Actually, the Apollo 13 SM only had the two oxygen tanks. One exploded, the other leaked out over about an hour's period. The third tank was added after the Apollo 13 mission.

BUZZZZZZZ!!!! Tacky buzzer.
The Saturn V platform was considered for a nuclear payload. The program was cancelled after the manned exploration to Mars was canceled.

http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/dirp...707_Rocket.pdf

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Valiant Dancer

The point is, if you all can't come up with data and/or crunch the numbers to support the lower temp reported by 13 than the data I find which supports a higher temp expectation then I figure I am on the right track.

No. Citing examples from a dissimilar spacecraft built with little or no experience in manned spacecraft design, operating in dissimilar circumstances, is not proof that the Apollo 13 thermal profile was falsified. Since you are the one claiming the report was falsified, you are required to "crunch the numbers" to provide support for that argument.

Further, since your argument is based on your failure to find a suitable thermodynamic model for the Apollo 13 spacecraft, I assert that this has value as proof only if you can show that you fully understand all the relevant thermal properties that affect spacecraft design. Otherwise I find it more parsimonious to believe that you are simply underinformed about how spaceships behave thermally, than that the whole Apollo 13 debaucle was deliberately and clumsily falsified by some entity you refuse to name.

Therefore I require answers to the following questions asked earlier.

1. Must an object in thermal equilibrium with its environment, especially under conditions of radiation, necessarily also be isothermal?

2. Please define "form factor" as it relates to radiative heat transfer.

Dumping the descent stage would have been suicidal.

Agreed, for the reasons you cite.

It (the CSM interstage structure) was perfectly capable of transmitting those forces without damage to the heat shield.

Again agreed. The thrust of the Saturn V was on the order of millions of pounds, while the LM's DPS could provide at most 10,500 pounds. Further, the aerodynamic pressure during the ascent was concentrated on the boost protective cover and transmitted via the command module to the service module across the CSM interface. Not only do you have millions of pounds pushing upward through that interface, you have quite a lot of aerodynamic pressure pushing back. The compression load on the CSM interface was known to be great.

Donnie B. said:
I think you're getting a bit extreme here. Or maybe the problem is in that last sentence: they would be incompentent fools only if they provided the cooling capacity to re-radiate what they could reflect away in the first place, but did not. In other words, if they couldn't reflect it away, they would have had to use another cooling system to deal with that heat. But if they could reflect it and instead absorbed it and then used an active system, that would be stupid.

But I think everyone followed you.

SAMU said:
And you make it sound like modern electrical and electronic equipment don't generate any heat. Why is it that PC's have a fan in them that must run constantly when the computer is on? Hint - it's not solar radiation or metabolic heat of the user.

As for the heat load of the Mercury capsule peaking with incident sun, you still have yet to recognize the differences between the Mercury capsule and the Apollo craft, i.e. the surface treatments and therefore optical and thermal properties were very different.

Your statements are misleading. They imply that the Atlas and Titan rockets were built first for the manned space program (Mercury and Gemini) and then subsequently employed for military use. That is not the case. NASA took existing rocket designs and then had them custom built and man-rated. Why? It was a quicker and easier jump start to space than designing new rockets from the ground up to do the same job - put payloads into low earth orbit. Whereas Apollo was a unique design because it had a unique mission - taking a payload to the Moon. Thus NASA did have to start from scratch.

The "global flaw" is in your theory. You're saying that somehow the military came in and secretly replaced the Apollo modules and LM with some other payload (presumably in a shell to look like Apollo hardware?), then smuggled the astronauts away and did not put them in the rocket? Or was the command module real but the LM fake? Whichever, both have major holes in them in trying to carry out a fake mission that was a nominal disaster as a cover for some other mission.

Donnie B. wrote:
Jim replied:
The parachutes were a safe way to reenter the atmosphere? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] (I take it you meant the parachutes were on the CM, and the LM was not designed to land in Earth's gravity, even if the descent stage hadn't already spent all its fuel in orbital maneuvers, and it somehow survived reentry.)

First, dozens of rockets? Do you have a cite?

Second, I wondered if it would come down to this. You ask if NASA could have put nuclear weapons on the S-Vs, as if supports your case of conspiracy. They could have, and they could have loaded them with gold bars, or anthrax, or leprachauns. You cannot argue what NASA could have done without facts to back it up. This sort of supposition is worse than useless: it opens up every possibility you can think of with no sort of rational review process, and weakens your argument considerably.

You have to do a lot more than just say what could have happened when you have no facts whatsoever to assume such a possibility. Stick with the science of the mission.

Maybe a dozen. Let me think here:

Apollo 4 (first unmanned test)
Apollo 6 (second unmanned test)
Apollos 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Skylab (to launch the lab itself)
The two sitting on the ground at JSC and KSC (which really p*sses me off, btw)

I count 15.

Per Boeing website, the production run of Saturn V rockets was 15. 13 were used in the space program. Two were placed on display. (Although they state storage, NASA identifies them as on display.)

http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices...ng/saturn.html

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Valiant Dancer

NASA took existing rocket designs and then had them custom built and man-rated.

Several of the first astronauts comment on the brutality of Atlas and Titan launches. These were ICBMs that produced eight g's or so on liftoff. Plus, the Atlas had a peculiar preference to roll immediately after takeof so that the horizon was vertical from the astronaut's point of view. This was because its guidance system worked best navigating on its side.

Whereas Apollo was a unique design because it had a unique mission - taking a payload to the Moon.

Hence the astronauts' characterization of the Saturn V as the "gentleman's rocket". Since it was designed primarily for passengers and not bombs, it was designed to exert a somewhat lower g-force than the ICBMs and could be ridden by less than perfect human specimens.

This design trend persists in the space shuttle, whose hardware is only capable of 4 g acceleration and whose flight control software limits acceleration to 3 g's to preserve the wits of the crew.

Upon rereading my post, I can see where it could be misleading.

The point is pretty much what you said. A heat shield is nice and necessary, but without parachutes, about all it does is keep the crew cool when they splat. The LM had (and needed) neither; it was designed for a powered landing... but under 1/6G, so even fully fueled it couldn't have supported a powered descent to earth.

Quite right. Shows what happens when you rely on memory instead of checking the facts.

What confused me was that the two O2 tanks were fed to three fuel cells. I remembered that the flight controllers had anxiously closed the cutoff valves to first one, then a second, fuel cell, hoping that would stop the leak, but knowing it would cost the mission -- the operation was one-way, and the lunar landing would have to be abandoned if only one fuel cell was on line. Of course, it was moot; there was no way to stop the leak.

I guess I unconsciously jumped from three fuel cells to three O2 tanks... d'oh!

Whoopsie! And here I've been calling on SAMU to speculate as to why there had been a fake mission. My thinking was along the lines of, well, if you can't give a good reason why it happened, what's the point of the whole speculation?

But on consideration, I withdraw that request. You're right, BA, we should stick to the facts.

Apollo 9: did it use a Saturn 5 or a Saturn 1B?

Saturn V - the inclusion of the lunar module made the payload too heavy for a IB.

But on consideration, I withdraw that request. You're right, BA, we should stick to the facts.

It's not improper to require someone to state his hypothesis up front, clearly. In fact, failure to elucidate the argument is, in fact, a fallacy per se. It's hard to find where he's spelled out his argument. Piecing together what SAMU has written over the past seven pages, I gather he's trying to argue that the U.S. military commandeered the Apollo 13 spacecraft for some reason, and invented what he considers to be an implausible cover story to account for the "failure" of the planned mission.

So what started as a hypothesis that the Apollo 13 wasn't a real emergency -- with the alleged thermodynamics discrepancy as the key piece of data -- is really a larger conspiracy theory. Unfortunately this larger conspiracy just opens up more questions for which we have not been given many answers. It's true this larger theory is more than mere "food for thought" and contains more plot holes than a rejected Star Trek script.

But we can, if we wish, concentrate for now on the science. The apparent hypothesis that Apollo 13 was commandeered rests on the premise that the cover story was implausible. If that premise fails, the hypothesis fails. But since his premise is not universally held, SAMU must demonstrate it. It is the proponent's duty to establish by proof any premises which lead to his conclusion.
So far his argument that the cover story is implausible is based on his failure to formulate a satisfactory thermodynamic scenario to account for the cooling. But that consequent has many antecedents, not the least of which that SAMU may not be sufficiently expert in thermodynamics nor familiar enough with the thermal design of the spacecraft in question to make his failure a significant point.

Specifically, many people in the world would fail to formulate a reasonable thermodynamic model for the combined, powered-down Apollo stack. This is because they don't have the requisite expertise. Thus, SAMU's argument makes sense only if SAMU is sufficiently expert in the thermal design of spacecraft.

This is what I am endeavoring to determine. He seems unsure of the properties of thermal equilibrium involving radiation, and this would be essential to knowing whether his failure is due to the lack of a suitable solution altogether, or SAMU's lack of skill in finding one. The difference is, precisely, the argument.

Even then, any argument which relies on the absence of the consequent as reliable predictor of the absence of an antecedent is a shaky argument.

Um...dumb trivia question (btw thanks for the info on the re-entry course of the CM!)

So, what ever happened to Saturn II, III, and IV? I'm pretty sure they were never physically built...but were they ever fully designed, or only partially designed, or...um...what?

Silas

I'm not completely sure this answer is definitive, but the "missing Saturns" may simply be the various stages of the various Saturn launch vehicles.

For example, for the Saturn V itself, the first stage was S-IC (S-one-C), the second stage was S-II (S-two), and the third stage was S-IVB (S-four-B).

Then again, the Saturn I was a completely different booster, and had little in common with the S-IC... most notably, different engines.

All right, here's a really simplistic (i.e. dumb) argument on the thermodynamics issue. I know it's far from rigorous, but what the heck, let's run it up the flagpole.

Several sources, including ones cited by SAMU, have stated that the sunlit side of objects in space heat up to about 250 degrees, and that the shaded sides drop to -250 degrees.

Now, the Apollo spacecraft was flown in passive thermal mode, meaning that it rotated slowly like a pig on a spit. And as for the roasting pig, that's done to keep the temperature at any one place from reaching those extremes.

But any one spot on the spacecraft would have spent about half its time in the sun, and the other half in the shade. So it would tend toward the average temperature... namely, zero degrees.

Now, I think the temperatures I've seen were listed in degrees Fahrenheit, so that average temperature would be about -17C. If I'm mistaken and the temps were already in Celsius, then the average would be around the freezing point. Either way, the Apollo 13 cabin ended up a little bit above that... which can be accounted for by the remaining electronics, sunlight entering through the windows, and the astronauts' metabolic heat.

Is this not reasonable?

In addition to the Saturn 5s already cited I have seen myself one outside New Orleans at NASA Michoud where NASA assembled the booster and one at NASA Huntsville. That's 15 by my count. I don't know how many others may be sitting at other NASA sites. I have also seen an Apollo comand module on top of a post outside of a strip mall in a suburb Los Angeles.

Regarding strategies for determining what the tempreture of 13 should have been. As already stated. Since the only Apollo spacecraft claimed to have been opperated without active cooling was 13. All strategies for determining tempreture Including just "taking their word" for it are just that, strategies.

I have not been letting the other strategies go by the wayside though. As of now the data usable for comparisons to other spacecraft has been more available. But the data that can be used in the strategy of heat absorbtion/conduction/radiation computations are coming in.

The bulletin board format is not usefull for the posting of the complex formulas and data involved nor are the readers likly to be able to follow it should it be posted by another meens. However it can be simplified to where it can be posted and understood by any who have a reasonably good knowlege base and reading skills. It is however an awkward strategy to research and post and should be incumbent on the ones who propose it to apply it.

It is not incumbent for someone who proposes a strategy for determinig the roundness of the Earth to state how the round earth fits on the back of The Great Turtle.

If you havent read the post regarding the balony detection kit you should read it now and apply it to your own posts.

http://www.sciam.com/2001/1101issue/1101skeptic.html

Second page here.

http://www.sciam.com/2001/1201issue/1201skeptic.html

SAMU

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SAMU on 2001-11-19 22:22 ]</font>