This post should be in the BABBling forum, but since it is currently locked, I figured it could be appropriately placed in this, the forum where Moon/Apollo and rocket experts/enthusiasts hang out.

My wife and I recently returned from our trip to the UK. We visited the Museum of Transport in Glasgow. In the museum is a small section with coin-operated rides for small children. The biggest highlight for our 16-month-old son was when we put him in the NASA rocket ship ride. Lucky for us we didn't have to waste our money on the thing, he was content just sitting in it playing with the controls.

Seeing my son having so much fun, I couldn't help but take some pictures of him as being an astronaut heading for the moon. He could have stayed in that ride all day; he even cried when we pulled him out of it.

Anyway, here are some cute pictures I figured you all could enjoy:

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

Seriously cute. However, given the hatch seems to be deployed for an EVA, he should probably be in a hard suit. :wink:

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

Cooper: You know what makes this bird go up? FUNDING makes this bird go up.
Grissom: He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Very cute. I probably wouldn't have seen it in all the BABBle so it's just as well that you posted it here. I sure wish my kids hadn't growed up on me.

__________________
You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

The presence of the sailor next to it is a clear whistle-blow that the whole thing is a hoax. [-(

(sorry, hadda say it 8) )

__________________
"Earth diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes." - Sam "NasaScam" Colby

Bearer of the highly coveted "I found Venus in nine Apollo photos" sweatsocks.

DataCable^2008 A+

What a cute pic.

Okay, look at the shadow being cast along the left side of the rocket. See how it follows the contour of the rocket, diverging from it as the receiving surface gets farther away, but always following the contour?

That's what happens when your light source is very near the camera. You get near-phase shadows. Here it's obviously from the integrated flash unit on the camera, since the phase angle is very narrow. But you can't have a narrow phase angle and a small light source without having that kind of near phase shadowing somewhere in the picture.

So the notion that the Aldrin egress photos were shot with a small light source placed less than two feet from the camera (i.e., the one supposedly creating the hot spot on Aldrin's boot) to add fill to the scene is completely bogus as there are no near-phase shadows anywhere in the picture, although there are uncountable opportunities for them in the complex structure of the LM's landing gear, the egress porch, etc.

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

^^ =D>

and thats what separates us!


Jay looked at the pic and using his experience and knowledge saw further evidence to disprove the claims of CNs.



























Me, I saw a pic of a sprog in a toy rocket. #-o

Cmon Jay, relax. Give yourself some slack. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud: Sometimes a photo is just a photo.

Tomorrow you're on German tv with the Discovery documentary. Let's have alook.

Harald

__________________
"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

hehe
But thanks to Jay's explanation, this thread now truly belongs in the "Lunar Conspiracy" forum and not the "BABBling" forum.

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

Nah, the picture was obviously taken shortly after splashdown... Popeye is part of the Navy's recovery team.

Cmon Jay, relax. Give yourself some slack.

Oh, I'm not entirely humorless. But remember, the key to understanding the allegedly anomalous is understanding the unequivocally mundane. The conspiracy theorists are poor photographic analysts because they don't turn a critical eye toward a picture of a cute kid in a toy rocket. Not that I can't appreciate the "cuteness" of a photo -- far from it. But every photo -- the good Dr. Freud notwithstanding -- has both emotional content and technical content. To acknowledge one does not deny the other.

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

=D>

__________________
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Ummm.. no, actually, I don't see any shadow there. Am I missing something obvious?

CJSF

__________________
Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

LOL

LunarOrbit, that picture is hilarious. And to think, my son has absolutely no idea how much his picture(s) has/have been analyzed and/or doctored here.

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

Yeah... I have too much spare time.

I was going to add floatation devices at the bottom of the capsule and a Navy diver just outside of the hatch but decided not to.

Now to replace all those NASCAR video games at the movie theater with scaled up versions of that.

Yes.

Look at the red step, bottom left in the top picture. It casts a tiny shadow upwards onto the floor. Further up, the black fin casts a shadow onto Popeye's left arm, and on the right the curved hatch frame casts a shadow onto sprog's jeans. In the second picture the left side of the nose-cone casts a wider but fainter shadow onto the distant picture on the wall at the top. These shadows indicate that the flash unit was right of and below the axis of the lens, so the photographer rotated the camera 90 degrees to the right to take the photos.

Good photographers position the flash so that the shadows are cast downwards behind the subject or behind a human's face.

One question arises from these photos: Was Mathyou9's better half wearing a pink thingy with knotted tassels on it? But perhaps it just looks pink because it was close to the camera and overexposed by the flash. It's at bottom right of the second picture and casts quite a big shadow onto the floor.

OK, now I see it. I was looking for a longer cast shadow. Thanks for helping me see the obvious!

CJSF

__________________
Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

But my "non-good" photography actually serves a purpose. Had I taken a "good" photograph, there would have been no visible shadow for Jay to comment about and therefore, you would have not clarified Jay's explanation to Christopher Ferro (or even had reason to mention what constitutes a "good" photograph.) :P

Indeed, you are observing my "better half" (my wife). She was, indeed, wearing "a pink thingy with knotted tassels on it" (it is actually a sweater-like poncho thing she got at Nordstrom.)

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths!