Simply amazing. I just read this discussion, in its... eh... post-mortem phase.

This thread should be sticked, I think. It is an excellent example of how to apply critical thinking, common sense, and known facts to show a hoax believer where the holes in his theory lies. It is also an example, unfortunately, of common HB'er tactics. I saw in at least a dozen situations where IDW was given a simple question, and his response was evade, evade, accuse, strawman.

I never get over watching Jay discuss something. He never seems to make mistakes, leave an opening, or not be able to find relevant data. Jay, I'd hate to be your opponent, even if the debate was just an excercise!

I know this thread's been dead for a while, but I just read through it and a couple things came to mind that I don't think were brought up:

Weren't the Apollo spacecraft constantly rotating during their translunar injection specifically so that no two sides were always in direct sunlight or shadow? It seems that alone would keep sunlight from keeping Apollo 13 warm during it's power outage.

Why, if Apollo was faked, wouldn't NASA just include more active thermal control systems if they didn't have to worry about actually building and implementing them? Why resort to passive systems if a.) they as you claim are inadequate and would uncover their fakery under close analysis and b.) they didn't have to actually plan for the weight and cost issues that so often influenced their decisions?

This is not an incident where one could say "it was impossible with the technology at the time" because more advanced active cooling systems existed and they chose the more passive system deliberately. Again, if it's so obvious a passive system is inadequate, why not just "use" an active system since they didn't have the burden of implementing it?

Did you see that not only the thread is dead, but the OP too.
He was banned and will not answer your questions.

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That's one of the many problems with the "only a few folks knew of the conspiracy" theory.
See, if only the top dogs knew it was a hoax, well, the rest of the folks...the technicians, designers, integrators, etc were working on hardware that could actually function as designed for the lunar mission. If it didn't work, they re- designed it until it did. Being "ignorant" of the hoax, they didn't know any better. They built the real deal.
Secret VAB data? Fake F1 engines? There are aspects of the design that cut across every bit of the design of the mission, if these were no-go areas, more that just a few would certainly know about it.
BTW, as I remember, the A13 crew never got a clean BBQ roll going. They would roll 90 degrees every 15 minutes or so to "simulate" a PTC mode.
For what it's worth...

No. First off, the sunlight wasn't enough to warm the Apollo spacecraft. As has been pointed out in this thread, most of the waste heat was provided by the electronics being on. No electronics, no waste heat, cold cabin.

The reason they rolled the spacecraft was to keep the CSM's skin from being heated too unevenly.

Remember that to a HB, the hoax is axiomatic. Everything has to serve the hoax so the HB can get their ego fix (or scam their money in the case of the players). The hoax has to be sufficiently flawless so that all observers with genuine expertise have to be either involved or duped, yet flawed enough for the HB to have detected the "flaws".

Building over-heavy active systems would have tipped off the expert dupes, you see. Can't have that.

Of course, if your system gets good enough to fool the experts, you may as well just fly it to the moon and back.

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Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Just a note, the CSM did have active cooling. See here:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1972012252.pdf

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I read the entire thread and understand that. I just thought I would throw it out there for posterity's sake.

I understand that the electronics were the predominat heat source. IDW was speculating that the sunlight would have been the predominant heating element and enough to heat the A13 astronauts to uncomfortable levels. I mentioned the constant roll to propose that the maneuver itself would have kept the sunlight from effectively heating the craft (if it were ever capable of doing so). If that assumption in and of itself is wrong then I will gladly rescind my claim. But thanks for clarifying the purpose of the maneuver.

Sadly, I believe you are correct. No hardcore HB's can be convinced by anybody but themselves that their views are wrong. I brought the topic up not for the hardcore HB's but for the fence-sitters that are really just looking for more information (I know they exist, I used to be one myself).

I read through that report the first time it was posted when I did my initial read of the thread yesterday. Now that is a fine report, and it's a shame IDW never got the chance to read it. I (a complete layman) was able to comprehend nearly all that was discussed in that report with not too much difficulty. But I guess I still have a lot to learn.

By the way Van Rijn, in your signature you post a riddle. My answer would be to say that the burden of proof is on your end, that you must instead prove to me that your claims of invisible backyard elves is true. Otherwise I have no vested interest.

Yep, that's the point. The backyard elf claim was a response to folks that would present one extraordinary idea or another (like Martian rock sheep, or a solid iron sun), and when pushed to the wall would say, "You can't prove me wrong!" So, I would make the claim for the backyard elf, and ask how they would prove me wrong. The funny part is that they never get the point: Their claim, no matter how bizarre, is different, and (according to them) should be taken more seriously than backyard elves.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

If that assumption in and of itself is wrong then I will gladly rescind my claim. But thanks for clarifying the purpose of the maneuver.

It's not really as cut and dried as that. In Apollo's case the roll was primarily to keep the heating as even as possible. That is, the difference in temperature between the hottest point and the coldest point on the spacecraft is minimized. The roll does both raise the cold point and lower the hot point. The lowering of the hot point means that equipment doesn't have to be made to operate under higher temperatures, so the end result (from the engineer's perspective) is a cooler spacecraft.

Just a few days ago, coincidentally, I was cleaning out an old backpack before sending it off to the thrift store, and I found a sheet of computations. After a few minutes I realized it was the thermodynamics computations for the CM's active cooling system; I had verified its design on that sheet and was trying to determine how effectively it would have worked if the ECS and EPS radiators had been in full sun constantly.

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True story: I was about to post a light-hearted, humorous quip about how I usually find old sheets of paper with silly things like 'rules for surviving Star Trek' on, not sad things like complex calculations (which I know, Jay, you would have taken in the spirit in which it was meant), but then I found a sheet of paper with some calculations on it that I had written out while attempting to demonstrate to someone that even a 13 billion light year distant galaxy appears larger in the sky than Pluto or the LM on the Moon.

And my desire for some harmless fun-poking was further undermined when I realised I actually want to know what conclusions you came to from those calculations, Jay....

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Under nominal operational load, with one of each radiator constantly in sunlight, the combination of the shaded radiator and the active cooling system would have been sufficient to sustain operation at steady state. The caveat is simply that the active system relies upon water replenishment and is therefore limited to consumables.

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Clavius Moon Base

Thanks for clarifying that for me. It seems common sense that you would not want to subject your craft to undue stresses by keeping one side constantly in the sun and one in the shade. Does this explain the lack of flat angular surfaces on the crafts as well? I imagine a craft that has flat planes would absorb heat faster if a side was directly facing the sun. That would also explain why the solar arrays on the ISS are shaped the way they are.

No, the overall shape of the CM is dictated by aerodynamic requirements during ascent and re-entry. But you are right that flat shapes will absorb more total solar energy than a curved plate of the same area.

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The mission requirements for some spacecraft include space-fixed and sun-fixed orientation constraints, and so must use different design strategies for passive thermal control. Not all spacecraft can manage solar heating by changing at will which side of them is pointed most directly at the sun.

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SOHO, for instance...

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Or simple geostationary communication satellites. Although they have a solar "day" just as Earth does, they don't get to take any navigational steps to manage the solar heating.

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Clavius Moon Base

duh, I should have remembered that. At least I got the second part right. That's why you are the scientist and I am the artist.

Astrophysics and thermodynamics can get so complicated it's actually harder in my opinion to grasp the common-sense stuff. I can never tell when something is going to be common sense or completely counterintuitive.

Oh, and please let me know if I am wasting your time or anything. I could probably just as easily research the answers to my questions rather than constantly bugging the whole forum. Of course, so could the HB's and they never can seem to figure that out!

One point about the thermal roll that the CSM performed.

One of the important reasons for this roll was that there were portions of the heat shield were not in fact covered by the service module - and the thermal roll was designed in large part to protect those regions.

Wayne

The role of the SM in protecting the heat shield was the reason why the damaged SM was not in fact detached from the CM / LM, even though it was dead weight, and its venting was raising serious problems.

Wayne

That's why you are the scientist and I am the artist.

Not really. Understanding why you depict curved surfaces as variously bright and dark is exactly the same as understanding why curved surfaces don't absorb heat uniformly. The same physics applies to illumination as to radiative heat transfer.

Representative art can be considered photometric science expressed through colored goop.

I can never tell when something is going to be common sense or completely counterintuitive.

No one can. That's why scientists eventually learn to eschew intuition and be doggedly analytical in all cases, just in case. And sometimes we come across looking like idiots. But we'd rather look like idiots the 99 times our analysis confirms our intuition, just so we can look really smug the 100th time when analysis proves counterintuitive and we're right despite all apparent odds.

Oh, and please let me know if I am wasting your time or anything.

If you were wasting my time, I simply wouldn't say anything. Volunteering is great that way. You can't possibly be the only one with these questions.

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Oh no! Not that boring issue again!

Extracelestial

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Why did the orbiting Skylab get so hot if the sun really doesn't heat up the space crafts? It was so hot that they couldn't occupy it. They had to send up another heat shield to bring the temperature down. Then it took three days to get the temperature below 38C.

A sunshield had torn away from the Skylab structure during launch. The exposed surface underneath did not have the reflective properties for keeping the sunlight from transmitting heat to the interior.
The parasol and another shield were quickly devised and taken up on the first manned visit, they "shaded" the affected area.

Whether or not the Sun heats up the interior of a spacecraft depends on the thermal properties of the outer skin of the spacecraft. Apollo command modules, you may notice, are very very shiny and reflective, hence they reject most incoming solar radiation. Skylab was a modified S-IVB rocket stage. One such modification was a reflective outer layer to perform the function of rejecting solar heat. Unfortunately it tore off, along with a solar array, during liftoff so the exposed skin of the workshop did not have the correct properties of thermal rejection, hence the interior rapidly heated up.

So, the Sun really doesn't heat up the interior of an Apollo command module, but it does heat up a damaged space station with no proper thermal shielding.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Hey, that's a good question. Unfortunately I don't have the answers. I think it has to do with the close proximity to earth of skylab and the lack of said close proximty in Apollo, combined with the barbeque roll but that's just a guess. I too wonder about this appearant inconsistancy, though I'm sure there's a resonable answer that I just don't have. Time to call forth the Jay...or, you know, anybody smarter than me.

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There's not much I can add. The answers that are already given are correct.

The outer layer of Skylab was torn away by aerodynamic forces during the ascent. This had the obvious effect of exposing the pressure vessel skin directly to solar heating whereas before it would have been shaded by the other skin. Not only was the outer skin a separate skin with mostly vacuum between it and the inner vessel (much like a Thermos bottle), the outer skin had been originally planned with the proper optical coating to reflect away the majority of the sun's heat. The optical properties of the outboard surface of the inner skin were accidentally highly favorable to absorption because they had not been designed to be in direct sunlight.

You simply need to keep the sun from shining on that surface. Even a thin layer of aluminized Mylar will work. The original heat shield had been more robust than Mylar because it had to withstand the ascent (theoretically). It did not need to be especially robust in order to perform its thermal role. Hence a bundle of Mylar carried aloft separately worked too.

It's way too simplistic to say the sun does or doesn't "heat up spacecraft." Each object in space will have its own thermal properties. No two spacecraft designs will have the same thermal parameters, and factors such as optical surface properties have a very profound effect on measurements such as temperature. An astonishing amount of variance is possible. Even a small increase in absorptivity can increase interior temperatures to an uncomfortable level.

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Well, I thought he was asking that if, as we've said before, A13 got cold because the electronics were turned off and yet skylab got hot because of the sun shining on it. That's the way I read it anyway.

Anywho, I guess skylab wasn't turned off so it got too hot once the sun started shining on it.

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I think even if Skylab had been turned off it would have suffered an elevated internal temperature, simply because the exposed skin of the pressure vessel was not rejecting the solar heat, as the outer thermal protection layer would have. Apollo 13 had all its external thermal protection layer intact, so it was rejecting virtually all of the incoming solar radiation.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

And they are both examples that the temperature inside a spacecraft is a balance between heat sources (electronics, people, radiative heating from the sun, etc.) and heat sinks (active cooling, passive cooling, thermal protection, surface reflectivity, etc.). When the components that control that balance get upset, the temperature changes, depending on exactly what went wrong.

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Why did the orbiting Salyut 7 get so cold when its electrical systems malfunctioned and its batteries drained empty? It was so cold the repair crew could work there only 40 minutes at a time before having to return to the warm Soyuz. They had to wear winter garb complete with gloves and fur-lined hats and still complained that their feet got painfully cold. The temperature inside was estimated at 14F (-10C); it was estimated because the thermometers had a lower measurement limit of only 32F. The stations walls were covered with frost and all the water tanks and lines had frozen. Then it took about a week to get the temperature above freezing.