The Unmentionable Fakery of the Apollo Missions.

[Ed]

I agree on the escape velocity of Earth, but what makes the return trip time ridiculous is that no such escape velocity was acheived to leave a moon orbit. The proposition put forward by NASA was that the spacecraft would achieve escape velocity and simply "fall through space" to its destination and back. That's simply another absurdity which has been illustrated by their accounts of the space shuttle's travels.

[Ken]

Earth escape Velocity is around 17500 mph. The lunar escape velocity is around 5300 mph. The CSM motor is specified at 20,500 lb thrust yielding a max delta v of around 6300 mph. The ascent module engines were specced to provide a (lunar) thrust to weigh ratio of just over 2:1. On the basis of those figures then both ascent to the CSM and the achievement of lunar escape velocity by the CSM are, theoretically, perfectly viable. After achieving escape velocity and engine shutdown the CSM would have coasted towards earth, once the earth's gravitational pull became greater than that of the moon then the CSM would have begun to accelerate - if we assume rentry speed around the same as lunar escape velocity (actually I think it would have been much higher) then the 3250 average mph for the return journey would appear quite feasible.

The specifications make the trip apparently feasible - the photographic records make me doubt it ever took place. One other little thought crosses my mind - if ordinary scanner radiation can fog film what effect would cosmic radiation have had on the films in the fairly ordinary little cameras the astronauts were using?

Ken.

[Ed]

"One other little thought crosses my mind - if ordinary scanner radiation can fog film what effect would cosmic radiation have had on the films in the fairly ordinary little cameras the astronauts were using?"

Good points. The -300+ degrees temperatures in the shade should have been very hard on any camera mechanism, not to mention the immediate change in temps when the astronaut flea-hopped out of the shade. Any critical thought applied to the claims made by NASA should send the thinker into gales of laughter. NASA was peopled by mediocre thinkers in their PR departments. The stories they told were ridiculous and there was a wide range of contemporary opinion worldwide, which isn't even acknowledged today by NASA historians.

[Ed]

Earth escape Velocity is around 17500 mph. The lunar escape velocity is around 5300 mph. The CSM motor is specified at 20,500 lb thrust yielding a max delta v of around 6300 mph. The ascent module engines were specced to provide a (lunar) thrust to weigh ratio of just over 2:1. On the basis of those figures then both ascent to the CSM and the achievement of lunar escape velocity by the CSM are, theoretically, perfectly viable. After achieving escape velocity and engine shutdown the CSM would have coasted towards earth, once the earth's gravitational pull became greater than that of the moon then the CSM would have begun to accelerate - if we assume rentry speed around the same as lunar escape velocity (actually I think it would have been much higher) then the 3250 average mph for the return journey would appear quite feasible.

.

I suppose the data was compiled to make the whole farce seem theoretically possible, but there's simply too much other obvious nonsense involved in the whole tale to keep the theory pure. For instance, the descent rockets are rockets, not jets. A rocket is on or off, so no modulation is possible. So, would the astronauts in the landing module have been able to slow the descent perfectly by killing and restarting the rockets and bringing the thing down smoothly from what had been orbit speed? Would they have been able to do it perfectly the first time, with no practice runs possible on Earth?. That's laughable enough by itself.

Had the "lunar landing module" been capable of detaching from the orbiting spacecraft, it should have been moving at what is assumed to be the orbiting speed of whichever Apollo vehicle it just left. That orbiting speed would tend to keep it in orbit, wouldn't it? The author also deals with the fact that the "lunar landing module" was constructed so flimsily that a screwdriver dropped on the floor from inside, on Earth, simply punctured the floor of the module. The outer hull of the module was Mylar/foil film, which is hardly impervious to micro meteorites, or a simple misstep by an astronaut.

To me, it's high comedy. I enjoyed reading the series because I'd laughed out loud at how funny it looked on TV when I was a teenager. McGowan just goes on and on, pointing out the patent absurdities. It's delicious, I tell you.

[Ken]

Killing a little orbital speed would not, theoretically, have been any problem. Use the RCS to rotate the LM and then fire a short retro burst on the main engine, probably four or five seconds would do it. To my mind all the tech specs add up. Liquid propellant rockets do have the capability of throttle modulation which was being investigated way back in the 1930s. Thrust modulation would have been attained simply by variation of fuel flow - the thrust would be constant for any given fuel flow rate so, dependant upon the method of variation, could be either stepped or infinitely variable.

Ken.

[David]

". Maybe I'm completely wrong"

Yeah, I'd say that's a distinct possibility. Those who want to call anyone questioning the obvious absurdities in government fables "conspiracy theorists" are being roundly ignored these days, in case you haven't noticed. Government shills are shouted down on blogs everywhere and they only manage to keep their input going on mainstream media outlets online. Those outlets are ignored and reviled by increasingly large segments of online participants, as well.

Who really cares what those assholes say? This is a thread about the series of articles. If you haven't read some of the articles, or even one of them, you have nothing to contribute to the discussion and are hijacking the thread. That's generally considered rude behavior in a forum setting. People who persist in that kind of "participation" get the reputation of being trolls.

Fair enough. Have fun with this one.

[Ed]

Apparently you understand all this better than I do. Still, what is amazing is how they landed the 33,000 lb. module with reverse thrusts of the main rocket without disturbing the dust. It's kind of miraculous, in fact. ;-)

[Jacob]

What is also miraculous is how they used hydrogen powered rockets on the multiple moon trips and yet, this many years later, "we" are told that there is not sufficient technology to harness hydrogen power in automobiles. "It's too dangerous" is what "they" say despite the fact the moon landings were apparently executed with perfection. Guess "we" are just a bunch of idiots who don't properly understand the science. Thank goodness the government is smarter than us, just imagine the things "we" would do without "them"...

[Dave Brand]

the fairly ordinary little cameras the astronauts were using?

They used Hasselblads - neither ordinary nor little!

[Ken]

The Saturn V engines were powered by LOX and RP-1 (Liquid oxygen and a refined form of Kerosene) as far as I know whilst the Lunar module and CSM engines used DiNitrogen Tetroxide and Aerozine which, I think, is a Hydrazine derivative and from my experience not something you would want to be anywhere near.

Ken.

Edit - My bad, it was only the first stage that used the Kerosene second propellant. The second and third stages did use Liquid Hydrogen.

[Ken]

My Dad's Hasselblad took good pictures but to me just looked like a larger Box Brownie with bells and whistles. By comparison with the modern film/digital cameras (which was the point I was making) I would still say it was ordinary. We are, after all, talking a technology that is over half a century old. Just my take, Dave.

Ken.

[Horse Badorties]

Dave Brand - you are correct as far as the glass goes. But the argument stands. There was no auto-focus back then, and those cameras had no view finders, chest mounted. Yeah, zone focusing, but it seemed to work perfectly outside the ship, not so much inside. When I was photo editor of a paper(s) back in the 80's I'd tell every photographer working for me, "Film is cheap. Shoot more than you think you need, use a few shots to experiment, they might turn out the most useful. Film is infinitely cheaper than re-creating an event."

That's one thing that boggles about the mission. If I'd been on the moon, I'd have gotten a few shots exposed to show the stars - no atmosphere, they should be visible at midday, should be spectacular - even if it meant blasting out the foreground, or shooting above the horizon.

Even exposure - pretty sure they weren't using the f16 rule, but no auto-exposure in '69 either - maybe they were using a spot meter, through a helmet, with gloves in a pressurized suit. But they all seemed to turn out good enough for a coffee table book. Smells funny here, and even under- or over- exposed shots would have scientific value I presume, as the film didn't have enough range to capture the full scene. It is amazing to me, and I use that word a lot, but really, AMAZING, that there is no series of bracketed shots from a scientific mission - as a simple photojournalist here on earth would do just for insurance. But no, instead the pics look like full on PR for a movie that hasn't started filming yet.
Ken is right.

Read those "Wagging the Moondoggie" articles (then look at the rest of the site). As Ed said, "Delicious."
In the sense of good reporting, and good writing. Too rare, even these days.

Enjoy.

[Ed]

They used Hasselblads - neither ordinary nor little!

Taken in the context of the article, the cameras on the suits were indeed fairly ordinary and little in comparison to the cameras which must have been used to actually produce the spectacular photos NASA claims were made by the Hasselblads mounted on the space suits. Read some of the articles and see if there's anything that makes you go, "Hmmmmm". I found plenty.

[Horse Badorties]

Almost forgot to link to Rammstein's "Amerika", one of my all time favorite music vids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrRdoY2kzbg
Some off the best parts are actually filmed on the moon.
lol

edit: also, the Making Of the above vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT7OLEwbcUo

[Ed]

Ack. Here I am having connection problems and vids don't stream as they should. That's one of the disadvantages of living in the boonies: no reliably fast internet connection. I'm bookmarking the vid and will check it out when the connection is better.

[Horse Badorties]

argh- I remember living in the boonies and having 23.6K max connection speed. Not fun, but I still played Q2 online with a ping of 300-350, and won games.
The problem these days is that even sites like EPAutos tend to assume DSL speed at least, and load on the features that eat up bandwidth.

Also Youtube is assuming the same. I'm in a different boonies now with an intermittent 1.5Mb DSL connection - Youtube recently instituted something called DASH, so the full vid doesn't buffer, they assume you can stream it. This made the service unusable for a month or two - a vid would buffer about 10%, then stop. If you played what you had, it might keep buffering, might not - at best it meant watching in chunks, and then...if you wanted to replay it so that you could watch it uninterrupted,... it would start the same downloading bullshit all over again! When the file should by rights be in your temp folder. I've seen comments from people with 50Mb connections who had the same problem.

There's a fix for this, but it's kind of a skirmish atm, an addon that lets you disable DASH, and also let's you download the vid to your hd so you can play it whenever - which is against yt TOS. It works, but you need to keep it updated.
Try this: http://lifehacker.com/preload-entire...ium=socialflow

Hope this helps, and yeah, you'd love the vids. Amerika is the extended version which isn't HD - the HD version of the tune is sweeeet, and the Making of is a real kick in the head.

[Horse Badorties]

Also I keep forgetting to thank Ken for the analysis!! I started out as a physics major, and it's always nice to find someone who speaks Math.

[Jacob]

I agree that Ken is giving some good analysis. I'm still a little butt-hurt over my "hydrogen fuel" argument being completely invalid (I have been using that one for a couple years) but I think I'll get over it eventually. (I was always told they were hydrogen rockets, turns out, they're not. Dammit I hate being wrong!)


I have already posted in this thread asking this question, but I'll ask again: Can someone please link me to pictures from the "high tech" telescopes that show pictures of our presence on the moon? Thank you. (spoiler alert.... those pictures don't exist, but have fun attempting to dig them up, maybe you'll "wake up" in the process).

[Ken]

Hey, Jacob. We were both wrong (partly). I recently updated my post to clarify that the first stage of the S5 was LOX/Kerosene. The second and third stages were LOX/Liquid Hydrogen.

Ken.

[Jacob]

Hmm, two wrongs made a right. The three lefts are jealous.

Zing?