I guess he's trying to say that since NASA still doesn't have a 100% record now and that other countries don't either, then therefore the Apollo missions were impossible.

Directly there is none. In the HB mindset such a thing would go like this:

If a relatively simple misison such as Genesis fails, then obviously a much more complex mission such as Apollo can not succeed.

The fact that the two are widely of different scope and execution not to mention budget, nor the fact that Genesis only failed when the pyro's (a previously proven technology) didn't fire (though the tumbling may have fouled the 'chutes), never enters into the HB thought process.

Eric, I should like to ask about your assertion that the LM was never tested? To what degree did it need to be tested in order for you to have been satisfied?

Eric, I directly challenge you to defend here and now, for us, the statements you make in your 22-page document on Apollo.

Keep in mind that many of us here, including myself, are professional engineers or scientists with years of experience in these fields. We are not swayed by bluster. It is becoming clear that you have neither the expertise nor the experience to claim what you have claimed in your document without further support.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

It goes like this. Genesis is a simple space vehicle and it failed. Apollo is much more complex, so it obviously couldn't work.

Of course applying such logic to every events clearly shows what a silly idea that this. For example, a small single passenger propeller plane crashed recently, so therefore multi-passenger jet airplanes could never fly.

I have tried photographing Venus and had to use exposures of seconds (don't remember the F-stop). I think it is obvious these people have never tried to take a photography.

That's a keeper Jay. =D>

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

What was the cost of the Genesis mission? $250 million? That's peanuts. That's less than the cost of a communication satellite. The whole point of the "new" NASA is cheaper spacecraft, cheaper missions, with less riding on the success of any one mission.

This is the art of engineering. It is problem-solving within constraints. The normal tradeoffs between naturally competing factors in design ensure that a globally satisfactory solution can never be reached. Therefore some missions will fail as long as schedule and budget exist. It is inevitable.

The characterization of the Genesis failure as a "major problem" is highly susceptible to viewpoint. From the engineering standpoint the failure is likely to be very minor -- perhaps one failed component, or a two-way mixed-mode failure. Obviously from the PR standpoint and the mission science standpoint the failure is costly. The fact that the mission performed flawlessly up until mere minutes before it was due to end is a testament to the skill of the engineers. The fact that the mission was compromised by a feature we've been confidently building since the mid-1960s (remember all those CORONA film packages) indicates that it is not a design problem or an operational problem. It is more likely an unforeseen failure (e.g., something incidental broke the system) or a quality assurance failure.

Why do tires go flat? Is it because we don't know how to design tires? Obviously not -- it's just incidental damage for the most part. Can't we design around that? Yes, we can use foam-filled tires, for example. But most of the time you and I don't buy foam-filled tires. Why? Because they're considerably more expensive than air-filled tires. We buy pneumatic tires because we accept the risk in exchange for lower cost.

Voila! Engineering.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Actually the logic would be more like: my friend just crashed his new Audi therefore cars could not have existed in the 1960s.

Just to be fair I will point out that Eric never said in his post that Genesis crashing is evidence for a Hoax, other posters implied it.

Well, technically, he implied it, and other posters inferred it.

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

Actually, that's not really the reason. Ask a bicyclist why we don't use solid, or even foam filled tires.

There's much more to pneumatic tires than cost.

I guess, we should only handle Apollo and one point at a time. No switch (escape?) to other subjects as long as one item isn't discussed to the end.

Hence the attempt to convert the discussion into a debate over the cause of WTC 7's collapse, a topic on which Eric probably feels more comfortable.

There's a bit of uncertainty here. The sentiment, "If you can't explain WTC 7 then you can't explain Apollo," is both logically and factually flawed. So do you refute the factuality or the logic?

Since it's been shown that WTC 7 has a plausible engineering explanation and is much less ambiguous than previously believed, we can go back to Eric's original statement and say that we're now in a good position to refute his comments on Apollo (i.e., the factual rebuttal). But to do that validates the poor logic of the original argument. Since there is no inherent congruence between WTC 7 and Apollo, the inference rule fails. And if the inference fails, it can't be a valid argument either against us or in our favor.

Miring their critics in the detailed decorations of a poorly framed argument is a common fallback position for a conspiracist. He convinces them they have to satisfy his syllogisms in order to adequately dispute him, and they sometimes willingly comply. There is simply no presumption that expertise in the face of Apollo hoax theories necessarily rests on specialized expertise in any other selected engineering feat or disaster.

I said that Eric's reference to the failures of steel structures "tips his hand." And it does. While expertise in one speciality does not necessarily imply expertise in any other specialty, it does imply basic expertise. I.e., an orthopedic surgeon is not presumed also to be an expert in gastrointestinal disorders, but he is presemed to know about basic biological functions. Negated, then, the lack of basic expertise clearly implies a lack of specialized knowledge -- someone showing inexpertise in basic biological functions cannot be assumed to know about either gastrointestinal or orthopedic disorders. Hence someone without a basic knowledge of engineering is not expected to be competent in some engineering specialty.

It also tips his hand in the sense of revealing him to be a typical conspiracist: one who incorporates as many disparate hypotheses as possible into a grand unified conspiracy theory. Membership in this category suggests he is not equipped to discuss any of the theories he attempts to colligate.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Actually, that's not really the reason. Ask a bicyclist why we don't use solid, or even foam filled tires.

I had solid tires on my bicycle as a child. I know what you mean.

There's much more to pneumatic tires than cost.

There is, and the general concept is that of the tradeoff. Whether the tradeoff is in cost or in a numb crotch, you decide what's important to you and engineer to that point. We can make tires that never go flat and give you a smooth ride. You can't afford them, though. If you want them to be affordable, we'll have to sacrifice something like ride.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Hi,
A question from a Moon-Newbie here;
On page 18 of that pdf there was a big 'moon-lamp'.
What was it for actually?

Good thing that kids teeth are temporary.

They've actually tried their best, damning the cost, and they still fail to cover the smooth ride, shape, drag and other factors that are advantages of pnuematics. Nu-teck's solid tires cost about $40 a piece and they still are not as good as pnuematics for upright bikes. I've gotten the indication that quintupling the price would not solve the problem, the proper material simply is available yet.

But I get your point, and we digress...

Which part of the photo are you referring to? At top right there is a lens flare. Nothing else in the photo looks like a lamp or other light.

Maybe he took the high gain antenna for a lamp-shade?

__________________
"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Patrick, nothing in that picture is supposed to be a lamp. The objects sticking up from the rover are various antennas.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

No no,
I meant the big white 'Globe' somewhere towards the end of the pdf file. (It resembled a huge lamp, hence 'lamp'). It was taken on Earth. They placed a lunar surface topography on that globe it seems, so I was curious to know what it's purpose was.

Oh, I see. You directed us to page 18, which has a picture of the lunar rover.

The big globe, on which was painted lunar topography, was an aid for flight training. It provided a reference for astronauts to practice identifying lunar features at various ranges and at various angles with the spherical distortion as a factor.

Eric here borrows the arguments of the anonymous author we've come to call NASAScam (from the name of his site). This argument attempts to paint relistic simulation as somehow inherently suspicious. It's a purely circular argument. Simulations are only useful if they are as immersive as possible. A great deal of engineering and research, for example, goes into preparing airliner simulators for pilots: collimated displays for the illusion of distant terrain, motion bases for simulating the stresses of flight. None of this is proof that airline flight is faked. Similarly, the fidelity of Apollo simulation is no proof that Apollo was faked.

Notice how neither Eric nor the source he has cribbed actually presents any arguments or evidence that this equipment was used to fake the missions. He merely plants suggestions. "Shall we convince ourselves that this was only for a museum?" "Shall we convince ourselves that this was only for flight training?" He asks the questions (i.e., lobs the innuendo), but doesn't provide any answers. The answers are quite plainly that these were intended as training aids, and there's quite a bit of precedence and training culture built around such practices. In short, the evidence quite clearly points to their use in training. If Eric has another use in mind, he needs to present evidence for that particular use -- not merely suggest than another possibility exists. He spreads fear, uncertainty, and doubt instead -- no real insight or information.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Hi!Yes, and many successes. What is your point? Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander, and Mars Climate Observer all failed fairly recently. Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and both Mars Expedition Rovers have all been spectacular successes - as were Vikings 1 and 2 back in the 70s. Again, what is your point?I'm not going to get into the WTC discussion on the Apollo part of this site. I will point out that steel structures are most certainly vulnerable to collapse from a fire; I volunteer as a firefighter and have a personal interest in that fact. People have been killed in such collapses long before the attacks on the WTC. Shoot, Jay provided an example he saw with his own eyes. Do you retract what appears to be an implicit claim that fire can't cause the collapse of steel-framed buildings? Well, I'm smart enough to make my living as an engineer in aerospace. I've worked on space flight hardware hands-on, in