark could do.
Those happen today...Although, for A-11, it was a unique fix (just freeze some water to the leak).
3#Somebody even circulated a memo warning them the ejection module would never work because 2 seconds would not be enough to get Astro's out of harms way. An explosion would devour whole thing in less than a second
It seems as though I heard a modern version of that lately

4# Some guys were working 20+ hours every day, imagine the burn-out
Yes; that one is impressive. Although; they were all young and probably working with a high adrenalin level.

5# Computers were amazingly primitive, Mission Control had mainframes laid all over the place, most of them were useless and the ones worked would not equal to a laptops intelligence.
They didn't have to do much. Some monitoring, some recording. No GUI interface, no graphics. Just a few calculations. You'd be surprised what a simple little computer can do.

6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today. Can you imagine playing an Atari 800 game on it? The car I am driving daily basis has manyfolds more computing power.
Same as 5, but a Model-T was driven daily without any kind of computer power. Heck; It probably ran with no power at all as long as you got something from the generator to the coil.

To me nothing diminishes, takes away what they have accomplished.

Yes; Even though I picked on your statements, it doesn't mean that it's any less amazing.

[Larry Jacks]

Senaca said that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” That is applicable to Apollo.

There were glitches on every one of those moon flights. Instead of luck, they had good people on board the spacecraft and on the ground who trained hard and worked hard to overcome the problems. They took huge risks - ones I doubt NASA has the guts to accept today - and achieved great things.

[Larry Jacks]

5# Computers were amazingly primitive, Mission Control had mainframes laid all over the place, most of them were useless and the ones worked would not equal to a laptops intelligence.
6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today. Can you imagine playing an Atari 800 game on it? The car I am driving daily basis has manyfolds more computing power.

Most of the critical computations were conducted ahead of time on the ground, not in real-time. They had weeks or even months to get those calculations right. Those computers, while primitive by today's standards, were state of the art back then. There's also another factor to consider - instead of depending on raw computer power to accomplish tasks, the engineers and astronauts used a lot of gray matter. For example, the computers on board the Apollo spacecraft had a user interface that's horrible by today's standards but the astronauts did enough training that they were able to operate them efficiently. As for the mission control computers, the biggest thing most of them were doing during a mission were decommutating the telemetry screen and displaying the data as well as performing some more of less real-time navigation checks. That doesn't require a lot of computer power.

[Glom]

They didn't have to do much. Some monitoring, some recording. No GUI interface, no graphics. Just a few calculations. You'd be surprised what a simple little computer can do.

That is something I can appreciate. When I have written programmes, getting them to do calculations are the easy bit (like when I used to play with rocket launches or orbital mechanics). The hard bit was making the programmes look good.

[Glom]

I suspect that the astronauts of Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 would not agree with that statement.

I'm sure Apollo 12 would have considered its luck what with getting struck by lightning on launch too. I bet the crew of Apollo 14 couldn't believe their luck getting lumbered with the rubbish MET that they ended up having to carry all the way to not quite Cone Crater.

[NEOWatcher]

Even the word "luck" can be thrown around too easily.

Consider the phrase "It's lucky that I knew that."

Is that really luck, or a product of related knowledge.

I can think of two of those where the knowledge was "little known".
1) what's a 1202 alarm?
2) On From the Earth to the Moon they depicted (I think Bean) an astronaut "luckily" realizing the needed switch was above his head.

[LaurelHS]

Even the word "luck" can be thrown around too easily.

Consider the phrase "It's lucky that I knew that."

Is that really luck, or a product of related knowledge.

I can think of two of those where the knowledge was "little known".
1) what's a 1202 alarm?
2) On From the Earth to the Moon they depicted (I think Bean) an astronaut "luckily" realizing the needed switch was above his head.

With the 1201 and 1202 alarms, you could say it was 'lucky' that Steve Bales had been through a simulation on July 5 in which the landing was erroneously aborted because of a computer program alarm, so he studied carefully to make sure he knew which alarms required an abort and which didn't. (Chapter 15 of Failure Is Not An Option).

Yes, Alan Bean was the one who knew what "SCE to Aux" meant and this is portrayed in From The Earth To The Moon; I was just watching that episode last week. Of course, this was right after EECOM John Aaron 'luckily' remembered the command from a simulation that took place months before.

[Dave J]

Even the word "luck" can be thrown around too easily.

2) On From the Earth to the Moon they depicted (I think Bean) an astronaut "luckily" realizing the needed switch was above his head.

...and the ground controller that remembered the "SCE to AUX" switch throw from one of hundreds of sim runs...

[Gawdzilla]

Comeon, swift, cut me some slack. I don't go to bed with these conspiratorial stories, this whole mission was too perfect, too good with the exception of #13, even then we didn't lose those guys. It was as good ending as any Star Trek Movie.

I got a very good piece of advice once, "Just because you can't do it does mean it can't be done."

[R.A.F.]

...cut me some slack.

Post rationally and that will come...

I had this little nagging doubt, for which I was viciously attacked...

"Viciously"?...I think not...

Personally my doubts (5%) were justified...

No...those "doubts" were not justified.

[JayUtah]

...

1# If you went to NASA today with the same Apollo Mission print in your hand & time frame they would look at you like a lunatic.

Supposition. In fact NASA is very proud of Apollo. The aerospace engineering community looks at Apollo as their best work and their finest hour. Much of the work being done today to return to the Moon is looking at the Apollo machinery. For example, my friend works on the team designing the new LES. Guess whose LES they're using as an example?

2# Apollo 11 developed a hydrogen leak day before, imagine what a spark could do.

First, a hydrogen leak is not nearly as dangerous as people imagine. Hydrogen disperses relatively rapidly. It's only dangerous when enclosed and allowed to accumulate.

Second, hydrogen safety protocols are not confined to preventing leaks. In fact, hydrogen being such a small molecule and therefore difficult to seal in, leaks are inevitable. Thus hydrogen safety assumes that leaks will develop. Hydrogen safety is a multi-pronged approach with many redundancies, therefore pointing to a failure of one prong does not immediately signal an unforeseen or especially dangerous condition.

3#Somebody even circulated a memo warning them the ejection module would never work...

And ejection seats sometimes don't save the lives of pilots either, nor airbags the lives of drivers. To misrepresent the risk would be dishonest. However, not to provide some chance of a means of escape, if it were at all possible, would be immoral. In the tragic case of a booster explosion, maximizing the crew's survival potential is a legitimate engineering goal, even if it cannot be extended to 100 percent.

4# Some guys were working 20+ hours every day, imagine the burn-out

That's a legitimate point. Our understanding of the interpersonal and social cost of Apollo was very late in coming. Crash projects are not new to the aerospace industry, but Apollo was a lengthy one.

5# Computers were amazingly primitive...

Irrelevant. Just because we rely on computers more and more these days doesn't mean it was impossible to build spacecraft before them. Modern plastics make medical surgery highly advanced. Yet complex scientific surgery was performed a hundred years before synthetic plastics.

Yes, it would be impossible to build spacecraft the way we do today, using computers from the 1960s. But in the 1960s they built spacecraft using different methods that didn't require extensive computing power.

6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today.

Irrelevant. The computer was assigned no more work than it could perform. Your statement is common among those who don't understand why and how we use computers. There was a time before computers, and there was a time when computers were comparatively slow and stupid. 50 years from now computers will be faster, smaller, and more capable. Does that mean it's valid for those people to question everything we did in 2009?

Showing that technology advances over time is not tantamount to proving that a certain historical achievement is questionable or fortuitous.

[ginnie]

1# If you went to NASA today with the same Apollo Mission print in your hand & time frame they would look at you like a lunatic.

I don't know how you can compare the state of the world in the sixties to that of today. The cold war and the relations between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had a lot to do with the development of the Apollo program.

2# Apollo 11 developed a hydrogen leak day before, imagine what a spark could do.

Are you saying its "lucky" that there wasn't a spark? May it was "unlucky" that there was a hydrogen leak?

3#Somebody even circulated a memo warning them the ejection module would never work because 2 seconds would not be enough to get Astro's out of harms way. An explosion would devour whole thing in less than a second

Details on this? An explosion where? Maybe under certain circumstances the launch escape system would not be effective - but you NASA still tried to do the best they could, and were much more careful than the Soviets were.
4# Some guys were working 20+ hours every day, imagine the burn-out
Maybe so, but was that really every day? And what were they doing? Doctors routinely have long days like that.

5# Computers were amazingly primitive, Mission Control had mainframes laid all over the place, most of them were useless and the ones worked would not equal to a laptops intelligence.

A computer only needs to do you need it to do.

6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today. Can you imagine playing an Atari 800 game on it? The car I am driving daily basis has manyfolds more computing power.

Why would the astronauts be playing Atari computer games? The Apollo Guidance Computer for instance, wasn't meant to play an Atari game.
And todays programs are extremely bloated because memory is cheap and everyone wants all the bells and whistles - even unnecessary ones...

[ginnie]

Showing that technology advances over time is not tantamount to proving that a certain historical achievement is questionable or fortuitous.

Here is a great example - the map on the left was charted by James Cook in 1775 without a computer - the map on the right is from Google, using satellite imagery.

[Gawdzilla]

3#Somebody even circulated a memo warning them the ejection module would never work because 2 seconds would not be enough to get Astro's out of harms way. An explosion would devour whole thing in less than a second

I wonder if "somebody" knew what they were talking about? I checked to see if "somebody" worked at NASA, and yep, there is definitely "somebody" working there. So I guess "somebody" is right. Or something.

[Glom]

And todays programs are extremely bloated because memory is cheap and everyone wants all the bells and whistles - even unnecessary ones...

Yeah. I bet the AGC had to make do without list validations in its spreadsheets. I don't know how the astronauts coped, but then that's what their training was for.

[JayUtah]

...

Is that really luck, or a product of related knowledge.

Fortune favors the prepared.

1) what's a 1202 alarm?

When the 1202 program alarm was telemetered and reported subsequently by Aldrin, Steven Bales' voice can be clearly heard over the controller's loop: "That's the same thing we had." He's referring to a simulator run that had occurred only a few days prior to launch in which he had been thrown a 1202 alarm and had wrongly decided to call an abort.

In this case, Bales knew what to do, knew that he knew what to do, and made the right decision. Subsequent analysis of that and the related 1201 program alarm completely justified Bales' call to continue the landing. One alarm described a condition in which the real-time execution loop could not complete its list of assigned duties fast enough. The other alarm described an inability to assign a block of erasable storage to a program segment. In each case, the affected programs were low-priority programs that could afford not to be run, and the crew and controllers almost immediately diagnosed what was causing the overload result and determined not to enter into those conditions.

2) On From the Earth to the Moon they depicted (I think Bean) an astronaut "luckily" realizing the needed switch was above his head.

Already covered.

These items both illustrate that careful preparation improves the chance of mission success. Training the crew to perform complex tasks, understand the behavior of the machinery, and think adaptively is no different than engineering a fail-safe or redundant system. Both techniques deterministically and intentionally improve the overall ability of the system to cope with unexpected circumstances and avoid disaster.

[NGCHunter]

3#Somebody even circulated a memo warning them the ejection module would never work...

And ejection seats sometimes don't save the lives of pilots either, nor airbags the lives of drivers. To misrepresent the risk would be dishonest. However, not to provide some chance of a means of escape, if it were at all possible, would be immoral. In the tragic case of a booster explosion, maximizing the crew's survival potential is a legitimate engineering goal, even if it cannot be extended to 100 percent.

Well said, but I'd like to add to that the simple fact that not all booster failures involve "rapid unscheduled disassembly." For example, one or more engine failures early in the ascent would be deadly without the launch escape tower system. Another example would be a pad emergency where there's not enough time to extract the crew through the normal means.

[Van Rijn]

6#Sapacecraft itself had computer intelligence less equal to Casio wristwatch I am wearing today. Can you imagine playing an Atari 800 game on it? The car I am driving daily basis has manyfolds more computing power.

I've programmed computers substantially less powerful than the AGC. For some embedded applications, microcontrollers with less RAM, ROM and speed are still being used. It really depends on the application.

By the way, the Atari 800 was an early example of a home computer with coprocessors to take some of the graphics and sound processing load off the 6502 CPU. The point is that it was designed for these things, since it was important for its market and use. The AGC didn't need fancy graphics or sounds, so it wasn't designed to do these things.

[slang]

I suspect that the astronauts of [...] Apollo 13 would not agree with that statement.

Heh, reread Robinson Crusoe.. lamenting his bad luck to be marooned on an island, later realizing how lucky he is, despite all hardship, to still be alive, he alone of his crew. It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? Bad things happen, all we can do is try our best to prevent them.

[Donnie B.]

Yeah. I bet the AGC had to make do without list validations in its spreadsheets. I don't know how the astronauts coped, but then that's what their training was for.

No animated GIFs, either... just static icons

[Glom]

No animated GIFs, either... just static icons

I bet The Big Bang Theory being played in the background could only be in standard definition as well.

[cjameshuff]

I've programmed computers substantially less powerful than the AGC. For some embedded applications, microcontrollers with less RAM, ROM and speed are still being used. It really depends on the application.

Several actually don't have any RAM, just a handful of working registers. It's common in the 8-bit world to only have a few hundred bytes of RAM, and quite often a program will fill several kilobytes of flash or ROM without being limited by that. Resource requirements are very, very different for embedded control systems.

You can accomplish a lot with less than a kilobyte of code and a handful of state...and since much of that is often setup, the second kilobyte counts even more. I've got an ATMega32 on my desk right now, 32 KB flash and 2048 bytes RAM...this is fairly large for an 8-bit microcontroller, I picked it so I wouldn't have to worry about RAM or code space while tinkering, not for a mass-produced product. The AGC had 36K words of ROM and 2K words of RAM, 15 data bits and a parity bit each...roughly double the program and data memory. It was certainly slower, but you could pack a lot of functionality into that space, and it didn't need a lot of speed to do the things it was used for. (Most of the time. It did get a bit overworked during landing when that rendezvous radar wasn't turned off, but it handled that gracefully.)