http://www.weather-photography.com/A...genschein.html
http://www.meteoros.de/heilig/heilig_b.htm


Replace "dewy grass land" with "moon's surface" and there you have it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RalphVanDyke on 2002-06-30 11:10 ]</font>

Up-sun, down-sun, and cross-sun refer to rough orientations with respect to the sun. If you're looking into the sun with your shadow falling behind you, that's "up-sun". If you're looking away from the sun with your shadow falling in front of you, that's "down-sun". Cross-sun should then be obvious. These terms correspond to a rough exposure guide printed on the Hasselblad camera magazines giving suggestions for shutter speeds and f-stops for each direction.

Heiligenschein is the German word for "halo", as in the kind depicted around the heads of saints in medieval iconology and art. It refers to an optical phenomenon in which a person casting a shadow on a textured surface (especially wet grass) will see an apparent halo around the shadow of his head.

There are two main causes for this. First, the aforementioned self-occlusion of shadows in the texture. Second, the propensity of transparent spheres (i.e., water droplets) to reflect light back in the direction it came from. The shadow phenomenon allows heiligenschein to be seen in dry textures under favorable circumstances. The droplet phenomenon allows it to be seen, for example, around the shadows of airplanes cast on clouds when flying slightly above them.

A proportion of lunar dust is composed of transparent and translucent spheres created when impacts throw molten material high off the surface. The material solidifies in a spherical shape due to surface tension and falls back to the surface as a solid spherical grain.

Here’s a few remarks about the groups response to my answers.

I cannot believe that Donnie B could believe that any large quantity of dust would be left as close as 10-15 feet away from the LEM landing site. We all know that the Moons surface is mainly hard rock covered with a thin layer of dust. So your telling me that an engine capable of keeping the LEM which had an overall mass of 10,149 kilograms on descent and a maneuver system thrust of 4,491 kgf did not have enough power to blow dust away at a mere 15 feet? I thought you guys said that the engines blew sideways?

Can you not see the importance of more than one single still photo of Armstrong? What would people have said to Sir Edmund Hilary if after returning from Everest he said ‘I only got one picture of myself I’m afraid because I was the better photographer… I’ve got loads of the sherpa though…’.

I cannot see the logic if NASA really planned to land on of the LEM’s on the ridge of a hill. What if it had landed 20 feet nearer to the Surveyor…would it have toppled over?

The radiation article I posted may be based on a 5 year mission and only recommend a thickness of 1.5cm of aluminium, but as I pointed out, this was in relation to metals and parts of a CCD camera and not human tissue. Metal is a lot stronger than someone’s skin - don’t you think?

So the famous picture used for postcards with the astronaut, flag and lem was just ‘pushed’ to show the US flag on a completely black side of the lem was it?

As for the perspective of shadows – don’t you think that David Percy would know this? He is a member of the Royal Photographic Society for Christ’s sake and was nominated the film cameraman of the year by the British Industrial and Scientific Film Association. If any photographer should know about perspective in photographs, I guess that Mr. Percy is your man

I don’t need to comment about the camera being strapped to the astronauts suit, because you guys would argue black is white.

As regards to the ‘Coke Bottle’ stories not being found in Australia… What’s the difference between NASA getting rid of documents of the Apollo missions and a local newspaper? None!

Why couldn’t the Worlds media have had a direct link to the ‘live’ Apollo event?

I’d like to see these so-called ‘high jumps’ that NASA astronauts performed. Were they any higher than could be naturally performed here on Earth?

Actually the air within the LEM would have been sufficient enough to have transmitted the sound to the inside. You keep saying that no sound was heard because of the vacuum, but the space craft with which they were sitting in wasn’t a vacuum was it!

If scatter is a well known photographic phenomena don’t you think that Percy and Groves would know about it?

You suspect that Jay and others have done more research than Percy and Bennett but that is pure speculation…. You cannot truthfully know that, unless of course you’ve asked them personally.

The perspective of the mountains would not look exactly the same from several different Apollo missions. Which landed far away from each other.

I have responded to the 32 answers actually, perhaps you’d like to dig about on the thread about it and you will see.

Jay, I don’t and never have claimed to be an expert in any of these fields, but I have read enough evidence from people who are and I’m quite in my rights to either quote or reprint information from their beliefs to defend my stance. Lets now remember that not all NASA astronauts stay in line either… Ever listened to Storey Musgrave or Gordon Cooper?

So now you’re an expert photographer and lighting engineer? Its amazing you have time to keep posting things on this board.

If you cannot work out what temperature I require, then it is becoming evident to me why you cannot grasp other parts of my argument. I cannot say air or atmosphere because the Moon lacks both, so shall we say ‘above the surface’….

But doesn’t the point of perspective completely rule out your trigonometry theory if the Moon has no atmosphere? Considering that the Moon has no atmosphere, we could see a horizon which would be considerably further away than we could see on Earth, simply due to the fact that there would be no ‘haze’. Couldn’t the azimuth of the rover be mistaken if on uneven ground or in a dippy?

The basis of my claim of the letter C appearing in Hollywood productions would stem from a quote in ‘Dark Moon’ which was written by a world class photographer, which I would presume, has close ties with the entertainment industry. Perhaps he is referring to this method being commonly used in the late 60’s? Were you around in Hollywood during the Apollo years? You believe that the ‘C’ mark is a hair which got into the print whilst it was being duplicated. This could be possible, but I believe that it would be highly unlikely to have two almost identical hairs appearing within a few mm of each other, one on the rock and one below it on the ground.

The shadows have been reproduced in ‘Dark Moon’ and have shown that they do not in anyway resemble how we would imagine these shadows to fall. An experiment, once again carried out by a professional photographer.

It doesn’t matter if the surface is undulated, you cannot convince me that shadows appearing in the middle of a photograph would fall in a position varying by several degrees to those shown in the foreground under natural conditions. For the shadows to have such a vast difference in direction, the rocks would have to be at the very top and edge of a steep drop. We can see by studying the photos that this is not the case.

How many people do you know who’s job description is ‘expert on shadows’?

My claim of 7% light albedo on the Moon is correct as has been confirmed by one of your members… it doesn’t matter it the albedo goes from 7%+. My statement is still correct. If my statement had said 1% then I could see your problem.

You have completely misunderstood my claim about the roll of film. I said that some people believe that the pictures were tampered with after they were developed, but this cannot be the case with the Apollo 11 film because HJP Arnold has an exact duplicate copy of a roll of it from NASA.

Concerning the hotspot you say ‘natural sunlight reflected off a big sheet of aluminum’ And as I said, would it have the capability to create a hotspot within a depressed area? I don’t think it could.

After speaking to Mary Bennett recently (before this debate kicked off), we were talking about the article and I actually asked her if she had a copy of the article which I could use for my site (research –ta da!!!) and she said that although they had contacted the paper in question (as I had done when I wrote the article), she had not received a letter either way telling of whether there were any evidence of the article or not. As I said earlier, the lack of documentation does not mean that it didn’t happen, the same question could be asked of NASA’s own destruction of Apollo documents.

I would like you to post the evidence that the Worlds media were allowed to have ‘live’ feeds from the Apollo missions. Even people answering this thread have said that they filmed the footage off the screens.

You’ve completely misquoted me on the footprint topic. Nowhere in the article do I say that I am referring to the first footprint, but the ‘famous footprint’. Secondly, if the engine threw up dust, as can be seen through the window on descent, how high would you estimate that it rose? I would estimate that the dust blew well above 5 feet in height and therefore WOULD have landed in the landing pads as the LEM hovered just 5 feet above the surface. Also to say that the dust just got lifted up under the LEM and then dropped is incorrect, as again, in the above mentioned footage we the viewer can clearly see that the dust is being billowed out from around the LEM as well as under it. This area by the way would be the same 10-15 feet away from the LEM which Donnie believed was unaffected by the engine.

I wrote to Aulis a while back to find the source of the surveyor footage, they didn’t reply.

Apollo 13… You don’t get my point. I mean that sector 4 could be removed instead of sector one. Do you understand?

You say that you find ‘Dark Moon’ ‘almost’ lacking in merit… so there are sections in it that you find interesting or correct?

Couldn’t a dust arc be created on Earth then?

I don’t know about the effect of space radiation anymore than you do, but I quoted an expert in the field that does. Isn’t that what you wanted?

Whether NASA footage is put together incorrectly or out of context, it still remains ‘official NASA footage’. The BBC analogy is incorrect. Whether the commentary is correct or not the film is still copyrighted to the BBC and therefore their property. Just because the voice over is incorrect does not alter the fact that the BBC have filmed and own the footage. The same situation as any film review program which is reviewing the latest release.

I’m very, very interested in your comment about your belief that the star footage on my site is a make believe event because I actually downloaded it from NASA’s site! If I can find the reference number I will print it here.

On the contrary, not only have I discussed the ‘stars’ in my pictures being anything else in recent posts, I have done just that in the post you are replying to. I have said that the movie footage rules out damage to the film because the ‘stars’ move across the sky as the camera pans.

I have talked about 11 different deaths of Apollo astronauts and you try to single out one person. What’s your point?

Nice to see how members of the group are commenting on my intelligence. At least I don’t have to suck up to JayUtah. What a bunch of brown nosers.

I’ve had enough of the groups patronising stance against me for the moment.

By the way Jay… you don’t have to call me Mr. Cosnette – Sir will suffice!

I'm not sure it's the LM illuminating the ground behind Aldrin. In the reflectiuon of the LM in Aldrin's helmet visor, the LM looks dark. I would expect it to be bright. I think the ground illumination may simply be due to terrain undulations, varying the way it reflects light.

Anyway, Jay, this thread is atour-de-force for you, and just to let you know, I am cheering you on.

One of my favorite claims is how the Sun cannot create a spotlight effect, yet I see heiligenschein on every dewy morning. I have a picture of me showing it very strongly in a park, in the infield dust of a baseball diamond. I'll have to post that here when I get a chance.

Muchos gracias. Now some statements make much more sense.

__________________
Jeff Schwarz
__________________________________________________
Argh!! They booby-trapped their sun!!****--Invader ZIM

[quote]
The radiation article I posted may be based on a 5 year mission and only recommend a thickness of 1.5cm of aluminium, but as I pointed out, this was in relation to metals and parts of a CCD camera and not human tissue. Metal is a lot stronger than someone’s skin - don’t you think?

Nope, I don't. Skin has this thing that metal doesn't, its called healing, you should check it out sometime. 5 years is about 130 times as long as 2 weeks. Its like comparing apples to oranges.

As for the perspective of shadows – don’t you think that David Percy would know this? He is a member of the Royal Photographic Society for Christ’s sake and was nominated the film cameraman of the year by the British Industrial and Scientific Film Association. If any photographer should know about perspective in photographs, I guess that Mr. Percy is your man

If Percy can't figure out why shadows might converge or diverge, then he is not a credible expert, period.

Actually the air within the LEM would have been sufficient enough to have transmitted the sound to the inside. You keep saying that no sound was heard because of the vacuum, but the space craft with which they were sitting in wasn’t a vacuum was it!

I'm not rocket scientist, but last time I checked, the engine wasn't pointed towards the inside of the cabin. Would sort've complicate getting the astronauts back to Earth alive, wouldn't it? The engine discharges its gas to the OUTSIDE, where the vacuum is.

If scatter is a well known photographic phenomena don’t you think that Percy and Groves would know about it?

They can't explain perspective either, so chalk it up to the long list of easy things they can't explain.

You suspect that Jay and others have done more research than Percy and Bennett but that is pure speculation…. You cannot truthfully know that, unless of course you’ve asked them personally.

Look at Clavius, now look at Aulis. Jay's site is 1000% more factually correct than Percy/Bennet's. This leads me to suspect Jay's research is better than theirs.

If you cannot work out what temperature I require, then it is becoming evident to me why you cannot grasp other parts of my argument. I cannot say air or atmosphere because the Moon lacks both, so shall we say ‘above the surface’….

You cannot seem to grasp there is *nothing* above the surface to have a temperature. The temperature is the measure of molecule movement. No molecules = no movement = no temperature.

But doesn’t the point of perspective completely rule out your trigonometry theory if the Moon has no atmosphere?

Trigonometry is the study of triangles. If you KNOW two measures of the triangles(or its angles)you can calculate the third. Triangles don't behave differently in a vaccuum than in an atmosphere

You believe that the ‘C’ mark is a hair which got into the print whilst it was being duplicated. This could be possible, but I believe that it would be highly unlikely to have two almost identical hairs appearing within a few mm of each other, one on the rock and one below it on the ground.

http://www.lunaranomalies.com/c-rock.htm

I don’t know about the effect of space radiation anymore than you do, but I quoted an expert in the field that does.

I think if Jay works on satelittes, I think he'd know a thing or two on radiation.

Nice to see how members of the group are commenting on my intelligence. At least I don’t have to suck up to JayUtah. What a bunch of brown nosers.

Big difference between brown nosing and recognizing and thanking someone is knowledgeable in a subject and is willing to share his information freely.

The sound we associate with rocket (or jet) engines is the sound of turbulent interaction between the high speed exhaust and the (relatively still) atmosphere. In vacuum, there is no atmosphere for the exhaust to interact with (DUH!). The flow through a convergent-divergent nozzle is mostly laminar (non-tubulent) and therefore, surprisingly quiet. With little turbulence, helmets, and noise cancelling microphones it is not at all surprising that little noise was audible on the voice feeds.

PS Don't even try to say that the technology for noise cancelling mics didn't exist back then. The Greatful Dead were using them in front of a 100,000+ watt "wall of sound" PA system at that time.

FWIW Since you are questioning everbody's credentials, Audio reinforcement and recording is my field of expertise (27 years in the business).

_________________
When all is said and done - sit down and shut up!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kaptain K on 2002-06-30 18:54 ]</font>

I cannot believe that Donnie B could believe that any large quantity of dust would be left as close as 10-15 feet away from the LEM landing site. We all know that the Moons surface is mainly hard rock covered with a thin layer of dust. So your telling me that an engine capable of keeping the LEM which had an overall mass of 10,149 kilograms on descent and a maneuver system thrust of 4,491 kgf did not have enough power to blow dust away at a mere 15 feet? I thought you guys said that the engines blew sideways?
It has been explained numerous times that a stream of exhaust in a vacuum behaves very differently from a similar exhaust in an atmosphere. I will find the posts explaining this when I have more time.

Can you not see the importance of more than one single still photo of Armstrong? What would people have said to Sir Edmund Hilary if after returning from Everest he said ‘I only got one picture of myself I’m afraid because I was the better photographer… I’ve got loads of the sherpa though…’.
What part of 'hours of footage of Armstrong' don't you understand?

I cannot see the logic if NASA really planned to land on of the LEM’s on the ridge of a hill. What if it had landed 20 feet nearer to the Surveyor…would it have toppled over?
Not sure what you are referring to here...

The radiation article I posted may be based on a 5 year mission and only recommend a thickness of 1.5cm of aluminium, but as I pointed out, this was in relation to metals and parts of a CCD camera and not human tissue. Metal is a lot stronger than someone’s skin - don’t you think?
Physically stronger, yes. But more resistant to radiation? That depends on the radiation. You pointed out articles both in relation to radiation's effects on camera film and also human safety.

So the famous picture used for postcards with the astronaut, flag and lem was just ‘pushed’ to show the US flag on a completely black side of the lem was it?
It is indirect illumination. How many times does this have to be explained to you?

As for the perspective of shadows – don’t you think that David Percy would know this? He is a member of the Royal Photographic Society for Christ’s sake and was nominated the film cameraman of the year by the British Industrial and Scientific Film Association. If any photographer should know about perspective in photographs, I guess that Mr. Percy is your man
It is perspective, nothing more, nothing less. I don't care if David Percy was nominated cameraman of the year, its blatantly obvious to anyone with more than a double figure neuron count that the effects are due to perspective.

I don’t need to comment about the camera being strapped to the astronauts suit, because you guys would argue black is white.
Admit defeat on this one, Dave.

As regards to the ‘Coke Bottle’ stories not being found in Australia… What’s the difference between NASA getting rid of documents of the Apollo missions and a local newspaper? None!
And this one.

Why couldn’t the Worlds media have had a direct link to the ‘live’ Apollo event?
T.E.C.H.N.O.L.O.G.Y and R.E.S.O.U.R.C.E.S

I’d like to see these so-called ‘high jumps’ that NASA astronauts performed. Were they any higher than could be naturally performed here on Earth?
I admit I have not seen these high-jumps. But I have read many times that a jump higher than possible on earth was made when Aldrin or Armostrong (I forget who) was ascending the ladder to the LM. I may be wrong here, in that case, my bad.

Actually the air within the LEM would have been sufficient enough to have transmitted the sound to the inside. You keep saying that no sound was heard because of the vacuum, but the space craft with which they were sitting in wasn’t a vacuum was it!
Yes, but how would the sound of combustion get from the point of combustion to the LM? We are in an atmosphere, yet we cant here the sun. That is because the source of the sound is in a vacum, as with the LM. There is no suitable transmition medium between the LM and the point at which the fuels combust. If there is, please tell me what it is.

If scatter is a well known photographic phenomena don’t you think that Percy and Groves would know about it?
They probably do know about it, and are probably very aware that it causes the effects seen. But they also know that conspiracists on the whole wont, so they continue to spout it.

You suspect that Jay and others have done more research than Percy and Bennett but that is pure speculation…. You cannot truthfully know that, unless of course you’ve asked them personally.
No, but you don't know that about Percy and Bennet either. From what I've read here and over there, poeple here have a considerably stronger grip on reality.

The perspective of the mountains would not look exactly the same from several different Apollo missions. Which landed far away from each other.
I have not seen these photographs. I will hunt them down.

If you cannot work out what temperature I require, then it is becoming evident to me why you cannot grasp other parts of my argument. I cannot say air or atmosphere because the Moon lacks both, so shall we say ‘above the surface’….
'Above the surface'? The temperature of the vacum you mean? I think what you meant was, the amount of energy something on the surface would recieve in sunlight, and the temperature it could be expected to cool to when not in the sunlight. You're obtuse wording demonstrates that you do not understand what you are arguing.

But doesn’t the point of perspective completely rule out your trigonometry theory if the Moon has no atmosphere? Considering that the Moon has no atmosphere, we could see a horizon which would be considerably further away than we could see on Earth, simply due to the fact that there would be no ‘haze’. Couldn’t the azimuth of the rover be mistaken if on uneven ground or in a dippy?
The horizon on earth is solely due to its curvature, hence on the moon the horizon would appear nearer, though it is extermely unlikely this would be detectable. If haze obscures the horizon, there is no horizon. I have no idea what you are arguing here.

The basis of my claim of the letter C appearing in Hollywood productions would stem from a quote in ‘Dark Moon’ which was written by a world class photographer, which I would presume, has close ties with the entertainment industry. Perhaps he is referring to this method being commonly used in the late 60’s? Were you around in Hollywood during the Apollo years? You believe that the ‘C’ mark is a hair which got into the print whilst it was being duplicated. This could be possible, but I believe that it would be highly unlikely to have two almost identical hairs appearing within a few mm of each other, one on the rock and one below it on the ground.
They are only identical in so far as being 'C' shaped.
BTW I am a great fan of B-movies, I love watching the most appalling films I can get my hands on, but nothing I have ever seen such a botch up as this. Considering the technical prowess required to make such a realistic 'stage' as the moon, makes it even less likely.

The shadows have been reproduced in ‘Dark Moon’ and have shown that they do not in anyway resemble how we would imagine these shadows to fall. An experiment, once again carried out by a professional photographer.
Someone (sorry I forget who) here also did the experiment, and showed quite clearly that shadows can fall like that. Go and look:
http://www.weather-photography.com/A.../w-083-13.html
http://www.weather-photography.com/A.../w-036-21.html
These are heiligenschien (sp?) demo's, but you can clearly see that the shadows from the sun are non-parallel. The authors of Dark Moon where trying to prove a point, and know very well they could use there 'qualifications' to pull such a stunt without the dangerously suggestible conspiracy crowd thinking 'sorry, is that right?'

It doesn’t matter if the surface is undulated, you cannot convince me that shadows appearing in the middle of a photograph would fall in a position varying by several degrees to those shown in the foreground under natural conditions. For the shadows to have such a vast difference in direction, the rocks would have to be at the very top and edge of a steep drop. We can see by studying the photos that this is not the case.
OMG. I wont swear. Look at the above links. Look at just about any photograph with the sun as the primary light source.

How many people do you know who’s job description is ‘expert on shadows’?
None. It probably falls under the category 'expert on lighting'. Though you dont need to be an expert in either to notice an everyday phenomenon at work in an Apollo photograph.

My claim of 7% light albedo on the Moon is correct as has been confirmed by one of your members… it doesn’t matter it the albedo goes from 7%+. My statement is still correct. If my statement had said 1% then I could see your problem.
Fair enough.

Concerning the hotspot you say ‘natural sunlight reflected off a big sheet of aluminum’ And as I said, would it have the capability to create a hotspot within a depressed area? I don’t think it could.
I believe you are referring to the Heiligenschein phenomenon. Again.
http://www.weather-photography.com/A.../w-036-21.html

After speaking to Mary Bennett recently (before this debate kicked off), we were talking about the article and I actually asked her if she had a copy of the article which I could use for my site (research –ta da!!!) ( by golly, that kind of research just puts everyone here to shame! n) and she said that although they had contacted the paper in question (as I had done when I wrote the article), she had not received a letter either way telling of whether there were any evidence of the article or not. As I said earlier, the lack of documentation does not mean that it didn’t happen, the same question could be asked of NASA’s own destruction of Apollo documents.
Fair enough. Pretty desperate, completely un-provable, but whatever.

I would like you to post the evidence that the Worlds media were allowed to have ‘live’ feeds from the Apollo missions. Even people answering this thread have said that they filmed the footage off the screens.
How can we provide evidence of this? It has already been said that it was 'filmed of screens' for many people, this was unavoidable. But it was still 'live', or at least within a few seconds.

[b]You’ve completely misquoted me on the footprint topic. Nowhere in the article do I say that I am referring to the first footprint, but the ‘famous footprint’. Secondly, if the engine threw up dust, as can be seen through the window on descent, how high would you estimate that it rose? I would estimate that the dust blew well above 5 feet in height and therefore WOULD have landed in the landing pads as the LEM hovered just 5 feet above the surface. Also to say that the dust just got lifted up under the LEM and then dropped is incorrect, as again, in the above mentioned footage we the viewer can clearly see that the dust is being billowed out from around the LEM as well as under it. This area by the way would be the same 10-15 feet away from the LEM which Donnie believed was unaffected by the engine.

I wrote to Aulis a while back to find the source of the surveyor footage, they didn’t reply.
You are an embarassment.

Couldn’t a dust arc be created on Earth then?
No. Not unless you are using extremely heavy dust, in which case it wouldnt get 'kicked up' so easily. In other words, absolutely, categorically, not as it appears in Apollo footage.

I don’t know about the effect of space radiation anymore than you do, but I quoted an expert in the field that does. Isn’t that what you wanted?
He proved himself a complete novice in the field of sensible experimentation. His experiments bore no resemblance whatsoever to the conditions he was simulating.

Nice to see how members of the group are commenting on my intelligence. At least I don’t have to suck up to JayUtah. What a bunch of brown nosers.
Jay does a fair portion of the debunking, so most of your comments are directed toward him, which makes it hard for anyone to discuss your subsequent posts without mentioning him.

I’ve had enough of the groups patronising stance against me for the moment.

By the way Jay… you don’t have to call me Mr. Cosnette – Sir will suffice!
Thanks!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: widoxm on 2002-06-30 19:06 ]</font>

Since you have proven yourself to be complely unwilling or unable to do the simplest calculations to support your arguments, I'll do it for you. First of all the moons surface is NOT "hard rock covered with a thin layer of dust". Where do you get this stuff? Do you just make it up? If you can't get this simple fact straight, why should we believe anything you say?

Anyway, if you figure (never mind, I'll figure for you) that the weight of the LM was around 3000 pounds at landing (lunar weight), and the width of the engine cover was 54 inches, you can do some simple math to figure out EXACTLY how much pressure was being exerted on the lunar surface. Doing the math it turns out it is less than 1.5 pounds per square inch! Now on the earth, if you blew on dust or ashes with that amount of pressure (which you could), you couldn't move it very far, but on the moon, the vacuum would allow the column to disperse so rapidly that it wouldn't move much depth of material at all.

You see? It only requires the simplest of thought.

I cannot believe that Donnie B could believe that any large quantity of dust would be left as close as 10-15 feet away from the LEM landing site.

What you believe is irrelevant. We're interested in what you can believe.

So your telling me that an engine capable of keeping the LEM which had an overall mass of 10,149 kilograms on descent ...

No. A large amount of that mass was descent fuel which was up to 95% depleted at touchdown. A more realistic estimate of the LM touchdown mass is 7,000 kg.

Further, the hover thrust is not determined by mass, but by lunar weight. Simply put, the moon's gravity would exert a downward force of about 12,000 N on the lunar module which would have to be balanced by an upward thrust of 12,000 N in order to maintain a constant descent rate.

... and a maneuver system thrust of 4,491 kgf did not have enough power to blow dust away at a mere 15 feet?

You're handwaving. Your argument amounts to, "Gee, I think it would do this." In order for your theory to me any more than a fantasy, you will have to quantitatively determine that the engine would unequivocally have interacted with the surface as you say. You're just begging the question.

I thought you guys said that the engines blew sideways?

No. Once the conical plume strikes the surface, it is dispersed sideways (radially) and slightly upward. But as it does so it loses density and with it the ability to pick up dust. Directly underneath the nozzle you would expect a large amount of scouring. Fifteen feet laterally from the nozzle you would not expect much scouring at all. What you see in the film is dust displaced from directly under the nozzle.

Can you not see the importance of more than one single still photo of Armstrong?

No, I do not agree with your estimatation of that importance. Though Armstrong was the first formally to set foot on the surface, both Armstrong and Aldrin undertook the same dangers and deserve the same reword. Armstrong's precedence is largely ceremonial. And we have plenty of pictures of Aldrin on the surface, documenting his activities.

Further, you have selected one mode of data acquisition (i.e., Hasselblad photography) and argued a case for suspicion based on Armstrong's absence from it. You have essentially ignored the reasons given why he doesn't appear in the Hasselblad photography, but more important you have simply disregarded as irrelevant all of the other means of data acquisition (e.g., television downlink, 16 mm film) in which Armstrong features quite prominently -- far more than Aldrin.

In other words, you can't seem to realize that your selectivity in your evidence undermines the conclusion you wish to draw from it.

What if it had landed 20 feet nearer to the Surveyor…would it have toppled over?

Of course

The radiation article I posted may be based on a 5 year mission ...

But you don't realize that this is a major difference between the data you cite and the conditions of an Apollo mission. Duration and constancy of exposure is a significant predictor of eventual radiological effect.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Metal is a lot stronger than someone’s skin - don’t you think?

That's not the issue. Sensitive electronics are far more susceptible to radiation damage than human tissue. Further, human tissue can heal; electronics cannot.

So the famous picture used for postcards with the astronaut, flag and lem was just ‘pushed’ to show the US flag on a completely black side of the lem was it?

You're changing horses. The decal on the side of the LM was made of Beta cloth and is a reasonably diffuse reflector. The aluminized mylar is a specular reflector. It was not completely black, but in most cases is reflecting an image of the blackness of space.

I discuss this at length on my web site.

As for the perspective of shadows – don’t you think that David Percy would know this?

I agree that he should. However, he has demonstrated on several occasions that he either does not understand perspective or he chooses to misrepresent it in his works. Further, countless photographers have empirically disproved Percy's assertions regarding perspective. I'm one of them.

He is a member of the Royal Photographic Society

That does not imply expert understanding of perspective.

was nominated the film cameraman of the year by the British Industrial and Scientific Film Association.

That does not imply expert understanding of perspective. Further, he was nominated but did not win. BISFA awards gold, silver, and bronze medals for that distinction; Percy came in at least fourth.

You are adept at regurgitating Percy's claims, but rather inept at determining what actual skills and qualifications those credentials imply. Photographers are not automatically experts in perspective, and Percy -- regardless of his claims -- is most certainly not an expert in perspective.

I don’t need to comment about the camera being strapped to the astronauts suit, because you guys would argue black is white.

Sour grapes. I have made a meticulous study of the mechanical aspects of that connection, and based on that study I disbelieve your argument. You have not demonstrated any study, examination, analysis or other intellectual treatment of your argument. You have simply stated an assertion with no support, and are now apparently upset that it's not being uncritically accepted.

As regards to the ‘Coke Bottle’ stories not being found in Australia… What’s the difference between NASA getting rid of documents of the Apollo missions and a local newspaper? None!

Irrelevant. If the originator of the story says that the facts were published in the newspaper, then that means someone, somewhere had to have seen that newspaper.

Further, you can explain the problems with your speculation only by adding more speculation. That makes your story less credible because it requires more to be taken, unproven, on faith. Besides, it is impossible to eliminate all copies of a newspaper. Someone, somewhere must have that alleged article in his private collection.

Finally, the fact remains that you and Ms. Bennett persist in alleging a fact which you admit not having verified. That is consummately dishonest.

Were they any higher than could be naturally performed here on Earth?

Armstrong estimated his leap as between five and six feet.

... keep saying that no sound was heard because of the vacuum, but the space craft with which they were sitting in wasn’t a vacuum was it!

No, you misunderstand. A rocket engine does not produce noise in a vacuum. The roar of a rocket engine is produced by the impact of the exhaust plume with the surrounding air. There was no air surrounding the LM's exhaust plume, therefore no roar. The presence of air inside the LM cabin is irrelevant.

If scatter is a well known photographic phenomena don’t you think that Percy and Groves would know about it?


You suspect that Jay and others have done more research than Percy and Bennett but that is pure speculation.

No, it is not. I have demonstrated in numerous cases that Bennett and Percy are completely ignorant or misrepresent several aspects of the Apollo missions. If one demonstrates more correct knowledge about a subject than someone else, it follows that he has done more research on it.

You cannot truthfully know that, unless of course you’ve asked them personally.

No. If someone claims to have made a careful examination of something, and then proceeds to inaccurately describe that thing, we can determine that his claims of thoroughness are false.

The perspective of the mountains would not look exactly the same from several different Apollo missions. Which landed far away from each other.

You have not provided any evidence of for this claim, despite our repeated requests to do so. We cannot evaluate the similarity of mountains we have not seen. For the last time, provide the evidence or withdraw the assertion.

I have responded to the 32 answers actually, perhaps you’d like to dig about on the thread about it and you will see.

But you continue to maintain that your questions have no answers. That is the issue. The fact that you have responded to the answers is de facto evidence that the answers exist.

Further, you have not provided any substantive response to most of those answers; merely restated your assertions.

Jay, I don’t and never have claimed to be an expert in any of these fields, but I have read enough evidence from people who are

No, you have cited evidence it is clear you don't understand, and your primary sources are Bennett and Percy, who are not experts.

So now you’re an expert photographer and lighting engineer?

No, I said I was a competent photographer and lighting technican. I further stipulated that I have confirmed my findings in those areas with people who are experts.

If you cannot work out what temperature I require, then it is becoming evident to me why you cannot grasp other parts of my argument.

No, it is you who cannot grasp the concepts of thermodynamics. Your question amounts to asking, "How high is up?" You're just handwaving again.

... so shall we say ‘above the surface’.

You must describe the physical characteristics of the object whose temperature you wish computed. Different objects reach different equilibrium temperatures based on their material characteristics and geometry. This is what you can't seem to understand.

Couldn’t the azimuth of the rover be mistaken if on uneven ground or in a dippy?

No. The guidance platforms on these vehicles will drift and introduce some inaccuracy, but the characteristics of the surface are not relevant. The guidance platforms are similar to compasses.

... which was written by a world class photographer

I do not agree that David Percy is a world class photographer. I don't even agree that Percy is a notable photographer.

... I would presume, has close ties with the entertainment industry.

Your presumptions are irrelevant. You agree with Percy because you trust his credentials. I disagree with Percy because his allegations of fact are not true. That's irrelevant of credentials.

Perhaps he is referring to this method being commonly used in the late 60’s?

If so, then how would Percy know about them?

This could be possible, but I believe that it would be highly unlikely to have two almost identical hairs ...

I did not say both were hairs.

The shadows have been reproduced in ‘Dark Moon’

No, Percy has drawn diagrams and made Photo Shop mockups of what he says the shadows should have looked like. He has not reproduced these shots in the studio with artificial light. I am not interested in what Percy "imagines" the shadows should have looked like.

It doesn’t matter if the surface is undulated, you cannot convince me that shadows appearing in the middle of a photograph would fall in a position varying by several degrees to those shown in the foreground under natural conditions.

Then you don't understand perspective.

How many people do you know who’s job description is ‘expert on shadows’?

They're called "photogrammetrists" and "photo analysts", and I know several.

My claim of 7% light albedo on the Moon is correct as has been confirmed by one of your members.

... who subsequently backed down.

... this cannot be the case with the Apollo 11 film because HJP Arnold has an exact duplicate copy of a roll of it from NASA.

That does not preclude in the least the possibility of "pushing" during printing.

would it have the capability to create a hotspot within a depressed area? I don’t think it could.

Prove it.

As I said earlier, the lack of documentation does not mean that it didn’t happen ...

The lack of documentation means you cannot assert that it happened, as you both have done. In the U.S. making such an allegation would be grounds for a libel suit because you would not have exercised due diligence to verify the claim before alleging it as fact.

I would like you to post the evidence that the Worlds media were allowed to have ‘live’ feeds from the Apollo missions.

I have been told this by several people who worked at Mission Control during the Apollo missions. Where is your evidence that the world's media had to film it off monitors in Houston?

You’ve completely misquoted me on the footprint topic. Nowhere in the article do I say that I am referring to the first footprint, but the ‘famous footprint’.

What exact "famous footprint" do you refer to then?

I would estimate that the dust blew well above 5 feet in height

I disagree. There is no atmosphere to aerosolize the dust outside of the plume. The plume hugs the surface and so does the dust.

dust is being billowed out from around the LEM as well as under it.

I disagree. What you are seeing is dust which has been carried from under the nozzle by the plume into the camera's field of view. There is no reason to suppose that the dust entering the field of view must have originated from within the field of view.

I wrote to Aulis a while back to find the source of the surveyor footage, they didn’t reply.

Then you don't know if your assertion is true or not.

I mean that sector 4 could be removed instead of sector one. Do you understand?

Yes, but then what's the point of comparing it to sector 1?

If you wish to argue the photo of Apollo 13's service module is staged then you have to do more than suggest that it might have been possible for it to be staged. The photo is exactly what we would expect to see if the Apollo 13 events had actually transpired. Upon what grounds do you argue it is anomalous?

there are sections in it that you find interesting or correct?

There are some true facts in Dark Moon, but that does not mean the book's conclusions are true. For example, Dark Moon compares radiation exposure levels from Apollo to exposures from Skylab. The figures quoted are correct. But the authors claim it's suspicious that Skylab exposures were greater. That is incorrect because a proper understanding of radiation exposure would expect Skylab levels to be higher because their exposure was longer.

Couldn’t a dust arc be created on Earth then?

Not in the same fashion as it is observed to be created in the Apollo footage.

I don’t know about the effect of space radiation anymore than you do, but I quoted an expert in the field that does. Isn’t that what you wanted?

No, because your example is irrelevant because it discusses a vastly different profile of exposure than Apollo.

Whether NASA footage is put together incorrectly or out of context, it still remains ‘official NASA footage’.

But the composition of the footage, and what may be added to it, do not constitute errors of the original source material.

Just because the voice over is incorrect does not alter the fact that the BBC have filmed and own the footage.

But the alleged error would not be the BBC's fault because they do not represent that the footage was taken on the same day. That would have been my representation. This is what has happened with the Apollo footage.

because I actually downloaded it from NASA’s site! If I can find the reference number I will print it here.

That would be acceptable.

I have said that the movie footage rules out damage to the film because the ‘stars’ move across the sky as the camera pans.

No. That argument presumes that the film and the stills represent images of the same causal phenomenon. You cannot assume that. Referring to the film does not solve the problems with the stills. Your argument is circular.

I have talked about 11 different deaths of Apollo astronauts and you try to single out one person. What’s your point?

My point is that nowhere on your site do I see a list of names and dates of death. I see only the assertion:

"Some of the Eleven Apollo astronauts had non space related fatal accidents within a twenty two month period of one another, the odds of this happening are 1 in 10,000...coincidence?"

These are specific arguments, and you have provided no specific data to back them up.

I’ve had enough of the groups patronising stance against me for the moment.

Perhaps if you would not be so arrogant you would not be so frustrated.


<font size=-1>[The Bad Astronomer corrected a couple of coding errors on 2002-06-30 19:06 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Bad Astronomer on 2002-06-30 19:07 ]</font>

I have talked about 11 different deaths of Apollo astronauts and you try to single out one person. What’s your point?

No, you've never talked about the deaths of eleven astronauts at all. That's the point, cos (may I call you cos?), you simply make the claim and ignore all requests for evidence. After weeks of reading your evasive responses you get this reaction...

Nice to see how members of the group are commenting on my intelligence.

...which really shouldn't be any surprise to you at all. Provide real evidence for your claims or withdraw them. That would silence the naysayers, right?

I’ve had enough of the groups patronising stance against me for the moment.

Oh, boo hoo. You have been arrogant, abusive, deliberately obtuse and downright insulting. You turn to personal attacks and belittling comments when it's clear that you haven't a clue what you're talking about. Count yourself lucky this debate is on BABB and not another board like JREF or you'd have been flamed to cinders by now.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pvtpylot on 2002-06-30 20:30 ]</font>

Yes, CD. I'll admit to sucking up when the subject is JayUtah's postings. But what I suck up are the delicious kernels of knowledge he so kindly leaves laying all over the place. Thanks, Jay, for continuing to satisfy my hunger.

I'm not sure it's the LM illuminating the ground behind Aldrin.

Neither am I, but I'm not about to discount it as a possibility. I was not trying to limit the possibilities to reflection from the LM skin. It could simply be a phase effect, or it could also be an exposure effect. It could be lots and lots of things.

One of my favorite claims is how the Sun cannot create a spotlight effect, yet I see heiligenschein on every dewy morning.

I see it frequently when I fly. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though. We'll keep pursuing reason in the face of absurdity.

...experts on shadows...

No, but I can go outside on a sunny day and reproduce all the Apollo 'anomolies' with my ditital camera.

rocket engine noise

Where does the noise come from? My blowtorch makes a sort of 'whooshing' noise, but a rocket engine makes a hell of a lot more din. Could this be because the gas exits at above the speed of sound, causing a sort of contiuous 'sonic boom'. A gun discharging also makes a loud 'sonic boom' as the bullit leaves the barrel well past the speed of sound. A whip 'cracks' because the tip is travelling at super sonic velocity. Take away the air, and there would be no sonic boom.

hotspot behind Aldrin

I have long believed this to be a reflection of the sunlight off the back of the LM. All the angles are right for it to be so.

Groves analysis

In the appendix of Dark Moon, it gives detailed assumptions behind the experiments. There are so many assumptions and guesses that the analysis is meaningless. Whether Groves himself made these assumptions, or whether Percy and Bennett determined the radiation conditions of the film testing is unclear.

Australian Coke bottle

Again, I will note that the Australian woman who 'stayed up late' to watch the Moon Walk was obviously spouting fantasy because the Moon Walk happened around lunch time in Australia.

TV broadcast

Why can't I video the output of my PC monitor? Different formats. I'd need some kind of converter. I could just point a video camera at the screen, if that's all I had available. And to convert 10 frames per second to 30 frames per second, I'd have to have the ability to buffer at least the last frame to repeat twice before moving on to the next. CD, these 100hz TV's we're being urged to buy in the UK, do you think the BBC etc transmit special 100hz signals? No, they just send the usual 25hz. The TV just scans each frame 4 times, to reduce flicker on larger screens.

Dust and surface heating

Take a blow torch and point it at some dirt for 10 seconds. What happens? Some of the dirt is blown away. The rest just sits there. To get it to do anything but get a little warm you have to hold the torch in place for ages, and then the dirt won't get fused into glass or anything so dramatic. That takes some serious heating.

CD, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to examine some of these 'anomolies'. Anyone can do it if they just use a bit of common sense and think things through a little.

Dave Cosnette said (in part): "Can you not see the importance of more than one single still photo of Armstrong? What would people have said to Sir Edmund Hilary if after returning from Everest he said ‘I only got one picture of myself I’m afraid because I was the better photographer… I’ve got loads of the sherpa though…’."

Interesting thought...How many photos did Hilary and Tenzing take on top of Mount Everest? And how many of each other? As I understand it, there are no photos of Hilary on Everest, because Tenzing didn't know how to use the camera.

Relevance to Apollo 11: Armstrong was supposed to be the better photographer, so he was given the job of taking most of the photos.

Incidentally, what's the source of the story about the Coke bottle seen by the Australian woman?

As an Australian, I'm curious about Australian angles on Apollo. Remember, I'm the person who read the microfilm copies of the "West Australian" newspaper at the time of the Apollo 11 landing, and found no references to faked moon walks or Coke bottles. All I found was reporting of what happened, and letters to the Editor split about 50:50 supporting and opposing the Apollo program as a whole.

Of course, someone could have leaned on the newspaper, and got them to print a late edition leaving out the story, and it was the late edition which made it onto the microfilm. But I'd like to see some evidence for that as well.

That's your opinion, but we have more than speculation.

For instance, in her rebuttal to The Sky At Night, Mary Bennett wrote:
It took me 30 seconds to find this color far-ultraviolet enhanced photograph taken by John Young using the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph.



In the caption it reads: The three auroral belts, the sunlit atmosphere and the background stars (one very close to the Earth, on left) can be studied quantitatively for brightness.

Now you see, we have more than speculation.

__________________
~AstroMike

Dave, for God's sake, you spent over an ENTIRE YEAR completely ignoring the rover video argument. Numerous people here have called the mistake to your attention, yet it takes you this long to admit your error. No what are we supposed to think about you?

WHOOPS!!! Cosmicdave steps in it again.

To confirm Peter's point, there is NO PICTURE OF HILLARY ON TOP OF EVEREST! Here is a quote from this website:

The dramatic photograph of Tenzing Norgay on the summit of Everest went around the world. Later people wondered why there was no similar picture of Hillary. The explorer wrote that he had not asked the Sherpa to reciprocate because "as far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how."

Oh, that's classic, Tomblvd! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Nice piece of research. I can't wait to see cd's backpedal about this one.

Can't take credit for this one. It's Peter B's baby.

But this is classic. The guy is so sure of himself that he just regurgitates anything that comes into his mind. A perfect example of what passes for research in his world.

But he won't backpedal, he'll ignore.

I'm from Perth myself, and let me inform you that the West Australian is the state's main newspaper, with a readership stretching from the capital to the northernmost part of the Kimberly more than 1,500 kilometres away. It is hardly a just a "local newspaper" now, nor was it 1969. As someone else mentioned, somebody, somewhere would have a copy of that article. In fact, if you consider the large number of Apollo enthusiasts, there should be a fair number of copies.

And as for the paper itself expunging certain stories from its archives, what possible motive would a newspaper have for destroying an article about one of the most important historical events of all time? Can you provide ANY evidence to back up your ridiculous allegation?


You can stop the infantile name-calling right now, thanks.

We hardly need to make such comments (though it's difficult to overcome the temptation), as your constant rudeness and your illiterate, incoherent and illogical ramblings are by themselves evidence enough for your limited mental faculties.

There's been no "sucking up" here. We have simply been giving credit where it is due. That's an adult concept, I know, but maybe you could try it sometime, eh?

(an infuriated)JB

(edit to rephrase and shorten post)

_________________
"Nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our loneliness..."

- Loren Eisely, "The Immense Journey" 1956

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jovianboy on 2002-07-01 02:43 ]</font>

And here it is: The Moon's geometric Albedo is 0.12 according to the 2002 Astronomical Almanac. Page E88, for those who want to look it up for themselves.

Joe Durnavich gave us this excellent page on lunar albedo at the beginning of this thread. I recommend everyone read it. http://www.roboticobservatory.com/je...ech/albedo.htm

It states:

The article goes on to say that a golf course is about 13%, so it's not really that dark. And ends with this quote:

So you see, the moon is not quite as dark as is often claimed - something about in the middle range of lunar brightnesses is just as bright as a grassy yard at noon.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Speaking of the lunar lander engine and noise - one thing to remember is that the lander engine was purely pressure fed. It had no fuel pumps to make noise; just a tank of supercritical helium pushing the fuels out through some valves, piping, and the exhaust nozzle. The only noise generated inside the lander would be the flow noise of the fuel and oxidizer through the system, and since there was very little turbulence even in the exhaust bell, you'd expect it to run pretty quiet.

Apollo 13 was on cable yesterday. Near the end there's a scene where Jim Lovell is dreaming of walking on the moon. And it looks really fake. You could tell they had to use some kind of dense clumping material to try and simulate the properties of lunar soil under low-gravity and vacume. It's close, but when the astronaut is walking around and kicking up dust the arcs of dust are much too shallow (1G rather than 1/6G behavior), and there is some tell-tale swirling of fine material suspended in the air for a moment - the ligher and heavier dust components seperate and fall at different rates. Close, but not quite.

Even today Hollywood can't accurately reproduce the behavior observed of the lunar dust in Apollo. There's no way they could have over 30 years ago.

Golf courses might have an albedo of 13%, but since they are green, golf courses appear brighter to human eyes than something red or blue with an albedo of 13%. This is because the human eye is most sensitive to wavelenghts of light near green.

see http://www.photo.net/photo/edscott/vis00010.htm. The most pertinent graphic is near the bottom.

..but that is the AVERAGE lunar albedo. Much of it is quite brighter than that. Any way, it has been shown that even if the surface was only 10% reflective, that is way more than enough to make it a mighty fine secondary light source.

CJSF


_________________
"Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never,
ever get it out."
-Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Christopher Ferro on 2002-07-01 11:39 ]</font>

This is because the human eye is most sensitive to wavelenghts of light near green.

And photographic film has its own characteristic response to wavelengths, and its own nonlinear response to the accumulation of photons. Photographers have known for decades that what you see with your eyes is not necessarily what you're going to see on film.

My point, which Mr. Cosnette has fully ignored, is that albedo is not the One True Measurement of the effects of reflected light upon retina or Ektachrome.

but that is the AVERAGE lunar albedo.

Another point which Mr. Cosnette has fully ignored, prefering instead to simply camp on his 7% figure and point to Joe's statement as proof that all he says about albedo is correct.

There is a big difference between standing on the lunar surface and orbiting over it. If I fly over my city and measure its average albedo, I'll probably come up with a value in the 10% range, since lawns and treetops will contribute to that effect. But if I stand in the middle of an empty concrete parking lot and measure the albedo of my surroundings, I'm going to get the albedo only of the concrete around me.

Mr. Cosnette intends his albedo argument to relate to specific photographs taken on the lunar surface, but he seems unwilling to account for the factors of albedo which make it unsuitable as a determiner of photographic exposure, and the simple fact that it varies from place to place on the moon. He takes the lowest published figure and applies that to everything, everywhere.

Any way, it has been shown that even if the surface was only 10% reflective, that is way more than enough to make it a mighty fine secondary light source.

You betcha, especially when the sun is the primary light source. People seem to have very little intuition for just how incredibly bright the sun is, and how just a very little bit of that, scattered or reflected around, can still have a profound effect -- especially in photography.

Photographers soon learn that using reflectors will give you more light than you think you're getting, in the cumulative sense. That is, looking at how the reflected light strikes your subject is not a good indicator of how much of that reflected light will show up in the final shot.

This is why professional photographers like Craig shoot Polaroid test shots to see if their lighting and reflection is really going to show up the way they think it will on film.

Well, others have already answered this in much the same way that I would. For the record, I do indeed believe that the surface was undisturbed where Aldrin made his footprint, for the simple reason that he was trying to document the surface properties, and deliberately chose an undisturbed place. If 15 feet hadn't been far enough, he could easily have walked another 15 feet, or 15 feet beyond that, and so on.

By the way, it's not at all true that "we all know" that the lunar surface is made up of dust over solid rock. It's not. The surface is, in fact, a material called "regolith", and it goes quite deep (at least a meter or two; in any case, much deeper than what the descent engine disturbed). Regolith is a mixture of particles of different sizes, ranging from dust-sized, up through sand-grain sized, small pebbles, and larger chunks of rock. It is relatively loose on top, and gets denser the farther down you go. That's why the astronauts found that they could push a flagpole in a few inches by hand, and could hammer it in several inches more. They did not hit solid rock at those depths.

No, I can't see any reason that getting a still photo of Armstrong would have been a high priority on Apollo 11. As you put it, cosmicdave: "Armstrong, Aldrin... whatever." You can't easily tell them apart anyhow. And even if you could, you need to realize that there were very specific subjects that the astronauts were expected to photograph: the LM (to document the effects of the landing), panoramas (to identify the exact landing location and allow study of the surface characteristics), the experiment packages, and so on. Taking "Neil-was-here" tourist shots was certainly not on the list.

And, of course, on the later missions there were two cameras, so both crew members are well-represented.

I have responded to the 32 answers actually, perhaps you?d like to dig about on the thread about it and you will see.
Well, I believe you admitted you did not have sufficient expertise to comment on the capability of the guidance computer. But your web site still makes the claim.

Also, you have not yet responded to the refutation of your claims that Apollo signals just came from Earth orbit.

As to your frustration - your feelings seem to be hurt because people are questioning your intelligence. Well, I don't know anything about your intelligence; you could be quite intelligent; I don't know. But some of your assertions reveal a great deal of ignorance. For instance,

If you cannot work out what temperature I require, then it is becoming evident to me why you cannot grasp other parts of my argument. I cannot say air or atmosphere because the Moon lacks both, so shall we say ?above the surface??
There's just no such thing as a temperature 'above the surface' in a vacuum. You have to refer to some kind of material. This is the most basic sort of freshman physics.

Or your claim that lunar soil should just drop straight down after coming out from under the rover's wheels - that wouldn't fly in high-school physics. To your credit, you backed off from that one, but your receptiveness to such correction is sporadic at best.

And when you keep making such elementary mistakes, and respond to detailed counterarguments with "so-and-so has a book about this" or "I can't accept that" rather than working out your answer, people wonder what is going on. I personally make no claim about your ability to learn, but your willingness to learn seems almost entirely subordinated to your determination to believe that Apollo was a hoax.

I can't stress enough that a question like, "What is the temperature a meter above the lunar surface?" is entirely meaningless. Mr. Cosnette wants to believe I'm dodging the argument, or that my inability to answer it means I lack the skill to comprehend his argument.

Dave, here's how it goes.

"Temperature" is a measurement of molecular vibration in a material. No material means no molecules, and therefore the measurement of molecular vibration is impossible. A meter above the lunar surface, there's nothing. Well, maybe a stray particle to two, but essentially nothing.

When people are talking about needing a material for the question, they mean that if you put a chunk of something a meter off the surface and let it come to equilibrium, the temperature of that chunk would mean something.

What that chunk is made of is very important. A spherical kilogram of polished aluminum will arrive at a different equilibrium temperature than a spherical kilogram of carbon. You're a big fan of common sense. Common sense tells you not to wear a long-sleeved black shirt on a hot day.

The angle of the sun as it strikes the object is very important, and interacts with the shape of the object to dictate how much radiant heat is absorbed. A sphere is a bad example because the angle doesn't matter. If we pound our kilogram of aluminum into a thin sheet, the angle of that sheet with respect to the direction of the sun will affect its equilibrium temperature. Roll it into a cylinder and present it end-on to the sun. That would also affect the temperature. Make it into a cone, like an Apollo command module. That would produce yet a third thermal situation.

The mass of the object matters. More massive objects absorb more heat without raising their temperature. That's why a cigarette lighter will heat up a paperclip to incandescence, but not an aircraft carrier. A square meter of aliminum plate that's one millimeter thick will get hotter in the sun (all things kept equal) than a square meter of aluminum plate that's five centimeters thick. The latter has more mass.

(In fact, structural engineers are hard at work trying to devise fireproof trusses, in the wake of the WTC collapse. Trusses are very efficient structural elements -- low weight and high strength. However they are very susceptible to being weakened by heat because instead of a single massive chunk of steel you have a web of small steel rods or angle stock. It doesn't take as much energy to heat those to the point where they soften, and once a portion of the truss is so softened, the entire truss fails.)

Finally there is the notion of temperature gradient. If you apply a cigarette lighter to one end of an aircraft carrier, that one spot will heat up but the opposite end of the aircraft carrier won't. This is because heat must conduct through material. And some of the heat is lost in the process. Different materials conduct heat differently. Poor conductors of heat are used as thermal insulation.

So if I take my sphere of aluminum and place it one meter above the lunar surface with the sun directly overhead, where shall I measure the temperature, and will it be the same all over? It won't be the same. The top "pole" of the sphere, in the most direct sunlight, will be the hottest. The coldest spot will be the bottom "pole". If I could magically measure the temperature at every point within the sphere, I would have what's called a "temperature gradient" between any two points -- simply the difference of temperature as heat propagates through the object, petering out as it goes.

Let's say that on the moon at lunar midday I measure the surface temperature of a rock and it comes out to 80 C or so. If I wanted, I could perform a chemical analysis of the rock and apply a lot of thermodynamics theory and come up with a computation that shows around 80 C for that substance in that position.

What would the temperature on the bottom of the rock be? Probably closer to -80 C because the rock won't conduct heat perfectly from its top to its bottom -- there are no perfectly isothermally conductive substances that I'm aware of. And the bottom of the rock isn't in the sun so it's not absorbing radiant energy from the sun.

Computational thermodynamics is pretty hard. You either need differential equations and a lot of patience, or a carefully constructed computer simulation, and usually both. But conceptual thermodynamics is actually quite easy and pretty common sensical once you really stop and think about it. But it's your refusal even to consider the conceptual aspects of thermodynamics and heat transfer that baffles us.

Sts60 said it a little more politely than I did, but the main cause of your frustration is your attitude. You project this feeling of believing that you are right and everyone else is wrong despite their expertise and learning.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-07-01 15:46 ]</font>

I was looking at AS11-40-5903 that JayUtah and David Hall were talking about, and I noticed something:

JayUtah said:
Aldrin is the subject of the photo, but Armstrong appears in it in the visor reflection. The problem is that there are two hot-spots in this photo: one behind Aldrin and likely caused by the reflection from facets of the LM, and one associated with Armstrong and very clearly due to heiligenschien. We have to be certain which pool of light we're talking about from moment to moment

(Bold added)

Isn't the heiligenschien due to Aldrin, not Armstrong? Armstrong is the white form visible in the dead center of Aldrin's visor, whereas the heiligenschien is centered at the tip of a shadow to the left of Armstrong's reflection. This shadow is Aldrin's shadow.