Thread: Apollo 13 Hoax?
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Old 05-November-2001, 07:02 PM
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JayUtah JayUtah is offline
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Okay, engineer checking in.

First, albedo. Geometric albedo concerns only zero-phase diffuse reflection. It does not consider specular reflections, which in many substances accounts for a vastly different visual phenomenon. The moon's albedo is measured as low as 0.07 and as high as 0.12, meaning it diffusely reflects between 7% and 12% of the light it receives back toward the source of the light. The earth's albedo is somewhere in the 0.30 range, considerably brighter than the moon. In fact, when you see pictures of both the earth and the moon taken by outbound interplanetary spacecraft, you have to artificially brighten the moon because the correct exposure for the earth leaves the moon a rather unimpressive dark brown.

The moon appears bright from earth because it's a the brightest object in an otherwise lightless environment. Look at a candle in daylight, then look at one in an otherwise dark room.

Second, asphalt. Or more properly, "bitumin asphalt concrete". "Concrete" is, in the general engineering sense, anything composed of an aggregate and a cement. In what we commonly call concrete, the aggregate is sand and gravel and the cement is Portland cement or other such compound. "Asphalt" (bitumin) is the cement in the asphalt concrete used in roadway construction. The aggregate is usually pea gravel. The bitumin asphalt holds the aggregate together in the same way Portland cement holds the aggregate together in concrete.

A freshly laid asphalt concrete roadway has a geometric albedo of about 0.04, or almost half that of the moon's lowest measurement. After about five years, the bitumin asphalt wears off the top surface of the aggregate and the geometric albedo rises to about 0.12, or equivalent to the highest estimate of the lunar albedo.

Thus it is not correct to compare the albedo of the moon to a freshly laid asphalt roadway. It is more correct to compare it to an asphalt roadway after several years of use, the ones that appear almost white. In fact, the geometric albedo of worn asphalt concrete is not especially less than the geometric albedo of ceramic concrete.

The thermal behavior of an object in space under solar radiation is directly affected most strongly by the reflectivity of that object. The Apollo command module was covered in aluminized Kapton insulation. The lunar module was covered in several blankets of aluminized Mylar insulation. The geometric albedo of these materials as applied to the spacecraft is in the 0.50 neighborhood. (It differs from the values for aluminum because the Kapton and Mylar sides were outboard.)

Some portions of the lunar module descent stage were covered in absorptive material because the machinery behind them actually needed to absorb a certain amount of solar heat in order to maintain the correct operating temperature.

It's clear SAMU doesn't have the appropriate expertise in thermodynamics or heat transfer to evaluate the viability of his theory, or understand the objections to it. The "Apollo 13 as a publicity stunt" theory is popular among hoax believers. Unfortunately it fails for two reasons. First, the popularity of Apollo missions hit its nadir around Apollo 15 or Apollo 16, and no "stunt" was forthcoming to fix that. Second, the failure of Apollo 13 is cited as a direct contributor to the decision to terminate the project. Its overall effect was to shorten the project, not perpetuate it.