I was reading about how someone is finally actually going to point a telescope at the moon and they will be able to see everything there close-up.

So here's a thought. Why not have one PERMANENTLY pointing to the moon and make it a tourist thing so anyone can pay $5 (say) and go into the observatory and see the rovers, flags etc with their own eyes! They could have guides that could point out the various spots for them to look at and so on.

And as regards to finance, whatever the outlay, it would easily pay for itself very quickly surely? What about the millions of people who would probably visit? It would be like a "mecca" for many , something most would want to do at least once in their lifetime.

Wouldn't this finally nail HB thoughts in the coffin? Even BS would finally shut up don't you think?

So why don't they just do this one thing? Why why why?

Money

Such a telescope would be bloody expensive, so 5 bucks would only pay for a few microseconds of observation time. And why should people peek through a telescope (btw, a telescope with such a resolution has nothing where you could "peek through") to look at a few dots? I f I want to see the stuff on the Moon, I go to http://www.apolloarchive.com/
Much better pix and free.

And, of course, no self-respecting HB would assume the pictures produced by such a telescope would proof anything.
Except they would show nothing. But as soon as they show something, that's the proof that the telescope's pictures are faked.

Ah, HB logic is so simple...

Harald

In principle nothing's wrong with this idea. In practice, it won't work just yet. The telescope in question is not a single instrument in a single location but rather a collection of instruments all over the world whose data are collated together and turned into a single coherent image. Nobody "looks" through a telescope anymore.

The problem is that with a new powerful instrument like this, the science organizations that lobbied for it and arranged for payment (i.e., the people who own it) have plans for it. They're going to use it to observe the universe, so it will be a very busy instrument indeed. No time for tourism.

And as regards to finance, whatever the outlay, it would easily pay for itself very quickly surely?

Not really. "Museums" don't generally recover enough funds to cover their costs. You would be lucky if $5 a head covered maintenance costs; there's almsot no chance of recovering the capital outlay.

Wouldn't this finally nail HB thoughts in the coffin? Even BS would finally shut up don't you think?

Not at all. The conspiracy theorists do not base their current theories on observation and deduction, so why should a fact change their beliefs? People believe in the moon hoax theory because conspiracy theorists are fun to believe in, and/or they have an ideological bone to pick with the government, the intelligentsia, and whatever other authority figure merits ridicule.

Conspiracists are adept at forming conjectural "explanations" for seemingly iron-clad bodies of evidence, so why should this large-array telescope provide any special problems?

"They must have put all the equipment up there with unmanned rockets."

"You're not really looking through the telescope; you're looking through a set of optics that's showing you a computer-generated image produced somewhere else in the building."

The request for more data, or better data, or what is believed to be the smoking gun is a simple red herring. Vast amounts of evidence for Apollo's authenticity are to be found now, and the conspiracists simply sidestep it.

You really should already know the answer to this.

First of all, the telescope you are talking about is the VLT (talked about here). As it stands now, the VLT may have the resolution to just be able to image something of the missions, but it isn't going to be getting any pulitzer-winning shots right yet. It might do better when all 4 mirrors are up and running in interferometer mode, in a few years.

Second, even if it can take images, it's not like you can just walk up to an eyepiece and look in. Such a shot would require precise guidance and a vibration-free environment. And it's delicate, high tech equipment. You can't just have lots of people traipsing all over it. Besides, almost all telescopes are built in remote mountainous locations nowadays, and it's probably only designed for photographic work anyway.

Third, what makes you think it could pay for itself? Something of the magnitude necessary for such a shot requires billions of dollars in outlays. Do you think there really are that many people out there willing to pay handsomely just for a quick shot at something they probably won't be able to recognize without help anyway? I don't. And making it fixed in place would just make it useless for any other work. What a waste.

There just aren't that many people who need convincing, and the real sceptics wouldn't be convinced anyway. Besides, the whole idea of the VLT imaging the lunar sites is just to provide a good challenging test for the scope. Providing proof of the landings is just an afterthought.

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

With the help of interferometry, they will be able to resolve the objects at the landing sites, which is not what was previously possible from Earth based scopes. But, close-up is debatable. You'll probably only get a single pixel corresponding to a descent stage.

1. How can you have a telescope PERMANENTLY pointed at a target that spends half the day below the horizon, half the month in night conditions and and few days each month within dangerous proximity to the Sun?

2. Certainly not with their own eyes. This is interferometry based. It will not have a single scope and a human eye will certainly not be good enough. CCDs will be used and the data will have to be processed before returning anything the public would call an image. Moreover, at that resolution, you won't want any screaming kids near the thing to shake the array.

Except, all the tourist would see is a vague photo taken from a CCD, which probably would require an expert to interpret. Why not just go the ALSJ and see more aesthetic pictures?

Selenogical samples have been under examination for thirty years and some are on display at Space Center Houston. There's one you can even touch. Astronomers have been bouncing lasers of LRRR's for thirty years. Clementine imaged the Apollo 15 landing site and a Japanese probe as well as a commercial one are due to be in Lunar orbit within a few years and will do the same. If this doesn't convince BS or the Dark Lord, why should some ground-based CCD image be any better?

Why should they? Most of the world doesn't need this for proof of Apollo's authenticity. Your kin keep on saying how this thing will convince them or that thing will convince them. On the Fox Special, the Dark Lord said he would be convinced by a picture from some other source. They've have been delivered, but guess what? He wasn't convinced. They say this to make them look like they are balanced and will accept proof when given it, but when they get it, they say it's just not good enough. Any effort is futile. So the astronomical community would prefer to do proper astronomy rather than wasting expensive hardware in vain attempting to placate a bunch of fanatics calling them conspirators. When faced with the choice of spending millions of dollars or whatever on conspiracists or on doing proper astronomy, they'll chose proper astronomy any day.

To be blunt: You're not that important!

Wow, that was fast! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img]

Anyone shouted "Full broadside!" here???

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

<a name="2-12-23.cc"> page=2-12-23.cc aka Clock check?
On 2002-12-18 09:28, kucharek wrote:10:55 A.M.
Anyone shouted "Full broadside!" here???1

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

this was ann attempt to determin the difference
in minutes between this 486 & BB.time
this line time was 10:57 A.M. to mi after lines above
?10:59 A.M. ed 1 time looks like 55-51=4min BBfast

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUb' on 2002-12-23 13:54 ]</font>

we don't have enough resolution to let HB see something on moon.
The only way to make him see something, is by faking telescope .... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
How about using Jules Verne's idea:
put HB in a closed ball. blow it to the moon with a huge cannon pointd to Apollo landing site ... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I think you guys came down too hard on the poor fellow.
*cough* manners and civility *splutter*