Hello,

I am a High School junior attending the first year of the International Baccalaureate Organization's Diploma Programme. I am required to take an epistemological course titled "Theory of Knowledge." My teacher is a Ph.D. in Gifted Education, a M.A. in History of Ideas, and a B.A. in Philosophy. He is a hoax theorist.

He's launched new arguments, that I haven't seen covered by Percy and his sycophants: the claims of background "fall-out" where the rear of the image (linked here: inset) is darkened while the foreground and face of Aldrin is illuminated.

Secondly, he's began claims that there are photo composite lines between the foreground where the astronauts, the LEM, and the other objects lie, and the background hills.

Thirdly, he claims that the Saturn V was not physically capable of sending men to the Moon, and that the guidance computer couldn't land the LEM. He supports this with the assertion that if the Saturn V and LEM were capable, the same booster could be used to lift a shuttle-vehicle, rather than the ground-up design of the Shuttle Transport System. From the same article containing the infamous Aldrin shot, I quote the following:

He claims (anecdotally, naturally) that engineers never lose anything, and there's no reason there'd be no plans and whatnot, unless the system just never worked at all. Does anyone have evidence of what they really mean, that the infrastructure and tooling to construct the Saturn Vs was dismantled?

Thank you for any help,

A new poster.

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"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."
- T.H. Huxley

First off, I'm sorry your teacher is a moron. Secondly, those are some lame degrees. Gifted teaching? History of ideas? That sounds like 1 or 2 classes tops, not a whole degree. Finally, you have come to the right place. There are several people here supremely qualified to answer your questions. Sadly (for both of us ), I'm not one of them.

Here is a perfect place to start, http://www.clavius.org/

Hopefully, Jay will show up soon to address your questions. Welcome to the board.

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

First of all, I second the moron comment, but I think it shold be capitalized.

What does your teacher (I'm being nice here) know about engineers? Nothing. My father was employed as a full time engineer for fourty years and did part-time engineering consulting for another fifteen years. He was consulting on a refrigeration project when he pasted away this past fall. My father had worked on a variety of interesting projects over his life time, including the M1 tank, the Humvee, the Saturn V and the Kelloge's frosted flake machine. Other than his books, my father only saved a handful of things. Why? Stuff he did 50 years ago is worthless. Materials, electronics, computers and many other facets of engineering have changed dramatically over the years.

I'm only 42 and have been involved in engineering about 20 years now. In my time, I've used computer punch cards, actual blue print machines, and computers that couldn't handled dates past 1990. If I wanted to save my punch cards for later use, I would have to save the card reader, some sort of interface system for the computer, and keep it all running for 20 years. What's the point. On top of that operating systems these days are different and from my point of view much better. Reflecting on it, I guess I would have to save the entire computer system. Now that makes a lot of sense.

Anyway your teacher is wrong. NASA did save all the blueprints and many of the technical reports. I'll get you a link later.

Why don't you have your teacher post here. Tell him, I've got three degrees, including a Ph.D., so he can feel that someone here is his equal (a lot sarcasm here).

BTW, welcome onboard.

Yes, but do you have a Masters in the History of Ideas.....?? ( :roll: )

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

I personaly am holding out hope that your teacher is attempting to teach your class a lesson in critical thinking, by seeing how many people he can suck in with a lot of conspirasists mumbo-jumbo. As omeone who rather enjoyed the few philosophy courses he took in college, I will say that the discussion your teacher is engaging in seems fairly out of place in a course on epistemology. Many books have been writen on this subject by some great thinkers-what a waste of time it seems to go over ridiculous moon hoax theories instead of, oh I don't know, STUDYING EPISTEMOLOGY.

I guess there's no accounting for stupidity.

Good old AS11-40-5903. Many question about this particular photo are covered here. First, we expect Aldrin to be brighter because his suit is more reflective than the Lunar surface. Second, the only real bit of brightness on the surface comes from an undulation that faces upsun and hence gets illuminated more intensely.

Yada yada. Nasascam all over. Often, it's just their imagination making a composite line out of a bit of landscape.

Well that doesn't say anything about the LM since that wouldn't be used in STS anyway. But the Saturn V not actually work? Ask the freak if he thinks Skylab is fake. I always find arguments about the Saturn V least convincing of all. Many people actually saw it lift off. The reason the Saturn V was scrapped was partly political and partly because STS wanted to be as reusable as possible. The Saturn V is completely expended on launch. With the Saturn not ideologically compatible with STS and no need for such ultra-heavy lift boosters by anyone, the technology was junked.

What evidence do you require? When there was no need for the Saturn series, there was no need to maintain the means by which to construct them. Aerospace engineering is not like the carpentry required to build a house. Maintaining the means is expensive and that expense if the contractors. If they're not going to get any business from it, they have no reason to keep that expense.

Welcome.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Seriously. Ask him to post here. If he's not, as has been suggested, just doing it all as an exercise. If he's not willing to post here, and he's serious, ask him why you should believe his analysis over that of for-real aerospace engineers.

Welcome to the BABB!

Welcome, IP.

If anyone wants a PhD in Gifted Education I've got some headed paper and some crayons...........

He's a nice article related to the Saturn V blue prints.

http://www.space.com/news/spacehisto...ve_000313.html

Some one I know who has done extensive historical research wrote me
this response about the Apollo blueprints.

Here's the response.

Most people think of "blueprints" as sheets of paper with drawings on them, neatly bound in rolls ready for viewing. What people don't understand is that there was never a single neatly bound and published complete set of blueprints to the Saturn V. Indeed, if one could assemble all of the so called "blueprints" of the launch vehcile and its millions of millions of components, it would fill several warehouses.

Even in the hayday of the Apollo program, no one, not even NASA had in its possession a complete set of so-called blueprints to the Saturn V. What they did have were millions of pieces of paper that documented each and every component but these were spread all over the country among the 12 NASA centers and hundreds of prime and sub contractors. Remember, at the peak of the Apollo program, NASA employed nearly a half a million people on the project. As far as I know, there was no one central depository for every piece of technical paper pertaining to the Saturn V.

To say that NASA has thrown away the Saturn V blueprints is simply not true. I am sure that duplicate copies of some of the millions of technical papers documenting every component of the launch vehcile, the CSM and LM were tossed but other copies remain. I have seen many of the piles of documentation that would, in laymen's terms, constitute blueprints. But there were never "blueprints" made of the Saturn V in the traditional sense that we can identify as typical blueprints. The vehicle was simple too big and complex.

I think an interesting comparison would be to try and obtain a complete set of blueprints to, say, the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. Again, if you were to try and secure such a "set" it would fill a similar sized warehouse. Yes, you could probably get blueprints showing the side, fore and aft views but to secure a complete "set" containing every component... you an begin to see the similarity of the task.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to the board, Illuminatus Primus. Congratulations on being in the International Baccalaureate program. I agree with the previous poster in that I hope your teacher is stringing you along with the intention to show how easy it is to make a persuasive case with poor information to those who have little knowledge of a subject. Whether he is or not, by questioning his line of thought you have demonstrated solid critical thinking skills.

One of the hoax believers tactics is to site various, seemingly authorities sources and tie any anomalies they find in these sources together as proof that a conspiracy exists. Sources are frequently news articles or the popular publications we read every day and typically find more or less accurate, to the best of our knowledge. A good example is the AP quote in your post. This is good journalistic writing in that it conveys the meaning that the old stuff is not of any particular use any more, but it really doesn’t say any more than that.

People that string together this kind of information together to form a larger idea are not practicing good thinking. They take a journalistic conveyance of complicated events into a succinct form that captures the gist of the situation and treat it as an exhaustive portrayal of events. If the sources of an argument are vague, the conclusion is even more vague than any individual source.

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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

This teacher sounds like a good example of an oxymoron. He's obviously an "educated idiot" if he really believes such nonsense.

I know that everyone can't be well informed in every area but this just seems ridiculous to the point of my wondering if it's some ploy to point out the need for critical/logical thinking?

I agree with everyone else...ask him to post here.

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

I like the idea stated by several that this is just an exercise for the students. But if he is serious, and that is a serious degree, it is really scary that this person is allowed to teach children (or teach others how to teach children) particularly those that are gifted.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

The only thing I can contribute that hasn't been added is that this is a serious degree. Curry School of Education at U.Va. is one of the finest institutions in the country for getting a degree in education.

http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/gifted/phd.html

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"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

I did a little researching on his degrees. From what I could tell there isn't a degree for gifted education. It is a education degree with emphasis on gifted education. Similarily his MA for History of Ideas is a Liberal Arts degree with emphasis on History of Ideas

Try Here and Here too

From the History of Ideas description, it appears that the teacher maybe using this as a learning tool and may not accept the hoax theory. Well see.

See my post above yours.

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"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

Folks, do not, repeat not attack other people using ad hominems. That includes the OP's teacher. Making fun of their degrees is very inappropriate.

Consider this a warning.

Another thing people keep missing is that we do have a vehicle with a lift capacity similar to that of the Saturn V. They call it the Space Shuttle.

Consider, for a moment, the total mass of the Apollo mission hardware, specifically, the CSM and the LM. Also, while we're at it, let's look at Skylab, too.

OK, the CM alone massed 5.8 metric tons. The SM was another 24.5 tons. The LM massed 14.7 tons. Skylab tipped the scales at an impressive 76.3 tons. So, a Saturn booster could put 76.3 tons into LEO, or send 45 tons to the Moon. Impressive, isn't it?

For comparison, let's look at the first and last Shuttles built, Columbia (OV-102) and Endeavour. OK, Columbia had a total mass of 104.3 metric tons, including 21.2 tons of cargo. Endeavour, meanwhile, has roughly the same maximum mass, but can carry a hair under 25 metric tons of cargo.

The difference between Apollo and the STS is that the launch system for the STS has a lot more "dead weight" it has to carry up every single time.

That was where Shuttle C was supposed to come in. It'd run a stripped-down, unmanned, wingless "shuttle" that was just for putting cargo into orbit. Of course, not surprisingly, it never happened.


Sources:

Apollo CSM
Apollo LM
Skylab
Columbia
Endeavour
Shuttle C

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Sleep? Isn't that that totally inadaquate substitute for caffeine I've heard so much about?

Quantumfoamy.com, my astronomy/astrophotography blog.