Author Topic: Cratered astronaut-training fields  (Read 1962 times)

Offline Kiwi

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Cratered astronaut-training fields
« on: January 19, 2017, 09:04:51 AM »
Latitude and longitude for Google Earth to drop right on the centre of each field near Flagstaff, Arizona:

Cinder Lakes Crater Field #1
35°18'25.59" N 111°30'15.86" W

Cinder Lakes Crater Field #2
35°19'18.15" N 111°31'01.21" W

Zoom in on the centre marker for each field until the scale at bottom left of the screen shows somewhere around 130 metres.

In the case of Field #1 that setting shows the largest crater at top left of centre, and at bottom left of centre are two sets of three similar-sized craters in slightly curved lines. To the upper right of them is a ramp which held a mock-up of the lunar module.

Underneath the scale indicator is a link with 1997 on it, which shows the image for that year.

The fields have been eroded and partly overgrown since they were constructed in 1967-68, but many craters are still visible.  Some of the original 1960s tracks are still visible, and it looks like nowadays the fields are used for doing wheelies on ATVs.

This PDF gives details about the sites, with maps and photos of their construction:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/lunar_exploration/CinderLakesCraterField.pdf

Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt trained there, and the PDF has a photo of the "Grover", a terrestrial training-equivalent of the Lunar Roving Vehicle.

When finished with the fields in Google Earth, zoom out and tilt the view to see many of the other fascinating volcanic cones near Flagstaff.

No doubt hoax-believers will leap on these small fields as "proof" of their hoax, instead of what they actually were – reasonably accurate small-scale training grounds with distinctly earthlike appearances.

It's rather doubtful that the residents of Flagstaff wouldn't have noticed the many hours of filming that would have been done there to "fake" what was actually done on the moon. Besides, there are many trees and high hills around which would have had to be somehow edited out of the films, videos and still photos, and the small areas and flatness of the fields completely rule out the possibility of them being used to fake the existing records of any mission other than some parts of Apollo 11. The landing and ascent films for Apollo 11 couldn't be faked there.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 09:12:14 AM by Kiwi »
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Offline onebigmonkey

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Re: Cratered astronaut-training fields
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2017, 01:32:40 PM »
The area was intended to represent the preferred landing site for Apollo 11 - I did some trawling around and found the Lunar Orbiter images they used as a basis and where those images were on the moon. I started by superimposing one of the areas of interest from early studies looking for landing areas:



Then I looked for the actual areas within that:

.

The two smaller insets are ones from a couple of articles covering the creation of the crater field.

They were about 7 km from TB - so had Neil not had to land long...!

« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 01:34:31 PM by onebigmonkey »