Might I also recommend Computers in Space: Journeys With Nasa by James E. Tomayko? Chock full of great stories, such as how Dick Rice had memorized the entire flight code for Voyager... Maybe not as technical for the engineers here, but still a good read. And great centerfolds of the AP-101!

And may I add what a pleasure it is to see all the pros at work here! =D> Jay et al, it is amazing how much knowledge firepower can be leveled against the woo2 onslaught.

I have to hang out more on the Lunar forum, I guess I am spending too much time with the Mars rovers... :wink:

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

Thanks for the recommendation. It looks like a good read.

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"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

You know, this whole 'ACA out of detent' solution to this problem provides circumstantial but a powerfully persuasive argument that the missions really did take place as advertised. This procedure that Jay described really resonates with me as an elegant, 'out of the square' solution to a real-life problem. But if the mission was a hoax, this problem would never have 'existed'.

Imagine if Apollo were a massive hoax. Common sense would dictate that the bogus spacecraft specs would include circuitry that sensed when the LM had landed, because this is what you would expect to see and accordingly, its inclusion would be a surprise to no-one. The additional weight and complexity would be irrelevant - the hoax spacecraft isn't really landing on the moon so it simply doesn't matter.

No-one orchestrating a hoax would add such a twist as to include an engineering solution to a problem that no-one in the target audience would ever suspect might occur. Why would you? All that would do is provide another opportunity to be 'caught out' by adding further detail to an already hugely complex fraud.

Instead, what we see here is an engineering solution to a real life problem that would only exist if the LM were being designed to perform this task required of it - to land on the moon. It is not proof, but it is an example of the sort of minor detail that adds so much consistency to the overall body of evidence.

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

Yup. It's a kind of derivative of Mark Twain's comment that "Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." (Possibly paraphrased.)

My derivative reads like this; "There are certain details that only real life would dare to make up."

And, of course, the "out of detent" detail has that verite of something that had actually been tried, not just dreamed about or simulated. It has that reek of versimilatude that comes from most real-world engineering solutions.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

It is the little things that make the hoax so convincing. :P

Of course, if the hoax spacecraft was made up in such minute detail and perfection and to be the perfect fraud, then why not actually use it to do it for real?

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

And, of course, the "out of detent" detail has that verite of something that had actually been tried, not just dreamed about or simulated. It has that reek of versimilatude that comes from most real-world engineering solutions.

I can't possibly agree more. This is one thing I have to constantly bring up to management, and to non-engineers acting in engineering roles. The saying goes: "Every project has two stages -- too early to tell, and too late to do anything about it." What it means is that when you sit down to do the paper designs at the beginning of a project, you really only know a very little bit of what you need to do to solve the whole problem. You can even have a 200-page statement of the problem, and you'll still discover things as you go. And so the art of engineering management is knowing how to progressively constrain the design components as you go and allow yourself maximum flexibility to account for these late-stage discoveries while still allowing the design to progress toward completion on schedule.

The ACA solution to the DAP problem is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you actually execute a design -- not merely dream it up for public consumption. This really does provide evidence that the LM was a working design, not merely a paper cover story.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

When did they come up with it?

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

As a writer, those are the details I collect (as a stage technician, most of our "solutions" are jerry-rigs!)

My current treasure is how the V1 crews dealt with interference with the magnetic compass from the metal body of the missile. After the thing was on the launch ramp they'd crawl around whanging at it with wooden mallets.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

This guy's another poor researcher who thinks he's the smartest person on the planet. If he can't figure something out in a few minutes with no research, then it is unsolvable for teams of dedicated professionals with advanced, specific training and months (if not years) of focused efforts to address that problem. Right.

Just completely wrong. Yes, heat from the sun is a problem for the Space Shuttle, but the tiles have nothing to do with that. Rather, the radiators that are attached to the inside of they payload bay doors are used to reject the heat build up from the sun and the heat generated by all the electrical systems and biological sources (a.k.a. astronauts). The astronauts open the payload bay doors right after reaching orbit (IIRC 30 minutes) and don't close them until just before reentry.

Heat does too have somewhere to go. It's called radiation. Yep, heat transfer doesn't just occur by conduction and convection. Radiation is how the sun's energy gets to Earth or to the spacecraft. It's also how the spacecraft keeps cool.

A car's radiator is misnamed. It's really a convection cooler. Radiation is only a component of how it rejects heat - when you're driving you have air being forced over the heat exchanger.

And what does a car's engine have to do with a spaceship? Why does he assume the two should work the same?

Unanswered question? Who did he ask? How hard did he look for the answer? Answer: sublimation. Yep, it's called "phase change" in chemistry. You know, "latent heat". Any chemistry I student should recognize that term.

Here I'm willing to cut him a little slack. Aldrin is not at all clear in the quoted statement:
That's not exactly explicit about the suit specifics, and does not make clear there are two layers of boots. However, he cut his own rope (nevermind the slack I gave him) because he makes no effort to find out the answer, despite having a picture of the suit on his page that shows the overboots. So obviously he found some information on the suits, enough to compare the Apollo design with the Shuttle design. Therefore, he should have pondered why the Apollo picture shows boots on the suit and/ lying next to it.

Okay, I just looked around further at that site.

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Just some teenager trying to feel smarter than he is by "seeing through the lies".