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Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: jr Knowing on March 29, 2019, 10:17:53 AM

Title: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on March 29, 2019, 10:17:53 AM
Hi Everyone, I am back. No I did not "stealth flounce" as some suggest, just had a very busy travelling schedule.

I have a question that has bothered me for a long time. In all the Apollo visual documentation, whether it be the DAC footage, TV footage or the thousands of photos, the moon is shown to have a layer of regolith ie moon dust. Yet when you examine the 5000 or so photos taken on the moon, most rocks, if not virtually all, do not have a layer of regolith. It doesn't matter if it is a two inch rock or 40 foot boulder, there is no layer of regolith. In fact, most rocks are pristine. How can this be? One can't even argue the rocks came later. The bases of these rocks are covered with regolith and there is no displacement around the rock if it "fell" on the regolith. And besides the moon continues to get hit by thousands of meteors and micrometeorites which create more dust all the time.

Regolith is supposedly electrostatic and sticks to everything. Yet most rocks and boulders seen in the photos are clean and pristine. Even if the regolith wasn't electrostatic, the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything. But that is not the case with these Apollo photos. To me, it leads me to believe these photos have been staged and the absence of regolith on rocks was probably done for esthetics.  Is there any reasonable scientific explanation why, for instance, a 30 foot flat boulder would not have a layer of regolith on it like the layer of regolith that surrounds it? Thanks
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on March 29, 2019, 12:05:53 PM
A couple of observations:
Have you looked at all +/- 9000 images taken while on the Lunar surface?  I know I haven't.
Regolith deposition is in geological time lines and the recent rock may not have been exposed to deposition.  I'll leave a better explanation to the geologist here on the board.
The first missions didn't cover much area and perhaps the low sample rate may be too low to make a definitive observation.
Now for some credible evidence for some deposition.  https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/AS16-116-18613HR.jpg
Look at the whitish rock just right of center and magnify the image, you will see some covering on it.  It does appear that the rock sticks up above the surrounding area.  But that took about 15 minutes of searching just the A16 library.  So it appears that your initial observation is not well founded.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on March 29, 2019, 12:16:04 PM
Hi bknight,

Actually I believe approximately 5500 photos were taken on the surface of the moon. (The other photos were taken off the moon). And yes I have looked at them many times.

As far as your example goes. I am not quite sure what you are talking about. None of the rocks have a 1 inch layer of regolith. Take a look closely to the center of the picture (right near the stain on the lens). There are larger rocks with flat top surfaces. There is no layer of regolith.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on March 29, 2019, 12:42:17 PM
the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything.

Why? Where does regolith come from? Or to put it another way, validate your comparison of regolith to snowfall.

Quote
To me, it leads me to believe these photos have been staged and the absence of regolith on rocks was probably done for esthetics.

If, as you suggest, it was faked, why would it be faked for 'aesthetics' rather than to look how you think it should look? Is the more likely explanation not that your expectation of how it should look is at fault?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on March 29, 2019, 12:43:56 PM
Hi Everyone, I am back. No I did not "stealth flounce" as some suggest, just had a very busy travelling schedule.

Good, then maybe you can get back to answering the questions put to you about LM stability and plume deflectors back on your earlier thread. I am still awaiting your mathematical demonstration of LM instability using the memo you provided as evidence for your argument.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on March 29, 2019, 01:32:01 PM
None of the Soviet or Chinese surface images show large accumulations of dust on the surface rocks either. Perhaps your assumptions about where that dust comes from are incorrect.

You're also making a huge generalisation as to how much regolith there is. There are many areas where it is quite deep, others where there is relatively little. Are you absolutely sure you could pick up a moon rock and not get dirt on your gloves? Are you absolutely sure that there isn't an accumulation of dust on this rock, for example:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/21654854445/in/album-72157659009912045/


You also need to take into account the origin of the rocks that were photographed. Some are large formations of bedrock, others are large rocks that have moved from one place to another (for example 'Tracy's Rock'). Why would a boulder that has moved or been deposited as a result of a crater forming impact continue to have dust on it?

Your premise is based on an oversimplistic assumption about the lunar surface and the processes acting on it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on March 29, 2019, 02:50:41 PM
Hi bknight,

Actually I believe approximately 5500 photos were taken on the surface of the moon. (The other photos were taken off the moon). And yes I have looked at them many times.

As far as your example goes. I am not quite sure what you are talking about. None of the rocks have a 1 inch layer of regolith. Take a look closely to the center of the picture (right near the stain on the lens). There are larger rocks with flat top surfaces. There is no layer of regolith.

We(you included) are unable to measure the amount of regolith from a two-dimensional image.  If you can't see the regolith sloping up onto the rock I described then I have nothing but pity on your eyesight.  And no I wouldn't be able to tell anyone how much is there, I'll just tell you it is there on the side of the rock.
Yes there are a couple of "flat" top rock, but the picture is neither close enough or sharp enough to observe there is no regolith on top.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 29, 2019, 05:07:43 PM
the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything.

Lunar regolith does not form like a deposit of snow.  No wonder the images look wrong to you because your expectations are incorrect.

Lunar regolith is mostly formed by multiple impacts, churned over and over.  Some rocks will always be sticking out of the top.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on March 29, 2019, 05:41:18 PM
the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything.

Lunar regolith does not form like a deposit of snow.  No wonder the images look wrong to you because your expectations are incorrect.

Lunar regolith is mostly formed by multiple impacts, churned over and over.  Some rocks will always be sticking out of the top.

And the corollary of that is that a lot of lunar bedrock is not sticking out of the top. By definition photographs of the lunar surface are showing regolith sitting on top of rocks.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Abaddon on March 29, 2019, 06:38:00 PM
Hi Everyone, I am back. No I did not "stealth flounce" as some suggest, just had a very busy travelling schedule.

I have a question that has bothered me for a long time. In all the Apollo visual documentation, whether it be the DAC footage, TV footage or the thousands of photos, the moon is shown to have a layer of regolith ie moon dust. Yet when you examine the 5000 or so photos taken on the moon, most rocks, if not virtually all, do not have a layer of regolith. It doesn't matter if it is a two inch rock or 40 foot boulder, there is no layer of regolith. In fact, most rocks are pristine. How can this be? One can't even argue the rocks came later. The bases of these rocks are covered with regolith and there is no displacement around the rock if it "fell" on the regolith. And besides the moon continues to get hit by thousands of meteors and micrometeorites which create more dust all the time.

Regolith is supposedly electrostatic and sticks to everything. Yet most rocks and boulders seen in the photos are clean and pristine. Even if the regolith wasn't electrostatic, the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything. But that is not the case with these Apollo photos. To me, it leads me to believe these photos have been staged and the absence of regolith on rocks was probably done for esthetics.  Is there any reasonable scientific explanation why, for instance, a 30 foot flat boulder would not have a layer of regolith on it like the layer of regolith that surrounds it? Thanks
Hahaha. You think the moon never changes and thus should have an accumulated blanket of dust. Too funny.

What do you think happens on the lunar surface when an impact occurs? What happens to any dust at the impact site? What gets exposed by the impact?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 29, 2019, 08:38:52 PM
the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything.

Lunar regolith does not form like a deposit of snow.  No wonder the images look wrong to you because your expectations are incorrect.

Lunar regolith is mostly formed by multiple impacts, churned over and over.  Some rocks will always be sticking out of the top.

And the corollary of that is that a lot of lunar bedrock is not sticking out of the top. By definition photographs of the lunar surface are showing regolith sitting on top of rocks.

Indeed, all the rocks sampled are of regolith. Lunar regolith contains rock fragments from the size of houses down to silt sized grains. The only bedrock images during Apollo was some in situ material on the far side of Hadley Rill.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Abaddon on March 30, 2019, 04:04:44 AM
the moonscape should look like a regolith snowfall blanketing everything.

Lunar regolith does not form like a deposit of snow.  No wonder the images look wrong to you because your expectations are incorrect.

Lunar regolith is mostly formed by multiple impacts, churned over and over.  Some rocks will always be sticking out of the top.

And the corollary of that is that a lot of lunar bedrock is not sticking out of the top. By definition photographs of the lunar surface are showing regolith sitting on top of rocks.

Indeed, all the rocks sampled are of regolith. Lunar regolith contains rock fragments from the size of houses down to silt sized grains. The only bedrock images during Apollo was some in situ material on the far side of Hadley Rill.
House Rock from A16 springs to mind.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on March 30, 2019, 04:36:14 AM
Also worth pointing out that the area in the vicinity of the landing zone has been scoured by a lunar module engine - you know, the one that should have created an enormous blast crater...
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on March 30, 2019, 12:53:30 PM
Hi Abaddon et al., I think you guys are missing the point. Virtually all the Apollo surface photos show the rocks or boulders with no build up of any Regolith layer. You would think, depending on circumstances, rocks would show various depths of Regolith layers. But the photos don’t show that. And contrary to one poster’s comments, the fine micro-particle layer of Regolith build up on the top surface of the moon is from dust particles that are dispersed during meteor and micrometeor impacts. (Atleast that is how the theory goes)

And with all due respect, Abaddon comments that impacts will create these “clean” rocks is somewhat nonsensical. If the impact removes the Regolith off a rock 2 inches above the ground why doesn’t it remove the fine layer of Regolith at the base of the rock 2 inches below? Even if the rock lands there because of a meteor impact, there would be a dispersement of Regolith around the rock. Yet what we see in all these photos are Regolith free rocks and boulders but the bases of these rocks and boulders are buried in a Regolith layer. How can this be? Thanks.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on March 30, 2019, 02:00:32 PM
Instead of going on about how something doesn't look right and therefore you believe the photos were staged, how about you take the time and give us a plausible explanation of how the house rock video that clearly shows the astronauts in a vacuum and 1/6th G moving towards a rock that is much larger then they expected could have been filmed on Earth.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: raven on March 30, 2019, 02:09:13 PM
"You would think." Why would we think this? The US had landed unmanned landers on the moon before Apollo, returning, for the time, decent quality imagery, so they would have good idea what the lunar surface was like.
So, let's imagine they had to build a set for a faked moon landing. What's stopping them from using said imagery, as well as those from released USSR photos from their own lander program, as the basis for their fakery? So even if Apollo was faked, and what you say about regolith was true, the Apollo images would cleave to the appearance what you say. The fact they don't means either a) the film-makers and/or their handlers were phenomenally stupid in building sets that didn't reflect known reality while trying to simulate it, or b) maybe, just maybe, you are wrong
I am not an astrogeologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I sure as heck know which has fewer assumptions attached.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on March 30, 2019, 03:04:17 PM
We got your point the first-time. Your inability to take on board why your assumptions might be misguided is the problem you need to address.

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: 12oh2alarm on March 30, 2019, 04:59:49 PM
Yet most rocks and boulders seen in the photos are clean and pristine.

ITYM "...appear to my untrained eye clean and pristine."

Did you get a chance to dust off any however thin layer of regolith on a rock with a fine brush?

Are you aware that even micrometeorite impacts are violent events? I'm just a garden variety physicist, but can tell you with confidence that most of that micrometeorite will become a fluid and expand due to the heat produced in the collision. If I sprinkle a large flat area with a lot of tiny explosions, I would expect a somewhat even distribution of regolith. Tiny explosion on the top of a rock will cause the regolith to settle at the base of the rock, on average. So I wouldn't be at all surprised to find only the tiniest of dust layers on rocks. (The house rock being different. It all depends on impact energy how far the tiny explosions distribute the impact debris).
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: smartcooky on March 30, 2019, 10:06:55 PM
Angle of repose may have something to do with this.

https://www.carthage.edu/space-sciences/microgravity/repose-angle/
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on March 30, 2019, 10:17:28 PM
No I did not "stealth flounce" as some suggest, just had a very busy travelling schedule.

Prove it by going back and addressing all the valid criticism in your last thread.  Put up or shut up.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 30, 2019, 11:26:22 PM
Hi Abaddon et al., I think you guys are missing the point. Virtually all the Apollo surface photos show the rocks or boulders with no build up of any Regolith layer. You would think, depending on circumstances, rocks would show various depths of Regolith layers. But the photos don’t show that. And contrary to one poster’s comments, the fine micro-particle layer of Regolith build up on the top surface of the moon is from dust particles that are dispersed during meteor and micrometeor impacts. (Atleast that is how the theory goes)

Actually no, that is not how the theory goes.

Quote
If the impact removes the Regolith off a rock 2 inches above the ground why doesn’t it remove the fine layer of Regolith at the base of the rock 2 inches below? Even if the rock lands there because of a meteor impact, there would be a dispersement of Regolith around the rock. Yet what we see in all these photos are Regolith free rocks and boulders but the bases of these rocks and boulders are buried in a Regolith layer. How can this be? Thanks.

Again, that is not how lunar regolith is formed.

When the real world does not confirm to your preconceptions, it is time you changed them to match the reality.

Your basic assumption appears that lunar regolith forms by gentle settling from the sky, like snowfall in your words. It does not.  It forms much more episodically and violently than that.

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on March 31, 2019, 03:57:31 AM
And contrary to one poster’s comments, the fine micro-particle layer of Regolith build up on the top surface of the moon is from dust particles that are dispersed during meteor and micrometeor impacts. (Atleast that is how the theory goes)

Yes, but that's nothing like snowfall. With no atmosphere to impede their progress those microfine particles hit at several thousand miles per hour. That's not going to 'settle' on the top of a rock. It's like being sandblasted, not covered in snow.
 
Quote
And with all due respect, Abaddon comments that impacts will create these “clean” rocks is somewhat nonsensical. If the impact removes the Regolith off a rock 2 inches above the ground why doesn’t it remove the fine layer of Regolith at the base of the rock 2 inches below?

Who says it's a fine layer of regolith? That's been building up for billions of years. In most places it's metres thick.

Quote
Even if the rock lands there because of a meteor impact, there would be a dispersement of Regolith around the rock.

Which is then evened out by further millions of years of regolith buildup.

Quote
Yet what we see in all these photos are Regolith free rocks and boulders but the bases of these rocks and boulders are buried in a Regolith layer. How can this be?

If you want to know how it can be, fine, but again are you willing to consider that your expectations being wrong is the more likely explanation than NASA faking a whole bunch of images to 'look good' but be unrealistic if they are trying to convince everyone they are real?

Regolith is not like snow. It's like a sandblaster. A very slow one operating over geological timescales. If you expect it to be like snow then you are barking up entirely the wrong tree. Let that go and you might get somewhere.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on March 31, 2019, 05:52:27 AM
Yes, but that's nothing like snowfall. With no atmosphere to impede their progress those microfine particles hit at several thousand miles per hour. That's not going to 'settle' on the top of a rock. It's like being sandblasted, not covered in snow.

That would seem to be the crux of the biscuit here - a failure to stop thinking in terms of how dust and other small particles behave in the terrestrial environment where they settle gradually thanks to the atmosphere.

It would be more remarkable if every rock did have a thick layer of regolith on top of it. Angle of incidence and all that.

Our protagonist also says "virtually every rock" and "most rocks", which suggests that he has seen some photographs were there is a layer of regolith on rocks that meet his arbitrary criteria of acceptability. Why is he happy with those and not the others? Which photographs are they?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: BertieSlack on March 31, 2019, 06:40:25 AM
Tracy's Rock, Geology Station 6, Apollo 17:

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-140-21496HR.jpg

Labelled detail: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17-21496lbl.jpg
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: gillianren on March 31, 2019, 10:38:20 AM
Seriously, why isn't "my expectations are wrong" a more likely answer than "an enormously complicated hoax requiring thousands of people and technology still not achievable was perpetrated"?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on March 31, 2019, 10:59:48 AM
Out of curiosity for those more knowledgeable than myself:  Could moonquakes play a significant role in dislodging regolith from boulders as well?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on March 31, 2019, 11:19:08 AM
Seriously, why isn't "my expectations are wrong" a more likely answer than "an enormously complicated hoax requiring thousands of people and technology still not achievable was perpetrated"?

Especially since that was explicitly what was wrong with his claims in his previous thread.  From which he obvious learned nothing.  He'd apparently rather just make the same mistake again.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on March 31, 2019, 12:20:29 PM
Thanks Smartcooky and your Angle of Repose study. Atleast someone here has attempted to use some science to explain things. Having said that, angle of repose issues really are not applicable to this topic. Perhaps on a very, very tiny rock this may come into play where a critical angle of repose may cause a collapse of regolith flushing all the material off the rock. But even then, we should still see rocks in all different states of regolith build up and that is not the case. And with larger rocks with flat tops, angle of repose issues can't explain (even ignoring electrostatics)  why there is no regolith build up.

With regards to regolith being like a snowfall, it is like a snowfall in that the dust particles are being disbursed evenly over the ground. All you have to do is watch one of the many films of the astronauts kicking up dust. The dust falling doesn't discriminate with the rocks and only settle around the rocks. Clearly that should be obvious to everyone. Micrometeorites hit the moon anywhere between 50000 to well over a million times a year depending on who you believe. When they hit, they hit at anywhere between 25000-100000 mph. (I sure would not want to be an astronaut getting hit :)  ) The dust clouds from meteorites (and for that matter meteors) can be enormous as documented by NASA. Are we to believe none of this regolith piles up on the top of rocks yet the bases of these rocks are buried in regolith?

 
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on March 31, 2019, 01:22:35 PM
But even then, we should still see rocks in all different states of regolith build up

Why? Once again, justify your expectations.

Quote
With regards to regolith being like a snowfall, it is like a snowfall in that the dust particles are being disbursed evenly over the ground. All you have to do is watch one of the many films of the astronauts kicking up dust.

An astronaut kicking up dust is nothing like the kind of impact events that cause the regolith to form and spread across the surface.

Quote
The dust clouds from meteorites (and for that matter meteors) can be enormous as documented by NASA. Are we to believe none of this regolith piles up on the top of rocks yet the bases of these rocks are buried in regolith?

Yes, because you still don't understand exactly how that buildup is happening. The 'dust clouds' are not like dust clouds here on earth where the fine material disperses and slowly falls to the ground. Every particle of regolith is moving at hundreds or thousands of miles per hour. The majority of that will hit a rock and either bounce off or else create another impact and blast more regolith off. Ultimately it will be far more likely to come to rest on the loose particulate exisiting regolith than a rock that sticks up from it.

But again, answer the question: why are your expectations being at fault not the mosre likely explanation? And when do you plan to get back to your original thread and answer the questions about LM instability still outstanding?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Abaddon on March 31, 2019, 04:24:02 PM
Hi Abaddon et al., I think you guys are missing the point. Virtually all the Apollo surface photos show the rocks or boulders with no build up of any Regolith layer. You would think, depending on circumstances, rocks would show various depths of Regolith layers. But the photos don’t show that. And contrary to one poster’s comments, the fine micro-particle layer of Regolith build up on the top surface of the moon is from dust particles that are dispersed during meteor and micrometeor impacts. (Atleast that is how the theory goes)

And with all due respect, Abaddon comments that impacts will create these “clean” rocks is somewhat nonsensical. If the impact removes the Regolith off a rock 2 inches above the ground why doesn’t it remove the fine layer of Regolith at the base of the rock 2 inches below? Even if the rock lands there because of a meteor impact, there would be a dispersement of Regolith around the rock. Yet what we see in all these photos are Regolith free rocks and boulders but the bases of these rocks and boulders are buried in a Regolith layer. How can this be? Thanks.
Because it is a result of a violent incident. Somehow you stupidly think that a rock ejected in an impact should magically carry with it any acquired film of dust, as if by magic, undisturbed. And you are unable to see how utterly idiotic that idea is.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 31, 2019, 05:53:49 PM
Seriously, why isn't "my expectations are wrong" a more likely answer than "an enormously complicated hoax requiring thousands of people and technology still not achievable was perpetrated"?

And, in this case, as all images of the lunar surface from all missions have consistent regolith architecture, a hoax that involves images collected by space agencies from three countries, two of which were hostile to each other for much of the time, over the past 55 years.  In addition to the six Apollo missions, 18 robotic missions, four of which are still active, and with a nineteenth soon to land.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on March 31, 2019, 06:01:42 PM
Atleast someone here has attempted to use some science to explain things.

No, you don't have the high moral ground here.  In your last thread you were given vast amounts of correct science that disputed your theories, as well as detailed explanations from your own documentation about how you were wrong.  Instead of admitting you were wrong -- or at least that you didn't know what you were talking about -- you continued to foist your own ignorant opinion.  When you were finally cornered, you ran away.  No, you were not "busy with work."  You came back to the forum several times after your last post, ostensibly to read the progress of the thread.  I say you were instead confronted with facts that you couldn't address, so you ran away.  You can prove that conclusion wrong at any time by taking up the subjects you left behind when you were allegedly too busy to deal with them.  Clearly you're not longer busy.

Here's the thing:  your critics will feel it less a waste of their time if you demonstrate that you are amenable to fact.  If you're just going to keep jerking people around like you did before, you don't get to assign moral values to the responses you get.

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Having said that, angle of repose issues really are not applicable to this topic.

And you say this from your vast experience in particulate mechanics?  You have already proven yourself willing simply to make up whatever "facts" you need in order for your beliefs to hold, regardless of whatever real science brings to the table.  What makes this dismissal any more credible than your other denials?

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Clearly that should be obvious to everyone.

No, you're just once again demanding that your ignorance be equivalent to fact.  Begging the question will not convince your critics here.

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Are we to believe none of this regolith piles up on the top of rocks yet the bases of these rocks are buried in regolith?

Yes.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 31, 2019, 06:06:12 PM
Out of curiosity for those more knowledgeable than myself:  Could moonquakes play a significant role in dislodging regolith from boulders as well?

A small role possibly.  We know that sometimes entire boulders are dislodged by moonquakes (often impact induced) and roll down slopes, leaving funky trails.

http://lunarnetworks.blogspot.com/2012/07/lroc-weaving-boulder-trails-on-moon.html

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/uploads/LROCiotw/M1225970LE_thumb.png
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 31, 2019, 06:26:56 PM
With regards to regolith being like a snowfall, it is like a snowfall in that the dust particles are being disbursed evenly over the ground. All you have to do is watch one of the many films of the astronauts kicking up dust. The dust falling doesn't discriminate with the rocks and only settle around the rocks. Clearly that should be obvious to everyone. Micrometeorites hit the moon anywhere between 50000 to well over a million times a year depending on who you believe. When they hit, they hit at anywhere between 25000-100000 mph. (I sure would not want to be an astronaut getting hit :)  ) The dust clouds from meteorites (and for that matter meteors) can be enormous as documented by NASA. Are we to believe none of this regolith piles up on the top of rocks yet the bases of these rocks are buried in regolith?

By using the example of material kicked by astronauts as an argument you are acknowledging that they were actually there to kick it up.  In which case you are trolling.

But it is a false analogy, everything, from cosmic dust to asteroids and comet nuclei 10s of km across, strikes the surface at high velocity, the minimum being 2.38 km/s.  Some of the cometary material at up to 40 km/s.  This creates more debris, most of it also moving at significant velocities from 10s of m/s to several km/s.

Some here have used a sandblaster analogy, I prefer the use machine gun fire. Except that most of the particles are moving at least three times faster than any bullet.

There will be no dust clouds such as those would see after such an impact here.

This will be my last comment to you for two reasons: 1- until you actually accept your idea of this process is wrong we can't discuss the fascinating topic of lunar regolith, and 2 - you have some outstanding questions from other people you need to answer first.
 
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on March 31, 2019, 08:02:39 PM
Hi Dalhousie et al,

I  am utterly confused about your statements regarding the formation of Regolith. Meteors etc impacting the moon creates dust particles that are thrown up into space. Much of it then settles back on the moon. But some it remains in a permanent cloud above the moon's surface. Further, recent studies have shown a recent meteor impact on the moon created two dust clouds in the exosphere.

Two new dust clouds
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-formation-lunar-clouds.html

Permanent Dust Cloud around the Moon
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14479
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 31, 2019, 08:12:18 PM
Hi Dalhousie et al,

I  am utterly confused about your statements regarding the formation of Regolith. Meteors etc impacting the moon creates dust particles that are thrown up into space. Much of it then settles back on the moon. But some it remains in a permanent cloud above the moon's surface. Further, recent studies have shown a recent meteor impact on the moon created two dust clouds in the exosphere.

Two new dust clouds
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-formation-lunar-clouds.html

Permanent Dust Cloud around the Moon
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14479

These are not clouds in the sense of clouds of dust on Earth.  They are particles that have been ejected from the lunar surface by impact at velocities high enough to achieve orbit. This requires a velocity of at least 1.87 km/s but less than lunar escape velocity of 2.38 km.  Much of this material will end up back on the Moon but when it does it will not be a gentle snowfall. They will be moving at between 1.87 and 2.38 km/2. That's roughly two to three times the speed of a bullet.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on March 31, 2019, 08:25:46 PM
Much of it then settles back on the moon.

No, it doesn't "settle."  It rains back down at very high velocity, the same velocity in reverse that the particles left at, ejected by the tremendous energy of impact.  If, at the moment of impact, it leaves the surface upward at 100 meters per second, it hits the ground at 100 meters per second at the end of its ballistic arc.  This is basic physics.  Basic physics.  There's no exotic astrophysics that we have to refer to.

Some of the particles leave with such velocity that they achieve a stable orbit.  As Dalhousie has explained, this is a constellation of orbiting particles, not an aerosol cloud such as we see on Earth.  You seem unable to reckon the behavior of high-energy particles in the absence of an atmosphere.  This is the part where you should be saying, "Gee, I guess I don't understand this as well as I thought."
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on March 31, 2019, 10:15:43 PM
  This is the part where you should be saying, "Gee, I guess I don't understand this as well as I thought."

And there is nothing wrong with that - we all have things we think we know better than we actually do.  Once we admit that is the case, usually in the face of contrary evidence, then it is a great opportunity to learn.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on March 31, 2019, 10:46:54 PM
And there is nothing wrong with that - we all have things we think we know better than we actually do.  Once we admit that is the case, usually in the face of contrary evidence, then it is a great opportunity to learn.

And in my case, someone gets a T-shirt.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: raven on March 31, 2019, 11:27:40 PM
Some of the particles leave with such velocity that they achieve a stable orbit.  As Dalhousie has explained, this is a constellation of orbiting particles, not an aerosol cloud such as we see on Earth.  You seem unable to reckon the behavior of high-energy particles in the absence of an atmosphere.  This is the part where you should be saying, "Gee, I guess I don't understand this as well as I thought."
I would say it's more akin to the paint flecks and other ultra-small space junk in orbit than jr Knowing's settling clouds. There is so much discussed on this site, especially space related, I don't understand, and, as much as I would like to understand, but, unlike jr Knowing, I have no problem admitting when I simply don't know.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Allan F on April 01, 2019, 01:15:43 AM
This is "Why is there no dust on the footpads of the LM" all over again. Same mechamism is responsible. NO AIR ON THE MOON.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 01, 2019, 01:26:10 AM
I  am utterly confused about your statements regarding the formation of Regolith.

Fine, but unless you acknowledge the confusion is your problem and not an indication that anything suspect is going on there is very little we can do here.

Quote
Meteors etc impacting the moon creates dust particles that are thrown up into space. Much of it then settles back on the moon.

No, it does not 'settle' it falls back at the same speed it left.

Quote
But some it remains in a permanent cloud above the moon's surface.

And if it remains in a permanent cloud then it is not settling, so is not contributing to the regolith on the surface. If it's not falling to the surface then it is either being electrostatically repelled or else moving fast enough to stay in orbit of the Moon.

Quote
Further, recent studies have shown a recent meteor impact on the moon created two dust clouds in the exosphere.

Not in dispute but not relevant to regolith on the surface either. Even if a dust 'cloud' is created this is not like any dust cloud on earth and when it does fall back to the surface it is still not a light settling that happens but a rapid impact.

Quote
Permanent Dust Cloud around the Moon
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14479

Did you buy that article or are you actually attempting to use nothing more than the abstract to bolster your arguments?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 01, 2019, 03:02:36 AM
The dust clouds from meteorites (and for that matter meteors)

You have no understanding of the words that you are using.  Dust in a low-G vacuum does not form "clouds" that "settle".
Meteors do not impact the ground and as such how would they have anything to do with the regolith?

The two articles that you quoted in another post refer to plasma clouds......why would you think that plasma has anything to do with the topic? I guess that is what happens when you have zero knowledge and have to rely on Googling "regolith and clouds".
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: smartcooky on April 01, 2019, 05:09:05 AM
Thanks Smartcooky and your Angle of Repose study. At least someone here has attempted to use some science to explain things.

No, EVERYONE here is using science to try to explain to you why you are wrong. You are refusing to listen, and substituting their science with your own flawed intuition about what might be happening.

Consider this:

On the Earth:
If you take a snowflake (lets assume its cold enough not to melt) and release it from 10 kilometres above the ground, it will begin to accelerate downwards and will reach a terminal velocity of between 1 and 7 kilometres per hour, (between 0.27 and 2m/s). The terminal velocity is due to air resistance


On the Moon:
If you take a snowflake and release it from 10 kilometres above the ground, it will begin to accelerate downwards and will keep accelerating downwards. There is no air on the moon, therefore no terminal velocity as such - the snowflake will continue to accelerate until it smashes into the surface at over 7,000 km/h (about 2000 m/s) - [someone please check my math]

This is why your description of regolith as being "like snowfall" is totally false.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Kiwi on April 01, 2019, 07:54:47 AM
Tracy's Rock, Geology Station 6, Apollo 17:

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-140-21496HR.jpg

Hey, jr Knowing, do you know what that faintly-orange little blob is, away in the distance to the right of the top of the rock?

It had a name: Challenger. Apollo 11's equivalent was Eagle.

What do you have to say about the regolith on Tracy's Rock which Gene Cernan disturbed with his gloved hands?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 10:06:47 AM
The two articles that you quoted in another post refer to plasma clouds...

It looks to me like the articles refer to actual dust, and are using the word "plasma" in its more general sense of a fluid affected by electromagnetic (and here, possibly gravitational) effects more than by Newtonian or Eulerian fluid dynamics.  The gist here, of course, is that these are not particulates entrained or suspended in a separate fluid.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 10:09:17 AM
What do you have to say about the regolith on Tracy's Rock which Gene Cernan disturbed with his gloved hands?

I believe this was raised early in the thread -- at least the notion that one cannot look at a photo of the lunar surface and determined from that alone whether there is any substantial amount of regolith on it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: gillianren on April 01, 2019, 10:18:56 AM
No, EVERYONE here is using science to try to explain to you why you are wrong.

To be strictly fair, I'm not.  I'm just asking why "I'm wrong" isn't the more likely explanation.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 01, 2019, 11:09:10 AM
Thanks Smartcooky and your Angle of Repose study. Atleast someone here has attempted to use some science to explain things.
 


Well, in regards to me asking you to come up with plausible explanations for the Apollo 16 House Rock video, there's the science of kinematics and how experts in that field can examine the live TV broadcast footage to validate the fact that those astronauts and lunar rovers interaction with the regolith is in a vacuum and a 1/6th G environment. Plus there's the science of telecommunications and the experts in that field will tell you that it would have been impossible to fake hours of live TV broadcasts that clearly shows them in a vacuum and 1/6th G plus video footage of what is obviously taken from some much higher elevations during the 3 J-missions. If you take the time to verify this info and find you can't come up with plausible explanations on how to fake it all, then maybe you won't waste anymore time with your pet little theories that have you convinced the missions were hoaxed.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 01, 2019, 11:34:28 AM
Hi Guys, What you guys are saying is correct but mainly not relevant. (I also question posters suggesting that the speed an object goes up is the same speed it comes back down at. I believe (and I could be wrong :) ) if you shoot something straight up off the moon (less than escape velocity) it will eventually fall back to the moon surface at the rate of gravity which may or may not be as fast as its original speed (especially since there is no terminal gravity velocity on the moon).

As far as the relevance goes, I am not quite sure why no one seems to suggest there will not be a localized debris/dust field from an impact. Posters seem to suggest that any dispersion of an impact results in either no localized debris field or the debris is carried back into to space to once more rain back on the moon. What some posters are suggesting is almost like a never ending loop of impacts. The moon gets hit, debris is shot back into space, eventually falling back to the moon creating an impact which would then send more debris into space which would then fall back to earth causing an impact to repeat the process etc... If that was the case, the moon would be raining micrometeorites continuously. But that doesn't seem to be the case, otherwise the LM would have been swiss cheese.

The issue I am trying to address here is why there is a layer of regolith on the surface but not on top of a five inch rock (for instance) in which its base is completely buried in regolith. Suggesting that moon impacts are akin to "sandblasting" or "machinegun fire" does not solve for this. (in fact, the idea of "sandblasting" sort of proves my concern not dismiss it). Perhaps there is a reasoned answer, but because moon impacts can be very violent doesn't necessarily account on how the regolith is disbursed in such a way that it will bury the base of a rock but leave the top of the rock regolith free. Thanks.   

 

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 01, 2019, 11:41:58 AM
<snip>
(and I could be wrong :)
<snip>

This is the heart of where you err in both of your threads.
Let's see "if it doesn't look right" it must be faked, if I don't understand, it must be faked"
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 11:50:20 AM
To be strictly fair, I'm not.  I'm just asking why "I'm wrong" isn't the more likely explanation.

Strictly speaking in the terms of applying specialized domain knowledge, no you aren't "using science."  But the principle of parsimony you allude to is perhaps more important to scientists.  Deference to longstanding, well-established tenets is a pillar of scientific reasoning.  If a scientist obtains a result that seems to challenge a bedrock principle (no pun intended), then the most likely explanation has always been, "I'm probably wrong."  Exercises like peer review help practitioners discover in what precise ways they might be wrong.  Of course this doesn't mean that new findings can never overturn long-established precedent.  It means simply that parsimony holds throughout the entire process.  A single contrary finding isn't parsimonious.  Multiple consilient contrary findings might eventually become the parsimonious answer that revises known findings.

Here we have a collection of thousands of high-definition photographs that have been accepted by generations of well-trained, highly-motivated professionals as accurate and authentic depictions of the lunar surface.  They have been corroborated by photographs from other landers operated by interests that have nothing to do with the typical reasons by which conspiracy theories are entertained.  It has been challenged by a claim that rests on a poor theoretical foundation.  The notion that parsimony suggests the challenger is almost certainly in error is eminently scientific, whether proffered by a scientist or a layman.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 11:54:55 AM
I also question posters suggesting that the speed an object goes up is the same speed it comes back down at.

That's basic Newtonian ballistics.  We teach this to students generally at the seventh to ninth grade level.

Quote
...and I could be wrong.

You are certainly wrong.

Quote
What some posters are suggesting is almost like a never ending loop of impacts.

No one is suggesting that.  That's a consequent you are formulating based on your ignorance of elementary physics.

Quote
The issue I am trying to address here is why there is a layer of regolith on the surface but not on top of a five inch rock (for instance) in which its base is completely buried in regolith. Suggesting that moon impacts are akin to "sandblasting" or "machinegun fire" does not solve for this.

Yes it does, but you are simply dismissing the explanations as "irrelevant."  You do not have a good track record at knowing what scientific principles are relevant to your claims and which are not.

Quote
Perhaps there is a reasoned answer...

Start by trying to figure out how your "endless impacts" theory is wrong.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: benparry on April 01, 2019, 11:57:46 AM
Hi Guys, What you guys are saying is correct but mainly not relevant. (I also question posters suggesting that the speed an object goes up is the same speed it comes back down at. I believe (and I could be wrong :) ) if you shoot something straight up off the moon (less than escape velocity) it will eventually fall back to the moon surface at the rate of gravity which may or may not be as fast as its original speed (especially since there is no terminal gravity velocity on the moon).

As far as the relevance goes, I am not quite sure why no one seems to suggest there will not be a localized debris/dust field from an impact. Posters seem to suggest that any dispersion of an impact results in either no localized debris field or the debris is carried back into to space to once more rain back on the moon. What some posters are suggesting is almost like a never ending loop of impacts. The moon gets hit, debris is shot back into space, eventually falling back to the moon creating an impact which would then send more debris into space which would then fall back to earth causing an impact to repeat the process etc... If that was the case, the moon would be raining micrometeorites continuously. But that doesn't seem to be the case, otherwise the LM would have been swiss cheese.

The issue I am trying to address here is why there is a layer of regolith on the surface but not on top of a five inch rock (for instance) in which its base is completely buried in regolith. Suggesting that moon impacts are akin to "sandblasting" or "machinegun fire" does not solve for this. (in fact, the idea of "sandblasting" sort of proves my concern not dismiss it). Perhaps there is a reasoned answer, but because moon impacts can be very violent doesn't necessarily account on how the regolith is disbursed in such a way that it will bury the base of a rock but leave the top of the rock regolith free. Thanks.   

 

I believe I am right on this but i'm sure if I am not I will be put right.

The rigolith will not fall at the rate of gravity because gravity doesn't affect speed directly. it affects acceleration. therefore the object will accelerate at the rate of gravity on the moon and will not stop accelerating. this is because no terminal velocity exists due to the lack of air resistance.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 12:06:21 PM
...the object will accelerate at the rate of gravity on the moon and will not stop accelerating. this is because no terminal velocity exists due to the lack of air resistance.

Yes.

Ignoring lateral velocity and assuming a vacuum, a particle traveling vertically upward from the lunar surface starting at velocity v will be slowed by acceleration -a.  The signs on the variables are different because velocity and acceleration are vector quantities, and we've arbitrary set "up" as the positive direction in this example, and gravity accelerates downward.  The acceleration -a is that imposed by lunar gravity and is (essentially) constant.  The particle will reach a prescribed altitude, the point at which v becomes zero.  That altitude is then the distance over which gravity will act to accelerate the particle.  The acceleration in this instance is the same -a as before, and the final velocity reached will be -v.  Distance and time for the two legs of the journey are the same.

Does anyone need this proven by actual math, or is it a commonly-enough known principle?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 01, 2019, 12:23:24 PM
Hi Jay,

With all due respect, you have not once attempted to answer the question I posted. I get it, because the moon landings are real, what I am asking is obviously wrong and stupid.

And you know what, you are probably 99 percent right that the moon landings are real. But to dismiss others with contempt because it doesn't fit your view of things is not right. I think I have asked a reasonable question and have been courteous. But I don't believe anyone has came up with a reasonable answer to why there is an absence of regolith on rocks and boulders. It makes sense, if the photos are real, there should be a logical explanation. Using Chinese photos or a "sandblasting" analogy as answers really doesn't explain this phenomena despite what people might think. Respectfully JR.

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 01, 2019, 12:59:33 PM
I don't think it's been very courteous of you  to blatantly ignore requests made to you by some, including Jay to go back to your "Apollo 11 Lunar Lander Pre-Launch" and wrap that one up. You just come across as someone incapable of admitting you were wrong about one of your pet theories.   
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 01, 2019, 01:00:01 PM
Hi Jay,

With all due respect, you have not once attempted to answer the question I posted. I get it, because the moon landings are real, what I am asking is obviously wrong and stupid.

And you know what, you are probably 99 percent right that the moon landings are real. But to dismiss others with contempt because it doesn't fit your view of things is not right. I think I have asked a reasonable question and have been courteous. But I don't believe anyone has came up with a reasonable answer to why there is an absence of regolith on rocks and boulders. It makes sense, if the photos are real, there should be a logical explanation. Using Chinese photos or a "sandblasting" analogy as answers really doesn't explain this phenomena despite what people might think. Respectfully JR.

Yes, it does, despite what you think.

What you think doesn't matter. What you can provide evidence for in support of what you think does.

Furthermore it's a little disingenuous to complain about dismissive answers when you dismiss out of hand reasonable explanations.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: AtomicDog on April 01, 2019, 01:01:01 PM
Jay has been nothing but courteous. Mistaking being firm with wrongness for discourteousness tells me that jr Knowing has never taken a science course.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jfb on April 01, 2019, 01:25:34 PM
What some posters are suggesting is almost like a never ending loop of impacts. The moon gets hit, debris is shot back into space, eventually falling back to the moon creating an impact which would then send more debris into space which would then fall back to earth causing an impact to repeat the process etc... If that was the case, the moon would be raining micrometeorites continuously. But that doesn't seem to be the case, otherwise the LM would have been swiss cheese.

Energy is lost with each impact.  Initial impact sends debris far and wide, and assuming it didn't achieve escape velocity, that debris hits the surface with less energy, bouncing or kicking up debris with even less energy, until all the energy of the initial impact has been dissipated (like billiard balls on the initial break).  Since impacts are random, debris is eventually evenly distributed over the surface, but in an intermittent, energetic fashion, and not at like a snowfall. 

Quote
The issue I am trying to address here is why there is a layer of regolith on the surface but not on top of a five inch rock (for instance) in which its base is completely buried in regolith.

That rock is part of the regolith, ejected by an earlier impact.  Regolith isn't just dust.

Quote
Suggesting that moon impacts are akin to "sandblasting" or "machinegun fire" does not solve for this. (in fact, the idea of "sandblasting" sort of proves my concern not dismiss it). Perhaps there is a reasoned answer, but because moon impacts can be very violent doesn't necessarily account on how the regolith is disbursed in such a way that it will bury the base of a rock but leave the top of the rock regolith free. Thanks.   

Imagine a low-energy impact near an exposed rock - the finer particles will hit the side of the rock and slide down.  Some particles will hit the top of the rock, some percentage of those will simply bounce off. 

Again, without an atmosphere, nothing "settles" like snow.  The dust acts more like water getting splashed (not exactly like, obviously, but it's the best visualization I can come up with at the moment). 
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 01:38:04 PM
With all due respect, you have not once attempted to answer the question I posted.

That's because I've been waiting for you to resume your prior thread regarding the stability of the lunar module, a topic which you say you did not abandon as a flounce, but were merely detained from addressing because of external concerns.  Your renewed activity here suggests those circumstances no longer hold.  Therefore it seemed advisable not to multiply the posts in this thread that you would have to answer, in the hopes you would find time to resume the discussion you abandoned before.  Now that it's clear you did abandon that other thread because you could not continue it, I'm faced with what that says about the likelihood you will respond to meaningful criticism in this thread.

And in this thread, as in prior threads, you have simply adopted the same strategy of ignoring replies that attempt to correct your misunderstanding of common physical principles and further foisting your ignorant intuition and suppositions in place.  That limits my willingness to address you in any depth or detail.  You have proven yourself to be almost entirely refractory to carefully-prepared responses, so you have lost the privilege of demanding them.  As I recall, you even complained that my responses before, in the other thread, contained too much detail.  You don't get to have your cake and eat it to.  Want more substantive responses?  Then prove you're worthy of them.  Continue the other thread regarding the lunar module, and address the arguments made by everyone in this thread with something more substantial than protest and denial.

Quote
I get it, because the moon landings are real, what I am asking is obviously wrong and stupid.

Your claim here is based on an incorrect understanding of the principles that apply to projectile physics.  You have resisted efforts to correct your understanding.  You really deserve little more attention if you are unwilling to accept the corrections by the people whose feedback you have ostensibly come here to solicit.

I will not coddle your willful ignorance.

Quote
But to dismiss others with contempt because it doesn't fit your view of things...

Your claims have been dismissed not because they disagree with "[my] view of things," but because they disagree with basic principles of Newtonian physics.  You are receiving what you view as contemptuous answers because you are following the same process here as you did in your abandoned thread:  you are frantically trying to dismiss learned correction as "irrelevant" and insisting that your ignorance be validated in its place.  Since you have resisted ongoing reasonable efforts to educate you, criticism that sounds in contempt is really the only appropriate attitude that remains.  You beg the question that your behavior on this forum to date is acceptable.

Quote
I think I have asked a reasonable question and have been courteous.

No.  Dismissing others' provably correct knowledge of basic physics as something you can simply sidestep in favor of your own ignorant intuition is the opposite of courtesy.

Quote
But I don't believe anyone has came up with a reasonable answer to why there is an absence of regolith on rocks and boulders.

You have been given a reasonable answer which you dismiss as "irrelevant," and you have further demonstrated a fairly glaring ignorance of the physical principles that apply to your question.  Further, you've been asked point-blank why you think your concerns regarding the authenticity of the photos in question remain valid given your ignorance, and given other circumstantial evidence that flatly contracts your claims.  You have ignored those entirely.  To maintain that your approach here has been "courteous" is laughable.  As with your other thread, your argument rises no higher than dismissing the actual science and insisting on the basis of your personal incredulity that you must still somehow have a valid point.  Ignorance is not the problem here; willful ignorance is.

Quote
It makes sense, if the photos are real, there should be a logical explanation.

There is a logical explanation, and it has been given.  That you feel I haven't delivered it personally is irrelevant; this is not a personalized debate.  Jason Thompson, for example, has presented you with a well-reasoned rebuttal that you have largely ignored.  You have rejected the logical explanation because that explanation has focused on refuting the incorrect premises on which you based your claims.  If you are waiting for logical explanation that doesn't entail you admitting your mistakes, then you will be waiting a long time.  Your expectations are based on misconceived or made-up principles of projectile behavior.  You are not entitled to an explanation that leaves those errors intact, nor to weary your critics by asking for one.

Quote
Using Chinese photos or a "sandblasting" analogy as answers really doesn't explain this phenomena despite what people might think.

Yes, they do, despite your increasingly desperate protests to the contrary.

You argue that the Apollo photos depict a landscape that is improbable according to projectile physics.  You hypothesize that this means they were not taken in an actual lunar environment, but must have been prepared somehow by other means to approximate what the public could reasonably expect from such photos.  But photos purporting also to be of the lunar landscape, taken by other agents, depict a landscape substantially similar in all relevant detail to Apollo photos.  This undermines your hypothesis because the agent in this case has no credible reason to defy physics or cover for NASA.  If two separate data sets are consilient on the appearance of the lunar surface, then it becomes more parsimonious to consider that your expectations are in error for what it should look like, more so than if you are simply trying to explain one data set with a hypothesis that invokes other antecedents particular only to that data set.  That's how parsimony works, and you clearly don't get it.

The sandblasting analogy is apt because it deals with particles that have a ratio of kinetic energy to mass that is more congruent with the behavior of impact ejecta than your "settling snowfall" expectation based the behavior of aerosols.  It is also more apt because it reduces the magnitude of the effect of air resistance on the particles in a way that would more closely resemble the behavior of projectiles in the complete absence of fluid resistance.  That you refuse to take them into account does not give you grounds simply to ignore them or sweep them aside.  You can't explain why it's irrelevant; you just don't seem to want to have to deal with it.

This closely mimics your inability to address the actual study of the lunar module flight dynamics, as revealed in your own sources.  You can't deal with the notion of free-body dynamics as a set of behaviors that has a highly predictive and tractable mathematical model, and so can't realize that people can conclusively dismiss your various theories.  You will never succeed in this forum if your arguments boil down simply to asking members to ignore scientific facts they know, but which you simply refuse to acknowledge and then get all butthurt over being repeatedly corrected about.  No one here will coddle willful ignorance.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 02:08:06 PM
Energy is lost with each impact.

Principally, a portion of the kinetic energy is converted to heat.  This was something I was hoping Jr Knowing would go look up himself.  But don't feel bad; it merely demonstrates that many people here have the appropriate knowledge to understand and explain why his expectations don't hold.

Quote
Since impacts are random, debris is eventually evenly distributed over the surface...
[...]
That rock is part of the regolith, ejected by an earlier impact.  Regolith isn't just dust.

If we consider mineral particles of roughly uniform size -- say, 0.1 mm to 0.5 mm -- and we consider a projectile of the same diameter and composition, having a kinetic energy commensurate with a velocity of many meters per second, then consider the difference between that projectile striking a 1 kg mineral rock and 1 kg aggregation of those mineral particles.  The collision mechanics are substantially different there, although the magnitude of energy transfer, considered as a scalar whole sum, will be roughly equivalent between the two cases.  The single projectile striking a single rock at ballistic velocity will simply bounce off elastically in a direction we could probably predict with some accuracy given the incident angle.  Impacting the particulate aggregation results in many small subcollisions instead, the net result of which would be difficult to predict beyond a few rounds.

Here too we have the matrixing principle.  This is something I was privileged to explain to a potential History Channel audience in a pilot that sadly did not air.  Because the small particles in lunar soil are jagged, they interlock with each other in aggregation to form a fairly strong matrix.  They are mechanically connected, much the way we engineer "rip rap" to protect coastlines, quays, and jetties from wave action.  They are further chemically cemented under abrasion in ways that Earth minerals (coated with oxides, sulfides, and hydrides) are not.  This is why lunar fines have a much higher angle of repose than traditional earth aggregates.  What this means in terms of collision mechanics is that the lunar regolith is much more likely to retain an impacting projectile and absorb its energy through elastic subcollisions with neighboring particles according to "interesting" geometries, not like billiard balls so much as like jacks.  Lunar particles are "tangled" with each other, and this very much matters in how they receive projectiles compared to rocks.

Quote
Some particles will hit the top of the rock, some percentage of those will simply bounce off.

Most rocks in the lunar environment simply have no "top" in the sense that would provide for a final repose of projectiles.  You're more likely to find particles at rest in crevices and other convex geometries that provide for multiple terminal collisions in directions that would result in containment in multiple directions.  Horizontal expanses of surface don't help.  Even a particle traveling at less than 1 meter per second on a near vertical trajectory is apt to strike the side of a rock and bounce elastically off of it rather than be retained on it.  I'd venture to say that would happen at velocities even one-tenth that amount.  Given that such particles would not wind up far from the rock, this handily explains why spent projectiles accumulate near the bases of large obstacles.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 01, 2019, 03:07:41 PM
Hi Guys, What you guys are saying is correct but mainly not relevant.

It certainly is relevant. Your failure to understand how is the problem here.

Quote
I also question posters suggesting that the speed an object goes up is the same speed it comes back down at. I believe (and I could be wrong :) ) if you shoot something straight up off the moon (less than escape velocity) it will eventually fall back to the moon surface at the rate of gravity which may or may not be as fast as its original speed (especially since there is no terminal gravity velocity on the moon).

This is incorrect on every level, and mathematically provably so. I learned this in school. Did you skip that class, or have the intervening years dulled your memory of basic physics? Gravity is not a speed, it is an acceleration. If you shoot something straight up then gravity will act to slow it down until its velocity is zero, after which it will speed it up in the opposite direction. The time taken and the change in velocity are the same on both sides. If it goes up at 100m/s and takes 10 seconds to slow to zero due to gravity, it will be accelerated back down at the same rate and be at the same speed when it hits the ground. The fact that there is no terminal velocity on the Moon actually makes this a perfect example of this phenomenon.

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As far as the relevance goes, I am not quite sure why no one seems to suggest there will not be a localized debris/dust field from an impact.

Of course there will be. That's not the same as a dust field that evenly coats everything in the vicinity, though.

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What some posters are suggesting is almost like a never ending loop of impacts.

No, that's your incorrect interpretation. Energy is lost at each stage of the process, so a field of progressively smaller impacts occurs. The point is that there is a very small percentage of particulates that will hit a solid rock and stay there rather than bouncing off, whereas the regolith surface is a good absorber of the energy of impact because of its particulate nature. Particles that will bounce off rocks will disturb the regolith a bit and stop. This disturbance also evens out the surface, so if the rock landing on the regolith did leave a small impact crater that would be lost over time, leaving a rock apparently sitting on or in a bed of regolith.

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The issue I am trying to address here is why there is a layer of regolith on the surface but not on top of a five inch rock (for instance) in which its base is completely buried in regolith.

Yes, we all understand the issue, and we are addressing it. But because the answers don't make immediate sense to you you dismiss them. Why are you here?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 01, 2019, 03:17:52 PM
I get it, because the moon landings are real, what I am asking is obviously wrong and stupid.

No, don't try and accuse us of calling you stupid. There is nothing wrong with asking questions, especially when it comes to things like space travel and other moons and planets which are not so easily understood by everyday experience. That you see something that does not match your expectations is fine, but you have demonstrated no willingness to concede that the problem is your expectations, not the thing you are looking at.
 
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But to dismiss others with contempt because it doesn't fit your view of things is not right.

THen why do you do it so much? You have been given, here and in your other thread (which I assume you have no intention of rejoining since you evidently cannot actually follow the mathematics of your own evidence to see how it utterly fails to support your argument) a lot of reasoned answers, and you have simply dimissed them as irrelevant and maintained your own incredulity. Why?

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I think I have asked a reasonable question

Yes, the original question was reasonable.

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But I don't believe anyone has came up with a reasonable answer

And what is a 'reasonable' answer, to you? I am serious. You have been given sound physics in the answers. You refuse to accept them. Why? The answers given are reasonable. Your unwillingness to accept them is not.

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It makes sense, if the photos are real, there should be a logical explanation.

There is, and you've been given it. Several times.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 01, 2019, 03:55:53 PM
Here's a simple thought experiment for you.

Turn a bucket upside down. Take another bucket, fill it with marbles. Empty that bucket above the other one from a height. Where do you think most of the marbles are going to end up?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 05:34:28 PM
No, don't try and accuse us of calling you stupid. There is nothing wrong with asking questions, especially when it comes to things like space travel and other moons and planets which are not so easily understood by everyday experience. That you see something that does not match your expectations is fine, but you have demonstrated no willingness to concede that the problem is your expectations, not the thing you are looking at.

This is really the problem.  One one hand he tries to tell us he's just asking innocent, reasonable questions about something he doesn't understand and can't explain.  And he wants to be given credit for this legitimate behavior.  The premise behind such a question -- if it is truly innocent as proffered -- is, "I don't understand what's going on here."  But then when the explanation is given, the behaviors that would logically follow a correct response to an honest, innocent question fly away completely.  In their place, we're told that the answers we've given are irrelevant to the problem, or contrary to natural law.  The premise behind such a response has to be, "I do know what's going on here, and that's not it."  Those are fundamentally contradictory positions.  Jr Knowing wants to be given credit both for being curious and innocent, but then later also for being knowledgeable and erudite -- even "woke."

The reader has to decide which of these two disparate characters is the real Jr Knowing.  I believe the latter is.  Why?  Because the motte-and-bailey approach is common in the conspiracy world.  The desired line of reasoning is that there is something legitimately wrong with the Apollo record that can only be explained by the hoax hypothesis.  That's the motte.  But when cornered, the proponent retreats back to the bailey argument, which is that he's just an innocent person asking reasonable, innocent questions and why is everyone treating him so shabbily?  It's a fairly threadbare method of trading a reasoned argument for an optimistic stab a social engineering.  He's shaming people away from attacking the motte argument.  He hopes it will still be somewhat convincing as long as no one pokes at it too sharply.

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You have been given sound physics in the answers. You refuse to accept them. Why? The answers given are reasonable. Your unwillingness to accept them is not.

Because under no circumstances can the acceptable refutation to a conspiracy theory be that the theorist doesn't know what he's talking about.  Conspiracy theorists are "woke" individuals with an enhanced worldview, and anyone who sticks with the moldy old narratives must just be ideologically impaired, lacking the enlightenment of forward thinkers.  The notion that there "must" be a logical explanation is a rhetorical feint.  The point being attempted is that there isn't a logical explanation, but only if Jr Knowing's premises are taken entirely at face value.  There being no logical explanation under the "don't-look-too-hard-at-these" premises -- the motte argument -- we must accept the possibility of a hoax -- you know, just to keep an "open mind."

Of course there was a reasonable explanation for the RCS plume deflectors and the placement of the RCS jets themselves on the service module.  When his motte argument on that front became untenable, and the bailey was breached, he just teleported away.  The same thing will happen here.  I predict that he'll try a few more times to shame his critics, insist for a few more rounds that everything his critics have pointed out cannot possibly be true or relevant, and then flounce from this thread too without ever acknowledging a single error on his part.

He's made some clangers this time round.  The rock-solid principles of ballistic physics have been around since 1687, yet for some reason he doesn't think they're true.  This is a principle I would literally expect a reasonably intelligent 14-year-old to grasp.  Ninth grade is when we start teaching the pre-calculus version of Newtonian physics.  And projectile motion is the introductory problem.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 01, 2019, 09:49:21 PM
Hi Jay,

"Most rocks in the lunar environment simply have no "top" in the sense that would provide for a final repose of projectiles.  You're more likely to find particles at rest in crevices and other convex geometries that provide for multiple terminal collisions in directions that would result in containment in multiple directions.  Horizontal expanses of surface don't help.  Even a particle traveling at less than 1 meter per second on a near vertical trajectory is apt to strike the side of a rock and bounce elastically off of it rather than be retained on it.  I'd venture to say that would happen at velocities even one-tenth that amount.  Given that such particles would not wind up far from the rock, this handily explains why spent projectiles accumulate near the bases of large obstacles."

Your explanation above is a reasonable explanation of the buildup of regolith at the base of rocks. I would still question why the regolith still seems uniform in depth even away from the rock. But it does make sense the rocks would be "obstacles" for atleast some of the disbursement.

As far as my "clanger" goes, you are correct. All I can say, for whatever reason, in my head, initial force, initial velocity, velocity between A and B (zero velocity) got all jumbled up in my thinking.

And as far as your posts go, I understand your passion for this overall subject. But you don't need to waste your energy, writing reams, dissecting every sentence I write. I have already said you are probably 99 percent right that the moon landings are real. Yes I have questions (with many still to ask) but isn't this what this website is all about? Please don't take things so seriously. To be quite honest you are reading too much into things. I am not employing any "motte and Bailey" approach. And I am not here to yank your chains. Believe me I have better things to do. I am literally here because my buddy, who is a staunch NASA supporter, doesn't have the depth of knowledge to answer many of my questions. He led me to this site. And as I have already mentioned in a previous thread, it wasn't till after I started posting did I realize who some of you were and the hornets nest I walked into :) .
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 01, 2019, 10:32:20 PM
I would still question why the regolith still seems uniform in depth...

I would question why you think you can determine that by looking at photos.  If you've done more than look at photos, then you would surely have run into the records of observations made by the people who were there.  When you've come up to speed on that, we can have that discussion.  Until then, nice try at changing the subject to distract from your roundabout admissions of error.

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But you don't need to waste your energy, writing reams, dissecting every sentence I write.

This morning you were complaining that I hadn't answered you thoroughly enough.  Now you're back to complaining that I'm too thorough.  It seems there's no pleasing you.

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I am not employing any "motte and Bailey" approach.

You clearly are.  If you believe otherwise, then you can address the relevant argument in detail instead of just waving it off vaguely.  I gave you a detailed rationale for that characterization using examples from your own arguments.  Do me the same courtesy in rebuttal.  It's a pretty common approach among conspiracy theories.  And every one of them thinks he is unique in using it, and everyone of them thinks he's getting away with it.

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...the hornets nest I walked into :) .

Other people have found this site to be a fount of good information and expertise.  You find it a "hornets nest" only because you knee-jerkedly reject all the answers you don't like, for no good reason, and because you are being held to a reasonable standard of intellectual honesty for your own behavior, which you are clearly unaccustomed to.  If these are things you equate with hornet-like antagonism, you are not equipped to debate in the real world.

Write off my standards-keeping as "passion" as much as you like.  These are the standards that prevail in the sciences you're trying to practice here.  If you're not up to the task, I won't coddle you.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: VQ on April 01, 2019, 11:12:39 PM
Your explanation above is a reasonable explanation of the buildup of regolith at the base of rocks. I would still question why the regolith still seems uniform in depth even away from the rock. But it does make sense the rocks would be "obstacles" for atleast some of the disbursement.

You do realize lunar regolith averages 5-15 meters thick depending on the age of that portion of the moon's surface, right?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 02, 2019, 01:26:05 AM
I would still question why the regolith still seems uniform in depth even away from the rock

I would question how you think you can tell the depth of regolith from looking at a photo. The regolith layer is several metres thick. Geologically the rocks are recent arrivals on the surface. Plenty more are entirely buried under it.

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But it does make sense the rocks would be "obstacles" for atleast some of the disbursement.

Which is what several of us have been saying all along. What was it that finally got you to understand?

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As far as my "clanger" goes, you are correct. All I can say, for whatever reason, in my head, initial force, initial velocity, velocity between A and B (zero velocity) got all jumbled up in my thinking.

Thank you for conceding that point. Now perhaps you'll go back to your original thread about LM instability and offer the same.

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But you don't need to waste your energy, writing reams, dissecting every sentence I write.

Clearly Jay (and others) do need to do that, since you complain when answers are not in-depth enough and it has apparently taken all these 'reams' of answers to get you to understand where the flaws in your reasoning are.

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Yes I have questions (with many still to ask) but isn't this what this website is all about?

As has been pointed out several times, the questions are not the issue, your reactions to the answers you get is. If you are 'just asking questions' then stop dismissing all the answers offhand until you are cornered.

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To be quite honest you are reading too much into things.

To be quite honest you are displaying all the typical conpiracy theorist tactics that lead to those conclusions, as has been explained already. And as with all conspiracy theorists using those patterns of behavour you act surprised when called on it.

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I am not employing any "motte and Bailey" approach. And I am not here to yank your chains. Believe me I have better things to do.

Fine, then get back over to your other thread and address the responses there. Just off the top of my head I can think of:

Insisting it is suspect that the LM looks different between stacking and landing, despite being shown the apparatus and documentation relating to work done on the pad after stacking.

Insisiting it is suspect that the RCS quads on the service module are exposed even after being informed of why they were not at risk of being damaged by airflow during take-off.

Failing to acknowledge the difference between a paper and a memo

Failing, after several times of saying you had it, to provide a 'more detailed' paper that you say proves the RCS system required perfect balance to operate correctly.

Failing to address the clear and evident fact that the memo you used to support your argument that the plume deflectors introduce instability actually says exactly the opposite for all but one very unlikely scenario.

Getting mixed up between LM and CSM RCS systems used on Apollo 13.

When do you plan to go back and either continue the arguments or else concede you were mistaken? Walking out of the discussion, for whatever reason, does not free you of any obligation to it.

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I am literally here because my buddy, who is a staunch NASA supporter, doesn't have the depth of knowledge to answer many of my questions. He led me to this site.

And is your buddy here reading? Why does he not contribute and ask his own questions?

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And as I have already mentioned in a previous thread, it wasn't till after I started posting did I realize who some of you were and the hornets nest I walked into :) .

This site is not a hornet's nest, except for those who insist on treating it like one. If you want to discuss, do it honestly and with a willingness to concede you might be wrong in your expectations of what the Apollo missions 'should' look like. You only stir up a nest if you refuse to engage honestly in the conversation.
[/quote]
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 02, 2019, 03:00:08 AM

Your explanation above is a reasonable explanation of the buildup of regolith at the base of rocks. I would still question why the regolith still seems uniform in depth even away from the rock.


It doesn't take much effort to find many studies of regolith depth based on analysis of visual imagery and radar from orbit, and to find from the results of those studies that regolith depth is variable.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 02, 2019, 06:55:23 AM

Your explanation above is a reasonable explanation of the buildup of regolith at the base of rocks. I would still question why the regolith still seems uniform in depth even away from the rock.


It doesn't take much effort to find many studies of regolith depth based on analysis of visual imagery and radar from orbit, and to find from the results of those studies that regolith depth is variable.

Indeed.

The problem lies not with how regolith is formed and distributed. The problem lies with jr Knowing's belief.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 02, 2019, 09:00:40 AM
]
The problem lies not with how regolith is formed and distributed. The problem lies with jr Knowing's belief.

Indeed.  It only took five pages to drag him to a cognition that expecting ejecta to settle like snowfall has no basis in science.  And now we're off and running on the next variation of "Something in these photos just doesn't look right to me."  Just like in his other thread where he flitted from one variation to another on, "The LM just doesn't look right to me."  And now we'll have to do another round of getting our posts just the right length and depth to meet his capricious standards, only to be reprimanded again for treating him so shabbily.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: benparry on April 02, 2019, 11:25:12 AM
]
The problem lies not with how regolith is formed and distributed. The problem lies with jr Knowing's belief.

Indeed.  It only took five pages to drag him to a cognition that expecting ejecta to settle like snowfall has no basis in science.  And now we're off and running on the next variation of "Something in these photos just doesn't look right to me."  Just like in his other thread where he flitted from one variation to another on, "The LM just doesn't look right to me."  And now we'll have to do another round of getting our posts just the right length and depth to meet his capricious standards, only to be reprimanded again for treating him so shabbily.

Jay

do you remember when you once told me that answering people was better than ignoring them in case newbies came looking for info.

do you still hold that opinion with JR :)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 02, 2019, 11:37:05 AM
do you still hold that opinion with JR :)

It's still better to provide answers than not to provide answers.  The cheerfulness with which I do so, however, is greatly affected by what kinds of shenanigans each individual tries to pull.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 02, 2019, 02:10:14 PM
]
The problem lies not with how regolith is formed and distributed. The problem lies with jr Knowing's belief.

Indeed.  It only took five pages to drag him to a cognition that expecting ejecta to settle like snowfall has no basis in science.  And now we're off and running on the next variation of "Something in these photos just doesn't look right to me."  Just like in his other thread where he flitted from one variation to another on, "The LM just doesn't look right to me."  And now we'll have to do another round of getting our posts just the right length and depth to meet his capricious standards, only to be reprimanded again for treating him so shabbily.

The guy is carrying on like a troll now.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jfb on April 02, 2019, 05:38:15 PM
]
The problem lies not with how regolith is formed and distributed. The problem lies with jr Knowing's belief.

Indeed.  It only took five pages to drag him to a cognition that expecting ejecta to settle like snowfall has no basis in science.  And now we're off and running on the next variation of "Something in these photos just doesn't look right to me."  Just like in his other thread where he flitted from one variation to another on, "The LM just doesn't look right to me."  And now we'll have to do another round of getting our posts just the right length and depth to meet his capricious standards, only to be reprimanded again for treating him so shabbily.

The guy is carrying on like a troll now.

He has for quite a while, almost from the beginning.  The innocent JAQ phase lasted about a day IIRC.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: benparry on April 03, 2019, 03:15:02 AM
do you still hold that opinion with JR :)

It's still better to provide answers than not to provide answers.  The cheerfulness with which I do so, however, is greatly affected by what kinds of shenanigans each individual tries to pull.

lol good answer. It is fun to watch
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 03, 2019, 05:18:37 AM
The basic argument in the first post - that lunar regolith would accumulate like snow - was based on false assumptions.  However the most incoherent part of the argument presented was:

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the absence of regolith on rocks was probably done for esthetics.

However if it the surface was faked with aesthetic considerations in mind, it would most likely have conformed to aesthetic expectations of the time, illustrated by films such as Destination Moon (1950), The first men in the Moon (1964),2001(1968, or the artwork of Bonestall (1962). Steep, jagged mountains and a rocky surface, not rolling rounded hills and a loose surface regolith with scattered rocks.



Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 03, 2019, 05:25:24 AM
But why fake it with those aesthetics during the Apollo period when we already knew that the lunar surface looked nothing like that from a succession of robotic missions?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 03, 2019, 05:33:13 AM
And of course with every likelihood that there would be other missions to come that would pick up any inaccuracies if they existed - as has been the case
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 03, 2019, 05:40:11 AM
Far more logical to accept that the the lunar surface looks this way in the Apollo images because they were actually taken on the Moon

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 03, 2019, 01:42:49 PM
Hi Dalhousie,

You clearly have a point. Saying it was done because of aesthetics does make little sense. Shoemaker et al had this mapped out well in advance for the real thing or for faking it :) .

BTW, speaking of Shoemaker, does anybody find Shoemaker's death suspicious?  If the moon landings were faked, it would almost be certain that Shoemaker would have to have had a hand in constructing the set. (he was also Cronkite's color commentator on tv). In all likelihood his death was most likely a tragic accident. He died in a remote part of Australia outside of Alice Springs. He was hit head on by a transport truck. The only thing I find odd about it, it came just a couple years after Armstrong name checked him in his now famous "Truth's protective layer's" speech at the WhiteHouse. He could of talked about anybody reminiscing about the moon landings but Shoemaker's name was the only one. And the speech wasn't really about reminiscing about the landings at all. It almost reads as a confession they didn't go. He starts by comparing himself to a parrot. Parrots don't fly well and they repeat what they are told. He then literally says the country had asked them to "do the impossible". But he doesn't follow that up by saying we accomplished it anyways. Instead, he rationalizes that the space age has increased our knowledge of the universe "a thousand fold" to the point we have a space shuttle flying overhead. (so wait, we went to the moon in '69 but the shuttle is now our crowning achievement?) He then cryptically talks about "removing one of truth's protective layer's". While it is debatable what he meant, many point to the fact he is talking about the firmament. Truth is God. And one of God's protective layers was the firmament in the bible that that is a protective layer over earth that can't be penetrated. While I personally don't believe there is a firmament, Neil was a very religious man. So if he is referring to the firmament he is suggesting that we cannot go the moon.

(And while all this may seem crazy, Wernher Von Braun, the man behind the Saturn program, also bizarrely on his own tomb stone puts only one thing on it, Psalms 19:1 ... "the firmament sheweth its handywork". Of the 4 or 5 billion people on earth at the time, Von Braun, given he sent a manned rocket to the moon, he should have been the very, very, very, very, very, very last one on earth to put something like this on his tombstone but he did. Completely bizarre)
 
In short, Armstrong's 25th Anniversary speech had little to do with 'the good old days of being on the moon' but rather the whole speech was about obstacles too great to overcome, he likens himself to a parrot asked to do the impossible and overcome insurmountable layers/barriers. This wasn't some off the cuff speech, it was a well thought out statement. What he truly meant by this statement, we may never know. But he was being cryptic for some reason. And it makes no sense why he is being cryptic. And that's why I question why he named checked Shoemaker in the speech. Was he calling him out for some specific reason apart from using him to illustrate that space with its "celestial fireworks etc" is a very dangerous place? (ie too dangerous for man) or was calling him out for another unknown reason?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 03, 2019, 02:06:28 PM
Hi Dalhousie,

You clearly have a point. Saying it was done because of aesthetics does make little sense.

Right, so you now concede no such thing was done?

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Shoemaker et al had this mapped out well in advance for the real thing or for faking it :) .

BTW, speaking of Shoemaker...

[snip]

...Wernher Von Braun

Irrelevant and trying to shift the discussion away from the original point. Are you conceding your expectations about how the lunar surface should look were wrong?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 03, 2019, 03:07:48 PM
Saying it was done because of aesthetics does make little sense.

So do you have a substitute reason that does make sense?  Or are you finally prepared to admit that your claim was nonsensical and misinformed, and should be rejected?

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BTW, speaking of Shoemaker...

Don't change the subject.  When you are rightly corrected, admit the correction and adjust your beliefs accordingly.  Don't try to dilute the effects of your personal failures with reams of new speculative, subjective incredulity or irrelevant raccontage.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 03, 2019, 03:20:56 PM
The guy is carrying on like a troll now.

Even more so with his latest free-associative screed.  They always start out in these forums with "reasonable questions," but don't last long before lapsing into a frantic grab at every scrap of fringe lore.  Let the Gish gallop commence.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 03, 2019, 03:40:01 PM
We've now joined the realms of babbling idiocy. Conspiracy theorists have several things they find difficult (other than the ability to read and digest relevant information with impartiality), 3D thinking and metaphors are two of them.

Armstrong employed a metaphor, a very similar one to that used in his speech to Congress in 1969.

Von Braun chose an apt biblical verse for his tombstone.

Neither person was alluding to anything. Deciding on their behalf what they meant won't wash and then pinning this to the flagpole as fact is just nonsense.

Shoemaker died in a car crash. People do this a lot. Well, technically they only do it once, but car accidents are not infrequent and people with interesting careers are not immune to them.

And it's "could have", not "could of".
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 03, 2019, 04:37:02 PM
We've now joined the realms of babbling idiocy.

And armchair psychology, all carried into the "If I Ran the Zoo" zoo on a Gish gallop of assumption and speculation.  I think it was Rene who authoritatively interpreted an instance in which Buzz Aldrin became emotional as extreme guilt over his role in the hoaxed landings.  And somehow these claimants expect those arguments actually to be taken seriously.

I'm not going to deign Jr Knowing's latest self-indulgent drivel with a detailed response.  The only thing worth noting in it is his fidelity to the same pattern of argument he's employed so far.  The way he would have done things, or the way he understandings things should be done, or the way he understands the world to be, is the inviolable gold standard by which the behavior of the natural world and of other people should be judged.  Such narcissistic methods rarely result in useful knowledge.  What's worse is that he stapled the latest vanity-driven rant to a half-baked concession that yet another one of his assumptions in this thread has fallen by the wayside.  Ejecta doesn't settle like snow, projectiles come down as fast as they go up, collisions between rocks are elastic, and (finally) the prevailing aesthetic of the lunar landscape in 1969 doesn't match what was photographed.  And that's not even starting to touch the myriad assumptions he deployed in his other thread, and is now pathetically trying to replay.  If one is repeatedly forced to walk back assumptions that fail in factual support, at what point should one be expected to have learned from the experience?  At what point can we expect that future arguments won't be simply more than titillating gossip wrapped around presumption and speculation?

I see no evidence that Jr Knowing intends to argue according to verifiable facts, or knows what it means to do so.  He's turned his presentation into the worst breed of coffee-klatch gibberish.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 03, 2019, 04:42:16 PM
Hi Jay and everyone,

Fair enough. If the pre Apollo surface photos are real, my concerns are surely diminished.

As far as changing the subject. Guilty. But it is not intentional. It’s just my nature to go off on tangents, no different than many of you. But nobody calls out those posts because they are coming from people  on the ‘winning’ team.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 03, 2019, 04:47:02 PM
As far as changing the subject. Guilty. But it is not intentional. It’s just my nature to go off on tangents, no different than many of you. But nobody calls out those posts because they are coming from people  on the ‘winning’ team.

It's not a tangent to talk in more depth about the various things you are throwing at the argument, or the manner in which you do so. It's relevant. You are using 'tangents' in place of actually addressing the rebuttals to your argument.

I still await your repsonse to my request, made several times, to use the mathematical equation in the memo you brought to the table to show LM instability, or to concede you were mistaken.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 03, 2019, 04:49:38 PM
Fair enough. If the pre Apollo surface photos are real, my concerns are surely diminished.

This is carefully worded to say nothing to advance the discussion.  Your line of reasoning in this thread was based on expectations whose premises have been thoroughly answered by your critics and variously conceded by you.  If you have no better argument, do you agree that your conclusion of fakery has been refuted?  A simple answer works fine.

Quote
As far as changing the subject. Guilty. But it is not intentional. It’s just my nature to go off on tangents, no different than many of you. But nobody calls out those posts because they are coming from people  on the ‘winning’ team.

Yet another attempt at social engineering, and I don't believe today's attempted digression was unintentional.  Would it be possible for you to go at least one day without bellyaching about how allegedly shabbily you're being treated?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 03, 2019, 04:55:53 PM
Hi Onebigmonkey,

Von Braun choose an apt bible verse for his tombstone? Then surely you don’t know the Bible well. The term “firmament” I believe is only mentioned 14 times in the entire Bible. It’s means a protective dome over earth that is impenetrable. The verse he choose out of the entire Bible states the firmament did its job. How is this remotely apt for a man who supposedly spearheaded a manned journey through this supposed dome? It makes absolutely zero sense.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 03, 2019, 04:58:28 PM
It makes absolutely zero sense.

Are you changing the subject or not?  If you're not, don't.  If you are, put all this new nonsense in a different thread so that we can keep you focused on the specific claims you've made in this one.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 04, 2019, 12:46:13 AM
Hi Onebigmonkey,

Von Braun choose an apt bible verse for his tombstone? Then surely you don’t know the Bible well. The term “firmament” I believe is only mentioned 14 times in the entire Bible. It’s means a protective dome over earth that is impenetrable. The verse he choose out of the entire Bible states the firmament did its job. How is this remotely apt for a man who supposedly spearheaded a manned journey through this supposed dome? It makes absolutely zero sense.

Your picking one word and deciding that is the significant one makes no sense, as does putting words in his mouth. Read the entire epitaph, think about why it might have been chosen by a rocket scientist.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 11:32:10 AM
Ignoring the latest diversion, let's try to see where we stand in this thread.

First, I don't think Jr Knowing understands what "regolith" means.  It's not just the dust and pea gravel.  Regolith, in lunar geology terms, is anything but bedrock.  It is granular material up to and including rocks of substantial mass.  It makes no sense to try to differentiate regolith from rocks.  Rocks are part of the regolith.  That some are only partially submerged is immaterial.  While the variance in diameter generally favors smaller particles nearer the surface, this is not a reason to distinguish among dust, grains, pebbles, and stones.

The aesthetic argument seems mostly put to rest.  Jr Knowing has conceded that pre-Apollo photographs of the lunar surface are consistent with Apollo photography, and that all of that is markedly distinct from the prevailing artistic impression.  He has raised the question of whether pre-Apollo photographs are authentic, but it is unclear whether he is advancing a hypothesis that they are fake.  If so, he has provided no evidence to support such an affirmation.

Jr Knowing has claimed the regolith is of uniform depth and insinuates that this is suspicious.  He seems to have drawn this conclusion merely on a casual observation of photographs.  He has provided no further elucidation of method, nor a response to other data indicating the regolith is many meters deep -- not the mere centimeters he insinuates -- and that the depth varies greatly.  It is likely this line of reasoning suffers from the aforementioned misconception of what regolith is.  In any case, this point remains open.  His claim has been rebutted and he has not rejoined it.

The argument based on the incorrect premise of dust particles behaving as an aerosol seems to have been abandoned.  Jr Knowing has conceded his erroneous concept of projectile velocity, and seems to have accepted the rebuttal from ballistics showing why dust will gather preferentially around the base of protruding rocks.

Gillianren's astute comments went entirely unaddressed.  Jr Knowing quoted her, but then launched into an irrelevant, unsubstantiated diatribe filled with baseless accusations.  Her rebuttal of his proposal presently stands without substantial rejoinder.  [ETA This is a point she brought up in the lunar module thread, not this thread.  I inadvertently included it in this summary.]

What is wanted here, then, seems to be:

Jr Knowing:  do you intend to continue the debate on these points, or shall we consider it an argument you've resigned from?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 04, 2019, 11:50:43 AM
Hi Onebigmonkey,

Von Braun choose an apt bible verse for his tombstone? Then surely you don’t know the Bible well. The term “firmament” I believe is only mentioned 14 times in the entire Bible. It’s means a protective dome over earth that is impenetrable. The verse he choose out of the entire Bible states the firmament did its job. How is this remotely apt for a man who supposedly spearheaded a manned journey through this supposed dome? It makes absolutely zero sense.

Lots of people today just use "firmament" as a synonym for "skies" or "heavens".  They tend not to care that the ancient Hebrews thought of it as a solid dome.  Much like people use the terms "sanguine" and "melancholy" without giving any thought to the theory of the four humors.  Werner von Braun was probably one of those people.

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 04, 2019, 12:09:00 PM
Ignoring the latest diversion, let's try to see where we stand in this thread.

First, I don't think Jr Knowing understands what "regolith" means.  It's not just the dust and pea gravel.  Regolith, in lunar geology terms, is anything but bedrock.  It is granular material up to and including rocks of substantial mass.  It makes no sense to try to differentiate regolith from rocks.  Rocks are part of the regolith.  That some are only partially submerged is immaterial.  While the variance in diameter generally favors smaller particles nearer the surface, this is not a reason to distinguish among dust, grains, pebbles, and stones.

The aesthetic argument seems mostly put to rest.  Jr Knowing has conceded that pre-Apollo photographs of the lunar surface are consistent with Apollo photography, and that all of that is markedly distinct from the prevailing artistic impression.  He has raised the question of whether pre-Apollo photographs are authentic, but it is unclear whether he is advancing a hypothesis that they are fake.  If so, he has provided no evidence to support such an affirmation.

Jr Knowing has claimed the regolith is of uniform depth and insinuates that this is suspicious.  He seems to have drawn this conclusion merely on a casual observation of photographs.  He has provided no further elucidation of method, nor a response to other data indicating the regolith is many meters deep -- not the mere centimeters he insinuates -- and that the depth varies greatly.  It is likely this line of reasoning suffers from the aforementioned misconception of what regolith is.  In any case, this point remains open.  His claim has been rebutted and he has not rejoined it.

The argument based on the incorrect premise of dust particles behaving as an aerosol seems to have been abandoned.  Jr Knowing has conceded his erroneous concept of projectile velocity, and seems to have accepted the rebuttal from ballistics showing why dust will gather preferentially around the base of protruding rocks.

Gillianren's astute comments went entirely unaddressed.  Jr Knowing quoted her, but then launched into an irrelevant, unsubstantiated diatribe filled with baseless accusations.  Her rebuttal of his proposal presently stands without substantial rejoinder.  [ETA This is a point she brought up in the lunar module thread, not this thread.  I inadvertently included it in this summary.]

What is wanted here, then, seems to be:
  • A concession that the pre-Apollo photographs of the lunar surface are authentic and consistent with Apollo photography, or in the alternative, an argument why they should not be accepted as evidence to that effect.
  • Substantiation of the claim that the regolith depicted in the photograh is both thin and uniform, and a line of reasoning connecting this to some desired point; or in the alternative, a disavowal that the claim is probative of anything touching authenticity of the Apollo missions.
  • A reconciliation of the implicit contradictions in his argument, specifically that what he is claiming was attempted as a clever deception is also claimed to be blatantly obvious.

Jr Knowing:  do you intend to continue the debate on these points, or shall we consider it an argument you've resigned from?

From https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/lunar_stratigraphy/chapter_6.pdf  from table 6.1 the "soil" varies from 12.2 m(A16)--3.7 m(A12)
Also Page 3
Quote
Soil accumulation is a self-damping process such that the average accumulation rate decreases with time (Lindsay, 1972, 1975; Quaide and Oberbeck, 1975).
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 04, 2019, 12:35:23 PM
Hi Onebigmonkey,

Von Braun choose an apt bible verse for his tombstone? Then surely you don’t know the Bible well. The term “firmament” I believe is only mentioned 14 times in the entire Bible. It’s means a protective dome over earth that is impenetrable. The verse he choose out of the entire Bible states the firmament did its job. How is this remotely apt for a man who supposedly spearheaded a manned journey through this supposed dome? It makes absolutely zero sense.

Lots of people today just use "firmament" as a synonym for "skies" or "heavens".  They tend not to care that the ancient Hebrews thought of it as a solid dome.  Much like people use the terms "sanguine" and "melancholy" without giving any thought to the theory of the four humors.  Werner von Braun was probably one of those people.

Hi Von Smith,

Fair enough but the quote says the firmament showed its handy work. What handy work would that be then? Surely somebody putting this on their own gravestone would consider the implications and meaning of the phrase. This is a man who died 6 or 7 years after he sent man to the moon and these are thoughts he found the most important to convey to others on his tombstone. It's mind boggling. It is akin to Bin Laden converting to Catholicism on his death bed. Von Braun's epitaph says the firmament did its job. Full stop. And then fast forward 15 years, and Armstrong is babbling about "removing one of truth's protective layers". By this time, Armstrong is well aware some are doubting the missions yet he muddy's the waters even more with his cryptic thoughts that go unexplained. None of this makes a lot of sense.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 04, 2019, 12:50:35 PM
...
Hi Von Smith,

Fair enough but the quote says the firmament showed its handy work. What handy work would that be then? Surely somebody putting this on their own gravestone would consider the implications and meaning of the phrase. This is a man who died 6 or 7 years after he sent man to the moon and these are thoughts he found the most important to convey to others on his tombstone. It's mind boggling. It is akin to Bin Laden converting to Catholicism on his death bed. Von Braun's epitaph says the firmament did its job. Full stop. And then fast forward 15 years, and Armstrong is babbling about "removing one of truth's protective layers". By this time, Armstrong is well aware some are doubting the missions yet he muddy's the waters even more with his cryptic thoughts that go unexplained.
While Neil may been aware that some are doubting, he made the voyage in real life, not some fantasy land belief.
Quote


 None of this makes a lot of sense.

Of course it made sense, IF one takes into context what he was speaking and leave the Hoax BS aside.
Neil was a very good pilot and astronaut.  Look at his escape after a failed simulator(that all the astronauts flew) and the disastrous Gemini 8 stuck thruster, proves.  Whether he choose later comments to appease the HB crowd MIGHT be debatable, to me the speech had the air of people finding new avenues of science and uncovering truths that lie within.  Of course I am not a HB.  :)
Your comment leads me to associate you with the other misinformed HB's.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 01:03:58 PM
Okay, I guess we're finished talking about regolith and its appearance in photos.  Since Jr Knowing doesn't want to rehabilitate any of his failed arguments along those lines, his accusation of faking those photographs fails forthwith.

Surely somebody putting this on their own gravestone would consider the implications and meaning of the phrase.

People have been interpreting verses of scripture differently and applying different significance and degrees of literalism to them for thousands of years with no one "correct" meaning having emerged.  There is absolutely no reason to suppose that what you infer from a scripture must be what von Braun or anyone else infers from it.  This is probably the silliest argument you've put forward in this forum.  If you want to argue that there is something suspicious about von Braun's headstone referring to Ps 19:1, then you bear the burden to show (not merely suggest) that he or his family has the same interpretation of that verse as you do.  Anything less boils down to begging the question.

Quote
By this time, Armstrong is well aware some are doubting the missions yet he muddy's the waters even more with his cryptic thoughts that go unexplained.

It was explained as a metaphor.

Quote
None of this makes a lot of sense.

No, you're just grasping at some pretty comically farfetched straws and begging some pretty farfetched questions in order to create a handwavy appearance of impropriety.  For someone who claims he is "99% sure" the missions were real, and who has pleaded with his critics that he only wants a friendly discourse, this is some pretty desperate argumentation.  You must have some inkling of how absurd it sounds and how utterly unconvincing it is.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 04, 2019, 01:32:01 PM
Fair enough but the quote says the firmament showed its handy work. What handy work would that be then?

[snip]

Von Braun's epitaph says the firmament did its job. Full stop.

Actually it says nothing of the kind. Have you actually looked at a picture of it or just spewed forth some other crap from another conspiracy site? Von Braun's epitaph says only 'Psalms 19.1'. That is all. This is it. You are claiming an interpretation based on a whole other layer of interpretation.

Frankly it was bad enough when you tried arguing technical details. This is just absurdity elevated to a high art.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Mag40 on April 04, 2019, 01:43:23 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_19#Verses_1–6:_The_glory_of_God

1.The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/firmament/

I declare this officially as the most obtuse argument I have ever seen. This gentleman could have put "Yeah - we faked it" on his grave, or issued a deathbed confession, but no. He decided to use biblical flat earth code that only bizarrely connected hoax believers can see.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 04, 2019, 01:47:25 PM
Try this link here. It shows the many many translations of that verse of the Bible that have been published, many of which do not even use the word 'firmament'. So go on, jr, tell us exacty which version von Braun was referring to or admit your entire argument was based on literally nothing.

https://biblehub.com/psalms/19-1.htm?fbclid=IwAR1-sFNOcWM5FOtTjh9J_u6GLp3-SAyKAKxtG9LvN0MubltqpWapJADZh_Y (https://biblehub.com/psalms/19-1.htm?fbclid=IwAR1-sFNOcWM5FOtTjh9J_u6GLp3-SAyKAKxtG9LvN0MubltqpWapJADZh_Y)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 01:51:16 PM
The entire verse is just referring to the glory of God and the work he did creating everything. That's my interpretation. Why is that any less valid than yours?

Wernher von Braun felt guilty for all the Jews who died building his V-2 rocket.  Hence he chose a verse from Hebrew scripture as a secret apology to the Jewish race.  Or, he was referring to the stirring setting of that verse in Hadyn's Creation, secretly reaffirming that all Germanic peoples should remain in solidarity regardless of what wars were lost.  See, I can make up speculative crap too.  Why are my interpretations any less justifiable?

Quote
For someone claiming to be just asking questions you are determined to read a lot of crap into insignificant details.

Indeed.  These are patently absurd arguments -- arguments of sheer desperation.  I can't imagine someone who purports to want a serious discussion actually deploying these arguments to pursue one.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 04, 2019, 02:46:07 PM
The entire verse is just referring to the glory of God and the work he did creating everything. That's my interpretation. Why is that any less valid than yours?

Wernher von Braun felt guilty for all the Jews who died building his V-2 rocket.  Hence he chose a verse from Hebrew scripture as a secret apology to the Jewish race.  Or, he was referring to the stirring setting of that verse in Hadyn's Creation, secretly reaffirming that all Germanic peoples should remain in solidarity regardless of what wars were lost.  See, I can make up speculative crap too.  Why are my interpretations any less justifiable?

Quote
For someone claiming to be just asking questions you are determined to read a lot of crap into insignificant details.

Indeed.  These are patently absurd arguments -- arguments of sheer desperation.  I can't imagine someone who purports to want a serious discussion actually deploying these arguments to pursue one.

Looks like you got to my post in the literally two minutes between my putting it up and re-thinking it, so I removed a lot of what you quoted. Sorry. Still, reasonable points made.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 04, 2019, 03:21:01 PM
Quote
Hi Von Smith,

Fair enough but the quote says the firmament showed its handy work. What handy work would that be then?

The Creation, maybe?  Everything that God has made?  I'm pretty sure that the author of Psalm 19 wasn't referring to a moon hoax, and I seriously doubt von Braun and his loved ones thought he was.  So regardless of whether the decision to put "Psalm 19:1" on his tombstone makes sense to you, there does not seem to be any basis for connecting it with a moon hoax.  You need a better argument. 

Quote
Surely somebody putting this on their own gravestone would consider the implications and meaning of the phrase. This is a man who died 6 or 7 years after he sent man to the moon and these are thoughts he found the most important to convey to others on his tombstone. It's mind boggling.
  A man fascinated by space all his life quoting a Bible verse that mentions the glory of the heavens to allude to that life's work?   Seems the very opposite of mind-boggling to me.
Quote
It is akin to Bin Laden converting to Catholicism on his death bed.

No it isn't.  von Braun's upbringing was Lutheran, and the Psalms are a part of that religion's canon.

Quote
Von Braun's epitaph says the firmament did its job. Full stop.

Again, unless you are suggesting that David was in on the moon hoax, or that von Braun thought he was, no it doesn't.  At this point you are simply making stuff up.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 03:50:28 PM
Again, unless you are suggesting that David was in on the moon hoax, or that von Braun thought he was, no it doesn't.

IIRC "firmament" stopped meaning an impassible barrier in Judaism around the third or fourth century BCE.  The notion that a Lutheran is going to interpret it that way in 1977 is ridiculous.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: raven on April 04, 2019, 03:53:17 PM
I've seen better logic from Adam West's Batman, jr Knowing.
My reading is of someone with a Christian background and perhaps faith chose it to talk about knowing a creator being through their creation, specifically the sky and space. Rather fitting for someone whose most famous life's work involved space, no?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: twik on April 04, 2019, 04:01:46 PM
Hi Onebigmonkey,

Von Braun choose an apt bible verse for his tombstone? Then surely you don’t know the Bible well. The term “firmament” I believe is only mentioned 14 times in the entire Bible. It’s means a protective dome over earth that is impenetrable. The verse he choose out of the entire Bible states the firmament did its job. How is this remotely apt for a man who supposedly spearheaded a manned journey through this supposed dome? It makes absolutely zero sense.

jr Knowing, do you believe there is a "firmament" around the earth that is an actual protective dome? Otherwise, your stance makes no sense.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 04, 2019, 05:33:56 PM
Hi Von Smith,

You do realize Lutheranism (Von Braun's upbringing) is based on a doctrine of justification in which the words of the bible are the sole basis of truth. They take the words literally in the bible as gospel. This is how this religion came about. If anything, a Lutheran would view the word firmament in the literal sense.

Twik, no I don't believe there is a firmament. But why does that mean my stance makes no sense?  What I am saying is it makes little sense that the architect behind the manned trips to the moon would choose to use an epitaph on his tombstone that suggests the firmament did its handy work? That is what makes zero sense. 
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 05:34:34 PM
If Jr Knowing's argument is that von Braun simply meant to refer to the archaic notion of the firmament as an actual solid dome, then he doesn't need to maintain a belief in it or even argue that von Braun believed it.  It would be like me referring to Cerberus; the mythical connotation may be all I need to make my point without outright expressing an actual belief in a giant three-headed dog.  We all know what the reference means.  The difference, of course, is that Cerberus -- even as a myth -- is a pretty locked-down concept.  What "firmament" means to people who read the Bible has changed quite a bit over the years from its archaic meaning, and has even lately acquired a number of poetic or symbolic meanings.  To affirm, with no evidence whatsoever, that a certain person (now beyond our reach) must have intended only one of these meanings is irrational.

And if you want to perpetuate a debate forever without any sort of resolution, that sort of circumstance is ideal.  Jr Knowing is now in the hogs-heaven (or hogs-firmament) of conspiracy claimants.  Regardless of the actual title of this thread, he's successfully changed its subject to one that can be debated ad nauseam without any hope of a factually-supported resolution.  The only way to resolve this conclusively would be to peek into the mind of a man who's been dead for more than forty years in the hope of determining (or refuting) what he was thinking at the time he chose the verse.  The "debate" now is just endless second-guessing, assumption, and supposition on both sides.  He has thoroughly rebuffed any attempt to bring the debate back to questions that can actually be resolved, or even questions that bear the slightest resemblance to the original topic.

If you want evidence that he's not interested in a serious debate, there it is.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 04, 2019, 05:38:31 PM
What I am saying is it makes little sense that the architect behind the manned trips to the moon would choose to use an epitaph on his tombstone that suggests the firmament did its handy work? That is what makes zero sense.

I repeat, von Braun's tombstone says absolutely nothing about the firmament. It simply says "Psalms 19.1", and there have been many, many translations of that verse of the the Bible that do not use the word at all, nor say it did any kind of job. Either prove which translation is actually being referred to or concede that you have nothing to hang your argument from at all.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 05:42:38 PM
If anything, a Lutheran would view the word firmament in the literal sense.

But is that how Lutherans actually interpret that verse?  Are you a Lutheran?  If so, are you a Lutheran theologian?  Here is an exegesis of Ps 19 written by a Lutheran seminary professor.  https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2297  Reconcile it with your claim.

You keep trying to substitute supposition for fact.  Long before there were Lutherans, the Jews stopped reading that passage the way you insist it should be read.

Quote
...that suggests the firmament did its handy work?

No, that's not what the verse says.  It's a standard parallel construction, indicative of Hebrew poetry.  (I studied Hebrew and the Old Testament with a rabbi.)  The first phrase, "The heavens (shamayim) tell the glory of God" is meant to be paralleled by the second phrase, "The firmament displays his (i.e., that of God) handiwork."  The structure is even a bit chaismic.  It plays loosely with Hebrew grammar to put "heavens" at the front of the first phrase and "firmament" at the end of the second phrase, with "glories of God" transpositionally parallel to "his handiwork."  This particular structure is why some English translations (especially the one Haydn used) are awkward.

There is no correct reading of the verse that equates to "The firmament did its job."

Quote
That is what makes zero sense.

Actually it makes perfect sense, so long as one isn't bound to your torturous interpretation.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 05:44:54 PM
...that do not use the word at all,

The verse actually uses both Hebrew words that refer to the sky.  Only one of them -- the one in the second phrase -- connotes a solid dome.  The other, in the first phrase, translates loosely as "sky water."

Quote
...nor say it did any kind of job.

There is no correct reading of that verse in which the second phrase translates to "The firmament did its job."  That is completely incorrect.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 04, 2019, 05:51:18 PM
And in any case this is simply jr obfuscating and trying to turn this into some kind of philosophical debate now he has been shown utterly incapable of engaging in the discussion on any technical grounds. Desperate attempts to make the reality of Apollo hinge on actually debatable aspects rather than technical stuff he is way out of his depth on.

Of course I'd love to be proved wrong and have him go back and address the huge galring elephant in the room that is his claim about LM instability....
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 05:56:29 PM
[N]ow he has been shown utterly incapable of engaging in the discussion on any technical grounds.

Fixed that for you (FTFY).  His arguments are all the same.  He tries to bluff his way through subjects he clearly has no competence in, expects the audience to accept his made-up nonsense as an inviolable premise, then flies into a flurry of social engineering when he's invariably corrected.

Quote
Of course I'd love to be proved wrong and have him go back and address the huge galring elephant in the room that is his claim about LM instability....

...without simply restarting the argument from the beginning as if the intervening 35 pages never happened.  That, in my mind, is what hammers the nail in the coffin of his supposed sincerity.  He just wants a sort of performance art that results in him thinking he's Really Smart.  If it runs into the weeds, just start it over again.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 04, 2019, 06:52:32 PM
Hi Von Smith,

You do realize Lutheranism (Von Braun's upbringing) is based on a doctrine of justification in which the words of the bible are the sole basis of truth. They take the words literally in the bible as gospel. This is how this religion came about. If anything, a Lutheran would view the word firmament in the literal sense.


No, that does not follow.  Sola Scriptura /= literalism.  And I highly doubt that Werner von Braun believed in a solid firmament.   

Your entire line of argument here is based on supposition, and poorly-informed supposition at that. 
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 07:56:01 PM
And I highly doubt that Werner von Braun believed in a solid firmament.

No, and it ultimately doesn't matter because Jr Knowing is simply speculating why von Braun chose that verse for his tombstone.  He can't seem to tell the difference between inference and fact.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 04, 2019, 08:17:28 PM
Hi Jason/Jay/ Von Smith

Don't want to belabor this point, but Lutheran's at the time used the King James version of the Bible. It explicitly uses the term Firmament. (New Revised standards version also used now, still Firmament) And yes, I am not inside Von Braun head but, to me, Psalms 19:1 makes for an unusual epitaph.

And if Armstrong wants to rattle on about some "truth's protective layer". So be it. But don't be dismissive that it doesn't mean much. Particular in a world where "God" and "truth" are interchangeable for so many people. He said we need to remove ONE of "truth's protective layers'. Pretty specific I would say.

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 08:30:41 PM
Don't want to belabor this point, but Lutheran's at the time used the King James version of the Bible.

Irrelevant.  The original Hebrew doesn't say what you insist it says.

Quote
but, to me, Psalms 19:1 makes for an unusual epitaph.

And your opinion means absolutely nothing.  It's based on a Bible exegesis that's as piss-poor as your attempts at science, and a stilted set of assumptions and supposition that makes you look extremely desperate.  It is evidence of exactly nothing.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 04, 2019, 09:11:54 PM
Jay,

However smart you may think you are, you don't have a good understanding of theology. Firmament is actually derived from the Hebrew word Raqia found in the Hebrew Bible. And that translates into the Greek word stereoma which means a firm or solid structure.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 09:36:59 PM
However smart you may think you are, you don't have a good understanding of theology.

Nonsense.  I noticed you haven't bothered to reconcile your claims of Lutheran belief with what Lutheran theologians actually say.  That's because you can't.  You don't have the faintest clue what Lutheran belief or exegesis is regarding "firmament."  Instead you continue to rely on gaslighting and bluster.  You're wrapped up in your own little world where you're always right, regardless of what the facts say.

Quote
Firmament is actually derived from the Hebrew word Raqia found in the Hebrew Bible. And that translates into the Greek word stereoma which means a firm or solid structure.

As anyone could have found out by going to Wikipedia.  Except that you have a problem linguistically between the concepts of "derived from" and "translated as."  But because you're fixated on "firmament" and pay zero attention to the rest of the verse, strophe, and chapter of Ps 19, you still have no clue what's being said or why.  You don't actually read Hebrew and you have zero understanding of the poetic forms used in Psalms and how they would affect the meanings of words used in them.

Here is the analysis I already gave.
http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=1603.msg50033#msg50033

You've ignored it entirely because you can't answer it.  Dig into it.  Show me where I'm wrong, with your extensive "knowledge" of theology and Biblical exegesis.  Put up or shut up.

You think the phrase translates as, "The firmament did its job," which the sentiment your argument requires to make any sort of sense regarding what you're trying to pin on von Braun.  But -- again -- because you don't actually read Hebrew and don't actually know theology, you can't grasp just how factually wrong you are.  As I said, I studied Hebrew and the Old Testament with a rabbi.  You got your divinity degree from Google.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 04, 2019, 11:21:21 PM
Hi Jason/Jay/ Von Smith

Don't want to belabor this point, but Lutheran's at the time used the King James version of the Bible.

...which renders the passage in question as:  "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork" (or some variant thereof, depending on the exact version).  Nothing about the firmament having "done its job".  I'm pretty sure that the translators of the KJV didn't intend to say anything about a moon hoax, either, nor that von Braun thought they did.  So what exactly is the basis for your interpretation?

Quote
It explicitly uses the term Firmament. (New Revised standards version also used now, still Firmament) And yes, I am not inside Von Braun head but, to me, Psalms 19:1 makes for an unusual epitaph.

OK, so it's unusual.  Maybe even distinct and unique.  But how does that support your contention about how he meant to send some coded message to the world that he'd tricked them, that the firmament had "done its job" of helping him conceal a moon hoax?  That he used his epitaph on the headstone his family and friends would come to pay their respects to just to say:  "My biggest accomplishment was a lie, and you all bought it, neener neener?"

Quote
And if Armstrong wants to rattle on about some "truth's protective layer". So be it. But don't be dismissive that it doesn't mean much.

You haven't made any case that it means anything.  Do you even know what an argument is?  All you've done on this point is make unsupported (and as far as I can tell, unsupportable) pronouncements about what these random phrases must have meant to the people who used them.

Quote
Particular in a world where "God" and "truth" are interchangeable for so many people. He said we need to remove ONE of "truth's protective layers'. Pretty specific I would say.


But the issue isn't what "truth" means to "so many people"; it is what Armstrong was referring to when *he* said it.  And God, in most people's conception, neither has nor needs "protective layers" so your exegesis is silly on its face, to say nothing of fanciful and unsupported.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 04, 2019, 11:23:04 PM
Hi Jay,

I read your link to the commentary of the Lutheran professor's thoughts on Psalms 19:1. Which part of his comments conflict with what I am saying? He uses the firmament interpretation and says it is like "plexi-glass dome" covering earth.  And to many, if not most, Lutherans, live their lives on a doctrine of Justification in which the literal words of the Bible are the sole basis of truth. (I minored in Religious studies as an undergrad) 

Oh and there is that word again, truth. God, Bible, truths, all one in the same. (at least to many) It makes you wonder what Armstrong was trying to say. He says that if we can remove "ONE of truth's protective layers... there are places we can go beyond belief".  Huh? What are truth's protective layers and what specific one is he talking about? To me, he is either talking about the firmament or he is suggesting a certain truth is being withheld from the public and that truth needs to be made known in order for us as a civilization can progress "to places beyond belief". Of course this is just conjecture on my part. What is certain Armstrong felt he had to make his point cryptically for whatever reason.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 04, 2019, 11:34:02 PM
Jay,

However smart you may think you are, you don't have a good understanding of theology. Firmament is actually derived from the Hebrew word Raqia found in the Hebrew Bible. And that translates into the Greek word stereoma which means a firm or solid structure.

OK, so what?   Lots of words derive from other words that have very little to do with their current usage and meaning.  It is simplistic and wrong to think you can construe a modern speaker's meaning from an etymology.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 04, 2019, 11:45:59 PM
Which part of his comments conflict with what I am saying?

Where he points out that the firmament is not impermeable and where he introduces his discussion of the second strophe by labeling the previous strophe as metaphorical.  Why would you then claim that Lutherans must interpret v. 1 literally?  The two key concepts in your desired exegesis were directly contradicted by a Lutheran.

Quote
Lutherans, live their lives on a doctrine of Justification in which the literal words of the Bible are the sole basis of truth.

No, you confused literalism with sola scriptura.  Luther advocated a natural reading of the Bible, but understood that turns of phrase, figures of speech, and so forth would be encountered and were not to be taken literally.  Hebrew poetry is nothing but figures of speech.

Further, the Jews themselves abandoned the literal interpretation of רָקִיעַ in about 300 BCE.  Your stilted examination of this cosmological concept doesn't even have one solitary interpretation in Judaism, much less Christianity.  Further, Luther specifically introduced the psaltery by saying the psalms should have a distinctly Christian interpretation, by which he meant in light of the New Testament.  By the common era, no such interpretation of "firmament" prevailed.

Quote
It makes you wonder what Armstrong...

Look how eager you are to change the subject.  Let's stick with von Braun, Lutheranism, and Hebrew poetry for now.  You were all excited to school me from Wikipedia about the Hebrew underpinnings of "firmament."  I devoted a fair amount of analysis to the textual apparatus that -- in this verse -- equates רָקִיעַ with שָּׁמַיִם.  That's not a literal equation, of course, but merely one that works here to create the poetry.  That's why the actual Lutheran author I cited (not a self-proclaimed religious-studies minor) can accurately describe the usage here as metaphorical.

And predictably you left out the most important part of the analysis.  You keep insisting on translating וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדָיו, מַגִּיד הָרָקִיעַ as (loosely) "The firmament did its job."  That is not at all what the sentence says.  But that is the meaning it has to have in order for you to pin nefarious intent on von Braun, so that's the meaning you give it -- grammar and structure be damned.

Now go back and try again.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 04, 2019, 11:47:27 PM
Hi Jay,

I read your link to the commentary of the Lutheran professor's thoughts on Psalms 19:1. Which part of his comments conflict with what I am saying? He uses the firmament interpretation and says it is like "plexi-glass dome" covering earth.  And to many, if not most, Lutherans, live their lives on a doctrine of Justification in which the literal words of the Bible are the sole basis of truth. (I minored in Religious studies as an undergrad) 


...in which case you know that the last sentence is rubbish.  Sola Scriptura is not the same thing as literalism.  Nor is it a doctrine that the Bible is the "sole basis of truth", only that it is the sole basis for the *rule of faith*, which is not the same thing.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 05, 2019, 12:06:56 AM
You guys are getting mixed up. Sola Fide, Justification of Faith alone. And for Lutherans (unlike some other religions), it is the Bible and only the Bible which forms the basis of this faith. And for the majority of Lutherans they take a literal view of the teachings of the Bible.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 12:12:37 AM
And for Lutherans (unlike some other religions), it is the Bible and only the Bible which forms the basis of this faith.

And that's not literalism.

Quote
And for the majority of Lutherans they take a literal view of the teachings of the Bible.

Except where it's inappropriate to do so, such as when the usage is a poetic turn of phrase.

My, my, how far we are from photographs of lunar regolith and spacecraft stability.  You can't talk about the actual facts of the Apollo missions so you've shuttered yourself behind a vague, pontificatory fairy tale of what secret messages Wernher von Braun must have left on his tombstone.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 05, 2019, 12:19:42 AM
You guys are getting mixed up. Sola Fide, Justification of Faith alone.


Sola fide and Sola scriptura are two different things.  As are Sola scriptura and literalism.  *You* seem to be the one getting things mixed up. 

Quote
And for Lutherans (unlike some other religions), it is the Bible and only the Bible which forms the basis of this faith. And for the majority of Lutherans they take a literal view of the teachings of the Bible.

citation needed
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 12:21:38 AM
You guys are getting mixed up.

No, we aren't.  You're trying to tell us what you think Lutheranism is.  But I get a different story from actual Lutherans who aren't on a mission to discredit a historical event with it.  Further, you're still assiduously avoiding your made-up translation of the second phrase in Ps 19:1.  You know, the sentiment that forms the front line of your attack on von Braun.  While you wind yourself up trying to play theologian (as badly as you played engineer), the Hebrew words still don't say "The firmament did its job."  Are you going to fix that, or shall we just assume you realize that it's fatal to your argument and are going to keep pretending your mistake never happened?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 12:35:30 AM
Sola fide and Sola scriptura are two different things.  As are Sola scriptura and literalism.  *You* seem to be the one getting things mixed up.

He blithely bluffed his way through aeronautical engineering.  Then he bluffed his way through ballistics and soil mechanics.  Then he bluffed his way through image analysis.  Why shouldn't we expect him to bluff his way through theology and exegesis as well?  He hasn't made a single argument yet that isn't based on bluster, bluffery, and gaslighting.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 05, 2019, 12:48:16 AM
Yes Jay the firmament did (was or is) doing it's job. God, by his handywork, had ensured it was in place full filling God's intended purpose.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 12:50:20 AM
Yes Jay the firmament did (was or is) doing it's job. God, by his handywork, had ensured it was in place full filling God's intended purpose.

No, that's not what the verse says.  Try again.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 05, 2019, 01:09:09 AM
The modern translation of the psalm does not say that the firmament 'did' its handiwork. It says 'shows his handiwork'  -  the pretty stars in the sky. Your choice of one word completely skews your interpretation. Is that deliberate?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 01:25:25 AM
The modern translation of the psalm does not say that the firmament 'did' its handiwork. It says 'shows his handiwork'  -  the pretty stars in the sky. Your choice of one word completely skews your interpretation. Is that deliberate?

Probably.  In ancient Hebrew, the operative verb here best translates as "narrates" or "tells." (cf. Gesenius) It's specifically meant to be detached from "does."  Jr Knowing's desired translation of the Hebrew words meaning "and the work [of] his hands" is as an agent.  That's wholly precluded by the grammar.  For it to be translated that way, there would have to be an adverbial which is not in the text.  As is the case with so many religious adherents, he is beginning with his desired meaning and just pretending the text supports it.  He's not translating the text.  He's just making crap up, as usual.

He doesn't really know engineering, so he just waves his hands vaguely.  He doesn't actually know image analysis, hence we get "remix the contrast."  And he doesn't actually read Hebrew, so we get the religious-sounding gobbledy-gook above.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 05, 2019, 02:28:08 AM
Hi Jason/Jay/ Von Smith

Don't want to belabor this point,

Of course you do. You'll belabour any point as long as you think it's distracting us from the pile of unanswered questions you are already accumulating.

There is nothing here to belabour. The fact remains, von Braun's headstone does not have the words on it at all. You are inferring the words he intended to have there, then further inferring some hidden meaning to the exact words you inferred he meant by trying to use their literal meaning. That isn't even close to being a sound argument.

'To you' it's a strange epitaph. Well whoopee-f***ing-do. So what?

Now get back to the actual business at hand, and address the argments you claim you want to have. Specifically, I still await your response to the outstanding questions regarding LM stability and that memo (not paper) that you claim proves it is unstable when it actually, mathematically and graphically, shows the exact opposite.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: gillianren on April 05, 2019, 02:46:13 AM
I will bet you $50 that Wernher Von Braun did not grow up using the King James Bible.  Want to take me up on that?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 05, 2019, 04:04:39 AM
Huh? What are truth's protective layers and what specific one is he talking about?

Confusing for you, is it? Look, human history is basically the story of work done to uncover the truth about how the world works. Think about how many truths have been 'hidden' until we developed the right tools. No-one knew diseases were caused by micro-organisms until we developed a microscope and saw them for the first time. No-one knew Jupiter had moons until we developed a telescope and saw them for the first time, and that led to ever increasing support for the truth of the solar system being heliocentric rather than geocentric.

Quote
To me, he is either talking about the firmament or he is suggesting a certain truth is being withheld from the public and that truth needs to be made known in order for us as a civilization can progress "to places beyond belief".

So you really don't think he might have been referring poetically to the fact that the truth about the Moon's composition and creation, which was hidden for so long behind the 'protective layer' of being too far away for us to reach throughout human history up until the second half of the twentieth century, was found by actually going there for the first time? To the way we 'removed a protective layer' of distance by developing the technology that allowed us to cross that distance and set foot on it? By collecting and analysing material that up until then we could only conjecture about? You really don't see that as a more likely meaning from the guy who was the first to make that step onto the surface and pick up the stuff we couldn't get to until then?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 05, 2019, 04:19:38 AM
This forum is primarily dedicating to exploring the science and engineering in the Apollo program as well as debunking hoaxie nonsense. It's not really a place for the philosophical discussion about an conspiracy believer's view on epitaphs on gravestones.

This is a diversion into an area that jr Knowing can try to control as there is no way to show definitively what was going through a dead man's mind when choosing an epitaph (assuming it was von Braun that chose the epitaph and not one of his family!).

If jr Knowing is determined to take this down a rabbit hole without addressing his glaring mistakes then can we close this thread down and allow him to start a new one in the Beyond Belief section, or preferably, on somewhere dedicated to this nonsense.
It's clear to me that jr knowing is nothing more than yet another hoaxie with a bad case of crank magnetism (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crank_magnetism). Having had his arse handed to him on a plate he clearly has no intention of addressing the glaring gaps in his "thinking" but wants to "bait and switch" into crankiest of crank discussions.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on April 05, 2019, 06:38:03 AM
I will bet you $50 that Wernher Von Braun did not grow up using the King James Bible.  Want to take me up on that?

:D

Quote
Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, und die Feste verkündigt seiner Hände Werk.

1912 Lutheran https://www.biblestudytools.com/lut/passage/?q=psalm+19:12-13;+psalm+19:1
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Halcyon Dayz, FCD on April 05, 2019, 08:29:37 AM
An old-timey Prussian Lutheran would use Luther's translation.

Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, und die Feste verkündigt seiner Hände Werk.

(For some reason Himmel is plural here.)


Except that you have a problem linguistically between the concepts of "derived from" and "translated as."
AKA etymological fallacy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Von_Smith on April 05, 2019, 09:57:40 AM
Yes Jay the firmament did (was or is) doing it's job. God, by his handywork, had ensured it was in place full filling God's intended purpose.

No, that's not what the verse says.  Try again.

The funny thing about all this talk about literalism is that it is self-defeating.  jK's entire hypothesis here relies on the notion that von Braun was using the verse as a metaphor for something it doesn't literally refer to at all.  The author of Psalm 19 wasn't literally referring to concealing the moon landing hoax, nor would von Braun have thought he was.  Using it that way necessarily involves construing the passage metaphorically.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 09:59:19 AM
For some reason Himmel is plural here.

Because it's plural in the Hebrew.  Or more accurately, a dual.  Hebrew has three numbers for nouns:  singular, dual, and plural.  So does ancient Greek.  Mayim means "[two] waters," and the word Luther renders as die Himmel, shamayim, derives from it -- the "[two] sky waters."  English translators also translate shamayim as "heavens" instead of "heaven."  Even today, we in English use a poetic plural, e.g. "The heavens opened" to indicate rain, probably irrespective of the question of translation from Hebrew.  Number in Hebrew doesn't always connote cardinality.  Here it's more likely to be a "majestic" dual.  Making something dual or plural -- even when it's clearly singular (or where number is meaningless) -- endows the word with greater importance and power.  The jury of Semitic linguistics is still pondering whether that's the case for mayim.  In any case t's up to the translator to decide what to say in a language that has different conventions.  For example, the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is also a dual.    It literally refers to the two Egypts because back then the notion of Egypt was as a late unification of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms.  Now the translator could easily adopt a construct such as what we mean when we say "The Americas," but that would be confusing.  So he just uses the concept familiar to English speakers -- one Egypt.

You point out the etymological fallacy, which is quite pertinent to the discussion, but it wasn't exactly where I was going with that.  Putting together two words, say sha + mayim, to create a new word is an example of a derivation.  The Gesenius lexicon for Hebrew is immaculately researched on points like this.  The derived word isn't always meant forever to be a concrete combination of its constituents.  "Mortgage" doesn't literally mean "death pledge," although that's what you'd think if you tried to define it solely by the constituents from which it was derived.  In Hebrew as in English, the derived word takes on a meaning of its own, and may take on meanings for symbolic or poetic purposes that have nothing to do with its derivation.  I could write, "We've mortgaged our future by a short-sighted energy policy," and that would use "mortgage" to mean a diminishment of use or potential.

Translation is different.  The path that arrives at the Hebrew word shamayim can be wholly different than the path that arrives at the English "heaven."  Each of these words has its own derivation according to its prototypical languages or related languages.  Each brings with it a certain linguistic baggage.  At some point, however, a translator decides that there is enough congruence between the two present meanings of those words that one can stand for another.  To say "heavens" derives from shamayim (or, for that matter, that "firmament" derives from raqqiya) is misleading.  No, it's outright incorrect.  We've decided that the English word "firmament" is the best word to represent the Hebrew word raqqiya.  That has nothing do with how either "firmament" or raqqiya was derived.  Amusingly, Jr Knowing insists that shamayim and raqqiya must be distinct and that "firmament" and "heavens" must also be distinct.  He's all at sea when it comes to understanding how Hebrew poets write.  The structure of Ps 19:1 (actually it's v. 2 in the Hebrew numbering) mandates that shamayim and raqqiya must -- here, at least -- evoke a common image.  And to throw a wrench in the works, "heavens" is a term in Elizabethan theater meaning the removable ceiling over the thrust stage.  As you might expect, Jr Knowing is simply making up stuff to suit his purposes.

Along those lines, in his rush to tell us the limitations of the "firmament," he has told us that raqqiya means a solid dome.  That's true enough.  It doesn't have to be dome-shaped; it can be flat surface such as a desert floor.  It's derived from a root meaning to beat out or flatten as with a mallet.  Less often it can mean a figurative "extent," or also the title of the James S.A. Corey novel series.  That would be an example of a meaning that transcends its literal derivation.  In very ancient Hebrew cosmology, though, it means dome-shaped, and it conveys solidity.  We refer to the other extra-Biblical meanings to help inform us what nuances might apply to a Bible reading.  But Jr Knowing took solidity also to mean it was impenetrable, impermeable.  That is not a connotation of raqqiya.  That's certainly what he needs it to mean in his von Braun fantasy, but in very old Hebrew cosmology the firmament is certainly permeable because that's how you get rain.  And the Lutheran commentator to which I referred him said as much.  That's probably why Jr Knowing has been evasive about that.  There is absolutely nothing in Hebrew cosmology or Lutheran exegesis that says the raqqiya is impenetrable.

The final laugh comes, as Von_Smith has just noted, when you see the contradiction in his recent approach.  Jr Knowing has fallen all over himself telling us that von Braun, as a good Lutheran, would have read the Bible literally, and that this means he would have considered the "firmament" to be impenetrable.  But when I ask Jr Knowing to render the verse literally from the Hebrew to support his paraphrase, "the firmament did its job," he can't do it.  He has to lapse into a figurative (and wholly ungrammatical) rearrangement of the concepts in the verse to arrive at his desired meaning.  The only way he can get the verse to mean what his argument requires it to mean is to paraphrase it and radically change its meaning, not read it literally.  That's probably why he evaded my requests for so long that he do so.  Once he did, his hand was tipped.

Rest assured Jr Knowing's linguistic and theological skill is just as inadequate as his engineering skill.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Echnaton on April 05, 2019, 10:35:20 AM
I will bet you $50 that Wernher Von Braun did not grow up using the King James Bible.  Want to take me up on that?
No way! LOL

Stating that a German speaking Lutheran born in the early 20th century in a town that is now in Poland actually grew up reading an English language bible is mind boggling ignorant on jr Knowing's part.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 05, 2019, 10:55:40 AM
<snip for brevity>
Rest assured Jr Knowing's linguistic and theological skill is just as inadequate as his engineering skill.

We should get back to discussing regolith rather than religious beliefs, IMO
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: gillianren on April 05, 2019, 11:03:38 AM
Y'all just don't want me to get the $50.  I see how it is.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Echnaton on April 05, 2019, 11:35:54 AM
Y'all just don't want me to get the $50.  I see how it is.
I'm a spoil sport. It is in my nature so I just can't help it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 11:53:33 AM
We should get back to discussing regolith rather than religious beliefs, IMO

I would love that.  Sadly, short of heavy-handed moderation, there is no way to get Jr Knowing to stick to a subject he assiduously wants to avoid.  When he first brought up the von Braun tombstone, I voted to disregard it and stick with the regolith discussion.  But we are individuals operating by loose consensus alone, so it really only takes one person who is interested in addressing the religious cosmology question for the distraction to work.  Then it's either follow, or sit on the sideline.  At worst this should be its own thread.  LunarOrbit likes keeping the forum topically organized.  That way those who don't want to follow don't have to.

This forum is primarily dedicating to exploring the science and engineering in the Apollo program as well as debunking hoaxie nonsense.

I certainly prefer the scientific and engineering debates, or at least debates based on observation and straightforward lines of reasoning.  They raise tractable questions, in contrast to eternal second-guessing and mindreading.  But there's no rule that says hoax claims have to attack the science and engineering.  It's perfectly legitimate to talk about "soft" things like human behavior or politics.

Quote
It's not really a place for the philosophical discussion about an conspiracy believer's view on epitaphs on gravestones.

The pertinent argument is that maybe Wernher von Braun was trying to say something by choosing that particular verse for his epitaph.  There is a subgenre of Apollo hoax claims that focus on Apollo participants' behavior after the missions and try to attribute nefarious motives to behaviors they characterize as suspicious.  Armstrong was reclusive to avoid talking about his fraud, Aldrin was driven to alcoholism by guilt, etc.  It falls into that category to argue that von Braun may have been trying to blow the whistle on his deathbed by alluding to the heavens as impenetrable.

Quote
If jr Knowing is determined to take this down a rabbit hole without addressing his glaring mistakes then can we close this thread down and allow him to start a new one...

That should happen anyway, just to facilitate organizing the information we contribute to this site.

Quote
Having had his arse handed to him on a plate he clearly has no intention of addressing the glaring gaps in his "thinking" but wants to "bait and switch" into crankiest of crank discussions.

This is all ego driven.  He's trying to find a subject on which he can pontificate without having his arse handed to him.  The problem is that he relies so much on bluff and bluster instead of actual knowledge that he's always going to run into someone who can hand him the particular arse-cheek he waves.

As I attempted to summarize yesterday, he is really out of premises in this thread.  They've all been refuted, and he's even conceded a few.  The only unaddressed one that remains is how he can discern the depth of the regolith just by looking at a picture of it.  It's been rebutted, but he hasn't rejoined.  There's no question his argument fails that says the photos of the surface are fake because the regolith doesn't look right.  It's been piecemeal refuted.  All that's lacking is an overarching concession of his entire point.  And we'll never get that.  It's never in the nature of a fringe theorist to respond to conclusive refutation with a decisive retraction.  I've been doing this since the mid-1990s and I've seen it happen only once.  This is because the proponent never actually changes his mind.  He keeps believing that, despite his failure to argue effectively, his claims are still somehow valid.  So this thread, as it treats photographs of the lunar regolith, is as effectively closed as it's ever going to get.  We have successfully refuted the claim, but he still believes that somehow the photos "just don't look right," and may indicate forgery.  When the belief comes first and the argument after, it's easy to keep the allure of the belief separate in one's mind from the inadequacy of the argument.  It doesn't matter in that case that there are glaring errors.

Ditto the lunar module thread.  He's reached a point where, if he doesn't address the mathematics, he can remain blissfully confident that "somehow" his fears of instability have some sort of technical foundation.  He can continue believing that his common sense trumps the math.  He has concluded that the reaction control jets themselves are causing the flow separation.  But since he is not burdened with a knowledge of flow dynamics, he can remain blissfully unaware that this is not possible.  He can continue to believe that out there, somewhere, is the paper that confirms his diagnosis of LM stability, even if he presently can't find it.

Fringe argumentation is less about establishing the point at hand than about establishing the fringe theorist as an authority, a hero.  As long as there's some path through the shell craters in his argument toward a reasonable boost in self-esteem, the exercise has succeeded for the claimant.  That's why we're talking about Hebrew poetry and Lutheran exegetics.  Jr Knowing is desperate to show he's better at something than somebody.  It doesn't matter a lot to him who or what that is.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 05, 2019, 12:12:00 PM
<snip for brevity>

Fringe argumentation is less about establishing the point at hand than about establishing the fringe theorist as an authority, a hero.  As long as there's some path through the shell craters in his argument toward a reasonable boost in self-esteem, the exercise has succeeded for the claimant.  That's why we're talking about Hebrew poetry and Lutheran exegetics.  Jr Knowing is desperate to show he's better at something than somebody.  It doesn't matter a lot to him who or what that is.

I agree with summation, and he wants attention to bolster his willfully ignorant knowledge and his ego.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 12:42:53 PM
I agree with summation, and he wants attention to bolster his willfully ignorant knowledge and his ego.

Thence also, "Hey, I just want a friendly dialectic about my questions, and you guys are just a mean hornet's nest."  Translation:  Go easy on me so it doesn't break the illusion that I'm really smart.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 05, 2019, 12:50:16 PM
I agree with summation, and he wants attention to bolster his willfully ignorant knowledge and his ego.

Thence also, "Hey, I just want a friendly dialectic about my questions, and you guys are just a mean hornet's nest."  Translation:  Go easy on me so it doesn't break the illusion that I'm really smart.

LOL  ;D
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 05, 2019, 01:01:48 PM
Hi Gillianren,

I'll take that $50 bet. I said at "the time" ie the time the Psalms 19:1 quote was put on his gravestone Lutherans were using the King James version of the bible. That was 1977 and Von Braun had been in the U.S. for 32 years. I didn't say when he was growing up. He was in the U.S. for the last 32 years of his life. What? Did he have the Saturn manuals written in German? Lets be reasonable.

And if we really want to confuse things up. And which no has brought up, Von Braun became very religious near the end of his life and joined an Evangelical Episcopalian Anglican congregation.   
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 05, 2019, 01:15:34 PM
Hey,jr. mind explaining were you got that $50,000 per lb of weight eliminated figure from and also explain why it differs so much from Tom Kelly's "Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module" book that states the bonus was set at $10,000 per lb of weight reduction?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: jr Knowing on April 05, 2019, 01:22:03 PM
Hi mako88sb,

I clearly misspoke if you are telling me you have documentation saying it was $10k not $50k per pound of weight reduction. I thought I read it was $50k. My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 05, 2019, 01:24:56 PM
Hi Gillianren,

I'll take that $50 bet. I said at "the time" ie the time the Psalms 19:1 quote was put on his gravestone Lutherans were using the King James version of the bible. That was 1977 and Von Braun had been in the U.S. for 32 years. I didn't say when he was growing up. He was in the U.S. for the last 32 years of his life. What? Did he have the Saturn manuals written in German? Lets be reasonable.

And if we really want to confuse things up. And which no has brought up, Von Braun became very religious near the end of his life and joined an Evangelical Episcopalian Anglican congregation.

I see we can add taking bets to the list of things you don't get. Gillianren's bet ws that von Braun did not grow up reading the King James Bible. To take that bet you have to take the contrary position, that he did. You are correct that you never said he grew up with the KJV, but in that case you should have refused the bet on the grounds of irrelevance, not taken it, because if you took the bet you'd lose, regardless of your position in the discussion.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 01:27:30 PM
Lets be reasonable.

Yes, let's.  Can we reasonably conclude that you have abandoned your discussion of the lunar regolith without addressing the open refutations?  Can we reasonably conclude that you know your argument on that point cannot prevail?  Can we reasonably conclude that your abandonment of it without resolution indicates an unwillingness to be honest in debate?

Quote
And if we really want to confuse things up. And which no has brought up, Von Braun became very religious near the end of his life and joined an Evangelical Episcopalian Anglican congregation.

Did they use the King James version?

You're still stuck with the problem that Ps 19:1 doesn't mean what you say it does, and never did at any time or in any language.  You pounded your fist on the table and insisted that von Braun's Lutheran (not Evangelical) background compelled him to read the scripture literally.  But the only reading of Ps 19:1 that gives your argument effect is the bastard paraphrase of it that you inflicted on us last night, which might as well have taken a machete to the original Hebrew.  You don't actually read Hebrew, do you?  You can't make your argument work without a comically inept paraphrasing of Ps. 19:1, and at this point I'm pretty sure you realize that.

And suddenly after you've been dragged kicking and screaming to what the actual Lutheran exegesis is, and flagrantly avoiding where it directly contradicts what you say Lutherans claim about this verse, now the argument shifts.  "Oh, did I say Lutheran?  I really mean Evangelical."  Once again we find you frantically trying to cover up your errors instead of admitting them and incorporating the consequences into your line of reasoning.  How pathetically dishonest you are.  And no, von Braun did not join an "Evangelical Episcopalian Anglican" congregation, as if that word salad meant anything.  First of all, "Anglican" and "Episcopalian" are at once redundant and contradictory.  Episcopalians are the manifestation of the Anglican Communion in the U.S.  You don't say both "Episcopalian" and "Anglican."  If you say "Episcopalian" it implies membership in the Anglican communion.  If you say "Anglican" it generally doesn't single out Americans, and is generally only preferred outside the U.S.  Second, although nowadays (since the late 1990s) there is an evangelical faction of Episcopalians, there was no such thing prior to 1977.

No.  First von Braun joined an Evangelical church in Texas.  Texas-style Evangelicalism has about as much to do with Anglican worship as cow manure does with crème brûlée.  Later, he became an Episcopalian -- an ordinary Episcopalian.  Two separate churches.  Two radically different kinds of church.  I'm surprised I have to explain this to a self-proclaimed religious-studies student.  Finally, von Braun viewed his accomplishments in pushing mankind deeper into space as an affirmation of his faith.  Is someone who says that likely to be someone who adopts literally the arcane, centuries-old interpretation of the verse he puts on his tombstone, or rather the metaphorical poetic interpretation of it preferred by everyone who reads the Bible since the ancient Greeks?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 01:28:35 PM
My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.

To reduce unneeded weight.  If new needs arise, you may have to add weight to meet those needs.  Where did you study aerospace engineering again?  I forgot...
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 05, 2019, 02:00:29 PM
Hi mako88sb,

I clearly misspoke if you are telling me you have documentation saying it was $10k not $50k per pound of weight reduction. I thought I read it was $50k. My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.

Sure but as Jay mentioned it was weight that could be safely lost. Or to offset unexpected weight additions such as the decision to switch to battery power instead of fuel cell technology that ended up adding about 200 lbs of weight. Btw, the original LM proposed by Grumman was 22,000 lbs. Even before the contract was won by them, NASA's insistence about more redundancy requirements quickly increased the weight to almost 30,000 lbs. So right off the bat, weight increase was already happening until it got to the point that the weight reduction program was implemented. The thing here though, is that the weight at the programs implementation did drop from about 32,800 lbs to about 30,500 lbs. However, after that, it started to rise again, with the odd lower dip but by the time of Apollo 11, it was up to 33,500 lbs. No doubt without the weight reduction program, it would have ended up even higher than that but there simply were some things about the LM's design that ended up overall adding more weight. I already mentioned the decision about switching to batteries but another big increase in weight was due the decision to use 26 gauge wire and miniature connectors for certain applications that saved hundreds of lbs of weight. However they ended up with so many issues with recurring wire breakage problems that they switched to a heavier grade of wire from LM-4 till the completion of the program..
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 02:19:48 PM
Sure but as Jay mentioned it was weight that could be safely lost. Or to offset unexpected weight additions such as...

This should be in the lunar module thread, but I guess we've given upon on all semblance of thread coherence.  So be it.

If you create a special incentive to reduce mass, you change the way people think about that particular style of optimization.  Normally the reasonable-cost effort arrives at a design that's "good enough."  The Good-Enough concept is vital in engineering.  It's what separates actual engineering from mere tinkering.  When you drum that into engineers -- and we do -- then sometimes the best way to change the thinking is to change the reward structure.  You can get engineers to optimize expensively for this or that variable.  You just ask them to.  But if you really want a high degree of optimization, you dangle a special reward.

But the goal is not to minimize mass at all costs.   The goal is to create a mass margin by removing unneeded mass.  You reduce the mass without altering the functional performance.  The whole reason you want the mass budget to have a margin is so that when functional requirements change -- and they always do -- you have a margin to invade in order to satisfy it.  In the case of the plume deflectors, the concern was the duty cycle of the downward-firing RCS thrusters and the limiting factor being the thermal load on the descent stage.  A shorter duty cycle meant the LM was more difficult to fly, which in turn meant it was less safe to fly.  The most straightforward answer was to increase the duty cycle of the RCS.  And that meant solving the thermal-loading problem in some way other than limiting how long the thruster could fire.  That's when you're glad you got rid of all the unnecessary mass, because it means you can add structure to fix the thermal loading.  You trade a little bit of your mass margin for an expanded maneuverability margin.  Deciding that one is more important than the other is the art of engineering.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 05, 2019, 02:57:48 PM
My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.

To reduce unneeded weight.  If new needs arise, you may have to add weight to meet those needs.  Where did you study aerospace engineering again?  I forgot...

One of his "teachers" must have been hunchbacked  ::)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Jason Thompson on April 05, 2019, 03:48:55 PM
My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.

When designing a payload for space flight you always want to reduce weight where possible. Not at the cost of practicality, however. So yes, Grumman did get a financial incentive to reduce weight, but weight that they could safely reduce. That's why they went for four legs instead of the original five, that's why they used mylar foil for heat shielding, that's why they eliminated the seats and reduced the size of the windows, that's why they eliminated the second docking hatch.

None of that means that if they find it necessary to add additional things as the development program progresses, such as plume deflectors, provided they don't make the thing too heavy to fly at all, they can't do it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 05, 2019, 04:05:49 PM
My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.

When designing a payload for space flight you always want to reduce weight where possible. Not at the cost of practicality, however. So yes, Grumman did get a financial incentive to reduce weight, but weight that they could safely reduce. That's why they went for four legs instead of the original five, that's why they used mylar foil for heat shielding, that's why they eliminated the seats and reduced the size of the windows, that's why they eliminated the second docking hatch.

None of that means that if they find it necessary to add additional things as the development program progresses, such as plume deflectors, provided they don't make the thing too heavy to fly at all, they can't do it.
I remember a NOVA program discussing the LM development.  All those features were mentioned along with the decision not to go with 3 legs due to possible instability on landing on a rock or a crater and the vehicle tipping over.  Those guys were really clever in the reduce the weights safely.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: twik on April 05, 2019, 04:25:17 PM
Hi Jay,

I read your link to the commentary of the Lutheran professor's thoughts on Psalms 19:1. Which part of his comments conflict with what I am saying? He uses the firmament interpretation and says it is like "plexi-glass dome" covering earth.  And to many, if not most, Lutherans, live their lives on a doctrine of Justification in which the literal words of the Bible are the sole basis of truth. (I minored in Religious studies as an undergrad) 

Oh and there is that word again, truth. God, Bible, truths, all one in the same. (at least to many) It makes you wonder what Armstrong was trying to say. He says that if we can remove "ONE of truth's protective layers... there are places we can go beyond belief".  Huh? What are truth's protective layers and what specific one is he talking about? To me, he is either talking about the firmament or he is suggesting a certain truth is being withheld from the public and that truth needs to be made known in order for us as a civilization can progress "to places beyond belief". Of course this is just conjecture on my part. What is certain Armstrong felt he had to make his point cryptically for whatever reason.

Dear Jr.

I go to a Lutheran church (actually a combo Lutheran/Anglican - "Lutherican"), and I will bet you my next paycheque not a single one of my fellow parishioners thinks the Earth is surrounded by a plexiglass-like dome.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 05, 2019, 05:06:05 PM
I go to a Lutheran church (actually a combo Lutheran/Anglican - "Lutherican"), and I will bet you my next paycheque not a single one of my fellow parishioners thinks the Earth is surrounded by a plexiglass-like dome.

Jr Knowing's argument is predicated on the notion that von Braun's religion compelled him to read the Bible literally.  If he adopted a metaphorical or figurative interpretation, then "firmament" is not in any way restricted to mean a dome -- Plexiglas or otherwise.  If von Braun lived out the end of his life as an Episcopalian, then it's a sure bet.  Episcopalians are the last people on Earth to read the Bible literally.  Or, in my experience, at all.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 05, 2019, 09:34:21 PM
And if we really want to confuse things up. And which no has brought up, Von Braun became very religious near the end of his life and joined an Evangelical Episcopalian Anglican congregation.

Most sources I have seen indicate this happened  in while at Fort Bliss, ie. 1945-1950.  Not "near the end of his life". Closer to half way through
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 05, 2019, 09:40:55 PM
My, my, how far we are from photographs of lunar regolith and spacecraft stability.  You can't talk about the actual facts of the Apollo missions so you've shuttered yourself behind a vague, pontificatory fairy tale of what secret messages Wernher von Braun must have left on his tombstone.

The main people who think there is something sinister to appropriate use of a beautiful verse as an epitaph seem to be flat Earthers.  I wonder if this is his actual stance, hidden behind obfuscation about regolith, thrusters, hidden meanings behind epitaphs, and conspiracy theories about Gene Shoemaker and Neil Armstrong?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 07, 2019, 02:04:04 PM
Hi Dalhousie,

 While it is debatable what he meant, many point to the fact he is talking about the firmament. Truth is God. And one of God's protective layers was the firmament in the bible that that is a protective layer over earth that can't be penetrated. While I personally don't believe there is a firmament, Neil was a very religious man. So if he is referring to the firmament he is suggesting that we cannot go the moon.

(And while all this may seem crazy, Wernher Von Braun, the man behind the Saturn program, also bizarrely on his own tomb stone puts only one thing on it, Psalms 19:1 ... "the firmament sheweth its handywork". Of the 4 or 5 billion people on earth at the time, Von Braun, given he sent a manned rocket to the moon, he should have been the very, very, very, very, very, very last one on earth to put something like this on his tombstone but he did. Completely bizarre)
 

I think you should take the time to read Jim Irwin's "To Rule the Night" and Charlie Dukes "Moonwalker". Both men were(Irwin)/are also very religious and they both said that their experiences on the moon strengthened their convictions about the existence of God. While you're at it, read Tom Kelly's Moon Lander book. You also might want to take the time to go through all the Apollo mission reports that are available online. So far that I know, every single supposed proof about hoaxed landings has been debunked, most of it quite easily. Of course the big problem with "your side" is the unwillingness to recognize how flawed the whole conspiracy is and how it would have been impossible to pull it off, never mind keep it from being discovered during the past 5 decades. 
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: gillianren on April 07, 2019, 06:16:32 PM
I'm going to emphasize "impossible," because that is just literally true.  We don't have the technology now to fake the Apollo missions the way they appear.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 08, 2019, 12:42:13 AM
Ignoring lateral velocity and assuming a vacuum, a particle traveling vertically upward from the lunar surface starting at velocity v will be slowed by acceleration -a.  The signs on the variables are different ....
You're right of course, but there is a much simpler way to explain it: conservation of energy. The moon has no atmosphere, so there is no atmospheric drag and no mechanism by which an object moving above the lunar surface can lose energy. So if it was launched from the surface without enough velocity to escape, then it must fall and hit with all the kinetic energy it had when leaving. The only possible difference would be if the impact site was at a different altitude than where it left the surface.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 08, 2019, 01:05:30 AM
Shoemaker died in a car crash. People do this a lot. Well, technically they only do it once, but car accidents are not infrequent and people with interesting careers are not immune to them.
I visited the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia not long after that happened. One of the locals opined a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. Shoemaker (and his wife, who survived with serious injuries) were looking for ancient impact craters, something they'd been doing for decades. They were on a remote single-lane road in the outback when they rounded a bend and saw a truck coming the other way. Shoemaker's American instincts kicked in and he swerved to the right. That wasn't the right thing to do in Australia.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 08, 2019, 01:52:02 AM
When designing a payload for space flight you always want to reduce weight where possible. Not at the cost of practicality, however.
If Einstein had been an aerospace engineer, he probably would have said something like "Everything should be as light as possible, but no lighter."
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 08, 2019, 01:58:30 AM
These are not clouds in the sense of clouds of dust on Earth.  They are particles that have been ejected from the lunar surface by impact at velocities high enough to achieve orbit. This requires a velocity of at least 1.87 km/s but less than lunar escape velocity of 2.38 km.
I don't think it's possible for an object to be placed into orbit with a single impulse from the surface. It could escape with sufficient velocity, but otherwise it would have to hit the surface before completing its first orbit. That could still be very far from the launching point.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 08, 2019, 04:30:19 AM
These are not clouds in the sense of clouds of dust on Earth.  They are particles that have been ejected from the lunar surface by impact at velocities high enough to achieve orbit. This requires a velocity of at least 1.87 km/s but less than lunar escape velocity of 2.38 km.
I don't think it's possible for an object to be placed into orbit with a single impulse from the surface. It could escape with sufficient velocity, but otherwise it would have to hit the surface before completing its first orbit. That could still be very far from the launching point.

You are assuming that it material ejected from an impact can be equated to a single impulse launch.  Since material does end up in orbit from an impact even, clearly it's more complex than that.  Remember that the Moon is thought to have form from a giant impact, as possibly are Phobos and Deimos.  Dust clouds from impact have been observed round the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn as well. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14479


It's how the Moon is thought to have been formed.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 08, 2019, 09:46:00 AM
In a two-body sense, I think it would be difficult for a single impulse.  But when matter reaches an altitude that Earth and solar gravity has a significant effect, then you can begin to expect orbits.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 08, 2019, 10:10:50 AM
In a two-body sense, I think it would be difficult for a single impulse.  But when matter reaches an altitude that Earth and solar gravity has a significant effect, then you can begin to expect orbits.

Difficult but not impossible, IIRC there have been some 15-20 Lunar meteorites discovered in the Antarctic.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ApolloEnthusiast on April 08, 2019, 11:21:17 AM
In a two-body sense, I think it would be difficult for a single impulse.  But when matter reaches an altitude that Earth and solar gravity has a significant effect, then you can begin to expect orbits.

Difficult but not impossible, IIRC there have been some 15-20 Lunar meteorites discovered in the Antarctic.
Those would fall under the escape velocity that ka9q mentioned, I believe. 

Unless I'm mistaken, I think what he was saying is that even with velocity sufficient for lunar orbit, the angle would either be to steep or too shallow, and in either case result in an "orbit" that impacts the surface.  From what Jay was saying, it sounds like Solar and Earth gravity can potentially provide the course corrections necessary to place the an object into a stable orbit.

I am speculating however, and welcome correction if I've misunderstood.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 08, 2019, 11:28:36 AM
Difficult but not impossible, IIRC there have been some 15-20 Lunar meteorites discovered in the Antarctic.

That would be an example of something that escaped lunar gravity.  A closed orbit from any single impulse would likely impact the Moon.  In fact, I think this can be proven mathematically.  You need a second impulse.  For powered ascent, the velocity vector changes either constantly, or at least once subsequently.  So you go up for a while, then you go downrange for a while.  That's equivalent to multiple impulses.  It results in a velocity state that's consistent with a useful closed orbit.  This is why we have to invoke restricted n-body solutions to explain impact ejecta in lunar orbit -- N bodies because anything more than two is an iterative problem, and restricted because we ignore the gravitational effect of dust on the Moon.

An ejectum might rise high enough that Earth's gravity tugs at it just enough to circularize its orbit.  It would be a razor's edge between falling back down to the lunar surface and going into some sort of (open or closed) orbit around the Earth.  Or possibly even the Sun, in even rarer cases.  I would expect this to apply to only a tiny percentage of ejecta, and I think the tenuous clouds are consistent with that.  Particles can also accumulate in the stable Langrange points, depending on their velocity state.

ETA:  Ninja'ed by the newcomer.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ApolloEnthusiast on April 08, 2019, 12:10:26 PM
ETA:  Ninja'ed by the newcomer.
I got in faster but you certainly said it better lol
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 08, 2019, 12:22:33 PM
Difficult but not impossible, IIRC there have been some 15-20 Lunar meteorites discovered in the Antarctic.

That would be an example of something that escaped lunar gravity.  A closed orbit from any single impulse would likely impact the Moon.  In fact, I think this can be proven mathematically.  You need a second impulse.  For powered ascent, the velocity vector changes either constantly, or at least once subsequently.  So you go up for a while, then you go downrange for a while.  That's equivalent to multiple impulses.  It results in a velocity state that's consistent with a useful closed orbit.  This is why we have to invoke restricted n-body solutions to explain impact ejecta in lunar orbit -- N bodies because anything more than two is an iterative problem, and restricted because we ignore the gravitational effect of dust on the Moon.

An ejectum might rise high enough that Earth's gravity tugs at it just enough to circularize its orbit.  It would be a razor's edge between falling back down to the lunar surface and going into some sort of (open or closed) orbit around the Earth.  Or possibly even the Sun, in even rarer cases.  I would expect this to apply to only a tiny percentage of ejecta, and I think the tenuous clouds are consistent with that.  Particles can also accumulate in the stable Langrange points, depending on their velocity state.

ETA:  Ninja'ed by the newcomer.

Fair enough, since there have been so few found on earth so far. :)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 08, 2019, 05:58:31 PM
There will be complex collisions between particles in the ejecta plume as well.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: VQ on April 08, 2019, 09:23:10 PM
That would be an example of something that escaped lunar gravity.  A closed orbit from any single impulse would likely impact the Moon.  In fact, I think this can be proven mathematically.  You need a second impulse.  For powered ascent, the velocity vector changes either constantly, or at least once subsequently.  So you go up for a while, then you go downrange for a while.  That's equivalent to multiple impulses.  It results in a velocity state that's consistent with a useful closed orbit.  This is why we have to invoke restricted n-body solutions to explain impact ejecta in lunar orbit -- N bodies because anything more than two is an iterative problem, and restricted because we ignore the gravitational effect of dust on the Moon.

An ejectum might rise high enough that Earth's gravity tugs at it just enough to circularize its orbit.  It would be a razor's edge between falling back down to the lunar surface and going into some sort of (open or closed) orbit around the Earth.  Or possibly even the Sun, in even rarer cases.  I would expect this to apply to only a tiny percentage of ejecta, and I think the tenuous clouds are consistent with that.  Particles can also accumulate in the stable Langrange points, depending on their velocity state.

ETA:  Ninja'ed by the newcomer.

The moon is also only approximately a homogeneous sphere. Mass concentrations destabilize circular low lunar orbits; presumably they also could perturb elliptical ones to be non-surface intersecting, at least temporarily?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 09, 2019, 07:55:04 AM
An ejectum might rise high enough that Earth's gravity tugs at it just enough to circularize its orbit.
The opposite (an impact) seems more likely. Lunar orbits are notoriously chaotic and unstable; look at the Apollo handbooks for an analysis of various premature shutdowns of the CSM SPS during lunar orbit insertion. IIRC, despite the delta-V being less than a nominal LOI, some scenarios actually ended with eventual lunar impact because of the the earth's gravitational perturbations during the high nearside pass.

Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 09, 2019, 12:00:22 PM
The opposite (an impact) seems more likely. Lunar orbits are notoriously chaotic and unstable; look at the Apollo handbooks for an analysis of various premature shutdowns of the CSM SPS during lunar orbit insertion. IIRC, despite the delta-V being less than a nominal LOI, some scenarios actually ended with eventual lunar impact because of the the earth's gravitational perturbations during the high nearside pass.

That's a good point.  Overshadowing all this is the notion that there just isn't any sort of passive, long-term stable orbit around the Moon, no matter how carefully it's established to begin with.  Orbits that begin stable will soon become unstable.  I don't mean to suggest that Earth's gravity influence will convert a random trajectory into a circular orbit.  It just has to circularize it enough that the periapsis is safe for some number of revs, so that the ejecta doesn't all just fall back to the surface within a couple hours.  My interpretation of the LADEE findings is that the persistent dust clouds persist because they're being constantly refreshed by new impacts.  My handwaving toward n-body dynamics is meant to suggest a fairly complex orbital system sustaining these clouds, the details of which I haven't thought through or read about completely yet.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: raven on April 09, 2019, 12:10:39 PM
I wonder if photon pressure would also have an effect in helping to keep them in orbit.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 09, 2019, 12:59:45 PM
I wonder if photon pressure would also have an effect in helping to keep them in orbit.

If so, a very small effect, I should think.  It's more pronounced for things like artificial satellites whose solar arrays present more of a "sail" surface compared to their mass.  But at the same time, any of the classic perturbation effects should be considered, at least in theory.  The proper interpretation of the dust in the lunar exosphere, I think, is not that this is a persistent cloud of particles that's been there for billions of years, but that it's a persistent set of effects that creates an ongoing, transitory phenomenon.  Dust stays there, not necessarily strictly in orbit, but affected by gravity, electromagnetism, light, collisions, etc. so as to create zones of consistently higher dust concentrations.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 09, 2019, 02:58:17 PM
Hi mako88sb,

I clearly misspoke if you are telling me you have documentation saying it was $10k not $50k per pound of weight reduction. I thought I read it was $50k. My mistake but it still illustrates NASA desire to reduce weight not increase it.

What's your point?
Yes there was a need to reduce weight, but not at any costs. They could easily have taken a load of weight out by removing, say, the ascent engine. Of course, that would be nonsensical. Just as nonsensical as the claim that you are trying to reach for here......they were weight in thermal protection to the legs be wise they thought that they needed it.
Your claim is preposterous. If they were perpetrating a hoax then why on earth would they add thermal protection after stacking for something that never landed? Like the vast majority of hoax claims it is ridiculous when examined.

One other thing.....you have not responded to the many outstanding questions, yet you continue to visit. You were online today, for example. You appear to be getting ready for another stealth flounce now you realise that you cannot answer your interlocutors; hoping to do another crank reset by reappearing later in the hope that your outstanding questions will be forgotten; or you are chortling "hur, hur, hur" at all the attention that you have received.
Which is it?
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 09, 2019, 05:56:35 PM
Your claim is preposterous. If they were perpetrating a hoax then why on earth would they add thermal protection after stacking for something that never landed?

And thereby inviting additional scrutiny and possible suspicion.  Not that what they were doing was at all suspicious as far as the industry is concerned.  But if they were trying to pull off something, why would they do something they would have to explain to people who, like Jr Knowing, wrongly thought post-rollout changes indicated a problem if not an outright no-no.  Why do anything expected or extraordinary?

So many of the hoax claims boil down to random nitpicks with no better narrative than the conventional one.  The claimant notices something and says, "That's not a credible way to fly a space mission."  Okay, granting that arguendo, how is it a plausible way to hoax a space mission?  Enlightenment requires more than just a knee-jerk reflex from "anomaly" to "hoax."

Quote
You were online today, for example.

And at least four separate times yesterday.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 10, 2019, 02:35:11 AM
If so, a very small effect, I should think.  It's more pronounced for things like artificial satellites whose solar arrays present more of a "sail" surface compared to their mass.
The 2/3 power law is very important here. Dust is much more affected by radiation pressure than larger objects, even when the materials are the same.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 10, 2019, 02:38:31 AM
IIRC, the Apollo astronauts made observations that implied a very thin dust cloud around the moon, at least near the terminator. They saw scattered sunlight coming around the limb when they were in darkness. There's also strong evidence that the laser retroreflectors have accumulated significant dust; the Apache Point return signal strength measurements are consistently > 10 dB less than predictions.

I think the hypothesis was some form of electrostatic charging, but I haven't heard anything definite.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Dalhousie on April 10, 2019, 04:04:50 AM
IIRC, the Apollo astronauts made observations that implied a very thin dust cloud around the moon, at least near the terminator. They saw scattered sunlight coming around the limb when they were in darkness. There's also strong evidence that the laser retroreflectors have accumulated significant dust; the Apache Point return signal strength measurements are consistently > 10 dB less than predictions.

I think the hypothesis was some form of electrostatic charging, but I haven't heard anything definite.

Dust may move round on the lunar surface through electrostatic processes, however the orbital dust clouds are something quite different.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 10, 2019, 05:14:43 AM
Is "orbital" the right word? I can certainly believe that while even small impacts in any particular spot on the moon aren't frequent, they're happening somewhere all the time. This could raise a fairly continuous cloud of suborbital dust particles, ie., microscopic particles of dust that fly off the surface with an impact and return after a possibly long ballistic flight over the surface. That would get around the problem that lunar orbits are chaotic and unstable.

The moon's extremely thin atmosphere is technically known as a surface-bounded exosphere, which means the mean free path is so long that the gas atoms or molecules are more likely to hit the surface than each other. This is kind of the same thing, only with slightly larger individual particles.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 11, 2019, 01:42:28 AM
[
Quote
You were online today, for example.

And at least four separate times yesterday.

His "busy travel schedule" seems to be preventing him from posting again. Strangely he's not so busy that finds himself unable to login every day though.....
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 14, 2019, 01:21:20 AM
Back online yesterday. I wonder if someone has stolen his keyboard??? ::)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 15, 2019, 03:25:20 AM
Aaannnd he's back online yesterday, but seemingly unable to have a go at answering his many unanswered questions.
Will he return? Is he a seagull poster? Maybe hoping for a fringe reset? Or should we have a whiparound to buy him a new keyboard?

So many questions..... ::)
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 17, 2019, 03:00:42 AM
So jr Knowing has visited every day since at least Saturday, yet refuses to acknowledge or answer his interlocutors.
Wilful ignorance and intellectual cowardice is not a good look. It's strange why so many conspiracy believers choose to adopt this pose.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Abaddon on April 17, 2019, 05:19:39 AM
So jr Knowing has visited every day since at least Saturday, yet refuses to acknowledge or answer his interlocutors.
Wilful ignorance and intellectual cowardice is not a good look. It's strange why so many conspiracy believers choose to adopt this pose.

I always considered that to be more of a troll attribute. You know, lob in a hand grenade and stand back to watch the reactions.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 17, 2019, 06:10:47 AM
So jr Knowing has visited every day since at least Saturday, yet refuses to acknowledge or answer his interlocutors.
Wilful ignorance and intellectual cowardice is not a good look. It's strange why so many conspiracy believers choose to adopt this pose.

I always considered that to be more of a troll attribute. You know, lob in a hand grenade and stand back to watch the reactions.

Except in this case his hand grenade merely fizzled and was promptly rammed up somewhere that jr knowing didn't want it ramming.  ;D
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ka9q on April 17, 2019, 06:12:17 AM
I think he must have counted to five before lobbing it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: ineluki on April 17, 2019, 07:23:47 AM
It's strange why so many conspiracy believers choose to adopt this pose.

Because IMHO very few "believers" are actually honest believers...
Their need to believe in a world full of conspiracies makes them immune against any kind of reason and logic.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: JayUtah on April 17, 2019, 09:08:43 AM
Here I think it's purely narcissistic.  He's checking in to see how much attention he's still being paid.  Conspiracy theories help a narcissist in two ways.  They provide something they can pontificate about and thereby pretend to be superior to the sheeple.  And conversely they provide an excuse for when they get things wrong.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Abaddon on April 18, 2019, 05:47:43 AM
I think he must have counted to five before lobbing it.

Not possible.

First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on April 18, 2019, 07:38:26 AM
That is a great movie, but I believe that our antagonist would not understand anything, since he has demonstrated no scientific understanding in all of his spam threads.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 22, 2019, 04:03:05 PM
Must be my natural optimistic belief in people. I think his absence is because he heeded my advice about reading some books on the subject! I won't let the fact that no HB has ever done so in the past dis-way me. Not that I'm aware of at any rate.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Zakalwe on April 23, 2019, 02:44:38 AM
Must be my natural optimistic belief in people. I think his absence is because he heeded my advice about reading some books on the subject! I won't let the fact that no HB has ever done so in the past dis-way me. Not that I'm aware of at any rate.

Let us know how that works out for you.... ;D
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: mako88sb on April 23, 2019, 04:31:50 PM
Must be my natural optimistic belief in people. I think his absence is because he heeded my advice about reading some books on the subject! I won't let the fact that no HB has ever done so in the past dis-way me. Not that I'm aware of at any rate.

Let us know how that works out for you.... ;D

Yeah, what was I thinking? There's a reason I only allow myself to have a couple drinks a year.   
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: MBDK on June 15, 2019, 05:25:34 PM
Wilful ignorance and intellectual cowardice is not a good look.
Although your "intellectual cowardice" is probably more accurately descriptive, when someone abandons a debate for no stated reason, I prefer to use the term "intellectual surrender".
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: onebigmonkey on June 16, 2019, 03:32:39 AM
I'm struggling with the 'intellectual' bit...
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: Abaddon on June 16, 2019, 01:09:45 PM
I'm struggling with the 'intellectual' bit...
Sure, but I am all good with the "surrender" part. I note that Willis has also vanished from UM.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bknight on June 16, 2019, 02:29:08 PM
I'm struggling with the 'intellectual' bit...
Sure, but I am all good with the "surrender" part. I note that Willis has also vanished from UM.

Yes he refuses to discuss any topic except the dust on S 3 lander and how/when it occurred.  Even though he open dialog on many of the points besides dust on the lander.  Maybe he is waiting for Jul 20 when "John" releases his documents proving a hoax.  I'm not holding my breathe as I don't believe there will be anything new or astonishing is proving a hoax.
Title: Re: Moon Rocks and the Absence of Regolith
Post by: bobdude11 on June 21, 2019, 01:36:26 PM
Hi Onebigmonkey,

Von Braun choose an apt bible verse for his tombstone? Then surely you don’t know the Bible well. The term “firmament” I believe is only mentioned 14 times in the entire Bible. It’s means a protective dome over earth that is impenetrable. The verse he choose out of the entire Bible states the firmament did its job. How is this remotely apt for a man who supposedly spearheaded a manned journey through this supposed dome? It makes absolutely zero sense.

Lots of people today just use "firmament" as a synonym for "skies" or "heavens".  They tend not to care that the ancient Hebrews thought of it as a solid dome.  Much like people use the terms "sanguine" and "melancholy" without giving any thought to the theory of the four humors.  Werner von Braun was probably one of those people.

Hi Von Smith,

Fair enough but the quote says the firmament showed its handy work. What handy work would that be then? Surely somebody putting this on their own gravestone would consider the implications and meaning of the phrase. This is a man who died 6 or 7 years after he sent man to the moon and these are thoughts he found the most important to convey to others on his tombstone. It's mind boggling. It is akin to Bin Laden converting to Catholicism on his death bed. Von Braun's epitaph says the firmament did its job. Full stop. And then fast forward 15 years, and Armstrong is babbling about "removing one of truth's protective layers". By this time, Armstrong is well aware some are doubting the missions yet he muddy's the waters even more with his cryptic thoughts that go unexplained. None of this makes a lot of sense.

But he could also have meant from the English Standard Version that has the verse as follows:
"The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork."

That, to me, is a pretty clear statement from him and referencing his involvement in the US Space program in general.