I've just been reading some of the infamous Australian coke bottle claims and I have a question.

The claim is that as Armstrong is about to step onto the surface there is a picture quality change and that some residents continues to see the original broadcast. I always wondered about this quality change.

In the movie "The Dish" it is explained that due to Buzz and Neils eagerness to walk, the landing site is too low in the Australian sky to steer the big Parkes dish onto it. Quote from the film "The next stops concrete". So they switch to the offset which presumably is more maneuverable. A few minutes later as Armstrong climbs down the ladder the main dish gets the picture and they switch to it, thus improving the picture quality.

Is this true? I've been trying to confirm it but I can't find too much about it. The directors commentry seems to indicate that this was the actual reason for the change.

If it is true it would indicate that there was no additional broadcast and would put another nail in the highly dubious coke bottle claim!

Ps

Another question for you rocketheads (to settle a friendly discussion). During a normal shuttle launch the external tank is jettesoned in such a way as to ensure its re-entry....correct ?? Would it be possible for the shuttle orbiter to carry the external tank into orbit??

Yes, but it would come at the sacrifice of payload. Jay Utah will have plenty to say about it, but I think that nobody saw a mission for empty external tanks, so it just wasn't done. Obviously, they might have been converted to elements of a station, but at the expense of "paying" cargo. And outfitting empty tanks to hold crews...you'd need airlocks into the tankage, fittings for power, water, air circulation and so forth; anything you stick on to the tank before launch is just more dead weight. Anything you add later has to be done in freefall, probably in vacuum and it would be extremely challenging work. So we get ISS instead of the Orbital Hilton.

DogB: You are basically correct about the antenna/signal stuff. Check
http://www.tip.net.au/~jsaxon/space/....htm#Firststep
for more information. This page is a part of Hamish Lindsay's book 'Tracking Apollo to the Moon'. Lindsay was technician at Honeysuckle.

Harald

I was about to recommend 'Tracking apollo to the moon' to answer the transmission question. Its a really good book. It also offers a different perspective on the missions than most others. Plus its even got some little cartoons in there too!

It's layout is pretty ambitious, but it is poorly lectored. Content is okay, though I would have liked to read more about tracking in it.
But if you need a book about the Golden Era with not only the stories and pictures in it you've already seen and read a hundred times, this is a book you should get. And when it comes to Apollo only, try to get the three-volume Time-Life set of Andy Chaikin's 'A Man on the Moon'. B&N currently sells it for $7 per volume. Original price tag was around $100 for the whole set. A real bargain.

Harald

Tracking Apollo to the Moon is a pretty good book, especially for younger people.

As for the Coke bottle, Clavius got some e-mail from a guy Down Under who says he thinks he knows where the Coke bottle rumor got started; there's supposedly a "smear" on the video at one place that kind of looks like a Coke bottle. I haven't found it yet myself, but I'll keep looking. He also reminds us that, contrary to Dave Cosnette's article, Dark Moon claims there were letters (not articles) in the Western Australian about this. Still, if Mr. Cosnette's statements about Ms. Bennett are to be believed, she didn't verify either form of publication with the paper before writing her book.

Oh, BTW, the statement about the change in video quality is absolutely true. The story is in Tracking Apollo to the Moon.

Goldstone was receiving the signal during Armstrong's egress, but it was too "hot". The top end of the signal was being clipped. The television signal was encoded as a reverse image -- black was represented by a "peak" in the signal. Thus a hot signal would be clipped so as to render a lot of stuff as black, since differences in dark grays were being lost.

The solution was to switch to Honeysuckle Creek, whose signal was closer to the expected strength. This cleared up the video. Lindsay says it was about six minutes too early for Parkes to get a signal.

Also, the alleged Coke bottle allegedly occurs during Alrdin's mobility tests, nearly an hour into the EVA. This was long after Honeysuckle Creek had taken over, and Americans at this time were seeing the same signal as Australians.

In short, there still is very little reason to believe the story as told, but as with many rumors there may be a nugget of truth somewhere there.

I'd say anyone who thinks he sees something strange as coke bottles in the coverage of the Apollo 11 EVA should first learn how to spell

R-O-R-S-C-H-A-C-H

Of course, the same holds for those guys who see all kind of weird stuff on the surface of Mars...

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

I agree. There's a big difference between seeing a flash of light that looks like a Coke bottle, and seeing an actual bottle. But the hoax believer approach doesn't necessarily respect such distinctions. Nevertheless, I'm pleased to be able to home in on the source of the rumor because it's one thing to say, "That story is very improbable," and another to say," That story is wrong; here's what really happened."

But what about the Aussie woman? She claims she stayed at late at night to watch it when it occurred around lunchtime there, so her story is obviously false.

BTW Jay, will you have a Clavius section on the Coke bottle story?

__________________
~AstroMike

Thanks all, much appreciated!

Ps. I hope all you Yanks are proud of your astonishing cyclist from Texas. Outstanding!

As I've mentioned in other threads, I think this rather dubious story was "inspired" by the movie "The Gods must be Crazy".

Or...maybe it's the other way round...Hmmmm...

__________________
Behind every conspiracy is another conspiracy.

Actually the mystery's been mostly solved.

I don't know if there was an Australian woman who "stayed up" until noon to watch this, but the item claimed by some to be the Coke bottle is merely a lens interreflection.

Those of you who have access to the Apollo 11 EVA video (which should be everybody, right?) can see for yourself. Fast-forward to Aldrin's mobility test. He walks out of the LM's shadow toward the television camera. He passes partly out of frame to the right. Then as he comes back in frame and crosses to the left of the frame, look on the ground near the LM strut. You'll see a bright object that appears to bounce along the ground.

Now if you correlate that to the hot spot on Aldrin's visor, you'll see that it's just part of the same lens "ghosting" that appears all over the Apollo 11 EVA video, where the primary image is "ghosted" -- but inverted in both directions. The "Coke bottle" bounces in exactly the opposite fashion as Aldrin's visor.

Actually, I think you've all been missing the real point of the underlying (and let me emphasise "lying") conspiracy here. The rumour that it was a coke bottle was "leaked" by Coca-cola to cover up the fact that it was in fact a Pepsi bottle! Yes, a bottle by Coca-cola's biggest rival. They couldn't just sit back and let Pepsi have the first soft-drink on the moon so they had to try to take credit for themselves.

Here's a clue - who was one of Pepsi's biggest promoters? None other than Michael Jackson who is famous for the "moon walk" dance move. So now you can see how it all ties together it's all pretty obvious really.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Rusty Lander on 2002-07-30 23:58 ]</font>

Good one! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]
Rusty, you and John McCartney should exchange email addresses. He's got some interesting perspectives on ties between pop music and the Apollo missions as well