Not to mention that suit riding up in the crotch as you slide out.

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

And don’t forget the old space wedgy given to all the rookie astronaut LMPs. That made leaving the LM especially difficult. Those guys can be such cut ups.

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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

The hatch did not need to be used often. Making a large hatch isn't that easy: you need sealing, and you can't really use the hatch space to attach equipment (well, only limited). As the moon lander was rather small already, why would they have made a hatch that was substantially larger than the minimum (safely) needed? And looking at Gemini capsules and the like, small spaces have never been a major problem for the astronauts...unless those were faked too :roll:

If I were an engineer at the time, I would have designed a hatch for miminum dimensions. Strictly speaking, engineers prefer no hatches at all. No windows either. Just a closed box, with nice straight walls to hang all the equipment. Take that minus some shape adjustments to accomodise with other parts of the spacecraft, add some windows for the astronauts, oh yes some space or the astronauts where they can, well, "be", and oh yes a hatch because they said they wanted to go out. That gives you the moon lander design Making a large hatch would have been rather "strange" in experimental space flight, making it too small would be just too stupid for a hoax.

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Yes, there are a lot of good reasons to minimize the hatch size. Structural support, sealing, inability to use that space for other needs, etc. Just look at the ISS hatches - they're not exactly roomy. I can't immediately find the dimensions, but they're about 3 ft by 3 ft - not much larger than the LM.

In the U.S. a standard internal door for a residence is 32 inches wide -- the same as the width of the LM forward hatch. That's pretty roomy, actually.

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

Jay, it's not the width that's at issue, it's the height. Most people are not only 32 inches tall, and don't particularly care to crawl through their doorways.

I point out the ISS because the payload racks that get mounted in the modules were designed to fit through the hatches so they could be moved around on orbit. The hatches are still about the same size (again I don't have the specifics at hand, but 32" x 32" is pretty close). That means moving racks that are about 6 foot long and 32" deep and 32" wide around and through the hatchways, navigating from a docking module for the shuttle (say on Node 1), through the node and turned 90 degrees to go into the Lab module. Etc. Engineers just aren't that kind to astronauts.

Your point is correct in the general sense, but in this specific case it is width that is the only issue. The Hoax Proponent's charge was that the hatch wasn't wide enough to fit through when suited up. I don't believe anyone has ever claimed the hatch wasn't tall enough.

Jay, it's not the width that's at issue, it's the height.

That depends on who you ask. Collier et al. cite height as the constraining dimension while Bennett and Percy cite width as the constraining dimension.

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

Let's not forget that they're fitting the facts to their conclusions, not the other way around. If the hatch was as big as my front door, they'd be saying "Why make such a big hatch? What a ridiculous design. This proves that the landings were faked."

Collier is the one I'm familiar with - you know, the guy who verified it by crawling under his table. He's definitely looking at height, not width. I wasn't aware anyone was saying the hatch was too narrow. The pictures prove that false.

JohnW, you are correct.

Well, when NASA bought them, that nice Mr Humphreys did say that they would ride up with wear...... ( :wink: )

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

Well, up until now, I was certain that we *did* go to the moon. But I just realized something. It is commonly believed that just before liftoff the flight crew said:

NO!

They really said:

Do we need more proof! The whole moon gig was just a hoax, now I'm sure! :wink: #-o

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