ApolloHoax.net

Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 09:17:06 AM

Title: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 09:17:06 AM
My wife bought me a nice thoughtful birthday gift today, I mean what do you get the guy you have been married to for 25 years. A tie lol, so anyways what she got me was a copy of each, the Ralph Rene one is an early edition and is even autographed. I was told it was authentic and I would like to believe it, I doubt there are to many forged ones out there unlike sports memorabilia. Anyways this is my introductory thread post or whatever you want to call it and just wanted to say Hi to everyone.

I will try and figure out how to post a pic of them later

Thanks Dean AKA Spanky ;)
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Zakalwe on August 08, 2019, 09:34:19 AM
Welcome onboard.

Do you actually believe Ralph Rene's or Bill Kaysing's guff?
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 10:56:12 AM
I don't buy everything they say hook line and sinker, but on they other hand I can't discount all what they have to say because I find they do have some valid points. Just like some of they other guys out there if you weed through there stuff they also have some valid points. I just like having these books either for a great conversation piece or for posterity, whether they are right or wrong They were the first to step forward and claim they unthinkable, which in some small part led to the creation of this very website and more. Some things in life strike funny you more than others and in my case I am an avid golfer, and what catches my attention is the famous golf shot. You cannot "Hook" or "Slice" a golf ball in a vacuum it is they air that causes that, it is referred to as they "Magnus Effect"  there are plenty of youtube videos on the subject if you are so inclined.

Spanky

PS: Both these books were bought at a church fundraiser they had all the usual stuff IE: quilts, pies, Jams, ect the books were so out of place in that setting that I took it for a sign from GOD  LOL, I asked who donated them and they did not know I would have loved to have a conversation with that parishioner.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Zakalwe on August 08, 2019, 11:25:22 AM
they do have some valid points.

Just like some of they other guys out there if you weed through there stuff they also have some valid points.

Nope and nope.
99 times out of a hundred their "valid points" are based on nothing more than ignorance. The one time that it isn't it's because they are trying to flog a book/seminar/TV show.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Kiwi on August 08, 2019, 12:46:27 PM
...the Ralph Rene one is an early edition and is even autographed. I was told it was authentic and I would like to believe it...

Welcome to ApolloHoax, Spanky. It's a good place to learn about Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and later space stuff.

I briefly corresponded with Rene back in 1995-96 when neither of us were on the internet and he was publicly known as only Rene'.

Nexus magazine had printed some excerpts from his book and because I was previously a professional photographer and had followed the space race since seeing Sputnik 1 in 1957, I was able to debunk some of his claims about photographs, but Nexus didn't print them.

Our exchange was friendly and because I sent him photos to illustrate some of my points, he kindly sent me a free copy of his book by airmail which, to New Zealand, was not cheap.

Here are some details from that original copy for you to compare.

Title page:
Quote
NASA MOONED AMERICA!
By Rene'
Edited by Stu Lucas
Drawings by Chris Wolfer
Copyright © 1994
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced [SNIP] ...and crediting the source.
Copyright © by Rene' 1992
ISBN Pending
Published by:
Rene'
31 Burgess Pl.
Passaic NJ 07055

Capitalisation and punctuation are the same. All lines are spaced so they fill the page and all but the last four lines are centered.

Inside the front cover is his signature, Rene', in black felt tip marker and sloping upward at about 45 degrees.

The front cover has the black-and-white photo AS12-49-7278 and his comments about it are on page 5. I don't think any of them were accurate, but don't have time right now to check them minutely.

Pages 6 to 10 are on glossy paper and have large but cropped-to-rectangular, high-quality colour reproductions of, in order, photos AS16-107-17446, AS16-113-18339, and AS14-66-9277.

To his credit, Rene was one early hoax-promoter who used the proper numbers for the photos. Nowadays we just collect them free on the internet.

The covers are thin white card and the book measures 280 x 217 x 12 mm. It is well-bound with four staples very close to the spine and finished with black tape.

I can probably dig out my comments and post them here if you're interested. Fellow-member JayUtah tackled some of Rene's claims here:
http://www.clavius.org/bibmilne.html

Edited to fix typos and add Clavius link.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 01:05:53 PM
That is exactly what I have too a TEE, I will try and post a pic of it later, for lack of a better term it is more in the format of a manuscript.

Spanky
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 01:06:58 PM
Working on pics
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 05:10:37 PM
I am also looking for Bill Coopers book for my collection,  if anyone has seen a a copy and could pass that along I would be eternally grateful. the book is entitled "Behold a Pale Horse"

Thanks Spanky

PS: Not to be fussy but It has to be an older copy, I don't like the fact that amazon and the like are republishing some authors works and getting away with it.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 08, 2019, 05:12:13 PM
So, why don't you tell us which "Valid points" you found in those books? I'm sure, the audience here will tell you exactly WHY those phamphlets are wrong in every way.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 05:15:45 PM
It is not in the book but my golf shot that I pointed out in my second post, is a valid point if you care to elaborate.

Dean
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Jason Thompson on August 08, 2019, 05:43:30 PM
It is not in the book but my golf shot that I pointed out in my second post, is a valid point if you care to elaborate.

Dean

Welcome to Apollohoax. I hope you enjoy it here.

Now, in what sense is yur golf shot point valid? In that it is impossible to 'slice' a golf ball in a vacuum? Well that may well be true. However, to use it as a piece of evidence for a hoax is stretching a point hugely. OK, so the capcom said Shepard's shot looked like a slice. So what? It was a bit of good-natured banter on a little piece of fun on the mission. It wasn't a professional golfing analysis of the shot. It is also impossible to hit the ball 'miles and miles and miles,' even in the reduced lunar gravity, but again, no-one was literally claiming it went that far.

There is way too much solid evidence of Apollo being real for a single over-lteral interpretation of a throaway comment on one mission to be anything resembling evidence of foul play.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 08, 2019, 06:13:46 PM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night. And from my experience even to this day there is no system available out there that could compensate for such an astronomical swing in temperature 500 Deg. Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries the current draw would be to taxing, and to add to that even if they could and I highly doubt it with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible. Then to add even more to this incredible feat of engineering to have a portable version that they can actually wear and prance around on the moon. If such a system was available after 50 years it would have made it's way into the market already, that is just the way things work.

Dean
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 08, 2019, 06:21:16 PM
ANOTHER misconception. The theoretical maximum temperature IN THE SOIL on the LUNAR EQUATOR at lunar NOON can be up there. The soil was barely above freezing at the places the Apollo missions landed, because it was in the lunar MORNING - just a few earth days after sunrise, where the sun is still very low on the horizon. It takes significant time to heat the soil up, after being in the dark for two earth weeks.

Now, the Apollo missions stayed for a maximum of about 3 earth days on the surface. They didn't spend the entire lunar day or lunar night there. The experiments left on the surface was powered by a RTG, not a battery. The LRVs used batteries, but they died a few earth days after the astronauts left in the ascent stage.

Car batteries? You mean Lead-Acid batteries? None of those were used on the Apollo missions. They used Silver-Zinc batteries. Much more energy per weight and volume.

Also, the 250 degrees you claim, WHICH degrees are you on about? Centigrades or Farenheit?

So: No car batteries. No 250 degrees (which type of degrees?) temperature.

Before you throw another old, useless claim out, please look into HOW THE MISSIONS WERE PERFORMED. A lot of your "good ideas" will perish right there. None of what you have written so far is in any way evidence, new, relevant or even logical.

And the degrees you fail to name, are farenheit.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Philthy on August 08, 2019, 06:33:09 PM
It's worth pointing out that the lunar day is two weeks long, so that also means the lunar night is also two weeks long. The Apollo missions landed during the morning, so the surface did not have sufficient time to heat up to 250F.

Phil
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 08, 2019, 06:33:39 PM
Are you talking about the batteries which powered the EVA suits? They were replaced by fresh batteries after each EVA. They had also fresh LiOH cannisters stored on the equipment pallet on the descent stage. Oxygen was replenished from the tank in the ascent stage - and cooling water too.

Those batteries were also Silver-Zinc batteries. Compact and powerful. You claim they didn't have enough power available. Then you should show us those calculations, including the power stored in the batteries, and how you calculated the power usage. If you just claim "They didn't have enough power" without EVIDENCE, you're just another parrot.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Jason Thompson on August 08, 2019, 06:40:25 PM
And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.

The temperature of what? That's not a trivial question, that's a key part of the situation. When we say it is 90 degrees here on Earth we mean the ambient atmospheric temperature. When you're bathed in air at that temperature you need a way to keep cool. If you're at the poles and in air of -50 degrees you need to keep warm. In both cases that's because the air in contact with you will transfer heat to or from you depending on the temperature it is at.

On the Moon there is no atmosphere, no ambient temperature. The extremes of temperature refer to the unar soil on the surface, and the highest temperatures are reached after up to two weeks in lunar day, and the lowest after two weeks to total darkness. Neither the LM nor the spacesuited astronaut had to contend with such temperatures. How hot or cold they get depends entirely on their own properties. The spacesuit was not white because it looked cool, but because it actually reflected solar heating. The LM is not covered in reflective material to look nice but for the same reason.

Quote
Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries

Nothing on Apollo used car batteries.

Quote
with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible.

Why would they need to recharge the batteries?
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 08, 2019, 07:07:54 PM
Actually, a standard procedure during the translunar coast, was to "top op" the charge in the LM's batteries, with electrical power from the SM's fuel cells.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Obviousman on August 08, 2019, 07:23:41 PM
Actually, a standard procedure during the translunar coast, was to "top op" the charge in the LM's batteries, with electrical power from the SM's fuel cells.

That's right, and a modified reverse procedure was used to charge the CM batteries from the LM on Apollo 13.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Count Zero on August 08, 2019, 10:02:21 PM
Howdy Spanky.  Welcome to the board!

Let's talk about the "temperature on the moon".  That phrase has led to a lot of confusion.  As you quote, the temperature on the Moon varies from -250F up to 250F.  I live in Texas, and in the summertime, the temperature gets up over 100F, so standing on the Moon must be like standing in an oven, right?

No.

If, on a hot summer day here in Texas, I walk out on the sidewalk barefoot, it's hot enough to cause pain.  If I step onto the asphalt street, I will blister my feet.  Why?  100F is less than two degrees above normal body temperature.  The solid pavement is hotter than the transparent air because it absorbs more radiant energy from the sunlight.  The light-colored concrete sidewalk may heat-up to 120-140F.  The darker asphalt may get up to 180F or more.

When we ask, "what is the temperature outside?" we are asking about the ambient temperature of the air.  On the Moon, there is no air, so when we ask about the temperature there, we are asking about the temperature of a specific object on the surface; a patch of dirt, a rock, a camera or an astronaut's spacesuit (and specifying whether it is the side facing towards or away from the Sun).  Note that this varies:   In my above example, the sidewalk was ~130F, but the asphalt was 180+ F.  When a textbook says that it gets up to 250F on the Moon, it is referring to the surface of a black, solid object with its face perpendicular to the Sun at local noon

The actual lunar surface is not black:  It's about the same shade as asphalt (not the fresh-laid black stuff, but rather the dark/medium grey color it fades to after a few years).  It heats up to roughly 200F.  Mind you, the Moon is the same average distance from the Sun as the Earth.  All things being equal, lunar regolith and asphalt should reach the same temperature.  However, the asphalt is cooled somewhat because the air in contact with the pavement conducts away some of the heat (we can see it doing this:  it causes the shimmering effect when we look across a hot parking lot).  Also, daylight only last ~12 hours on Earth, but it's 14 days from sunrise to sunset on the Moon.

I said before that the pavement here in Texas can get up to ~180F.  However, on a summer day I can go outside and walk on it barefoot with no discomfort.  How?  It's simple:  I do it at 8:00am, before it gets anywhere near that hot.  The Apollo astronauts did the same thing:  They landed when the rising sun was only ~10 degrees above the horizon and the surface temperature was ~30F.  When they left three days later (on the longest missions), the sun was still only half-way up the sky, and the surface temperature was a bit over 100F (yes, NASA did have the technology to make insulated shoes in the 1960s  :)).

(Allow me to state the blindingly obvious:  The surface starts out cold because it has spent all night radiating its heat into space.  As someone else already pointed out, when a surface is in the sun, it absorbs light based on its reflectivity (more reflective absorbs less energy) and its angle to the sun (a perpendicular angle to the light absorbs more than an oblique angle).  When the same surface is shaded from the sun, it radiates heat as efficiently as it absorbs it - a black surface radiates faster than a light one.)

For astronauts, heat management is a crucial issue that requires careful engineering, whether they are on the Moon or in Earth orbit - Remember, they are at the same average distance from the Sun.  In fact, the Earth is more reflective than the Moon, so astronauts & spacecraft in Earth orbit get more reflected energy than those on the Moon (even though the surface is much further away, there's a lot more area doing the reflecting).  For spacecraft & spacesuits (which can be thought of as mini-spacecraft), the engineering solution is basically the same:  Keep as much of the outside heat out and control the heat that's being generated on the inside to maintain comfortable levels.

Outside heat from direct & reflected sunlight is kept out by using a reflective outer layer, backed up by layers of insulation.  When you look at the flimsy-looking outer covers of the Lunar Module, you're only seeing the reflective skin that covers the actual structural members and pressure vessels beneath.  Interestingly, Middle Eastern nomads developed the same principle centuries ago:  Those volumous white robes they wear serve the same function, and work better than shorts and a t-shirt to keep them cool in the desert.

Inside, heat is generated by electronics and by the astronauts themselves.  On full-size spacecraft, most of the heat comes from electronics, and any excess goes to shielded radiators on the hull (on Apollo 13, when they lost power, they shut down the electronics and therefore their main heat source, which is why it got so cold).  Men doing geology on the Moon, and building the International Space Station in orbit are basically doing heavy work for hours in an airtight rubber suit.  Beneath the rubber, they wear something like long underwear that has a whole network of tubes.  They pump water through the tubes to something called a porous-plate sublimator, which carries the heat away to space. 

The smaller pieces of equipment on the Moon, such as cameras and experiment packages mainly relied on reflective outer casings.  In these cases, keeping the dark lunar dust off of them was a major concern.  On the EVA videos, you can hear some exasperation from the astronauts after the umpteenth request from Houston to dust-off the TV camera because it's overheating.  Of course, the astronauts and the still cameras they carried were almost constantly turning this way and that, so individual surfaces spent as much time facing away from the Sun as towards it.

Hopefully this helps clear things up.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Abaddon on August 09, 2019, 12:00:07 AM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.
The temperature of what, exactly. What, very precisely please, reaches a temperature 0f 250 by day on the moon and -250 at night. No fudging, thank you. Identify what object and/or objects go through those extremes. You can follow up by explaining exactly which astronauts were on the moon at lunar midday or midnight. Good luck with that.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Abaddon on August 09, 2019, 12:43:45 AM
It is not in the book but my golf shot that I pointed out in my second post, is a valid point if you care to elaborate.

Dean

Welcome to Apollohoax. I hope you enjoy it here.

Now, in what sense is yur golf shot point valid? In that it is impossible to 'slice' a golf ball in a vacuum? Well that may well be true. However, to use it as a piece of evidence for a hoax is stretching a point hugely. OK, so the capcom said Shepard's shot looked like a slice. So what? It was a bit of good-natured banter on a little piece of fun on the mission. It wasn't a professional golfing analysis of the shot. It is also impossible to hit the ball 'miles and miles and miles,' even in the reduced lunar gravity, but again, no-one was literally claiming it went that far.
This is a valid point. HB types have this unrealistic expectation that everything on the transcript is factual. At face value, then, Santa is real. The astronauts claimed to have seen him after all.

If, on the other hand, one cares enough to become familiar with the whole record, one discovers that there is a whole bucket of offhand humour going on almost continuously. The three blokes on any mission knew full well that they might pop their clogs at any moment. That gives rise to a certain gallows humour common in the test pilot brigade of well, frankly optimists.

Although it is hard to understand, I understand it. As likely do most here. I have had both my parents placed in a box in the ground and while the process was not a happy one, the black humour in ER was not to be missed. Sure it was arguably inappropriate. Didn't stop me and my siblings. I can recount tales of woe that would have them rolling in the aisles. So what? Everyone can do that. It is common human experience. Except for the young. They have never had to confront mortality. Yet.

Somehow, they seem to think they will have a different answer. But can't say what it might be. Personally, I am inclined not to care much. I have legally arranged matters so that my kids will never have want of a home. Thus my role is fulfilled. And they are not my kids anymore, they are almost adults.Have I made mistakes on that journey? Sure, Doesn't matter. I have equipped them to venture forth into the world. I will rest easy in the grave. Or possibly pot on the mantle. I care not.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Zakalwe on August 09, 2019, 03:36:47 AM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night. And from my experience even to this day there is no system available out there that could compensate for such an astronomical swing in temperature 500 Deg. Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries the current draw would be to taxing, and to add to that even if they could and I highly doubt it with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible. Then to add even more to this incredible feat of engineering to have a portable version that they can actually wear and prance around on the moon. If such a system was available after 50 years it would have made it's way into the market already, that is just the way things work.

Dean

Remember when I said this?
99 times out of a hundred their "valid points" are based on nothing more than ignorance. The one time that it isn't it's because they are trying to flog a book/seminar/TV show.
You're one of the 99 then. Why do you think that your industrial experience in HVAC translates into a low gravity vacuum environment? The very first question that you pose illustrates that your understanding of thermodynamics in a vacuum is woefully inadequate.
The second question shows that you haven't bothered to do any basic research...the LM or the suits did not use "car batteries". A 30 second search on Wikipedia would have told you that.
The third question is equally as ignorant. A descendant of the A7L spacesuit is used on the ISS for EVAs and was used in the Spacelab program. As for making it onto the market, please explain how big a market there is for self-contained suits to work in a vacuum.

Enjoy your Kaysing and Rene books. It seems to me that you are the perfect target for their nonsense in that you are wilfully ignorant, can't be bothered to do even a tiny modicum of basic research and at the same time gullible enough to read and believe their tripe.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: ineluki on August 09, 2019, 08:56:08 AM
And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.

Stop right there...

If you have any honest interest in the subject please do yourself a favor and try to get at least some knowledge about basic physics (we are not even talking about rocket science this is more like "how can you survive 90° C in a Sauna when the same water temperature would  kill you") before you parrot any more of the long debunked lies of Kaysing, Rene, Sibrel and the other Frauds.

Since you started with the misleading temperature:
http://www.clavius.org/envheat.html

Even Wikipedia would be a good start to learn more...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories



Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: gillianren on August 09, 2019, 10:19:19 AM
The simple fact is, I'd much rather have one solid reprinted book full of facts than any number of original, signed manuscripts full of lies and errors.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: bknight on August 09, 2019, 11:25:03 AM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.
The temperature of what, exactly. What, very precisely please, reaches a temperature 0f 250 by day on the moon and -250 at night. No fudging, thank you. Identify what object and/or objects go through those extremes. You can follow up by explaining exactly which astronauts were on the moon at lunar midday or midnight. Good luck with that.

As you and ineluki have pointed out the fallacy of this misconception.  This seems like starting out JAQ and is evolving to toward non-belief IMO.  My suggestion to Spanky is to do a little bit of research and he will debunk the failures of these two gentlemen.  BTW Spanky does Ren indicate he is a self-taught engineer?  Too bad he doesn't have the training to mke observations in the real world, not just what he believed.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Kiwi on August 09, 2019, 12:02:24 PM
Hi again, Spanky.

I hope you can find this post among the multiplicity of same questions and same answers. For some reason I don't understand, some folks here don't read all the posts before replying to an early one. Wouldn't it be lovely if they had the good sense to do so, and only added some important point that others hadn't mentioned, or clarified something that's unclear?

Anyway, do pay attention to anything old-time regular Jason Thompson says, because (1) he's a walking encyclopedia and (2) he lives in the UK so is much more polite than some members on the other side of the Atlantic. You might have already noticed that he hasn't insulted you in either of his posts.

Ditto for JayUtah whenever he turns up, except he's from Utah. He's also polite but is about four or five walking encyclopedias, and two of us have already given you links to his Clavius web pages. Gillianren (reply 23) -- great value too. She has an excellent brain but sometimes insists it's not too good, but mine isn't either. She's brief and to the point, and equally polite. Obviousman, Count Zero – old-timers and good blokes too.

You didn't say whether or not you wanted to see the letters I wrote to Nexus and Rene all those years ago, but they might help you get a better understanding of Rene's book, so here goes (I've deleted some personal information and you'll see that regarding shadows, I failed to mention all-important vanishing points, which many artists understand):--


LETTER TO NEXUS MAGAZINE

[Kiwi]
XX XXXXXXX Street, XXXXXXXXXX, Manawatu 5450, New Zealand
Tel 0-6-324 XXXX

7 September 1995

Mr Duncan Roads
Nexus
PO Box 30
Mapleton
Qld 4560
Australia

Dear Duncan

A few comments about Rene's article about NASA's "fake" moon shots (NEXUS August-September 1995):

The reason there are no stars in most photographs taken on the moon is that the exposures for sunlit objects and stars are highly incompatible.  On earth the exposure to clearly show stars, eight seconds or more at f4 with 100 ISO film, is over 16,000 times the 1/125th at f16 required for sunlit objects.  The ratio would be about the same on the moon.

The landing modules DID leave blast marks in the dust, although rather small ones, partly because they came in at an angle rather than straight down, and also because the rockets were not particularly powerful due to the moon having 1/6th the earth's gravity.  When Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, while over seventy feet from the surface their lander engine was only on 5 per cent thrust, and it kicked up dust before it was within 30 feet of the surface ("The Invasion of the Moon 1969" by Peter Ryan, page 112).  Shortly after stepping onto the moon Armstrong said, "The descent engine did not leave a crater of any size... I can see some evidence of rays emanating from the descent engine, but [a] very insignificant amount."  (Ryan, P120).  Later when Armstrong and Aldrin discussed the dent in the surface under the engine which was made by the landing probe, Armstrong said, "Yes, I think that is a good representation of our sideward velocity at touchdown there."  (P125).

I can't comment on Rene's "Spacey Twin" photos, but printers don't always get it right.  There are a few photos around of Cindy Crawford with her beauty spot on the OTHER side.

Regarding "The Shadow Shows", Rene asks, "How can an 8.5 foot diameter object cast a shadow that size nearly 80 miles away?"  Put simply, it can't.  The object in the photo is neither an 8.5 foot engine nozzle, and nor is it casting a shadow.  It is one of the lunar module's small attitude control thrusters just outside the window, and happens to be on the shaded side of the LM.  These thrusters show up in many other photos.  The sun is almost directly behind the camera and lunar module, as can be seen from the shadow in the crater Maskelyne, below right.

Rene is wrong in saying Pete Conrad is carrying no camera in his photo of Al Bean.  He is.  It's strapped to his chest and casting a shadow towards his right arm.  His right hand is operating the trigger on the handgrip.  The astronauts didn't hold little 35mm cameras up to their eyes to take photos, because they wouldn't have seen the viewfinders through their visors.  They used big, viewfinderless, 200-shot, motor driven Hasselblad cameras which had wide angle lenses and took 6x6 cm colour slides.  Bean has one of them strapped to his chest in the photo.  It is pointing a little downward as they usually did when not in use, and the handgrip with its trigger is visible underneath the camera.  Rene claims this camera is being viewed from at least eight feet above the ground.  That's not possible, because Bean's right hand is below his shoulder, and Conrad's camera is very close to it. 

Rene's "spotlight" could be one of many protruding parts on the lunar module catching the sunlight, which is coming from left and forward of the camera, and the lighting on the ground is far more consistent with sunlight, or at least floodlights, than studio spotlights.  The tube Bean is holding DOES have a shadow side, facing Conrad's camera, but the shadow is considerably lightened by reflections off Bean's and Conrad's white spacesuits.
 
The shadow which Rene says is being cast forward by Conrad is actually being cast backward by a piece of apparatus on the ground.  It can be seen just beyond Bean's hand in the reflection in his visor.  Also the shadow is much wider than Conrad's leg, so could not be his shadow.

I think it's Rene who has mooned Americans, and possibly thinks Antipodeans are gullible too!

Yours sincerely
[Kiwi]

[Comment added 10 August 2019 4:22 am NZST: I was also wrong about Rene's "spotlight" above, because in all my years in photography since 1968 I never saw anything like it until I got on the internet and examined many more lunar surface photos. It proved to be a particular lens flare that occurred in the wide-angle Zeiss lenses used on the moon. I've not even seen that same lens flare in other Hasselblad photos, but maybe it's in some photos I haven't seen. The baffling part of the flare looks like the end of slats in a venetian blind.]

**************************************************************************


LETTER TO RALPH RENE

[Kiwi]
XX XXXXXXX Street, XXXXXXXXXX, Manawatu 5450, New Zealand
Tel 0-6-324 XXXX

7 September 1995

Rene
31 Burgess Place
Passaic
NJ 07055
USA

Dear Rene

I enclose a copy of a letter to Nexus magazine.  I am intrigued at your apparent lack of knowledge and research, and would be interested in your reply to my comments.

Having listened to the first moon landing live on the radio and studied space travel since then, been interested in astronomy for over ten years, and been a professional photographer for 20 years, I can see many flaws in your arguments and an obvious lack of understanding of what actually did go on out in space. The flaws are so obvious that I'd be surprised if any genuine scientists would bother contacting you.

I'm pretty open minded about many things, such as UFOs, religion, science, Hoagland's Mars, etc., but do like to see decent arguments.  Have seen similarly weak arguments in a video tape and book by David Hatcher Childress, and in a rather idiotic book called Moongate.

For instance, Childress points at mountains over 7,000 feet high and wonders whether they are "pyramids".  Twice he says "No-one has a good explanation for it," regarding the Straight Wall on the moon, and speculates that it may be a hangar.  Oh really?  It is one of the best-known moonquake faults.  It is neither a wall, nor is it straight, but is a 60 mile long fault, up to 1,000 feet high, with a slope of about 40 degrees (Guide to the Moon, Patrick Moore, P107, and other books).

In Moongate the author goes to great lengths to "prove" that the moon has much more than one-sixth of the earth's gravity, and bases his arguments on the fact that Apollo 11 crossed the neutral point between the earth's and the moon's gravity systems much further from the moon than the text books said it would.  Unfortunately, the author obviously didn't sit down with a pen and paper and figure out the trajectory of a craft on its way to the moon, or where it would be in relation to the moon when it crossed the neutral point.

The conventional neutral point is stated to be about 23,900 miles from the moon, but that's on the earth-moon axis.  A spacecraft would never fly along that axis, but would aim for a point much further along the moon's orbit where it would eventually meet the moon a few days later.  The enclosed diagram is largely self-explanatory and is based on figures in any good astronomy book.  Although not dead accurate and just an educated guess on my part, it shows why Apollo 11 crossed a different neutral point 43,495 miles, instead of 23,900 miles, from the moon.  The distance from the moon to the neutral point would vary considerably, depending on how far you were from the earth-moon axis.

Further comments about the Nexus article:  I often remark on how dark our sky is.  The darker it is, the brighter the stars seem, and the better the "seeing" in astronomers' language, so the astronauts' comments about dark skies certainly don't imply confusion about whether or not stars are visible.  However, while travelling between the earth and moon they often had to contend with both moonshine and earthshine which dazzled their eyes and rendered the stars invisible to them, although the sky still would have appeared dark.  The full moon casts only quarter of a lux of light on Earth, whereas the full Earth casts 16 lux on the moon.

On page 90-91 of Ryan's book, it says: GET 71:50  Collins: "Houston, Apollo Eleven.  The earthshine coming through the window is so bright you can read a book by it."  Two days before, Collins reported trouble trying to sight stars because of the brightness of the earth...  GET 71:58  "Now we're able to see stars again and recognise constellations for the first time on the trip.  The sky is full of stars just like the night sky of the earth, but all the way here we've only been able to see stars occasionally."

The camera which took the photo of Bean could not be eight feet above Bean's camera AND show both the natural horizon and reflected horizon at almost the same level.  There is no camera stand showing between Conrad and Bean because the camera is strapped to Conrad's chest, the same as Bean's camera.

You mentioned non-parallel shadows on the moon.  Only parallel objects will have parallel shadows, but furthermore, there is considerable perspective distortion in the moon photos which was produced by the wide-angle lenses used.  This causes parallel lines to seemingly converge, just as putting a camera on railway sleepers between the rails will make the rails appear to converge.  The cameras didn't have viewfinders, so had wide-angle lenses to compensate.  The lack of viewfinders also explains why the horizon is often tilted in the pictures.  Incidentally, you can see the astronauts handling the same Hasselblad cameras in the movie "Apollo 13".  One gets tossed into the command module to act as ballast to compensate for the lack of moon rocks.

You can prove much of what I say for yourself:

1.  On a perfectly clear, starry night with no moon, and well away from city lights, sit in a brightly-lit room for ten minutes with one eye completely covered with something opaque.  Go outside, look at the stars and remove the eye cover.  The difference between what the two eyes can see is astounding, and a good example of dark-adaption.

2.  On a similar clear night with no moon, take a photo of the stars for 20 seconds at f4 with 200 ISO film.

3.  Another time, photograph the full moon at 1/500th of a second at f11.  It's just a piece of rock lit by bright sun, so requires the same exposure as a sunlit piece of rock on Earth.  Don't use an automatic-exposure camera, it won't get the exposure right.  Note how you can see far fewer stars than on the moonless night.  If you can see any stars close to the moon, they probably won't come out in your photograph.

4.  On the same full-moon night, turn your camera away so the moon is behind you and again photograph the stars for 20 seconds at f4.  If you include some earthbound scenery in this photo (again, no lights), you'll be able to surprise people with what looks like stars showing in broad daylight.  I have a photo of Orion, Sirius and other stars in a blue sky above a snow-capped mountain which looks as if it's sunlit.  It really fools people, and even the colour lab tried to kid me the stars were "dust on my lens."  There's a hint of the pink glow from the Orion Nebula in my photo, which I took with a 24mm lens on a 35mm camera which sat on a cloth bag half-full of rice on the bonnet of my car.

The hardest part is finding a lab which will print the photos properly so that the moon is detailed and the sky black, but if you do get a detailed shot of the moon, it's unlikely to show any stars.  Mercury, Venus and Jupiter CAN show, but few stars are bright enough.  I see that you're closer to New York than I am to my nearest city, so you'll probably have to travel a fair distance to find dark skies.

Anyway, they say there is one born every minute, and in the States there are probably enough of them to get rich by writing flawed books, so good luck to you.  I actually came across one of them when Halley's Comet was here in 1986.  One night I went up to a lookout in Wellington, our second-largest city, where there were lots of people looking at the comet.  From off in the distance I heard, in a long Texan drawl, "Do you mean ah came twenty thousand miles just to see a smudge?"  I laughed and thought, "Jeez, mate, if you travelled 20,000 miles to see the comet, why don't you have the brains to simply travel another 30 or 40, so you're well out of the city in a dark-sky area where you'll see tail and all, just as I have, many times."

Here's a challenge to test your knowledge of the moon.  See if you can tell me the names of the ten major craters in photo AS11-37-5437.  Until last night I didn't know which ones were showing, but soon worked it out from maps 35, 36, 46 and 47, photos 15 and 38, and the explanatory note on page 26 of Antonin Rukl's "Atlas of the Moon" (Kalmbach Publishing).

Will look forward to the future articles in Nexus, but haven't yet seen anything that would encourage me to buy your book.  I hope your remarks about strange features on the moon aren't based on fuzzy photos.  Sharp photos tell a very different story.

Yours sincerely
[Kiwi]


Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 09, 2019, 01:33:02 PM
5 percent thrust on the descent stage isn't right. It was more like 40%, due to the descent stage having a mass around 6500 kg at landing - which is about 14.500 pounds. In lunar gravity, that is a weight of around 2400 pounds, and the descent engine had a max thrust of 6.000 pounds in the flown configuration.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: bknight on August 09, 2019, 03:20:25 PM
Kiwi, very nice and informative letters.  I'd be interested in any response that you received, but reality probably indicates you probably didn't receive any.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: raven on August 09, 2019, 04:35:30 PM
I'm not someone who has nearly the technical knowledge of many of the fine people of this forum, but I've yet to get a good answer for this counterquestion: If there was supposed to be a 'blast crater' and it was a hoax, why didn't the set dressers and props people . . . create one?
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 09, 2019, 05:38:08 PM
The hoaxbelievers will answer that with the "whistleblower"-argument - that some of the people working the hoax put clues to the nature of the hoax into the set and pictures.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: raven on August 09, 2019, 05:43:28 PM
The hoaxbelievers will answer that with the "whistleblower"-argument - that some of the people working the hoax put clues to the nature of the hoax into the set and pictures.
I've heard it. I find it less than convincing. Why would NASA allow photos to be released with this allegedly 'obvious', unless basically everyone, including the security on the alleged hoax makers to make sure they did a good enough job, was part of this 'whistleblower' conspiracy within the conspiracy, in which case, if things were so lax, why didn't they just come forward normally.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 09, 2019, 06:20:26 PM
That is exactly the point. The hoax idea is inconsistent, as soon as you look at it in any detail. If you have to expand the conspiracy to encompass more and more people to keep the story consistent, it will fail on sheer numbers.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Von_Smith on August 09, 2019, 09:02:09 PM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night. And from my experience even to this day there is no system available out there that could compensate for such an astronomical swing in temperature 500 Deg. Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries the current draw would be to taxing, and to add to that even if they could and I highly doubt it with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible. Then to add even more to this incredible feat of engineering to have a portable version that they can actually wear and prance around on the moon. If such a system was available after 50 years it would have made it's way into the market already, that is just the way things work.

Dean


What does "working in the HVAC industry" mean, or have to do with the point you're making?  Are you trying to suggest you have some relevant expertise?  For that, you'd have to be more specific.  Are you an engineer?  Do you have adjuticated training in thermodynamics and/or thermal design?  Are you a furnace repairman?  A customer service rep who processes service requests?  An accountant or a purchaser who works for Heil Heating & Cooling?  A technician who checks for gas leaks?  A chimneysweep?  "Working in the HVAC industry" is too vague to be a relevant credential.

You work with systems that move, heat, and cool air, right?   The VAC in HVAC doesn't stand for "vacuum", does it?  So how exactly do you apply your background to any of the technical problems you mention above?  And what *specific*, non-gee-whiz-that-sure-sounds-hot problems does that background point to?
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Abaddon on August 09, 2019, 09:21:55 PM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night. And from my experience even to this day there is no system available out there that could compensate for such an astronomical swing in temperature 500 Deg. Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries the current draw would be to taxing, and to add to that even if they could and I highly doubt it with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible. Then to add even more to this incredible feat of engineering to have a portable version that they can actually wear and prance around on the moon. If such a system was available after 50 years it would have made it's way into the market already, that is just the way things work.

Dean


What does "working in the HVAC industry" mean, or have to do with the point you're making?  Are you trying to suggest you have some relevant expertise?  For that, you'd have to be more specific.  Are you an engineer?  Do you have adjuticated training in thermodynamics and/or thermal design?  Are you a furnace repairman?  A customer service rep who processes service requests?  An accountant or a purchaser who works for Heil Heating & Cooling?  A technician who checks for gas leaks?  A chimneysweep?  "Working in the HVAC industry" is too vague to be a relevant credential.

You work with systems that move, heat, and cool air, right?   The VAC in HVAC doesn't stand for "vacuum", does it?  So how exactly do you apply your background to any of the technical problems you mention above?  And what *specific*, non-gee-whiz-that-sure-sounds-hot problems does that background point to?

I guess it involves moving large volumes of hot air...
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Von_Smith on August 10, 2019, 12:03:18 AM
OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night. And from my experience even to this day there is no system available out there that could compensate for such an astronomical swing in temperature 500 Deg. Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries the current draw would be to taxing, and to add to that even if they could and I highly doubt it with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible. Then to add even more to this incredible feat of engineering to have a portable version that they can actually wear and prance around on the moon. If such a system was available after 50 years it would have made it's way into the market already, that is just the way things work.

Dean


What does "working in the HVAC industry" mean, or have to do with the point you're making?  Are you trying to suggest you have some relevant expertise?  For that, you'd have to be more specific.  Are you an engineer?  Do you have adjuticated training in thermodynamics and/or thermal design?  Are you a furnace repairman?  A customer service rep who processes service requests?  An accountant or a purchaser who works for Heil Heating & Cooling?  A technician who checks for gas leaks?  A chimneysweep?  "Working in the HVAC industry" is too vague to be a relevant credential.

You work with systems that move, heat, and cool air, right?   The VAC in HVAC doesn't stand for "vacuum", does it?  So how exactly do you apply your background to any of the technical problems you mention above?  And what *specific*, non-gee-whiz-that-sure-sounds-hot problems does that background point to?

I guess it involves moving large volumes of hot air...

Aww, man, I really wish I'd thought of that first.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Abaddon on August 10, 2019, 02:56:49 AM

Aww, man, I really wish I'd thought of that first.
LOL sorry.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: MBDK on August 10, 2019, 05:50:56 AM
The simple fact is, I'd much rather have one solid reprinted book full of facts than any number of original, signed manuscripts full of lies and errors.
Well said.

(or to be more correct in the literal sense, "well written")
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: smartcooky on August 10, 2019, 09:10:24 AM
That is exactly the point. The hoax idea is inconsistent, as soon as you look at it in any detail. If you have to expand the conspiracy to encompass more and more people to keep the story consistent, it will fail on sheer numbers.

KEEPING THE CONSPIRACY POSSIBLE
Once you are forced to hypothesise whole new technologies to keep your conspiracy possible, you have stepped over into the realm of magic, requiring of you a deep and abiding faith in things you can never know.
- S. G. Collins
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Kiwi on August 10, 2019, 09:42:30 AM
5 percent thrust on the descent stage isn't right. It was more like 40%, due to the descent stage having a mass around 6500 kg at landing - which is about 14.500 pounds. In lunar gravity, that is a weight of around 2400 pounds, and the descent engine had a max thrust of 6.000 pounds in the flown configuration.

Many thanks for that. I like being proved wrong about anything (but didn't a few decades ago when my ego was bigger), because it means I can go from being wrong to being right. I remember having one of those little mental pauses at the 5% when I re-read the letter before posting, but carried on without my memory reminding me that that figure referred to remaining fuel, not thrust.

But I didn't know that in the pre-internet days of 1995 and only had Ryan's book to go on, which got it wrong as so many other non-technical people did back in 1969, particularly newspaper reporters who produced some wonderful howlers. However, Ryan's book was actually right most of the time, especially considering I bought my copy in New Zealand in either October or November 1969 -- I've long wished that I had recorded the exact date. In fact it was far more accurate than many of the early and uncorrected voice transcripts of Apollo 11, which have many howlers too and were published on the early internet.

From The Invasion of the Moon 1969 - The Story of Apollo 11, by Peter Ryan, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, England (1969), page 112:--

Quote
112>
...[feet per second]...  33 degrees...  600 feet, down at 19 [feet per second]...  540 feet, down at 30 [feet per second]...  down at 15...  400 feet, down at 9...  8 [degrees, pitched] forward...  350 [feet] down at 4...  330 [feet] 3½ down...  we're pegged on horizontal velocity...  300 [feet], down 3½...  47 [degrees] forward...  1½ down...  got the shadow [of the LM] out there...  down at 2½...  19 [pitch] forward...  altitude velocity lights...  3½ down, 220 feet...  13 [pitch] forward...  11 forward, coming down nicely...  200 feet, 4½ down...  5½ down...  160 [feet], 6½ down...  5½ down, 9 [pitch] forward...  5 per cent [descent engine thrust]...  75 feet, things looking good...  down a half, 6 [pitch] forward...'
   MCC:  '60 seconds.'  Aldrin:  'Down 2½...  forward...  forward...  good...  40 feet, down 2½...  picking up some dust...  30 feet, 2½ down...  faint shadow...  4 [pitch] forward...  4 [pitch] forward, drifting to the right a little...  6 [forward pitch], down a half.'
   MCC:  '30 seconds.'  Aldrin:  'Drifting right...  contact light [landing probes attached to three of the pads of the descent stage had touched the lunar surface, Armstrong counted one second and punched a button to cut the engine]...  OK, engine stop...'
   MCC:  'We copy you down, Eagle.' Armstrong:  'Houston, Tranquillity base here, the Eagle has landed.'  MCC:  'Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground.  You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.  We're breathing again.  Thanks a lot.'
   PAO:  We have an unofficial time for that touchdown: [GET] 102 hours: 45 minutes: 42 seconds [9.18 p.m. BST].
<112

It was an incredible privilege to be listening to that stuff live on the radio as it happened. Most of us were breathing very shallowly during the last few minutes.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Von_Smith on August 10, 2019, 10:29:40 AM
That is exactly the point. The hoax idea is inconsistent, as soon as you look at it in any detail. If you have to expand the conspiracy to encompass more and more people to keep the story consistent, it will fail on sheer numbers.

KEEPING THE CONSPIRACY POSSIBLE
Once you are forced to hypothesise whole new technologies to keep your conspiracy possible, you have stepped over into the realm of magic, requiring of you a deep and abiding faith in things you can never know.
- S. G. Collins

Not to mention, hypothesizing new technologies eviscerates any argument of "they couldn't do that without six feet of lead shield, etc.".  If NASA has secret magical technology with which to fake the landing, then it has secret magical technology with which to make the landing.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Allan F on August 10, 2019, 11:01:47 AM
I don't think I ever heard a reference to the thrust setting on the descent engine (which was the only one with throttle control) during the landing phase. It was controlled automatically by the computer, responding to the commander's wishes for vertical velocity.

Only during the initial de-orbit burn, where the engine started out at 10%, to ensure a steady flow of fuel/oxidizer, before being throttled up to full.

And you're welcome.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Spanky on August 10, 2019, 08:08:28 PM
KIWI
Thank you kind sir

Dean
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Kiwi on August 11, 2019, 04:20:09 AM
Thanks Spanky.

SECOND LETTER TO RALPH RENE

Only my outward letters from that period are in my computer. Rene's letters are still on paper and I'll try to summarise his most informative replies. Will be unlikely to include anything that particularly shows him in a bad light as he's not here to defend himself so it's unethical to do so, and I believe he already did enough of that to himself with his book and later TV appearances.


[Kiwi]
XX XXXXXXX Street, XXXXXXXXXX, Manawatu 5450, New Zealand
Tel 0-6-324 XXXX

9 November 1995

Mr R Rene
31 Burgess Place
Passiac
NJ 07055
USA

Dear Rene

Thank you for your interesting letter of 13 September.

You and I are certainly similar, as I also suffered for years through having a fairly high IQ (only around XXX or XX% though, on the British Mensa scale).  I came from a poor background too, and was not allowed to think or question as a child.  I left school at age 15, used to think I wasn't very bright, found it hard to get on with lots of people because I was so analytical, and only thought to test my IQ in 1989.  At school I was regularly bullied... [and at 18] had to set about learning a lot which my childhood and schooling didn't teach me.

I'm now 46, and partly disabled... [SNIP paragraphs about self and New Zealand]

Anyway, forgive the provocative style of my last letter -- at least you replied!  Hope you don't mind me discussing a few points.

[Note in the following how I sometimes struggle because of the lack of something we now take for granted – the great mountain of information that is freely available on the internet. Plus, these two letters to Rene are my first attempts at debunking hoax theories.]

I did a couple of experiments.  One was with a curved glass bowl, with background and reflected horizons as in the Conrad/Bean photo.  To align the background with the reflected foreground, I had to have both horizons and my eye nearly on the same level.  Raising my viewpoint raised the rear horizon in relation to the front centre of the bowl, and the reflected horizon stayed in the middle, or went DOWN, depending on the curvature of the bowl and distance of the reflected horizon.  With a straight mirror, the reflected horizon always went UP.  It was only a rough experiment, but indicated that the camera WAS down low, on Conrad's chest.

The other experiment was to ascertain the visibility of stars in a clear, dark sky when my eyes were accustomed to looking at something lit by "sunlight".  Holding a blank sheet of this paper against a 200 watt lightbulb (we're on 240 volts here) and staring at it for a few minutes gave me the same effect as looking at an average-toned object in sunlight (1/125th at f16 at 125 ISO).  On going outside, I could only see the very brightest stars and planets, Achernar, Formalhaut, Altair, Alpha and Beta Centauri, Jupiter, and Saturn.  Had I not known from star maps what I was looking at, or not known which way I was facing, I wouldn't have had a clue which objects I was viewing.  It took over three minutes before I could make out all of Crux (the Southern Cross), about six minutes to recognise the "square" of Pegasus, and 7-8 minutes before I could recognise Pisces.  That was with the benefit of no sun or moon to stop down my iris.

So I feel the astronauts may have been able to see individual bright stars, particularly with a 26-power sextant, but without recognising the fainter ones too, they wouldn't have known what they were looking at.  They could only see the faint stars well when neither sunshine, moonshine, earthshine nor artificial light prevented their eyes dark-adapting, which usually takes at least five minutes.

You mentioned the letter "C" on a rock.  Is that the picture of which I enclose a photocopy?  If so, I saw the "C" long ago and it never bothered me, because in my opinion it's there courtesy of Kodak, on the film.  Mainly because it's almost perfectly aligned between the horizontal registration crosses, although not centered horizontally.  It is also very much on the same plane as the film, but rotated about 10 degrees anticlockwise, whereas the plane of the rock it's "on" looks as if it's tilted backward and toward the right of the camera's axis.  See my estimated grid pattern for the rock's planes.  To have the "C" align between the crosses and appear to be on the same plane as the film would be a stunning coincidence, if it was painted on the rock.

I also have a shot captioned "Charles Duke near Flag Crater.  Stone Mountain in the background, three miles away."  Copy also enclosed.  (Both of these photos came from astronomy magazines, so I don't know the NASA numbers.)  On the very bottom, centered below one set of vertical crosses, is the number "39" in very similar type to the "C", like an old typewriter or a rubber stamp, and again, on the same plane as the film.  It's definitely not painted on the moondust!

I have seen similar things happen to other films throughout my time in photography.  I got caught once by a batch of Ilford film which had patterns like tractor tyre marks on them.  They ruined my photos.

Is it the same photo, with the "C" on the rock, where the white piece on the Rover partly obscures the rangefinder cross?  If so, again it doesn't surprise me.  I don't know exactly how the crosses got on the film, because being transparency film they would be white if put there by a burst of light.  So I guess they are some sort of physical object which partially prevented light reaching the emulsion, or otherwise stopped the developer and/or bleach working, but I most suspect the former.  Anyway, what we're talking about is a highlight bleeding into a shadow, and that is quite common.
 
Will enclose a photo (No 854-2) I took of a friend against a window, with sunlit corrugated iron for a background.  Note the "corrugations" in the window frame on the right, and also that the frame is straight at the top where there is foliage and sky of medium tone.  The highlights actually bleed into the foreground shadows, partially "obscuring" them.  They also bleed into the brown fencepost at bottom left, just as the white bit on the Rover bleeds into the cross.

There are plenty of moon photos where highlights bleed into the crosses, and it also happened to photos taken from Skylab, where sunlit patches or even clouds on earth obliterated parts of the crosses.  For instance, in a shot of Jim Irwin tending the lunar rover with Mount Hadley in the background, five highlights on the Rover's aerial obliterate parts of one cross, and a specular highlight on another piece of the Rover wipes out one arm of another cross.

In the famous photo of Aldrin standing next to the LM with the landing probe in front of him, the large centre cross is just below his right knee and the edge of the picture just touches, or even cuts off, the top of his back pack.  Armstrong nearly screwed up that photo.  In one of my copies, the centre of the large cross is 147mm from the edge of the frame.  Therefore the 56mm square Hasselblad slide has been enlarged 5.25 times to 294mm square.  The centre cross is 22mm from point to point, the others half the size, and their arms are never thicker than half a millimetre.  This means the centre cross is 4.19mm point to point, the smaller ones 2.095mm, and their arms less than one-tenth of a millimetre thick on the film, so it's no wonder that highlights can creep around them.

You said that you don't wish to defend "Moongate" and I respect that, but must make some comments.  On first looking at it I went straight to the photos, and wondered why he printed so many that had in-camera flare because they were taken into the sunlight.

Another of my photos, 838-3, is the full moon over Lake Taupo, with Taupo township lit up at centre left, and the dot in the sky on the right is Jupiter.  Note the flare pattern that is similar to photo No 3 in "Moongate".  Nothing to do with any atmosphere at all -- simply an in-camera effect that almost anyone could produce, with or without an atmosphere.  It even occurs inside my eyeballs now that I'm over 40!  The flare produced by the over-exposed moon at the top bled right over into the film perforations, so the crosses being obliterated is no surprise to me.

Nearly all of William Brian's photos that he claims are evidence of atmosphere are simply examples of flare produced by either direct sunlight reaching the lens; overexposure; or chromatic aberration.

[SNIP technical stuff about lens flare and abberations]

Honestly, Rene, I was astounded at Brian's lack of knowledge of normal, everyday photographic principles, especially considering he's an engineer.  He could so easily learn about them at many camera stores or clubs or public libraries.  I'm not trying to deliberately destroy his work, but only arguing for a little common sense where it should be used.  More realism and less fantasy.  To me, it's idiotic to claim that flare is "proof" of an atmosphere.

Brian says that dust cannot exist in a vacuum, but what then are The Coalsack in Crux, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, the Cone Nebula in Monoceros, and many other similar things out there?  Great clouds of dust in a vacuum!  What he possibly means is that dust will not float for long in a vacuum where there is gravity, and of course with no atmosphere it sticks together and compacts readily, which explains the footprints on the moon, without the need for moisture.

He makes some real nonsense statements, such as the one about Nansen sailing north for 15 days on page 139.  This means he either sailed a very short distance each day, or there was no pack ice that year, or he sailed towards the magnetic pole but not the north pole.  In fact, he drifted generally north-west and west, and at one stage got out of the "Fram" and walked toward the pole, so he couldn't have possibly sailed past it.  The lone star overhead had to be Polaris, and if Nansen actually sank into an opening in the earth, then obviously Polaris would have started sinking behind him, not staying "straight above."

Brian's "hole in the earth" in photo 17 is positioned over Greenland.  This can be checked on any globe, with your eye above the equator in Brazil.  Isn't Greenland a solid island?  The "hole" is merely an optical illusion.

Brian claims the moon has a dense atmosphere, so how does he account for grazing occultations, where stars blink off and on as they pass behind mountains and become exposed by valleys on the edge of the moon.  If there was an atmosphere, there would be a measurable decrease in the star's brilliance as the moon's limb neared it, but I've never heard of one.  Again, normal phenomena which he fails to explain.  Will enclose a chart of grazing occultations visible from New Zealand in 1994, which shows how common they are.  Track 3 on 4 March passed over us, but I missed it due to a cloudy sky.

I don't have the technical expertise to comment on everything in "Moongate", and it probably sounds quite plausible to many people, but from what I do understand the book seems to be either a hoax or to belong in the libraries of the flat earth folk.

There is a simple explanation for the extremely rounded hills and dust on the moon that I've never noticed in any books:  temperature changes.  Every gardener who has clayey soil knows to dig the garden in autumn and the winter frosts and sunshine will break up the clods.  It happens in areas like ours, where the temperatures only vary from about -3 to +10 degrees centigrade in winter.  So wouldn't the hundreds of degrees variation on the moon break down even rock?  The stresses must be enormous.

In the Nexus article there were two comments I feel are easily answered.  "The camera that recorded the blast-off [of the Apollo 16 ascent stage] panned upward to track the capsule.  Who operated the camera?"  Probably Ed Fendall back at Mission Control, who was responsible for the remote control of the Rover's TV camera.  See "A Man on the Moon", Andrew Chaikin, 1994, pages 487 & 522.  Fendall's camera movements were often about three seconds behind the action on the screen, because of the time it took for the signals to travel to earth then back to the moon, plus his reaction time.

"Many photographers point out the similarity to painted backdrops [in lunar photos]." There is one photo that is definitely airbrushed and that is the panoramic one that includes Schmitt next to the split boulder ("Moongate", photo 15) plus the Lunar Rover on the right.  The two separate frames required airbrushing to make up a single, composite picture.  But there are also reasons for the effect in unpainted photos.  With no recognisable reference points (cars, trees, houses), it's very hard to estimate the distance to the background in two-dimensional photographs.  Apparently Armstrong, Aldrin and others had the same problem, even with the benefit of viewing the real thing with stereoscopic vision.  Therefore, on a distant horizon, fine details such as small craters completely disappear, giving a much smoother "painted" look to the background.  Then there is the same bleeding problem mentioned above, where sunlit moon meets black sky, an in-camera effect which further confuses the eye.  Both of these effects produce many optical illusions where there are distant hills.

To illustrate, how far away is the township in my photo 838-3?  Probably a few miles, but without benefit of prior knowledge or a map, it's extremely hard to tell.  And how far away and how big is the mountain in 839-2?  That's Mount Ruapehu, the one that erupted recently, photographed under the same full moon on a beautiful late-summer evening.  The top is 13.5 km (8.3 miles) from the camera, and at least 1800 metres (5,900 feet) above it.  The left and right snowcapped peaks are about 4.8 km (3 miles) apart.  It looks much bigger in real life, due to my use of a 24mm wideangle lens.  Note the belt and sword of Orion (with the red Orion Nebula in the sword -- dust in a vacuum!) just above the snow, Sirius near top centre, and Procyon top right -- upside down compared with how you see them.

Your arguments about Apollo 13 are interesting.  My understanding of the free-return trajectory is that it was also called the "slingshot maneuver" because it was a fast and furious action carried out close to the moon's surface.  You say in your pamphlet that "...they would have run past the moon tens of thousands of miles before being pulled back."  I've never understood that to be the case.  The ICE craft did five loops around the moon before it went off to investigate Halley's comet, and each lunar flyby increased its velocity and changed its direction.  The last loop, on 23 December 1983, brought ICE within 62 miles of the Moon's surface.

Just before the explosion, Apollo 13 was not on the free-return trajectory but on the hybrid trajectory, because of intending to land in the west of the moon and away from the equator.  It set off from Earth on free return, but changed to hybrid during an early burn.  Much of this is explained on page 298 of "A Man on the Moon", but briefly, they had to do a burn after the explosion to get back onto free return, and therefore back to Earth, but DIDN'T HAVE TO DO A BURN BEHIND THE MOON.  It was called free return because a burn wasn't required.  Your pamphlet implies Apollo 13 had to do a burn to brake into Moon orbit, but it didn't.  According to all the texts I've read, the Moon alone flung it quickly back towards Earth.

In GOTCHA No. 4 you say NASA lied about doing a burn behind the Moon.  Surely they must do a burn BEHIND the Moon because of the craft doing about 5,200 miles per hour in one direction and the Moon doing 2,200 MPH in the opposite direction, otherwise the craft wouldn't be captured by the Moon's gravity and pulled into orbit because of the low escape velocity.  That's why free return is free.  No burn.  If they did a burn well away from the Moon where it would be visible from earth, they might simply crash onto the leading edge of the Moon.  The craft must be travelling nearly perpendicular to the Earth-Moon axis when it meets the Moon, because of their relative speeds in space, therefore it becomes tangential to the Moon BEHIND it along our line of sight.

Anyway, enough for now.  I'd probably buy your book if I was on an income, but about NZ$45 is out of reach right now.  I have to save for the operation to extract the amalgam.

Will also enclose a bit about how it's apparently easy to get NASA photos from Bara Studios in Bladensburg, MD, as long as you know the numbers.  Unfortunately, I've no idea where the article came from -- it was given to me my by a friend who now can't find his source.

Finally, will enclose the names of the craters in photo AS11-37-5437.  It's interesting to know that it's about 150km (93 miles) between Maskelyne on the right and Toricelli C on the left.  Tranquility Base is about 170km (105 miles) from Maskelyne.  Very hard to tell without any frame of reference.

Kind regards
[Kiwi]

Enclosures:
Article about Boron for treating arthritis
Copies of letters to newspapers
Photocopy of photo with "C"
Closeup of "C"
Photo with "39", Charles Duke near Flag Crater
Chart of grazing occultations visible from New Zealand in 1994
Article about NASA photos from Bara Studios
Names of craters in photo AS11-37-5437
Photo 838-3
Photo 839-2
Photo 854-2

Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Jason Thompson on August 12, 2019, 07:17:25 AM
Anyway, do pay attention to anything old-time regular Jason Thompson says, because (1) he's a walking encyclopedia and (2) he lives in the UK so is much more polite than some members on the other side of the Atlantic. You might have already noticed that he hasn't insulted you in either of his posts.

Thank you, Kiwi, for your kind words. In an interestingly recursive quirk, I have to point out that much of my 'walking encyclopedia' credibility, as you put it, actually has resulted from the years I spent here, learning from, or being pointed to sources by, other regulars and experts such as Jay, sts60, and so on.

Taking this forum in its various forms, and my time on what is now Cosmoquest but was Bad Astronomy when I joined it, I've been doing this for about 17 years now. I've learned a hell of a lot in that time.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Donnie B. on August 12, 2019, 08:02:21 AM
Quote
112>
...[feet per second]...  33 degrees...  600 feet, down at 19 [feet per second]...  540 feet, down at 30 [feet per second]...  down at 15...  400 feet, down at 9...  8 [degrees, pitched] forward...  350 [feet] down at 4...  330 [feet] 3½ down...  we're pegged on horizontal velocity...  300 [feet], down 3½...  47 [degrees] forward...  1½ down...  got the shadow [of the LM] out there...  down at 2½...  19 [pitch] forward...  altitude velocity lights...  3½ down, 220 feet...  13 [pitch] forward...  11 forward, coming down nicely...  200 feet, 4½ down...  5½ down...  160 [feet], 6½ down...  5½ down, 9 [pitch] forward...  5 per cent [descent engine thrust]...  75 feet, things looking good...  down a half, 6 [pitch] forward...'
   MCC:  '60 seconds.'  Aldrin:  'Down 2½...  forward...  forward...  good...  40 feet, down 2½...  picking up some dust...  30 feet, 2½ down...  faint shadow...  4 [pitch] forward...  4 [pitch] forward, drifting to the right a little...  6 [forward pitch], down a half.'
   MCC:  '30 seconds.'  Aldrin:  'Drifting right...  contact light [landing probes attached to three of the pads of the descent stage had touched the lunar surface, Armstrong counted one second and punched a button to cut the engine]...  OK, engine stop...'
   MCC:  'We copy you down, Eagle.' Armstrong:  'Houston, Tranquillity base here, the Eagle has landed.'  MCC:  'Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground.  You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.  We're breathing again.  Thanks a lot.'
   PAO:  We have an unofficial time for that touchdown: [GET] 102 hours: 45 minutes: 42 seconds [9.18 p.m. BST].
<112

It was an incredible privilege to be listening to that stuff live on the radio as it happened. Most of us were breathing very shallowly during the last few minutes.

I was watching on TV with my family.  I had no idea that the callouts "60 seconds" and "30 seconds" referred to fuel remaining -- I thought they were "time to touchdown".  So I wasn't anywhere near as worried as those guys in the MCC -- to me it sounded like everything was going fine!  I didn't even catch the full significance of the "about to turn blue" remark until later.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: gillianren on August 12, 2019, 11:47:16 AM
To clarify, my brain is just fine (except the bipolar disorder, of course), but it doesn't turn in the same directions as some of the others.  I don't get the math, quite a lot of the time, and I'm certainly nowhere near as educated in the engineering.  I can talk about the history, politics, and psychology fairly easy, and I get most of the geology.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: bobdude11 on August 12, 2019, 04:30:00 PM
To clarify, my brain is just fine (except the bipolar disorder, of course), but it doesn't turn in the same directions as some of the others.  I don't get the math, quite a lot of the time, and I'm certainly nowhere near as educated in the engineering.  I can talk about the history, politics, and psychology fairly easy, and I get most of the geology.
I have the same issues with the maths. I understand much of the mechanics, some of the physics (when they are explained by people that DO understand the math). I am fortunate that I do not suffer from Bi-Polar Disorder, but I do suffer from ADHD that causes my mind to go down rabbit holes when I am researching things.
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Rob48 on August 13, 2019, 07:15:15 AM
On a related note, I see Jarrah White is most upset that Amazon is offering Ralph's book for sale, thus depriving him of gullible folks' cash. 

I also note with dismay that JW has apparently managed to complete his astrophysics course. Maybe his tutors just got so fed up with him that they let him pass?
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Zakalwe on August 13, 2019, 08:32:47 AM
On a related note, I see Jarrah White is most upset that Amazon is offering Ralph's book for sale, thus depriving him of gullible folks' cash. 

Aw, diddums. I see he claims that his efforts in distributing Rene's guff is a "labour of love". Not for profit at all, absolutely no way, no Siree....
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: bknight on August 13, 2019, 08:53:34 AM
On a related note, I see Jarrah White is most upset that Amazon is offering Ralph's book for sale, thus depriving him of gullible folks' cash. 

Aw, diddums. I see he claims that his efforts in distributing Rene's guff is a "labour of love". Not for profit at all, absolutely no way, no Siree....

Sounds a bit like Derek Willis, no?
Title: Re: Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books
Post by: Zakalwe on August 13, 2019, 11:40:58 AM
On a related note, I see Jarrah White is most upset that Amazon is offering Ralph's book for sale, thus depriving him of gullible folks' cash. 

Aw, diddums. I see he claims that his efforts in distributing Rene's guff is a "labour of love". Not for profit at all, absolutely no way, no Siree....

Sounds a bit like Derek Willis, no?

Absolutely.
As i said earlier in this thread, 99 out of a hundred hoax believers are ignorant of facts. The last 1% are chasing down a dollar. Rene was one of those and The Blunder from Down Under is another (though at 12K subscribers his pickings from YouTube will be scant).