It's a new one on me, from a blog post on fakeapollo.com...

...

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The writer claims to be neither a hoax believer or denier, but considering the email he sent me when I requested to use some of his pictures, he very much seems to believe the hoax. The post also references the 1962 laser calculations used to determine how close the moon was.

I would post a link to the full post, but the forum does not want to play ball. The blog is fakeapollo.com and the post is something like fourth on the main page.

Anyway, my understanding of retroflectors is... limited... to be kind (I've always thought of the tracking of Apollo craft by non-NASA agencies as my "proof"). My initial reaction was that the intense precision required for this was actually proof of the lunar landings - but, Apollo 11 overshot its landing site, and Collins couldn't find the Eagle from the CM. So I have to admit, this one had me scratching my head a bit.

Any thoughts?

Ask him how big the 'footprint' of the laser is by the time it hits the moon.

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Well, this is what I gathered about it from the MythBusters' special on the Apollo Moon Hoax theories. By the time the laser's light has gotten to the Moon, the beam is several kilometers wide. On top of that, of the very bright flash sent to the Moon, only a few photons actually return back to the telescope on Earth. It's not like you're sending out a bullet or something; you're sending out a huge number of waves.

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Thanks for the reminder, I keep meaning to find that Mythbusters' episode online...

That completely makes sense

For someone who considers themselves a "space historian", this "professor" fellow sure has his facts all mixed-up.

It reminds me of reading Jack White.

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The person is suffering from the misconception that a laser beam is a very thin beam of light, and remains so even at the distance of the moon. Still, the beam does need to be aimed at the general location of the reflector. That position is known, and the laser can be aimed at that general location. Considering the divergence of the laser beam, there is no need for such high accuracy that the reflector would need to be seen for aiming at it. As BertL said, that Mythbusters episode shows it nicely.

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As I recall, the beam is intentionally expanded to be a rather large spot on the Moon's surface so that it's relatively "easy" to keep it trained on the LLRR.

This technique is not in the least bit new. The military laser target designators I maintained did exactly the same thing: expanded a pencil-thin beam to a much larger flashlight-like spot by the time it reached its operating range of (merely) tens-of-thousands of feet.

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Yes, the laser beam is about a kilometer wide by the time it gets to the Moon. Even with Apollo 11 we now know where (in terms of lunar surface coordinates) the LRRR is.

Yes, the Moon is a moving target, but both its motion and the Earth's rotation can be determined with extreme precision, and the corrective factors lie well within the capacity of relatively unintelligent automation packages routinely sold with consumer telescopes.

Yes, only a few photons come back. But we have the ability to measure light down to the quantities of handfuls of photons -- especially when they are photons of a particular wavelength that stand out against background noise.

I agree with R.A.F. -- this guy really has no expertise to speak of. So if he's playing the "I'm an expert, and this makes no sense to me" card, then it's time to trump it.

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I emailed him asking if I could use some of his images and got a long, rambling email back about how he doesn't really believe in the missions or the "truthers". Nice enough guy, fairly harmless, but it took you guys all of ten seconds to debunk his pet theory. I don't really understand how people are that lax with their theories...

Expertise is a tricky thing to quantify. However, this guy calls himself a "space historian", which is misleading - and I think intentionally. The word 'amateur' is mighty useful sometimes, and if used, should be backed up by expert opinion.

I have to ask you genuine experts (there is no way of writing that without it sounding sarcastic, which isn't intentional) - how does what the retroflectors do any different from the '62 experiments?

You know the exact path the photons took, instead of having to guess where exactly they bounced on the Moon surface. Thus higher precision. (Assuming I understand the 62 experiment, I might be wrong)

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Actually, hoax proponents have little use for theories. The important thing to understand about the CT mentality, is that they suffer from a form of selective cognition: they believe only those things that would appear to support their ideas (they are NOT theories) and choose to ignore whatever would tend to disprove their ideas. Key word: choose.

The "choose to ignore" part is critical to understanding the CT mentality, for it is only by understanding that, that you will ultimately understand that it is pointless to argue with such people: no matter what you tell them, no matter how well-reasoned, no matter how accurate, they will choose to ignore anything that disproves their ideas.

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Bouncing signals off the Moon has a pretty long history. The US Army used radar to determine the Earth-Moon distance ~1946. By the 1960s the US was using "Common Moon" technology, where any two points that could see the Moon could exchange data.

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There could be 10s or even 100s of m of tographic variation in the 1 km laser footptint, the returned signal would be an average of those. Whereas the reflector is a point return and allows cm accuracy.

This 'expert' says this:

"NASA claims that even the Hubble Space Telescope can't get us a good look at the lunar landing sites - let alone get us a shot of the tiny laser reflectors."

It has nothing to do with NASA's claims. Anyone who knows about optics knows that simply is not how telescopes work! This isn't the magic viewscreen where someone just pushes a button and you get an even closer, perfectly rendered image of the subject's shoelaces!

This person is rather inept for someone who claims expertise.

Reading other entries....did he just misspell *Zeiss*?!

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I've never considered the retroreflectors to be very good "proof" of the veracity of Apollo. It's too easy for conspiracists simply to claim that these could have been placed by unmanned probes, especially because the Soviets actually did place two that way. Any technical explanations of how the astronaut-placed retroreflectors are much more effective can simply be handwaved away.

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Was "truther" his term? I'm curious because in conspiracist and debunker circles a "truther" (or "twoofer") is someone who purports to attempt to uncover the "truth" about the September 11 attacks.

You're new at this, aren't you?

You're starting to catch on.

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"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

Here's a short quotation from the "Terms of Use" found on the FakeApollo.com website:
In other words, 'whatever information you can find on this website might be total bollocks'.

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Nice enough guy, fairly harmless...

I used to think so, in general, but not any more. The more conspiracy theorists I meet in person, the more I find that the same sloppy and paranoid thinking pervades other aspects of their lives -- perhaps aspects that adversely affect other people.

I don't really understand how people are that lax with their theories...

I don't really know what he said to you in his letter, but what you've reproduced here really doesn't even count as a theory.

Expertise is a tricky thing to quantify.

Agreed, since I recognize many different sources from which expertise can arise. I know people in this and other forums, for example, who know more about certain aspects of space flight than others I know who have trained for it. Expertise has many dimensions.

However, it often comes down to either knowing something or not. In terms of expertise, that's where the rubber meets the road.

The word 'amateur' is mighty useful sometimes, and if used, should be backed up by expert opinion.

Yes. I have no problem with people calling themselves amateur space historians, or even armchair engineers. The problem is when their conclusions butt up against the commonly accepted views. If all the qualified engineers believe that the LRRR would work, and one "amateur historian" mounts some pseudo-technical rationale for why it wouldn't, then the parsimonious resolution to that controversy is that the lesser-educated guy doesn't know what he's talking about -- especially if his errors can be demonstrated as was done here.

how does what the retroflectors do any different from the '62 experiments?

Simply by providing a much more effective reflector than would occur naturally.

Measuring distance requires as short a pulse as possible. You're going to derive distance by measuring the travel time of something going the speed of light. Very small fractions of a second matter. Any given laser can only emit so many photons per unit time. If you have a poor reflector (i.e., the Moon's surface itself) then you have to send a lot of photons in order to increase the chance of getting one back.

That means a long pulse for some laser of a given power. And when sending lots of photons means sending a longer pulse, you can't be sure whether the photon you got back left Earth at the beginning or the ending of the pulse. So you have to sample many photons' travel times and build up a statistical distribution. That distribution will be "wide" owing to the longer pulse and the broader variation in travel time.

If, for some laser of a given power, you can send a very short pulse and increase the chances of a photon finding its way back to Earth, your statistical distribution of return times is much "tighter" and provides a more precise statistical basis for estimating the distance.

In general the lunar surface acts like a Lambertian reflector, meaning an incoming photon is likely to bounce off in any old direction -- not back to Earth. With the retroreflector in place, a photon is very much more likely to return along the path it came from.

The Mythbusters demonstrated this. They aimed the laser at a random part of the Moon and found that no detectable photons returned. With the laser at the same settings they aimed it at a retroreflector and got a very significant number of photons back.

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180 degrees wrong, except for your so-called debunker circles. "Truthers, birthers, conspiracy theorists" my foot. They love to coin these Newspeak labels, catch phrases, words that the media masters, the master brainwashers - like many you see right here - devise to avoid addressing the salient issues and dehumanize dissenters, and confuse the canon fodder. Don't worry, there's plenty more where those came from - racist, sexist, homophobe, antisemite, terrorist, militant, insurgent, the list goes on. War is peace. George Orwell was only off by about twenty years.

Here's two more I just picked up from the hustlers posting below: "CT, hoaxtards".

"Yes. I have no problem with people calling themselves amateur space historians, or even armchair engineers. The problem is when their conclusions butt up against the commonly accepted views."

In other words he has no problem with anyone calling themselves anything as long as they toe the the Party Line.

"Nice enough guy, fairly harmless..."

"I used to think so, in general, but not any more. The more conspiracy theorists I meet in person, the more I find that the same sloppy and paranoid thinking pervades other aspects of their lives -- perhaps aspects that adversely affect other people."


People you call "conspiracy theorists" - they are dangerous, they are terrorists, lock them up. Is that what you're getting at, Jay?

here we go..

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If seeing the LM as an engineering marvel is "toeing the party line"...then show me the rope.

If "openmindedly" seeing the Van Allen belts as an inpenetrable searing radiation hell simply because it has "radiation", as did Chernobyl, without any study or research of the subject...I'll pass.

It's all about facts and science....the widely accepted stuff.

People you call "conspiracy theorists" - they are dangerous, they are terrorists, lock them up. Is that what you're getting at, Jay?

Not at all, and I can't imagine how you got that from my post.

We tend to dismiss certain indefensible ideas as harmless because they don't seem to have any direct adverse effect. So we don't make the effort to contend them. But irrational thinking is irrational thinking; it spills over into things that do have an adverse effect, but which we don't necessarily see or connect to some conspiracy theory.

Guys who think we never landed on the Moon seem harmful enough until they're on a jury deciding someone's fate, or determining whether to grant a building permit. We need to develop a culture of challenging irrational thinking, because we can't always determine when it will matter. If you're the person whose fate is being decided by the jury, and you're innocent, you really want that decision to be based on facts and not on preconceptions, innuendo, or just plain ignorance.

In other words he has no problem with anyone calling themselves anything as long as they toe the the Party Line.

When did I say anything about a "party line?" You seem to think that the commonly accepted belief is commonly accepted because it was somehow handed down from on high and must be believed in order to satisfy some abstract, unseen hegemony. You don't seem to consider that a belief may be commonly held because that's where all the evidence naturally points.

Mainstream science is based on constantly challenging the status quo. Scientists would have nothing to do all day if they weren't doing that. But there are rules to those challenges to ensure that they aren't done frivolously or foolishly.

The commonly-accepted belief regarding cislunar radiation is that while the Van Allen belts themselves pose some risk, it is possible to operate within them and to chart reasonably safe courses through them; that 7 grams or so per square centimeter of shielding is sufficient for quick transits; that space outside the Van Allen belts is passable when the sun is quiescent; that major solar events of all types occur with sufficient infrequency to allow a 10-day mission with a probability of success no less than other aspects of the mission.

These beliefs are commonly accepted because there is vast amount of scientific data and operational experience to support it. The people who believe it, believe it because they've been given good reason to believe it. Not because someone told them to believe it, but because they do things that require them to get the right information and so studied the problem.

Then along comes someone and says that everything that's known is somehow different, and that we should have an open mind and try to accept it. Very well, says Science: show me your evidence and how it's better than mine. Instead of a better-reasoned case with better data, we get a flimsy half-ignorant set of handwaving. When that's deemed insufficient to supplant the commonly-accepted view, its proponent dives off the deep end into socio-political rhetoric.

People can educate themselves to almost an arbitrary level of expertise, if they choose to. And if they can demonstrate the requisite knowledge, they deserve respect for it. But they don't get that just by challenging the status quo. Respect is earned by demonstrating a defensible understanding, not just by bucking the popular trend.

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Just for the record, Ong is wrong. See here. I mention this only because it pertains to the question I posed to Antonia up-thread.

In case anyone is unfamiliar, general discussion of September 11 CTs is off-limits for this forum.

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"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

Astronaut placed ones are not intrinsically better. The Apollo ones give a better return than the Lunokhod ones simply because they are many times larger.

Jon

"So NASA just used bigger probes than the Soviets."

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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

Well, as a kid I wondered about how often skeet shooters can hit their target until I learnt about shotgun cartridges...
What people don't realize is, that the beam is pretty wide when reaching the moon. We get reflections not only from LRRR, but also from ground. Sorting out the photons from the reflector is a physical (wavelength) and a statistical thing. When we have enough samples, we get a peak for the distance of the LRRR, as any other photons are randomly distibuted over some intervall due to the rough terrain on the moon. The LRRRs are not necessary to make measurements, they are necessary to make precision measurements. I guess, if there would be lakes on the moon, we could do without reflectors on a windless day.

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