What’s the difference between aren’t and should not be?

That's not the difference I delineated. The difference between seeing stars in space (e.g., from earth orbit) and seeing stars on the lunar surface. When you figure out what the difference is, you'll have your answer.

This rules out blemishes on the lens or within the film.

I did not say that had to be on the lens or within the film. The process of producing those photos for web publishing entailed many possible sources of dust contamination, e.g., scanner bezels. The JSC scans were produced hurriedly as thumbnails.

You say they're stars, although you can supply no proof for that. And in fact, your assertion that they are the same between photos despite a different camera angle is good evidence that they are not stars. It is very strong evidence that it is contamination in the optical path during some process.

It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and flies like a duck. Yet you say it's a squid.

This does not apply to the Apollo 13 missions because they had a limited supply of Oxygen.

Irrelevant to the point, which we have covered elsewhere in any case.

Ok, so lets go with the appearance of a flame argument.

Is this a concession, or is it for the sake of argument?

You guys reckon that no flame should be seen, so why is one evident in many ascents from the Moon?

That's simplistic. That's not what we claim. You want to break this down into a black and white, either-or situation, when it has been painstakingly explained to you that this it is not binary determination. You simply refuse to take it into account.

If there is to be a visible plume from an Aerozine engine -- and there isn't always one -- that plume will occur at the ignition transient, which is the exact instant you've captured in your video frame. If you play the rest of the video, the plume instantly goes away.

The problem in your argument is that you're trying to have it both ways. If you say that a plume is visible, that refutes your own argument where you say the absence of a plume is suspicious. You've subverted your own support.

This comment would be fine, except for the fact that the background soil is of a completely different shade to the foreground and that is why such a distinct ‘join’ can be seen.

No. The argument that there is a contour feature is based on evidence other than apparent color. You claim to have read http://www.clavius.org/shadlen.html where this was explained in great detail. Apparently you didn't read it carefully enough.

Also several different backgrounds from different missions have the same features and size, even though the sites are allegedly several km away from each other.

I require an example.

Actually those sceptics are on this very group and told me about the two light sources around Christmas time.

All the posts have been retained on this board since October 2001. Please point to the thread in which this conversation took place.

Your own members came up with this theory, so if it’s wrong you can blame them.

No. I am not asking you to address some other person's answers. I am asking you to address my answers. You have a singular talent for trying to shift responsibility for your statements. You are employing what logicians call a "straw man", trying to argue against a weaker objection that what is mounted. Please either support your statements or withdrawn them.

So how did they communicate with Houston if the aerial was down?

VHF communications are impossible during re-entry anyway due to the ionization layer that builds up around the spacecraft. The antenna was lowered just prior to re-entry and then extended again after splashdown.

You’re missing the point. The wording I used is ‘Who would dare risk using the LEM on the Moon when it was never, ever tested successfully?’

No, you're missing the point. I don't agree with your assertion that the LM was not tested successfully.

The LEM was never successfully landed anywhere until it landed on the Moon.

The LM was designed to land on the moon. Its structure, engines, and landing gear were designed for that task. How could such a vehicle have been landed anywhere else? It came as close as it needed to on Apollo 10 to verify that the landing systems would indeed work.

You argue that the actual touchdown as the sine qua non of a successful test. How and where did you become an expert on the flight test of spacecraft? If you're not an expert, why should we trust your opinion of what constitutes a successful spacecraft test?

I seem to remember Armstrong almost being killed on one of the attempts made.

Armstrong ejected from the Lunar Lander Training Vehicle shortly before it crashed. Two of the five such vehicles were lost in crashes. The cause of Armstrong's crash was determined to be a leak which exhausted his manuevering fuel, making it impossible for him to steer the vehicle. Hundreds of successful test and training flights were made in these training vehicles without incident.

What's your point?

In regards to the ability to jump, within 1/6th gravity it would be an easier task to jump than here on Earth

Granted, but your argument is that the absence of such leaping is suspicious. This is an affirmed consequent. You claim they didn't do it because they couldn't do it. When in fact there were other reasons why they perhaps didn't want to do it. Leaping about on the lunar surface frequently led to loss of balance. There is some excellent footage of this on the Apollo Archive if you'd care to examine it.

Your argument rests on your assumption that if they could have, they necessarily would have. I don't agree.

even guys on Earth can jump 6 feet or above.

Then I challenge you to find an athlete who can replicate, in earth gravity, Neil Armstrong's leap up to the top of the LM ladder at the end of the Apollo 11 EVA.

More luck than judgement considering that there is no way of knowing when solar flares will erupt.

Agreed. However the probability of encountering an injurious solar event during an Apollo mission was actually less than the probability that the booster would explode on the pad killing them all instantly.

If you argue that the use of statistical probability to avoid solar events was insufficient to provide an adequate safety margin, I will require you to provide a statistical probability argument to support that. I do not accept handwaving on matters such as this.

In fact midway through the Apollo years the sunspot cycle was at its 11 year cycle high and was one of the highest recorded on record.

And all the solar events that occurred during that solar cycle were duly recorded and measured by several different organizations and countries. If you believe that a first-magnitude solar event occurred during an Apollo mission, please provide documentation.

And they didn’t go either!

Irrelevant. They produced a spacecraft design they believed would survive the cislunar environment. Please explain why the Soviet designs mention nothing of the massive radiation shields you say were necessary.

So where did all that used up oxygen go?

You have absolutely no clue how the space suits function. The sublimators are for cooling. It's a closed loop.

The oxygen is combined with carbon in the astronauts' bodies and released into the space suit gas loop as carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is absorbed by lithium hydroxide in the PLSS.

And Astronauts during the Apollo missions were living in these radiation conditions continually.

No, I do not agree that astronauts were living in the same conditions as persist during a dental x-ray. This has been my point throughout. You have provided absolutely no quantitative evidence of the x-ray conditions in cislunar space, or estimates of absorbed dose, or estimates of biological effects. You simply wave your hands and say it would be dangerous.

I am engineer. I want numbers.

Protection in dental x-rays is intended to produce an effectively zero dose in your blood-forming organs, meaning that you do not have to keep track of how many such x-rays you receive over a year to see whether you're approaching a dangerous dose.

Really, even though that man was to be a guinea pig on Apollo 1 and basically put his life in NASA’s hands?

That circumstance has nothing to do with whether Gus Grissom was in possession of the relavant information and expertise to say whether the entire Apollo program was on track or not. Your statement has nothing to do with your argument. You wish to argue that Gus Grissom's estimate of ten years is the authoritative estimate. Your statement establishes interest, but not authority.

But how many people have seen it?

Irrelevant to your argument. You claim NASA tried to destroy the Apollo 1 capsule on a number of occasions. I want to know why it's so difficult to destroy an item that's in one's custody.

In short, you have provided no evidence that NASA attempted to destroy the Apollo 1 capsule, and the assertion is preposterous on its merits.

Hazardous in my dictionary does mean life threatening.

Irrelevant. You have provided no quantitative data to support any of your arguments regarding radiation. I don't care what your dictionary says. If you don't have numbers, and the ability to correctly interpret them, you don't have an argument.

My current car has an onboard computer of around 64mb.

And if the same technology had been available to Apollo, their computer would have been larger and more powerful. The comparison to modern computers is largely invalid. The question is not whether the Apollo computer is equivalent to some other computer. The question is whether the Apollo computer is adequate for the tasks assigned to it.

Can you give any expert testimony as to whether the Apollo computer was not capable of performing the tasks it was asked to perform?

Obviously the Apollo craft had a lot more gadgetry to them.

Perhaps. Does your car regularly communicate with large mainframes in order to maintain proper operation? Or is your car's computer required to manage all those tasks on its own? Do you have any explicit input to your car's computer, or is it simply a "black box" to you?

Perhaps your car's computer is trying to solve different problems than an Apollo spacecraft computer.

That brings up another point. The bit of the car you can see in my shadow photos does not have a computer. If your car requires a 64MB computer in order to operate, someone could argue that my car, which has no computer at all, could not possibly operate. You make the common mistake that just because we solve certain problems with computers today, those problems had no solution before the application of computers.

how do you suggest that such a small memory computer could cope with the task?

In your highly expert opinion, how much computer memory is required to solve the problem of spacecraft guidance? What are the memory requirements for an embedded system as opposed to a general purpose system? What other measures of computer performance might be applicable to the problem of spacecraft guidance?

You better get in touch with NASA if you believe this because they have released images of the Apollo hardware, both on motion film and still photos - or are you calling them liars?

That was not your question, nor was that my answer. Your question stated that it should be possible for "a very powerful telescope" or the Clementine probe to have taken pictures of the Apollo hardware. I took the liberty of using the Hubble as the quintessential example of "a very powerful telescope" (arguably the most powerful available). And I pointed out that neither aspect of your scenario was possible.

You're now changing horses and saying that NASA has released photos and film of the Apollo hardware. That is true, it having been taken from the Apollo command module and some from the ascending lunar module, not either of the pieces of technology you mentioned.

You are trying to change the argument.

But you’re the one who tells me that you have so many thousands of documents on the Apollo missions – What’s stopping them looking at the old blueprints?

I don't claim to have every document, and I specifically stated that many of them were destroyed. In any case, having documents which describe the technology is not the same as having the technology in hand.

Future attempts to reach the moon will likely build upon various Apollo concepts, but will not simply reuse the same hardware. Nothing prevents engineers from looking at the design documents from Apollo, filling in the gaps, and producing the Apollo spacecraft again. But this is not what they would prefer to do. They would prefer to incorporate the advances learned in space technology since Apollo.

And the acquisition of the technology is not the chief impediment to returning to the moon. NASA lacks any mandate from the public to do so.

Surely these highly qualified scientists can work from a simple plan – can’t they?

Why do you assume spacecraft are designed according to "a simple plan"? I have participated in the design of spacecraft. You have not. I'll keep my own counsel about what is possible in that industry.

On the one hand your telling me that Schools and Universities are shown Apollo related stuff to learn from and in the next breath that NASA don’t bother to use it themselves… odd?

No, again you're trying to simplify away important differences. Studying some crucial aspect of Apollo technology is not equivalent to being able to reproduce it for use again on a whim.

The space shuttle main engines were designed according to many of the same principles as the Rocketdyne F-1. We still use the F-1 to help understand the SSMEs, and we use the SSME design as a springboard for newer technologies.

The point with regard to using Apollo technology as teaching aids is that if this technology did not work as advertised, the people studying it would discover this. And technology built on that as a predecessor would not work either.

You want to equate widespread familiarity with Apollo technology to the capacity to yank a lever tomorrow and have an actual, functioning lunar module pop out.

The whole Apollo project cost an estimated $25 billion.

In 1960 dollars. You do understand inflation, don't you?

So NASA would have more than that amount in just 2 years.

But "that much" these days won't buy you a moon landing program. And that's if NASA completely shut down all of its other operations and concentrated solely on returning to the moon. That's impractical.

Why do they have to cut back on resources?

NASA must work within the budget and mandate established by Congress. Congress has not authorized funds for returning to the moon, nor authorized that as a valid expenditure of any funds currently in NASA's possession.

You are grossly oversimplifying the factors that affect a national space program.

That’s a very convenient way of wriggling out of having to answer to firm evidence that you believe us hoax believers could not uncover.

Not at all. I simply point out that Bart Sibrel has gone to great lengths to make it difficult for you to see what's really happening in his footage. If it really is what he says it is, it shouldn't require his heavy editing and commentary. Since I have seen the footage without the benefit of Sibrel's commentary, I am free to form my own opinion of what it represents. I have also consulted with both astronauts and ground personnel to get a more educated interpretation.

There is nothing whatosever in the footage that says the astronauts are about to falsify an in-transit telecast from low-earth orbit. Everything that's in there is fully consistent with what NASA says it is: a rehearsal for a telecast that hadn't been discussed prior to departure.

You seem fully converted to Bart Sibrel's interpretation of this footage. And it is his interpretatiion. Have you considered at all any other possible explanation?

I thought that someone on here said that all NASA footage was released in the mid 70s? obviously that rule didn’t apply to this footage.

Completely specious. That it was first published in the 1990s does not prove it was not previously available.

What else has NASA got tucked away in the vaults?

I don't know. Speculation is your bag.

Oh how convenient, and you don’t think this is suspect?

No, I don't, because unlike you I have experience in the aerospace industry. I know about their document retention policies. Whether you think it's "convenient" or not is irrelevant. If you believe the materials were destroyed to keep them from being examined too closely, then it is your responsibility to prove exactly that proposition.

If this were the situation in the UK there would be a national outcry

Well bully for you. You can't cry fraud just because, in your infinite wisdom, you would have done it differently.

Why didn’t NASA offer the documents to a private buyer?

The documents that were held by NASA are in the National Archives and have been available for inspection for decades. This is only a very small portion of the total documentation produced for Apollo. The vast majority of the documentation is the part-specific paperwork I mentioned earlier. That documentation is held by the contractor (by U.S. law) and is largely useless once the spacecraft have been used (and in some cases, destroyed). That is the documentation which has been destroyed.

Conspiracy theorists, who do not understand the first thing about documentation in public engineering, are aghast at any destruction of documents, regardless of their historical significant.

This strengthens my argument that the position of the Apollo craft could not successfully be worked out by radio ham operators

False. S-band receiving antennas must be precisely aligned.

Perhaps you could tell this to China who only recently discovered a huge American spy satellite watching over them.

Hogwash. Reconaissance satellites are continuously in various altitude orbits at high inclinations, passing over most of the earth's surface at any one time. It is impossible according to orbital mechanics to make a recon satellite "hover" over some particular part of the earth.

I think I have more than responded to my critics with very a very valid response.

No, I'm very unsatisfied. You have, in many cases, simply tried to change the subject or throw irrelevant topics into the discussion. For the rest you have simply provided handwaving.

Further, you did not respond to several of my answers. Does that mean you concede those arguments?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-06-03 17:26 ]</font>