While playing with my debunker on another forum I was browsing some Apollo 11 photos. This one I have never seen. But OMG it takes my breath away, it is just majestic, and for me anyway (sums the entire endeavor up) in one single photo

Enjoy............

What took that picture?

Also I had always assumed the CM flew with the pointy end more horizontal to the surface, not pointed straight away like that shows. Granted it's just an assumption, but why would they bother to rotate it to that orientation in the first place?

Line of thought here, and much of this may be way off. I thought the "door" to the CM was at the pointy end. Didn't they have to flip the SM around to get into the LM, then have the same configuration to get back into the CM after lunar lift off? If that's right, and I question my knowledge of it, then why would the CM ever be in the orientation shown while over the Moon?

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

What took that picture?

One of the crew in the LM I'd guess. It would have been taken either before descent to land, or before re-docking on the way back.

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Howling from the Shadows

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You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Why would it have been so high above the CM? Or is just not as high as it looks?

And yeah, I did assume the LM was on the surface at the time. Rookie mistake.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...-37-5447HR.jpg
It was taken around the time of the CSM separation maneuver. The separation maneuver was done over the landing site and it was a 2.7 fps radially downward SM RCS burn. The spacecrafts are in the right positions and right orientation for that in the picture.

The separation burn was radially downwards, because the spacecrafts had to be in equiperiodic orbits in case the LM fails to burn DOI. Descent Orbit Insertion was a deceleration burn done on the opposite side of the moon from this point and for safety reasons they had to make sure that the LM is coming about three to four kilometers behind the CSM at the point of DOI. To accomplish this the CSM had to take the lower route so that it would reach the opposite intersection point before the LM.

[EDIT: Insertion, not Initiation]

Wow, thanks. That pretty much answered it all.

It is a great pic by the way.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

It makes my puny monitor sad! (I hate my monitor.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Clearly this picture was faked by NASA. Not only are there no stars, but the LM was supposed to go down to the surface of the Moon, and here it is above the CSM. As we all know, you can't get somewhere in space by going the other way! Plus, I see part of the matting used by the photofakery crew along the lower right side.

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

Yeah, right, and now you will tell me that you know that cause you work with spacecraft like the Thunderbird 3

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Thunderbird 3, not the Thunderbird 3. It's clear you are no real spacecraft engineer.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

No I am not, I'm not even a real plastic model plane kit builder

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Thanks for the higher res and explaination.
With the first picture, it took me a while to figure out that I was looking at the CM and not a crater.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

You mean the opposite shadow direction didn't clue you in?

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"Time travel gives me a headache." - Capt. Kathryn Janeway

Careful what you admit to - you are rapidly losing your rights to nerdship

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This is not an idea to be tossed aside lightly - it should be thrown with great force

Wow - I've seen that image before, but never in Hi-Res. It is just stunning.

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

Well considering how every time glued the things I'd use so much it would damage the plastic and that every time I painted them it looked like a job made by Al Bundy, I think it's safe to admit it

Besides I took the Nerd Test (take a look at my Blog ) and got 98% so I am not too worried

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

It makes my puny monitor sad! (I hate my monitor.)

I'm looking at it right now on a 24" monitor in one of the CAD labs at school.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

But did you at least "fly" the thing aroung the room every time you stuck a new part to the mess? Bonus points for making airplane noises while you did it.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

In my neighborhood the proper noise for a prop plane was "Eeeeeyyyoooooowwwwww!" -- with the sound modulations synced to the swoop of the plane, of course. For jets it was more like "Sssssshhhhhhh!" (but there really isn't a proper way to write that sound).

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"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)