ApolloHoax.net

Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: Ishkabibble on October 10, 2015, 01:49:21 AM

Title: A hoax theory...
Post by: Ishkabibble on October 10, 2015, 01:49:21 AM
Maybe it's really only interesting from the mental gymnastics and the realistic-sounding terminology. It references Jarrah and Percy. I'd be interested in seeing the forum members dissect it, and what the factual, non-misrepresented information is.

Call it an intellectual exercise.

Here it is:

Q: Weren’t there independent parties tracking Apollo all the way to the moon and back?

A: No. There are some known Ham radio operators who attest to having picked up signals from Apollo (Paul Wilson, Richard Knadle, Larry Baysinger, Sven Grahn), but none of them can attest to having tracked these probes all the way to the moon and back. Grahn for example only testifies to having picked up signals from Apollo 17 when it was in earth orbit, when it was on the moon and in lunar orbit. He openly admits to not tracking it the whole way there and back. Baysinger only received communications from Apollo 11 during the alleged moonwalk, again not the way to the moon and back. Wilson & Knadle received signals from a diversity of Apollo missions2, but again only when the crafts were in lunar orbit – an exception being Apollo 15 in which they received a handful of signals on the alleged flight home. The two were quoted to saying: “The moon is always in view of two of NASA's primary tracking stations in Spain, Australia and California, but not so for the amateur. Some of the most exciting events and transmissions from the Apollo mission always seem to occur when the moon is below the horizon for the continental United States astronomer!”

Recently, Jarrah met with CSIRO professor Ray Morris, who as a kid received signals from Apollo 13 – but only during the time they were said to be in earth orbit.  In the nineties, David Percy contacted Jodrell Bank Observatory technician Robert Pitchard. He stated that they too only tracked Apollo when it was close to the moon, not the trip there and back: “The Moon probes were observed with a 50ft radio telescope which at the frequency used (2300MHz) had a beam width of 5/8ths degrees In round terms this allowed us to pick up signals from up signals from up to about 1,000 miles above the moon’s surface, although small corrections had to be made to pointing as the probes orbited the Moon.

Voice signals (of good quality) were received from both the orbiting spacecraft and the Lunar Lander but television signals were only picked up from the spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. As we were not actively involved in the tracking of these spacecraft, we did not track them after they had left the Moon. And with regard to Apollo 10, I have no details of any observations, after all this time – the reason escapes me.”  And on the Russian side, for the most part the Soviets had relied heavily on Jodrell Bank just to track their own moon-bound spacecrafts because they lacked the capability to do it themselves (this was discussed in the BBC series, The Planets).
 Although later in the early 60s they were able to build deep space network tracking facilities with a 100million kilometre range, none of these radio telescopes were tuneable to the 2.3GHz (2300MHz) signals used by Apollo. This is clear evidence that NASA selected those frequencies so that no one could prove they were faking the whole thing. Only at the last minute in November 1968 did they manage to equip their TNA-400 facility in Crimea with suitable receiving equipment. And even then, because NASA did not supply them with the ballistics data, the Soviets were limited to listening to it during the time Apollo 8, 10, 11 and 12 were supposedly in lunar orbit.



This is something I have only read about on a limited basis, and is way beyond my academic field. Let me state clearly, and for the record, anything that references Jarrah or Percy is automatically viewed by me as total bollocks.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: darren r on October 10, 2015, 07:30:29 AM

none of them can attest to having tracked these probes all the way to the moon and back. Grahn for example only testifies to having picked up signals from Apollo 17 when it was in earth orbit, when it was on the moon and in lunar orbit.


television signals were only picked up from the spacecraft on the surface of the Moon.

So various spacecraft were independently tracked in Earth orbit, then in Lunar orbit, and TV signals were picked up from the Moon's surface. Hard to see how this is an argument against the reality of Apollo!

Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Allan F on October 10, 2015, 09:50:16 AM
Of course ham operators didn't track the spacecraft all the way. As the Earth turns, they lost line-of-sight. Only with a world-wide tracking net could the spacecraft be tracked. This is just a bad argument against amateur tracking.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: gwiz on October 10, 2015, 11:53:38 AM
Certainly untrue about Russian capability.  They tracked their own lunar missions and they tracked Apollo.  NASA announced the Apollo frequencies to the world well in advance of the missions.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: JayUtah on October 10, 2015, 01:59:47 PM
I agree that Jarrah and Percy are not good sources.  Neither one has a reputation for reliably and accurately reporting their sources, or of asking pertinent sources.  Neither understands the relevant sciences.

One salient technical omission is that the VHF reception during the Moon walks was still directional.  The signals were still coming unmistakably from the direction of the Moon.  Another important aspect is that these were signals called for in the mission plan but not intended to be picked up from Earth.  These were the low-power radios used by the astronauts to communicate with each other and with the LM while nearby.  If you're faking a Moon mission, why would you fake signals that no one is expected to eavesdrop upon?

Don't be too hasty to declare this outside your field.  Yes, the technical details require expertise -- which, incidentally, are to be had neither by White nor Percy.  But in your field people need to discuss in particular what makes a reasonable standard of proof amid a sporadic (and sometimes nearly barren) landscape of evidence.  The insidious error in the snippet you've quoted is the hidden assumption that tracking would need to be continuous from a single station in order to be probative.  That suggested standard of proof is physically impossible (or absurdly impractical, let's say).  Because the Earth turns, no one Earth-based system can do it.  At best you'd have overlapping periods of, well, periodic coverage.  That limitation informs what we might consider reasonable proof.

NASA created the Manned Space Flight Network to aggregate discrete monitoring stations into the best coverage it could manage.  But still made from discrete elements.  Because others' ad hoc efforts do not fly under a single banner, the author here has examined each element in isolation.  And the examination cherry-picks simply the portions of the overall proof-by-tracking problem that aren't met by that individual.  That method sidesteps the persuasive consilience created by having different people work in different ways and operate at different times in order to test the claim broadly and unusually, if not continuously.

This approach smacks of that class of fallacies that work on the composition and division of elements, laying expectations proper to the whole at the feet of some improper part, or vice versa.  And the body of reason from which that class is drawn forms the abstract bedrock of every intellectual activity humankind pursues.  The satisfaction of debunking comes in part from knowing the details in evidence, but in larger part from seeing what error of reason or interpretation led to a belief.  That can't be learned from narrowed study, nor does such insight live in only one place in our body of wisdom.  That's why this debate, and others, attracts generalists or specialists in other area.  The appeal runs deep.

While a full rebuttal necessarily involves technical detail, a persuasive and meaningful rebuttal looks at basic questions such as, "What is this person trying to prove?  Are his expectations reasonable?  Are his methods fair?"
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: smartcooky on October 10, 2015, 03:05:35 PM
In the case of Baysinger, he used a home-made horizontal "corner reflector" antenna like the one on the right

(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/accp/ss0131/ss0131a0032.gif)

This type of antenna is directional, that is to say, it has to be pointed in the direction of the signals that you want to pick up, otherwise you won't hear them.

From the ARRL Article "Eavesdropping on Apollo 11" by Chris Graney
"Baysinger says that on the night of the Apollo 11 landing, he and Rutherford had to essentially aim the antenna at the Moon by getting behind it and sighting it like a gun. This was difficult since the weather was cloudy and the Moon not easily visible. The antenna, which was originally built for Baysinger’s radio astronomy work, had a motorized steering mechanism but it had to be manually guided.

Its “beam” or “field of view” was such that, once pointed at the Moon, it could be let go for a little while, but pretty soon it would have to be reaimed because the motions of the Earth and Moon caused the Moon to drift out of the antenna’s field and the signal to be lost. In fact, this was one piece of evidence that the Apollo 11 signals the receiver picked up were indeed from the Moon — if the antenna was not kept aimed at the Moon, the signal disappeared. Baysinger’s wife and daughter watched the Apollo 11 landing on TV while Baysinger and Rutherford listened via Baysinger’s equipment. The signal on the home-built equipment came through approximately 5-10 seconds earlier than the signal on TV. It was noisy, but you could hear what was going on."


From the Otter Creek-South Harrison Observatory home page...
Of course we can ask, did Baysinger really pick up signals from the moon? Is it possible that he was merely detecting spurious transmissions from a local radio or TV station that was broadcasting the moon landing?  Baysinger has asked himself these same questions. However, several lines of evidence indicate that these signals were not spurious:

· The antenna had to be aimed at the moon in order to receive the signals, and the signal was lost when the moon set.
· The audio could be heard through Baysinger's receiver a few seconds before it was heard over TV.
· The audio Baysinger recorded is different from the audio provided by NASA in that Aldrin and Armstrong are can be heard, while Collins, CAPCOM, and the PAO voice-over cannot. Were Baysinger picking up the local TV or radio station, he should have recorded the same audio that everyone heard on TV.

It is also worth noting that no quindar tones (the beep between transmisions) seem to be audible on any of the recordings. If this had been a spurious transmission from a local station, the qundar tones would have been heard.

More information as well as MP3 and WMA files of Baysinger's recordings are available here

http://legacy.jefferson.kctcs.edu/observatory/apollo11/




Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: molesworth on October 10, 2015, 03:22:10 PM
And on the Russian side, for the most part the Soviets had relied heavily on Jodrell Bank just to track their own moon-bound spacecrafts because they lacked the capability to do it themselves (this was discussed in the BBC series, The Planets).
I find this part very hard to believe.

Given the situation at the time, with the ongoing cold war, there wasn't much in the way of cooperation between the UK and the Soviet Union.  I remember they were a bit miffed when Jodrell Bank managed to get pictures from Luna 9 into the British press before the Soviet scientists even got a look at them.

"...relied heavily on Jodrell Bank..." - I don't think so.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: onebigmonkey on October 10, 2015, 03:27:16 PM
And on the Russian side, for the most part the Soviets had relied heavily on Jodrell Bank just to track their own moon-bound spacecrafts because they lacked the capability to do it themselves (this was discussed in the BBC series, The Planets).
I find this part very hard to believe.

Given the situation at the time, with the ongoing cold war, there wasn't much in the way of cooperation between the UK and the Soviet Union.  I remember they were a bit miffed when Jodrell Bank managed to get pictures from Luna 9 into the British press before the Soviet scientists even got a look at them.

"...relied heavily on Jodrell Bank..." - I don't think so.

It's true:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/jodrell/jodrole1.htm

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part1.html

Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: molesworth on October 10, 2015, 03:57:38 PM
It's true:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/jodrell/jodrole1.htm

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part1.html

Ach!  First post and I manage to get it wrong.  Must do more research...  :-[

Oh well, better luck next time...
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Mag40 on October 10, 2015, 07:11:51 PM
And on the Russian side, for the most part the Soviets had relied heavily on Jodrell Bank just to track their own moon-bound spacecrafts because they lacked the capability to do it themselves (this was discussed in the BBC series, The Planets).
I find this part very hard to believe.

Given the situation at the time, with the ongoing cold war, there wasn't much in the way of cooperation between the UK and the Soviet Union.  I remember they were a bit miffed when Jodrell Bank managed to get pictures from Luna 9 into the British press before the Soviet scientists even got a look at them.

"...relied heavily on Jodrell Bank..." - I don't think so.

It's true:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/jodrell/jodrole1.htm

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part1.html

I am not so sure about this. From what I have read, Jodrell Bank tracked Soviet craft as a means to verify their achievements, after they were given tracking frequencies for this very purpose. The Soviet Union had a massive assembly of radio telescopes that put JB to shame.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/kik.html

This video by the superb debunker Phil Webb elaborates on the subject:

Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: bknight on October 11, 2015, 01:34:27 AM
Why is it necessary to track Apollo all the way to the moon to prove they went?  As many have indicated radio waves are directional and everybody that wanted to track them full time would need a network of tracking stations.  The Soviets built theirs in in the early 60's.  I believe that I watched a history of their space program and the Soviets "Used the Jodrell bank observatory as an independent source to verify their moon missions, but did not "need" them for control. Broadcasts were intercepted from a direction towards the moon.  Speaking of Jodrell they monitored A11's descent, notiting that the LM had vertical motions collaborating Armstrong's taking control and "flying over a boulder area before landing.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: BazBear on October 11, 2015, 01:51:51 AM
IIRC some of the Luna 9 team members were pissed because Jodrell realized the transmission from the lander was using the international Radiofax standard, after which the Daily Express newspaper rushed over the right fax receiver to download the images, which the Express then published and distributed internationally, before the Soviets were ready to release them.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: JayUtah on October 11, 2015, 02:34:16 AM
Why is it necessary to track Apollo all the way to the moon to prove they went?

Because we cite the continuity of a mission as evidence of its authenticity.  We ask for explanations of how a mission could be hoaxed end to end.  Inspecting the mission only at discrete points opens up the possibility that different methods were used to hoax each segment. That makes the job easier.

Quote
...but did not "need" them for control.

Indeed the Apollo program was designed with the possibility of more than one mission in operation at a time. It was assumed each mission could proceed autonomously, without explicit tracking and control from the ground.  Even with line-of-sight established, ground controllers might be concentration on other missions.  The original Apollo design was for a fleet of general-purpose spacecraft.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Dalhousie on October 11, 2015, 03:24:22 AM
And on the Russian side, for the most part the Soviets had relied heavily on Jodrell Bank just to track their own moon-bound spacecrafts because they lacked the capability to do it themselves (this was discussed in the BBC series, The Planets).
I find this part very hard to believe.

Given the situation at the time, with the ongoing cold war, there wasn't much in the way of cooperation between the UK and the Soviet Union.  I remember they were a bit miffed when Jodrell Bank managed to get pictures from Luna 9 into the British press before the Soviet scientists even got a look at them.

"...relied heavily on Jodrell Bank..." - I don't think so.

It's true:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/jodrell/jodrole1.htm

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part1.html

I don't think it is true to say they relied on Jodrell bank.  Although on a couple of occasions they did call on it's services as the then largest steerable radio telescope in the world. As others in the era They had their own tracking network on their own territory for routine work (12 time zones) plus a fleet of tracking ships.

The issue with Luna 9 was not that Jodrell bank got the images first but that they released them first
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 11, 2015, 05:19:48 AM
if the antenna was not kept aimed at the Moon, the signal disappeared.
The signal also exhibited a rather esoteric behavior that would be fully expected by radio hams and others familiar with space communications: before the moon set in Kentucky, Baysinger's received signal slowly oscillated in signal strength, sometimes disappearing and sometimes becoming louder than when the moon was higher in the sky.

This was caused by the moon slowly setting through the Fresnel zones of Baysinger's antenna. It's an example of multipath in action. When the moon was low on his western horizon, his antenna wasn't directional enough to exclude the signal from Armstrong's transmitter that bounced off the earth before arriving at Baysinger's antenna. As the moon slowly set, the difference in length between the direct and reflected paths slowly changed. At times it was a multiple of a wavelength, and the two components reinforced each other; that's when the signal became stronger than it had been with the moon high in the sky. At other times the difference in path length was an odd multiple of a half wavelength so the two components arrived out of phase, cancelled each other and caused Armstrong's signal to fade out.

I don't think I'd seen this mentioned anywhere in the articles about Baysinger's recording, but I recognized it right away when I listened. Along with the other lines of evidence -- arriving before the TV, no Quindar tones, hearing both Armstrong and Aldrin but not Capcom, disappearing at moonset, the average signal strength matching my link budget -- I knew Baysinger had recorded the real thing.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 11, 2015, 05:31:57 AM
Why is it necessary to track Apollo all the way to the moon to prove they went?
It wasn't.

The (entirely fictional) power-failure scene from The Dish hints why hams heard relatively little from Apollo during the transit. It was hard in those days even for a professional radio telescope to track a tiny spacecraft on its way to or from the moon. You needed to know where to point your highly directional antenna. Even if you had a computer with the right software, which was pretty rare in the late 1960s, you also needed the actual state vector/orbital elements to plug into that program. I don't think NASA treated them as classified, but neither did they publish them in the papers; there were useless to most people.

But when Apollo was in lunar orbit, it was easy to track: just point your antenna at the moon. Accurate almanacs would tell you where the moon would be even if you couldn't see it because of cloudy weather.

Even that might overstate it a little. I have a collection of the "Eimac moonbounce notes" from the early-mid 1970s for radio hams involved in bouncing their signals off the moon. Quite a few were devoted to various means for tracking the moon, often by ad-hoc graphical means. This is how they did things back in the good 'ol days before computers, sonny...


Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: bknight on October 11, 2015, 09:46:08 AM
Why is it necessary to track Apollo all the way to the moon to prove they went?
It wasn't.

The (entirely fictional) power-failure scene from The Dish hints why hams heard relatively little from Apollo during the transit. It was hard in those days even for a professional radio telescope to track a tiny spacecraft on its way to or from the moon. You needed to know where to point your highly directional antenna. Even if you had a computer with the right software, which was pretty rare in the late 1960s, you also needed the actual state vector/orbital elements to plug into that program. I don't think NASA treated them as classified, but neither did they publish them in the papers; there were useless to most people.

But when Apollo was in lunar orbit, it was easy to track: just point your antenna at the moon. Accurate almanacs would tell you where the moon would be even if you couldn't see it because of cloudy weather.

Even that might overstate it a little. I have a collection of the "Eimac moonbounce notes" from the early-mid 1970s for radio hams involved in bouncing their signals off the moon. Quite a few were devoted to various means for tracking the moon, often by ad-hoc graphical means. This is how they did things back in the good 'ol days before computers, sonny...
One of comical comments are/were the lunar mission signals where coming from the TETRA satellites
EDIT Changed satellite to correct nomenclature.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: JayUtah on October 11, 2015, 01:09:20 PM
Yeah, Bart Sibrel infamously made that claim. As if ground stations couldn't tell the difference between a translunar spacecraft and a LEO spacecraft.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Bryanpoprobson on October 11, 2015, 01:19:12 PM
Yeah, Bart Sibrel infamously made that claim. As if ground stations couldn't tell the difference between a translunar spacecraft and a LEO spacecraft.

There is a way that could have been done though, but I wouldn't want to furnish these idiots with theories.. :D
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: bknight on October 11, 2015, 02:07:59 PM
Yeah, Bart Sibrel infamously made that claim. As if ground stations couldn't tell the difference between a translunar spacecraft and a LEO spacecraft.
Aw yes, but they were paid to keep silent on any discrepancies, or Ninja ::) I did see an article about mysterious scientist deaths.  some apparently still believe NASA silences critics, whistle blowers ::)
http://www.neonnettle.com/features/415-why-have-74-prominent-scientists-been-murdered-in-the-past-ten-years-
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: smartcooky on October 11, 2015, 03:05:09 PM
Yeah, Bart Sibrel infamously made that claim. As if ground stations couldn't tell the difference between a translunar spacecraft and a LEO spacecraft.

Err let me see, the moon tracks across the sky at about 15° per hour, but a LEO satellite tracks across the sky at between 1° and 5° per second (orbit dependent). e.g., the ISS tracks at about 1.2° per second. That is about 290 times faster than the moon.  I think mr Baysinger would have noticed!

There is a way that could have been done though, but I wouldn't want to furnish these idiots with theories.. :D

Yes there is. You could send a specially designed radio replay station/lander........to the moon. You would have to send the outgoing transmisions to the lunar relay station which would then have to be scrambled (to defeat all those nosey ham radio operators) and sent back on a different frequency to a sooper seekrit receiving station on Earth (actually you would need a few sooper seekrit stations because of the Earth's rotation) and relayed to Tranqulity Base Studios at Area 51 where they are unscrambled, the astronaut replies, and his signal is scrambled again and sent back to the sooper seekrit relay station, back up to he lunar relay station where it is unscrambled again and transmitted back to CapCom.

One problem.... The delay. This would double the delay from about 2½ seconds to about 5 seconds which would be noticable immediately. It is possible to add delay, but not possible to reduce it; that would need the radio transmissions to travel faster than light, and is against Mr Einstein's rules.

 
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Bryanpoprobson on October 11, 2015, 03:28:14 PM
My solution would have been, to put a relay satellite at the L1 point, although not the most stable point, it would only have to remain stable for the duration of the EVA's. Plus the round trip delay would be about 2.5 to 3 seconds..
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: smartcooky on October 11, 2015, 03:49:20 PM
My solution would have been, to put a relay satellite at the L1 point, although not the most stable point, it would only have to remain stable for the duration of the EVA's. Plus the round trip delay would be about 2.5 to 3 seconds..

Stable enough for Apollo 11 maybe for its short duration of a couple of hours in the surface but not long enough for Apollo 17 that was at Taurus-Littrow for three days.,

Also, for Apollo 13 there was a lot more communications with the spacecraft in transit (and remember that the Apollo spacecraft in transit to and from the moon goes a long way off the a direct line between the Earth and the Moon)

Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Bryanpoprobson on October 11, 2015, 03:57:32 PM


Stable enough for Apollo 11 maybe for its short duration of a couple of hours in the surface but not long enough for Apollo 17 that was at Taurus-Littrow for three days.,

Also, for Apollo 13 there was a lot more communications with the spacecraft in transit (and remember that the Apollo spacecraft in transit to and from the moon goes a long way off the a direct line between the Earth and the Moon)

It depends on the amount of instability at the L1 point, I know it is one of the least stable of the Lagrange points, beyond that I'm guessing. But as for tracking, that could be done from each of the Saturn launches.. But it just goes to show, all these little intricacies and difficulties, it was simpler and easier for it to have happened.. ;)
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: smartcooky on October 11, 2015, 05:06:12 PM


Stable enough for Apollo 11 maybe for its short duration of a couple of hours in the surface but not long enough for Apollo 17 that was at Taurus-Littrow for three days.,

Also, for Apollo 13 there was a lot more communications with the spacecraft in transit (and remember that the Apollo spacecraft in transit to and from the moon goes a long way off the a direct line between the Earth and the Moon)

It depends on the amount of instability at the L1 point, I know it is one of the least stable of the Lagrange points, beyond that I'm guessing. But as for tracking, that could be done from each of the Saturn launches.. But it just goes to show, all these little intricacies and difficulties, it was simpler and easier for it to have happened.. ;)


Back of the envelope math.

L1 is about 325,000 km from earth, the moon is about 384,000km, so L1 is about 85% of the distance. While you could possibly put a relay station there it wouldn't help much. If you are going to fake the landing site on Earth, say, at Area 51, then in order to make the signal come from the direction of the moon (to anyone listening), you still have to get the signal from

CapCom to L1 - 325,000 km
L1 to SSTN* - 325,000 km
SSTN* to Area 51 - ?
Area 51 to SSTN* - ?
SSTN* to L1 - 325,000 km
L1 to CapCom - 325,000 km

*SSTN = Sooper Seekrit Tracking Network

In 1969, the signal to and from Area 51 and SSTN would probably be achieved by landline and the delay would be typically 1-2 seconds each way (Others here will have a better idea of that than me)

The signal has to travel through space 1.3 million km

1.3 million km @ 300,000 km/sec =   4.3 seconds plus 2 to 4 seconds landline delay means that even an immediate reply to a transmission from CapCom could not be heard any quicker than 6 to 8 seconds later.

That delay would stand out like a canine's gonads!!! 


NOTE: With 1969 rocket technology I think it would be bloody difficult to put a satellite at L1. As I understand it, the Apollo missions were all done by, as Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13, "putting Sir Isaac Newton in the driving seat". The spacecraft literally fell toward the moon and they used the moon's gravity as well as retro-firing to put the the spacecraft into lunar orbit. The orbital mechanics experts here will have a better idea than me, but I imagine it would take quite a complicated series of manoeuvres and extended lunar orbits including a number of retro-firings to get a satellite into L1. 
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: bknight on October 11, 2015, 06:04:19 PM
Yeah, Bart Sibrel infamously made that claim. As if ground stations couldn't tell the difference between a translunar spacecraft and a LEO spacecraft.

Err let me see, the moon tracks across the sky at about 15° per hour, but a LEO satellite tracks across the sky at between 1° and 5° per second (orbit dependent). e.g., the ISS tracks at about 1.2° per second. That is about 290 times faster than the moon.  I think mr Baysinger would have noticed!

There is a way that could have been done though, but I wouldn't want to furnish these idiots with theories.. :D

Yes there is. You could send a specially designed radio replay station/lander........to the moon. You would have to send the outgoing transmisions to the lunar relay station which would then have to be scrambled (to defeat all those nosey ham radio operators) and sent back on a different frequency to a sooper seekrit receiving station on Earth (actually you would need a few sooper seekrit stations because of the Earth's rotation) and relayed to Tranqulity Base Studios at Area 51 where they are unscrambled, the astronaut replies, and his signal is scrambled again and sent back to the sooper seekrit relay station, back up to he lunar relay station where it is unscrambled again and transmitted back to CapCom.

One problem.... The delay. This would double the delay from about 2½ seconds to about 5 seconds which would be noticable immediately. It is possible to add delay, but not possible to reduce it; that would need the radio transmissions to travel faster than light, and is against Mr Einstein's rules.
It seems it would be easrier to actually go than try a fake it.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: smartcooky on October 11, 2015, 09:33:59 PM
Yeah, Bart Sibrel infamously made that claim. As if ground stations couldn't tell the difference between a translunar spacecraft and a LEO spacecraft.

Err let me see, the moon tracks across the sky at about 15° per hour, but a LEO satellite tracks across the sky at between 1° and 5° per second (orbit dependent). e.g., the ISS tracks at about 1.2° per second. That is about 290 times faster than the moon.  I think mr Baysinger would have noticed!

There is a way that could have been done though, but I wouldn't want to furnish these idiots with theories.. :D

Yes there is. You could send a specially designed radio replay station/lander........to the moon. You would have to send the outgoing transmisions to the lunar relay station which would then have to be scrambled (to defeat all those nosey ham radio operators) and sent back on a different frequency to a sooper seekrit receiving station on Earth (actually you would need a few sooper seekrit stations because of the Earth's rotation) and relayed to Tranqulity Base Studios at Area 51 where they are unscrambled, the astronaut replies, and his signal is scrambled again and sent back to the sooper seekrit relay station, back up to he lunar relay station where it is unscrambled again and transmitted back to CapCom.

One problem.... The delay. This would double the delay from about 2½ seconds to about 5 seconds which would be noticable immediately. It is possible to add delay, but not possible to reduce it; that would need the radio transmissions to travel faster than light, and is against Mr Einstein's rules.
It seems it would be easrier to actually go than try a fake it.


Mitchell & Webb certainly believe so :)
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Rob260259 on October 12, 2015, 11:35:34 AM
About the Soviets...:



Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 13, 2015, 05:34:44 AM
The more you know about Apollo communications, the more absurd the idea of a hoax relay satellite becomes.

It's not just a matter of parking a relay satellite near the moon. It also needs the right range-rate (velocity projected along the line of sight) vs time so that Doppler measurements come out right. In two-way tracking, which was used almost continuously except when the LM was transmitting TV, the received downlink frequency depends on both the direct Doppler effect on the downlink signal (which depends on ground receiver location) and on the Doppler effect on the uplink signal (which doesn't). This is one of the reasons for the shifting LM frequency observed at Jodrell Bank even after the Eagle had landed -- there was Doppler on the uplink to the LM from Goldstone, which was transmitting at the time, and Goldstone is a long way from England.

When the LM is in orbit you'll expect to see the range-rate at a maximum when it is going around the limb of the moon and minimum as it crosses the face of the moon. After you subtract out the eccentricity of the moon's orbit, of course. And the earth's rotation.

However, round trip delay on voice communications is not the obstacle some think it is. You simply send your "uplink" directly from Houston to your nearby actor-astronauts on earth, and then route their response up to the relay and back. The total round trip time will be roughly as expected, and even if they interrupt each other or the crew microphones occasionally repeat the uplink audio you'll get the same effects as in the actual missions.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: bknight on October 13, 2015, 08:53:19 AM
The more you know about Apollo communications, the more absurd the idea of a hoax relay satellite becomes.

It's not just a matter of parking a relay satellite near the moon. It also needs the right range-rate (velocity projected along the line of sight) vs time so that Doppler measurements come out right. In two-way tracking, which was used almost continuously except when the LM was transmitting TV, the received downlink frequency depends on both the direct Doppler effect on the downlink signal (which depends on ground receiver location) and on the Doppler effect on the uplink signal (which doesn't). This is one of the reasons for the shifting LM frequency observed at Jodrell Bank even after the Eagle had landed -- there was Doppler on the uplink to the LM from Goldstone, which was transmitting at the time, and Goldstone is a long way from England.

When the LM is in orbit you'll expect to see the range-rate at a maximum when it is going around the limb of the moon and minimum as it crosses the face of the moon. After you subtract out the eccentricity of the moon's orbit, of course. And the earth's rotation.

However, round trip delay on voice communications is not the obstacle some think it is. You simply send your "uplink" directly from Houston to your nearby actor-astronauts on earth, and then route their response up to the relay and back. The total round trip time will be roughly as expected, and even if they interrupt each other or the crew microphones occasionally repeat the uplink audio you'll get the same effects as in the actual missions.
iT IS Easy to mak4 a claim of ignorance, especially when their audience is as ignorant hence the HB seductively persuades them. 
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: smartcooky on October 13, 2015, 02:31:38 PM
However, round trip delay on voice communications is not the obstacle some think it is. You simply send your "uplink" directly from Houston to your nearby actor-astronauts on earth, and then route their response up to the relay and back. The total round trip time will be roughly as expected, and even if they interrupt each other or the crew microphones occasionally repeat the uplink audio you'll get the same effects as in the actual missions.

But then, wouln't the ham radio eavesdroppers hear CapCom and the quindar tones on the downlink?
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 30, 2015, 01:09:54 AM
But then, wouln't the ham radio eavesdroppers hear CapCom and the quindar tones on the downlink?
You use a completely separate, low-delay path to transmit Capcom to your fake crew on the ground. At Houston, you combine Capcom with the downlink from the relay satellite parked near the moon, which is repeating "downlink" audio from the crew, and provide their sum to the media as the air/ground channel.

The radio eavesdroppers listening to the downlink would only hear the Capcom, delayed by one lunar round trip time, when there is acoustic coupling between the earphones and microphones -- as happened frequently during the actual missions.

BTW, you would not hear the Quindar tones even under these conditions because they're notch filtered at the uplink transmitter; the world hears them direct from Houston, but the astronauts do not. Their original purpose was just to mute the uplink transmitter (which is on continuously for tracking) when the Capcom is not talking so the astronauts don't have to hear crosstalk on the communication circuits from Houston to the uplink site. Today you'd use digital circuits without any crosstalk, so you wouldn't have this problem.

Anyone pointing an antenna at the moon while Apollo was there and listening to the uplink frequency would likely hear it passively reflected off the moon. So in our hypothetical hoax situation you'd have to pay attention to this detail and have an uplink transmitter even though no spacecraft up there was actually receiving it.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Luke Pemberton on October 30, 2015, 04:05:44 AM
The more you know about Apollo communications, the more absurd the idea of a hoax relay satellite becomes.

I recall you explaining the absurdity of relay satellites when Phil Webb produced his critique of Jarrah's Exhibit D videos, outlining exactly the same problems that NASA would have setting up such a relay configuration. If I recall, Jarrah also suggested that they could transmit the contents of pre-recorded tapes from  relay satellites to fool the world. Again, another example in hoax world where NASA can create fantastical technology to pull off a hoax, when it would be simpler to actually send men to the Moon.  ???
Title: All too effortless
Post by: Mag40 on October 30, 2015, 05:24:39 AM
The more you know about Apollo communications, the more absurd the idea of a hoax relay satellite becomes.

Has anyone highlighted the really obvious bit about faking the whole Apollo communications?


That thousand hours of natural and perfect audio is really crazy to think it's faked. You'd think :o
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 30, 2015, 06:34:13 AM
Faking the voices, even the conversations about current sports scores and stock market figures, having realistic delays, etc, would be the easy part.

You have to somehow attach those voices to periodic TV broadcasts in which the speakers are obviously in zero or 1/6 gravity for prolonged periods of time.

You have to make the radio signals appear to come from the correct parts of the sky, with the correct Doppler shifts.

You have to actually transmit the uplink signals towards the moon, just in case somebody is listening for the echoes of those signals off the moon.

And you have to cover multiple frequency bands, just in case somebody like Larry Baysinger decides to intercept low power PLSS VHF transmissions instead of the S-band signals intended to travel all the way to earth. As he did, successfully, during Apollo 11.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Zakalwe on October 30, 2015, 06:55:07 AM
Faking the voices, even the conversations about current sports scores and stock market figures, having realistic delays, etc, would be the easy part.

You have to somehow attach those voices to periodic TV broadcasts in which the speakers are obviously in zero or 1/6 gravity for prolonged periods of time.

You have to make the radio signals appear to come from the correct parts of the sky, with the correct Doppler shifts.

You have to actually transmit the uplink signals towards the moon, just in case somebody is listening for the echoes of those signals off the moon.

And you have to cover multiple frequency bands, just in case somebody like Larry Baysinger decides to intercept low power PLSS VHF transmissions instead of the S-band signals intended to travel all the way to earth. As he did, successfully, during Apollo 11.

In other words, to fake it is probably as hard as actually going there.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Luke Pemberton on October 30, 2015, 11:59:50 AM
You have to actually transmit the uplink signals towards the moon, just in case somebody is listening for the echoes of those signals off the moon.

Never thought about that. Jarrah's 'they could have done this and done that' simply does not meet the scrutiny of a real communications engineer. I do like his communication theories [like used in the loosest sense of the word].
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 30, 2015, 07:17:27 PM
Jarrah's 'they could have done this and done that' simply does not meet the scrutiny of a real communications engineer.
But naturally I'm just a "NASA shill" so what I say can be ignored.

It's really remarkable how widely the word "shill" is bandied about in conspiracist circles. It might be due to "crank magnetism" (cranks subscribing to a wide range of otherwise unrelated conspiracy theories).

I think it illustrates their inability to differentiate between an opinion, where popularity is relevant, and an assertion of a testable fact, where popularity is (or ought to be) irrelevant.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Luke Pemberton on October 30, 2015, 07:48:19 PM
But naturally I'm just a "NASA shill" so what I say can be ignored.

Or an alleged engineer, a phrase he uses to describe Jay.

Question: I'm thinking about the rather iconic image of Bernard Lovell holding up the tracking data graph for the Apollo 11 LM, where the bump shows Neil's steely pilot skills as he pilots the LM past the boulder field.

Would there have been measurable Doppler shift from the signals received at Jodrell Bank, and if so, did the scientists measure the shift to confirm the landings as advertised?

I'm fairly sure that you have discussed this before, and pointed out that had the landings not happened as advertised it would have been fairly plain to see from the Doppler (it might have been in a private email when Phil Webb was putting together his Exhibit D critique). My memory is probably wrong on this matter.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on October 30, 2015, 08:39:28 PM
But naturally I'm just a "NASA shill" so what I say can be ignored.

Or an alleged engineer, a phrase he uses to describe Jay.
I recently took my master's diploma to my auto insurance company. They grant discounts to certain professionals, including electrical engineers. It seemed to convince them, so I guess I really am an electrical engineer.
Quote
Would there have been measurable Doppler shift from the signals received at Jodrell Bank, and is so, did the scientists measure the shift to confirm the landings as advertised?
Sure, and very easily.

Apollo communicated with earth with S-band radio signals with a wavelength of about 13 centimeters.  A 13-cm change in distance between transmitter and receiver (the range) therefore causes the phase of the received signal to rotate through a complete cycle of 360 degrees. A velocity along the same line (range-rate) of 13 cm/s will shift the signal by 1 Hz: down if the distance is increasing, up if it's decreasing.

13 cm is pretty short compared to the earth-moon distance, but your ability to detect this relies on having very stable oscillators in both the receiver and the transmitter. This is somewhat difficult to do in a spacecraft, especially one that has to withstand lots of acceleration and vibration, but it's now done fairly often especially on interplanetary probes (e.g., New Horizons).

There's a simpler way when tracking a probe close enough to earth that noise and propagation delay aren't serious problems: with a coherent transponder. To work around the need for an ultra-stable oscillator on the spacecraft, it locks onto the uplink signal from the ground, multiplies its frequency by a specific ratio, and sets its downlink transmitter to that frequency. For Apollo, and every other spacecraft using the same S-band range, this ratio is exactly 240/221. Now you can keep your ultra-stable oscillator on the ground, and even if it changes it will affect the uplink and downlink frequencies by almost the same amount. Note that now you'll see a full 360-degree rotation for each half-wavelength change in range.

This is obviously simplest when the same ground antenna is both the uplink and downlink; this is 2-way coherent tracking. During the Apollo 11 landing, this was done by the Goldstone site in California. Jodrell Bank was simply listening in, making it a 3-way path, so their observation of Apollo's downlink signal would have been affected by all these things:

Frequency errors or drift between the reference oscillators at Goldstone and at Jodrell Bank. (I don't know what they each had, but atomic clocks were already fairly common and I suspect both sites were equipped with them).

The relative motions of the two stations along the earth-moon line caused by the rotation of the earth and moon and the orbital motion of the moon around the earth.

The position and motion of Eagle relative to the lunar surface.

The effect of parallax between the two stations as they viewed Eagle.

Nowadays it wouldn't be hard for a 3rd party site like Jodrell Bank to correct for all these effects and determine Eagle's absolute velocity with respect to the lunar surface, but I suspect they weren't doing this at the time. That explains why they still saw a continuing change in frequency after Eagle landed but one that was abruptly different from what it was during Eagle's descent.


Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Count Zero on November 01, 2015, 12:19:22 AM
I don't know if anyone has posted it in this thread yet, but here is the link (http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/multimedia/images/apollo11-eagle.html) to the Jodrell Bank page about tracking the Apollo 11 signal.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: Tedward on November 01, 2015, 01:12:25 AM
Believe that came up on a TV program on the event in recent years. If memory of the program serves they were tracking the Russian probe that was going to try to upstage the landing (perhaps?) but Jodrell had another dish on 11.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: molesworth on November 01, 2015, 04:57:29 AM
Believe that came up on a TV program on the event in recent years. If memory of the program serves they were tracking the Russian probe that was going to try to upstage the landing (perhaps?) but Jodrell had another dish on 11.
This rang a bell with me, as I was sure I'd read a few things about it.  A quick google turned up a post on some old board about Apollo ;-) http://apollohoax.proboards.com/thread/1988 (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/thread/1988). (I'm not sure if the messages have been copied here, or how to search for them.)

It covers the tracking, and contains a quote from Ian Morison :

Quote
We only needed a 50ft antenna to get a good signal from both the Command Module and the lander (the Eagle).

So maybe a little bigger than the average amateur antenna, but it certainly shows that lots of people all over the world would have had the capability to track the missions.

You can also find the graph of the frequency tracking for the Apollo 11 landing here : http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/multimedia/images/apollo11-eagle.html (http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/multimedia/images/apollo11-eagle.html)

Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on November 02, 2015, 04:34:30 AM
Yes, that's the one I remember. Note the straight but sloping line after the landing. That's not due to the "relative velocity between the telescope and that point on the lunar surface" but to the acceleration along the range vector. A constant range-rate (first time derivative of range) would produce a fixed frequency offset, ie a horizontal line.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean either end is actually, physically accelerating. It just means that the velocity projected onto the range vector is changing in magnitude as the angle between them changes. You see (or hear) the same thing when a car drives by at constant speed.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: ka9q on November 02, 2015, 08:58:18 AM
So maybe a little bigger than the average amateur antenna, but it certainly shows that lots of people all over the world would have had the capability to track the missions.
I don't know about "lots", but with an event as big as Apollo 11, enough would that NASA could never get away with a hoax.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: apollo16uvc on September 22, 2018, 03:33:57 AM
The http://legacy.jefferson.kctcs.edu/observatory/apollo11/ link seems to be dead, does anybody have an archive of it and the audio recordings?

maybe try to contact jefferson ducation.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: raven on September 22, 2018, 01:19:18 PM
The http://legacy.jefferson.kctcs.edu/observatory/apollo11/ link seems to be dead, does anybody have an archive of it and the audio recordings?

maybe try to contact jefferson ducation.
Archive.org's Wayback Machine has it archived, thankfully.
Title: Re: A hoax theory...
Post by: bknight on October 20, 2018, 06:10:40 PM
Necro thread, I was searching for Larry Bassinger's ham set up monitoring Apollo 11 and this site came up.


https://www.thespacerace.com/forum/index.php?topic=2777.0

LO you do get around.

Ok thread back into the grave.