This website rehashes the same old stuff. The main difference between this and other HB websites is that this website states "facts" but does not even attempt to rationalize why (i.e., some HBs at least attempt to appear knowledgable, but this HB does not.)

I especially like the use of the reverse speech pseudo-science. Scroll to the bottom of the page and it's the clip where Armstrong says, "That's one small step..." Armstrong is then interpreted [when played backwards] to say, in effect, the whole thing is just a farce. I don't know about you, but I'm convinved! :wink:

Funny though, at the Official Reverse Speech website, the VERY same sound clip is given a 180-degree interpretation.

On another note (confirm me if I'm right or correct me if I'm wrong) but the hype about the size of the reflected Sun on the astonauts' visors (also at said website) can be explained by the following:

The area that the reflected Sun occupies [on a reflective surface] is determined by the distance of the observer; e.g., if I am 2 feet away from a 6' by 6' mirror, the Sun's reflection is such-and-such in size on the mirror's surface; but if I move back to a distance of 1 mile, the Sun's reflection exceeds the area of the 6' by 6' mirror. This can be seen in videos taken in orbit, that is, the Sun's reflection's on the ocean's surface [edit](being somewhat convex)[/edit] takes up a vast area (many square miles.) So, wouldn't this principle apply to a convex mirror (i.e., an astronaut's visor) just the same?

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

Boy, that article is so wrong, it's really tough to know where to begin.

For example....**
*
I'm sitting here wondering just how high John Young "could" have jumped on the Earth wearing an EVA suit? I imagine not very high.

Not to mention the added factor of being top heavy and tending to tip over when they jumped too high.

__________________
"Eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy"
------------Mark Twain

"Women are like Voltron. The more you can hook up, the better it gets."

There's another point to remember: just because a person can jump a certain height doesn't mean that he has to jump that high every time. If I'm capable of jumping, say, three feet off the ground from a standing start, I can also jump to any height less than that if I so choose.

In this case, Young may have been trying to limit his jump so he stayed in the frame -- that is, no higher (or not much higher) than the top of the flagpole.

I always try to point out to people how little John young bends at the knee when jumping. I then ask them to dupicate the motion and see how high they can jump. I'm lucky if I get one foot off the ground, and probably not even that.

What a woo-woo. I mean just look at those michelin men on the pictures! What is he complaining about?
http://www.beverlyunderground.com/issue3/noshadow.jpg


Does anyone care to give the explanation for buzz's order of pressurizing, taking off boots, opening hatch and dropping waste? I didn't hear this claim before.

__________________
To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

The LM's velocity at orbit insertion was about 3,770 mph. This ignoramus is off by nearly a factor of 3, yet he thinks he knows enough to tell us the LM didn't carry enough propellant. I hate it when these woo-woos try to play rocket scientist because they suck at it. :x

The boots in question were the overboots, not the pressure boots.

I'd have to check my Mission Reports to see whether there was a double pressurization. My recollection is that the astronauts entered the cabin, hooked their suits up to the onboard life support, then tossed out the PLSS backpacks, overboots, waste, etc. all without repressurizing. However, I could be wrong. Or it could have varied from one mission to another.

Yeah... you just have to laugh when he claims that a rocket engine has higher fuel consumption than a jet engine.

What rocket engine? What jet engine? Running at what throttle setting? Does he really think that an RCS thruster uses fuel faster than a Rolls Royce RB-211?

Here's another example of a guy who thinks "common sense" means something in a technical discussion.

By "boots" Aldrin means the unpressurized overshoes. In the illustration above the paragraph in question you can see all the parts of a space suit. Notice the white Osmond-style boots that are integral to the pant legs of the space suit. Those are the pressure boots. For lunar surface EVA, the astronauts donned the unpressurized overshoes to the right of the pressure boots. Those are made with a silicone rubber sole, and uppers made of Chromel-R and Beta.

The astronauts didn't have enough flexibility to deal with footwear with the suits pressurized. So they had to depressurize the cabin and deflate the suits so they could bend over enough to reach the booties.

The EMU contained many such overgarmets. The entire white outer covering of the suit, for example, was simply worn over the inner Neoprene pressure garment. The suit held pressure integrity without it. There was the fishbowl helmet for pressure integrity, over which was simply slid the LEVA, or white visor assembly. In addition to the silicone rubber booties, there were the external (unpressurized) gauntlets worn over the pressure gloves. Most conspiracists are completely unaware of what makes up a space suit.

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

Motives are endless: Russian competition, need to fulfill promises to the American people, for increased nationalism, faith in technological advancements, distraction from the Vietnam War, etc.

The typical conspiracist argument: there was a motive, therefore it was done. This conveniently sidesteps any corpus delicti.

Now compare the size of this reflection with the reflection on the visors during the moon missions.

Two factors intervene. First, the scatter effect. As light bounces off a reflector, some of it scatters. Even from a flat reflector you have a divergence of light. The farther away you get from it, the broader the divergence. Now in photographs, some of that divergence is strong enough to saturate the film.

Second, abrasion. The space shuttle astronauts wear helmets that stay behind protective covers until they actually go outside. And there's nothing to affect them out there. Apollo astronauts play in the dirt and get their visors scratched and dirty. This increases the scatter.

Huge reflections can also be seen in the following videos...

And vidicon bloom adds a third factor.

Whatever the light source is, the wide spread of light on the convex visor CANNOT be explained as being caused by the sun reflecting.

Only because the author has failed to recognize additional possibilities. The author's oversimplification of the physics fails to answer the dilemma, yet the problem somehow isn't attributed to the oversimplification.

...the flag post does not throw a shadow

Not in the itty-bitty version supplied. Make the photo small enough and you won't be able to distinguish arms from legs either, but that doesn't prove anything. Even with artificial light, how would you not get a shadow?

Others do not show parallel shadows, which is impossible if the ONLY light source was really the sun.

Not impossible at all.

Note that he only jumps about ¼ of his height into the air, no different than in earth gravity, only in slow motion.

Nobody can jump that high in Earth gravity, even wearing lightweight costume space suits and bending their knees that little. Further, note how the salute is not in slow motion, but the jump is.

However, the fact is that the moon’s gravity is 1/6 of that of the earth; therefore, he should jump 6 times as high as on earth!

Check the physics again.

He should have no problem exceeding his own height with his jump.

Nobody who has ever worn a backpack would really say that. There would be considerable problems keeping balance. What if he rotated backwards during his several-meter jump? What would he do then?

Try to make footprint in dry sand, or solid ice. It won’t show.

But try making it in Portland cement or coal ash. It will. Sand is a poor simulant of all soil mechanics situations because of the large, rounded grains.

Even more amazing is that the astronaut, much lighter than the entire capsule, makes an imprint in the ground and the lander foot doesn't!

Distributed load. Do the computations; they'll suprise you.

Amazingly, the rocket of the moon-lander did not form a blast crater whatsoever during landing!

Not amazing at all. And there are definite effects of the plume.

not even a single speckle of dust (see above photo) from the rocket booster blast showing on the lander’s feet!

Not surprising since the feet were more than a meter above the surface when the last plume-driven dust departed the area.

Rocket motors are EXTREMELY noisy...

The noise is caused by the supersonic plume contacting the air. No air, no noise.

...and produce strong vibration.

But at what amplitudes and frequencies? Why would we assume they're audible?

Yet it is completely silent. Listen to the video of the landing...

Audio comes from noise-cancellation microphones inside of sealed helmets.

A takeoff from them moon is at least as complicated as a takeoff from earth, most likely even more complicated.

No.

Yet in NASA’s scenario it does not play a significant role.

Hogwash. The reliability of the ascent engine was one of the most critical aspects of Apollo engineering.

Additionally, there are no moon based navigational aides or beacons to ensure a successful rendezvous with the mother ship (the command module) still circling the moon.

Red herring. The best navigation aid was the command module itself.

Keep in mind, onboard computer power of the Apollo mission was LESS than your average four-dollar calculator has today.

Irrelevant. A baseball has no onboard guidance, yet seems to find very small targets.

How were takeoff time, angle, speed and power settings calculated and properly executed?

I know, but this author doesn't. And because he doesn't, they must be mysterious.

Time-coordinated increments to the local up vector were loaded into the digital attitude-hold mode of the autopilot. These were precomputed to achieve an orbit using a fixed magnitude thrust. This is known as the piecewise linear, or patched linear, approach. You learn about it if you are a rocket scientist.

What were the three dimensional reference points in space

The Earth, moon, sun, stars, and command module.

...how were they established?

Static vectors, space-fixed points, Earth-fixed points, moon-fixed points, and radar vectors.

Common sense tells us...

Translation: I have no idea, but I'm going to make a guess.

...the payload and the actual dry weight of the lander accounts for about half of that.

No.

The rest of the argument is based on a completely ignorant estimate of the LM's fuel load.

it uses rocket fuel, which is consumed at a much higher rate than jet fuel.

Not in the LM's case.

Decelerate the lander from its cruising speed of ten thousand miles plus per hour to zero...

No. Lunar orbital velocity is much slower than that.

How likely is it that all lunar module maneuvers could have been accomplished with about 13,500 lbs of fuel...

How likely is it that pure guesswork comes anywhere close to engineering estimation?

...the Saturn V rocket taking off from earth had a fuel capacity of 4.5 MILLION pounds?

Apples and oranges.

You be the judge!

Okay. After having done the requisite calculations, and after having confirmed actual fuel loadouts instead of "common sense" wild guesses, I judge that the rocketry of the LM is right on par with what theory suggests.

Note that all space missions of NASA and the Russians to this day always stayed well BELOW the protective cover of the Van Allen Belts with the only exception of the Apollo missions.

No. Gemini and Zond are notable exceptions.

Yet miraculously none of these astronauts ever developed radiation related diseases...

The supposed dangers of the Van Allen belts are vastly overrated.

Radiation exposes film (x-rays) and there is tremendous radiation in space and on the moon.

X-rays are not the only form of radiation. The radiation in space and on the moon is primarily in the form of solar wind, which is particles. While particles can also damage film, they are comparatively easy to shield using thin sheets of aluminum.

Skylab in the 70’s had a massive lead film vault on board that protected the film from being exposed by space radiation...

That's because Skylab orbited the Earth for many weeks and constantly dipped into the SAMA feature of the Van Allen belts. Common sense doesn't know that a low Earth orbit sustained for long periods actually subjects occupants to a greater dose than a short translunar mission.

A big problem of the shuttle mission is heat from exposure to the sun.

No.

To divert heat, the shuttle is turned upside down, so the protective ceramic tiles underneath deflect the heat.

No. The TPS is used for re-entry only and does not "deflect" heat. Instead, it absorbs it.

The orbiter frequently adopts a heads-down posture because much of its mission involves studying the Earth with instruments in the cabin and payload bays. Further, the payload bay doors are lined with the radiators used to reject the heat generated on board. They are pointed away from the sun so that they will be more effective. If they were aimed at the sun, they would not radiate heat effectively.

It is always daytime for the capsule.

Only one side of the capsule.

There is also no protective tile on the underside; there is nothing more than the capsule’s tip which had a small heat shield.

No. Both spacecraft had considerable insulation.

NASA claims that they rotated the capsule constantly in order to divert the heat. This however would not reduce the heat, just distribute it better.

Correct, and the major problem for spacecraft engineering is the stresses caused by uneven heating. The ship can be uniformly hot or uniformly cold without too much difficulty. But when part of it is very hot and part is very cold, this causes mechanical problems.

And traveling in the vacuum of space the heat has NOWHERE TO GO! No air to take it on!

Space does, however, provide a perfect heat sink for rejecting heat through radiation.

Put the car’s radiator into a vacuum and the engine will overheat.

True, but irrelevant. Engineers take advantage of the environment. If you have a medium into which to reject heat by conduction or convection, then use it. If you don't design something else.

Where does the backpack of the astronauts dissipate the body heat to when there is no air to exchange it into? Liquid maybe?

This author seems to think that his being stumped equates to nobody knowing the answer. Porous-plate sublimators.

The lander is left alone without a human monitoring its systems. What if there is an electrical fire or an oxygen or fuel leak?

The unoccupied lander is unpressurized, so I fail to see where an electrical fire would do any damage. What should an astronaut do in the case of an oxygen or fuel leak? The oxygen systems and fuel systems are not in the habitable volume of the ship. They are inaccessible to him. This is why those systems were carefully engineered to very high standards of reliability. And if they are so engineered, they do not require human monitoring. While we're on that subject, the spacecraft displays provided limited monitoring opportunity. The best monitoring happened via telemetry.

The moon communication recordings on the other hand are far less technical and are always understandable by a layman.

No. In fact you have other hoax authors arguing exactly the opposite: that the astronauts' jargon was meant to disguise their sightings of alien artifacts. Most people can't understand things like "ACA out of detent" or "Go for PDI." Most of my engineer colleagues don't understand Apollo recordings because they're not familiar with the shorthand references.

“Were finally here Houston, Fantastic!” is what the crew says after touching down on the moon. There is no indication of them executing an after landing checklist or a shut down procedure.

That's because the LM comm system did not automatically transmit everything back to Earth. When you get the cabin voice recorder tapes, you get to hear the many checklists. When Armstrong said, "We're going to be busy for a moment," shortly after landing, that was so that he and Aldrin could execute the post-landing checklist.

Another misconception is the notion that checklists are always executed with one person reading off the action and the other person doing it and then saying "check". The Apollo checklists had instructions for both pilots, and there was no need to follow it orally.

Safety on the moon: The surface of the moon is un-researched.

Hogwash. The Surveyors proved the surface was solid.

The lunar rover was far to big to fit in the lander.

That's why it was strapped to the outside.

Watch this video and judge for yourself if this is a metal rover being deployed...

Looks like a metal rover, folded just as the book says it was folded.

Today’s astronauts wear much bulkier suits, unlike the moon astronauts, they cannot even let their arms hang down straight. What happened to the design of these suits? Did we go backwards in technology?

No. Like good engineers we let the requirements of the problem dictate the solutions. We don't complicate the execution of a design by adding functionality that isn't required. Modern space suits for use on the space shuttle have rigid torsos and rigid upper-arm segments. Shuttle astronauts do not have the mobility needs that Apollo astronauts had, and so the suit can be made simpler, more cheaply, more reliably, and safer by eliminating the mobility that is unnecessary in a shuttle mission.

Additionally, given the laws of physics, an astronaut in a fully pressurized “soft” suit like the one worn on the moon should have looked like the Michelin man!

Nothing about the "laws of physics" talks about this. Nothing about joint-wise flexibility requires physical inflation. Think about a hydraulic hose. It is flexible and connected to a piston which it drives with literally thousands of pounds per square inch of fluid power. How is that flexible hose able to stand up to all that fluid pressure?

This is why non-engineers shouldn't stand up and talk about what is and isn't possible in engineering. "Common sense" only gets you so far. Then you have to actually understand how those experts get things done. The seemingly rubber-only hydraulic hose is only rubber-clad. Inside it is a web of very strong metal fibers. Garden hoses have this too. A typical garden hose withstands a pressure difference of 30 psi without ballooning out. A typical hydraulic hose can withstand many times that pressure without bulging. A space suit withstands a pressure differential of only 3.5-5 psi.

This is highly indicative of how engineers solve problems. They realize that no one single substance can solve the problem of retaining pressure while providing flexibility. And so they break up the problem into its separate constituents. Rubber will make a seal and be flexible, but it won't take the pressure. A steel webbing will be flexible and take the pressure without bulging, but it won't make a seal. Combine the two and you have the complete solution.

The Apollo suits have a restraint layer. They will not bulge beyond a certain point no matter how much additional pressure you add.

...therewith enabling them to take off their boots which were part of the pressure suit.

No. The boots in question were the unpressurized overshoes.

On a trip from earth to the moon there is a VERY significant point at which the gravity of the moon and that of the earth cancel each other out...

It's not that significant. In terms of forces of flight, it's a smooth, negligible shift. It's only significant because the AGC switches from Earth-based to moon-based navigation at that point.

The Apollo space ship should stop decelerating and start to accelerate towards the moon.

No. This refers to a "sphere of influence" problem which is actually an orbital mechanics situation. The neutral point (i.e., where on the sphere of influence the spacecraft enters) is not the same as the static neutral point determined by a simultaneous solution of the gravity force equations in direct opposition. The static neutral point is useless for navigation purposes.

Physiologically the astronauts should experience a change of their equilibrium.

Utter hogwash. The astronauts are in free-fall under all those conditions. The gravity vector sum acts simultaneously on the astronauts and their internal body parts.

Lose [sic] objects in the space ship should start moving in opposite directions.

Again, utter hogwash. All objects in the ship are uniformly affected by gravity, regardless of the way the vectors line up.

YET, in none of NASA’s records is there ANY mention of this significant point during ANY of the moon missions...

Hogwash. The flight dynamics literature is full of discussions about the AGC transition.

...nor is there any radio communication between Houston and the Apollo ship which refers to the subject!

Still more hogwash. The neutral point fallacy derives precisely from Apollo 8's mention of the AGC crossover having introduced some discontinuity in the state vector. This was misinterpreted by the press as the spacecraft having been "jolted" as it crossed into the moon's sphere of influence.

Here we see ignorance come full round. The whole neutral-point effect argument got started because of a radio transmission that was misunderstood. Now the conspiracists are saying there was no discussion over the radio, as allegedly expected.

What he really meant to say however is revealed when you play this clip backwards...

Backwards masking was debunked a long time ago.

We haven’t been back to the moon in 30+ years. Why?

No political will.

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

I wonder why the author doesn't suggest that we "try to make footprint in dry corn starch or dry flour"? Because it WILL show. Even when I was a small child (before I was even 10 years old) and I saw photographs of astronauts' footprints on the moon, I could tell that it wasn't "normal" dirt (as we know on earth.) I imagined it having comparable traits of corn starch or flour. I was an uneducated kid, it wasn't a mystery to me. Yet [adult] HBs can't seem to figure this out? I get so frustrated at the ignorance of some people.

Perhaps we should put the author on a frozen lake with thin ice. The author will soon learn that it doesn't matter how much mass something has, but over how much surface area the weight is distributed. And how can the author deduce the lander feet did not make imprints. I bet if the lander was moved, lander foot prints would be visible.

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

I'd add: A four-dollar calculator MIGHT have a microcontroller as powerful as the AGC, but that is one seriously overengineered calculator! For me, the "Their computers were toys" type arguments are offensive and demonstrates ignorance of the very recent past and abject computer illiteracy. I remember thinking how incredible it would be to have a megabyte of memory ... and years later finding the reality fell far short of the dream. These folks have absolutely no clue how much of the resources of a modern computer is dedicated to glitz - audio, video, and ease of use.

If you are running Windows, then half. Irregrdless of your Memory, HDD or CPU, half.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Thanks Jay, as usual I learned a few new things from your explanations. =D>

The website is just weird. The author does have some insight, (e.g. the heat transfer problem) but seems to stop halfway through for some reason. And as Jay noted he's suffering from the common fallacy that 'if I can't see a solution to this, noone else can'.

__________________
"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

That's another keeper from Jay.

BTW, what does "ACA out of detent" mean?

__________________
Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131