ApolloHoax.net
Off Topic => Other Conspiracy Theories => Topic started by: Jockndoris on August 19, 2012, 05:22:25 AM
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Wonderful Photographs from MARS
I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise. What are they going to find this time ?
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Wonderful Photographs from MARS
Random capitalization of words. Hmm, I wonder who you might be.
I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
And your evidence for it being shot at 'lot 171' is?
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.
The Voyager probes sent pictures a hell of a lot further than Curiosity is.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise. What are they going to find this time ?
We don't know yet, you'll have to wait and see.
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This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Evidence?
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Evidence?
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Please explain why the fact that it took a spacecraft months to physically travel to mars has any bearing on the transmission of images by radio waves, as has been done for decades at this point?
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
You have no idea how space travel works, have you? Please feel free to explain the speed at which the spacecraft travelled on its journey.
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We all fell for it in 1969..
How's the sextant going? Won any new comp's?
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There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Why?
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.
Yes, we are. What of it?
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Were they looking for "new chemicals compounds?"
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Hi, Jockndoris (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=169.msg5702#msg5702). Welcome to the board.
Wonderful Photographs from MARS
I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.
Yes, I was excited too. Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars. And, yes, those people at NASA, or more accurately JPL, are pretty clever.
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Wrong on a few different counts. First, that's a sub-heading, not a headline. Second, Astronomy thinks the mission is quite real. Third, that description was issued by NASA and quoted by the magazine.
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Have you been to Nevada? I have. The parts I've seen don't look like the Moon. Of course, your unsupported assertion fails on many other counts as well, but there's no point in discussing them unless you actually supply some details for your claim.
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Non sequitir. It takes radio signals only minutes to make that voyage. We have routinely received "high quality photographs" from spacecraft much farther away.
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
Meaningless. MSL was on a trajectory designed for the launch vehicle constraints and coasted almost the entire way to Mars. The notion of "full speed" has no particular definition in this case. You might as well say the Moon orbits the Earth at "full speed".
and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality
First, it's been done before. A lot. Second, you are simply appealing to personal incredulity. I don't find it hard to believe, and I work in this business. Do you? Third, can you supply a specific reason the systems should not work as claimed?
of a near perfectly flat landing area.
Of course. The landing area was selected to be flat. It's merely flat enough.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Wrong. (http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/Mineralogy.pdf) Again. You have no idea at all what you're talking about.
What are they going to find this time ?
Several very interesting things, I expect. That's the beautiful reality of these missions, quite unlike the cramped, dreary fantasy world of the ignorant conspiracy-mongers.
Y'all come back now, y'hear?
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We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
You seem to assume that the telecasts are the only evidence.
You know what they say about assumptions?
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Because you say so?
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.
Argument from personal incredulity.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Do you know what a chemical compound is?
What are they going to find this time ?
New stuff.
The universe is like that, full of surprises.
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It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
Full speed??? Bwahahahaha!
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Yes, I was excited too. Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars.
Did you? Neat! One of the reasons I kept my fingers firmly crossed during that landing was the knowledge that much of our remaining stock of Pu-238 is on that thing. Are we ever going to make more, or will the remaining stock be it?
When I saw on TV the structure holding the RTG (the rover's "tail") in the cleanroom I noticed the pipes looping around inside it. I assumed those were coolant pipes carrying waste heat into the rover so less of its limited electrical output would have to be spent on heaters. Is that right? How much electricity still has to be spent on heaters?
Also, I was wondering why the cruise stage had solar panels. Was the RTG not enough? I wouldn't think of cruise as requiring much power unless the use of a medium gain antenna required an exceptional amount of RF power to compensate.
How was the RTG's waste heat dissipated during cruise? I assume EDL was brief enough to not be a problem.
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It was "six minutes of terror (http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/tl_entry1.html)" for the MER rovers. It's not the signal delay (which was about 14 minutes for MSL in each direction), it's the time for entry, descent, and landing in which a failure is most likely going to cause loss of the spacecraft.
IMHO, it still wasn't quite as much "terror" (suspense, really) as for the (failed) MPL mission in 1999. That one was designed without any real-time communications during EDL. As the review board pointed out, this was a perfectly reasonable decision from a mission management standpoint; if something failed there wasn't anything that could be done anyway, and we'd know if it had landed by transmissions from the surface.
But from a program point of view it was intolerable because, when it failed, there was no way to know for sure exactly when and how it failed so the problem could be fixed in future missions. They could only conclude that if the lander made it to leg deployment, it would have crashed when their bouncing surface-sensing switches were misinterpreted by the flight software as surface contact, and the descent rockets cut off well above the surface.
As the saying goes, there is always one more bug...
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There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Let's see your fully detailed radio link budget calculations to back this up. JPL routinely calculates these to the hundreths of a decibel so I expect you to do the same.
Note: this is my specialty, so you won't be able to BS me.
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I found a sardine. Anyone have a firecracker I can borrow?
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It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed...
???
This is too funny. What exactly is full speed in space? Is there a half speed? What would idle speed be?
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(http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/wp-content/blogs.dir/311/files/2012/04/i-5061fe7ab12700cb708665ac1f667230-tinfoil-hat.jpg)
You know that India will be sending a probe to MARS around 2013?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19110039 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19110039)
Are they faking it as well? If they're not, will they spill the beans on NASA when they find no evidence of Curiosity or how they been paid off to stay silent?
Do you think the other NASA MARS rovers are faked as well?
How do you account for the fact it can be easily demonstrated that Curiosity's signals are coming from MARS?
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Yay!
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But anyway, why should a camera designed for high resolution photography be incapable of high resolution photography?
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“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States” - This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Evidence? 'Resembles' is not the same as 'is'. Just how different do you expect a desert plain on Mars to look from a desert plain on Earth?
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
And your evidence for that is...?
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Why not? And what does the time taken for a spacecraft to reach somewhere have to do with the time taken to send back information via radio waves?
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
What is 'full speed' when referring to space flight?
and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.
What exactly is so challenging about that?
I await your answers, and some indication that you understand the first thing about space flight.
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I await your answers, and some indication that you understand the first thing about space flight.
Me too!
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"Jockndoris" posted this exact block of text here (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=169.msg5702#msg5702) yesterday. He has not addressed any of the responses there.
Does this thread rightfully belong in this section?
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...those wonderful people at NASA.
Cool, aren't they? Coloured mohawks nowadays, instead of Brylcremed, neatly parted hair; and not a pocket-protector in sight.
"The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States"
That sounds like a fairly good way to describe that part of Mars to laypeople like myself. While I've never left my country in the southwestern Pacific, I could no doubt find out what portions of the southwestern United States look like, much more easily than I could understand if they said it looks like a flat portion of Olympus Mons, about 22 km up its southwestern side.
Neil Armstrong said of the area around Tranquillity Base: "It has a stark beauty all its own. It's like much of the high desert of the United States. It's different, but it's very pretty out here." That probably meant more to earthlings than if he said it looked like Mare Humorum.
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Gee, you sound like a real space expert! :-) If what you say is true, how come we have photos of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune taken close-up by spacecraft? Last I heard, those four planets have long been a tad further away than Mars. I also heard there's a craft out by Saturn right now, and it will be sending back photos of Saturn, its rings and its moons for some time to come.
And isn't there currently a spacecraft out near the heliopause, beyond our solar system, and still sending back signals to earth with a transmitter of only a few watts, and which it has been doing for decades?
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Do you really believe that? This document, http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/Mineralogy.pdf
tells us about four new minerals found on the Moon:
New minerals
Armalcolite (Mg,Fe)(Ti,Zr)2O5
Tranquillityite Fe8(Zr,Y)2Ti3Si3O24
Pyroxferroite CaFe6(SiO3)7
Yttrobetafite (Ca,Y)2(Ti,Nb)2O7
Guess who Armalcolite is named after: ARMstrong, ALdrin and COLlins, the three guys who first brought it back to Earth.
However, if this is wrong, please do give us the benefit of your expertise and tell us how the world's geologists and mineralogists and chemists who understand that could be so mistaken.
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You get HD TV from 144,000 KM give or take a few. Live as well.
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Well, since you repeated your post from the "Other Conspiracies" section, I'll repeat my reply...
Hi, Jockndoris (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=169.msg5702#msg5702). Welcome to the board.
Wonderful Photographs from MARS
I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.
Yes, I was excited too. Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars. And, yes, those people at NASA, or more accurately JPL, are pretty clever.
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Wrong on a few different counts. First, that's a sub-heading, not a headline. Second, Astronomy thinks the mission is quite real. Third, that description was issued by NASA and quoted by the magazine.
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Have you been to Nevada? I have. The parts I've seen don't look like the Moon. Of course, your unsupported assertion fails on many other counts as well, but there's no point in discussing them unless you actually supply some details for your claim.
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Non sequitir. It takes radio signals only minutes to make that voyage. We have routinely received "high quality photographs" from spacecraft much farther away.
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
Meaningless. MSL was on a trajectory designed for the launch vehicle constraints and coasted almost the entire way to Mars. The notion of "full speed" has no particular definition in this case. You might as well say the Moon orbits the Earth at "full speed".
and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality
First, it's been done before. A lot. Second, you are simply appealing to personal incredulity. I don't find it hard to believe, and I work in this business. Do you? Third, can you supply a specific reason the systems should not work as claimed?
of a near perfectly flat landing area.
Of course. The landing area was selected to be flat. It's merely flat enough.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Wrong. (http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/Mineralogy.pdf) Again. You have no idea at all what you're talking about.
What are they going to find this time ?
Several very interesting things, I expect. That's the beautiful reality of these missions, quite unlike the cramped, dreary fantasy world of the ignorant conspiracy-mongers.
Y'all come back now, y'hear?
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Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
Heck, JPL is in the southwestern United States; we drove past it about a month ago. Every single person there could tell you the ways Mars is different. And that's leaving aside the, you know, wildlife of the Southwest. You can't find much of the Southwest that barren of plantlife, for starters.
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One of the reasons I kept my fingers firmly crossed during that landing was the knowledge that much of our remaining stock of Pu-238 is on that thing.
Well, not most, but a good chunk.
Are we ever going to make more, or will the remaining stock be it?
There are plans to make more domestically; whether or not that will actually get funding remains to be seen. Also, maybe we can buy some more from the Russians... if they have any... and they are not soft negotiators.
When I saw on TV the structure holding the RTG (the rover's "tail") in the cleanroom I noticed the pipes looping around inside it. I assumed those were coolant pipes carrying waste heat into the rover so less of its limited electrical output would have to be spent on heaters. Is that right?
Exactly right.
How much electricity still has to be spent on heaters?
That I don't know.
Also, I was wondering why the cruise stage had solar panels. Was the RTG not enough? I wouldn't think of cruise as requiring much power unless the use of a medium gain antenna required an exceptional amount of RF power to compensate.
I'm not sure about this. The cruise stage provided power to the descent stage, but looking at a schematic, it appears that the rover could too. Also, the descent stage had thermal batteries for EDL since it had to be independent of both.
How was the RTG's waste heat dissipated during cruise? I assume EDL was brief enough to not be a problem.
A separate flight-only cooling loop carried the heat out to radiators on the cruise stage. I don't know exactly when the rover coolant loop started, but, yeah, EDL - in particular the part still covered by the backshell - didn't last long enough to be a problem.
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It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed...
???
This is too funny. What exactly is full speed in space? Is there a half speed? What would idle speed be?
Don't you watch Star Trek? "One quarter impulse", "Full impulse", etc. Obviously our new old friend here learned all his science from science fiction.
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Armalcolite? It should be Armcolalite. CMP's name goes before LMP.
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Armalcolite rolls off the tongue better.
BTW, in my above post, I had misread ka9q's comment of "much of our remaining stock..." as "most of..."; my bad.
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It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed...
???
This is too funny. What exactly is full speed in space? Is there a half speed? What would idle speed be?
Full speed could be 'warp factor 8' or 'standard by twelve' or 'lightspeed' (delete as applicable).
Meanwhile in the real world...
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'standard by twelve'
:)
Always makes me smile to see a Blake's 7 reference...
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In space, the only thing that could legitimately be called full speed is C.
I don't think the MSL managed to quite reach that speed.
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...the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
(http://4.cdn.tapcdn.com/images/thumbs/taps/2012/08/inigo-montoya-you-keep-using-that-word-i-dont-think-it-means-what-you-th-c3c345cb-sz500x500-animate.jpg)
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sts60, thanks for your answers. I remember hearing "thermal batteries" in the EDL commentary and thinking they were a natural choice for that application -- a long storage period, then a very short service life at very high power.
Does the rover use any supercaps? I know it has two lithium-ion batteries serving a similar role as the CM entry batteries on Apollo - to cover short demand peaks beyond the capability of the primary electricity source (RTG for Curiosity, fuel cells for Apollo). If these batteries are essential then they will probably set the rover's lifetime. Supercaps still have a much lower energy density but they have the enormous advantage of a cycle life measured in the hundreds of thousands. They could cover demand peaks (very brief motor actuations) that exceed the RTG's steady state output after the li-ion batteries die.
l've been thinking about supercaps a lot for LEO amateur satellites. They're usually eclipsed on every orbit, and that's very hard on chemical batteries. Of our satellites not in short-lived orbits (e.g., ARISSat-1) battery failure usually kills us. A supercap that can at least keep the computer alive during eclipse would be a big win.
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Your Excellency, that's a wonderful image that is from the wrong part of the movie and subtly misquoting. (It's "I do not think it means what you think it means.") But it is nonetheless completely appropriate here. "Fact" means something different to these people!
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There's probably supercaps in there somewhere, but just incidentally as something that came along with some RTC. I think the very poor energy density would make them undesirable for anything that requires storing significant amounts of energy. They are comparable to lead acid batteries. Lithium batteries will deteriorate, yes, but they start off storing much more energy for a given mass.
A Maxwell BCAP0150 puts 150 F in a 32 g package. Rated operating voltage is 2.7 V at 65 C, 2.3 V at 85 C. Assuming 2.3 V full charge with useful discharge down to 1 V, that's 320 J of useful stored energy, just over 10 kJ/kg. Lithium ion batteries are generally in the range 360-900 kJ/kg. A 500 kJ/kg Li-ion battery would need to degrade to 1/50th its normal capacity to become worse than an equivalent mass supercapacitor. If cycle count is enough of a concern, you might look into other battery chemistries before supercapacitors, such as nickel-hydrogen or even nickel-iron batteries.
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Your Excellency, that's a wonderful image that is from the wrong part of the movie and subtly misquoting. (It's "I do not think it means what you think it means.") But it is nonetheless completely appropriate here. "Fact" means something different to these people!
Mea culpa. I was shooting from the hip. My original idea was (after the bolded quote) to just post a picture of Inigo and let Those-Of-Us-Who-Know work-out the context. When I did a GIS, the above image came-up so I ran with it. I haven't been online for several weeks and am still catching-up. Please forgive the rush-job.
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This might help.
http://twentytwowords.com/2011/03/15/a-flowchart-to-help-you-determine-if-youre-having-a-rational-discussion/ (http://twentytwowords.com/2011/03/15/a-flowchart-to-help-you-determine-if-youre-having-a-rational-discussion/)
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Armalcolite? It should be Armcolalite. CMP's name goes before LMP.
That was the first idea, yeah. But, you know, trademark issues 'n such.
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With regards speed. You call it ramming speed sans crunch?
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Prepare for ludicrous speed!
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In space, the only thing that could legitimately be called full speed is C.
I don't think the MSL managed to quite reach that speed.
Insted of "Seven Minutes of Terror", it would have been "Seven Milliseconds of Plasma".
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In space, the only thing that could legitimately be called full speed is C.
I don't think the MSL managed to quite reach that speed.
Insted of "Seven Minutes of Terror", it would have been "Seven Milliseconds of Plasma".
That long?
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Reminds me of this recent article (http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/) on relativistic baseball.
(http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/1/04.png)
The rest of the what-if articles are just as fun.
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I didn't know about that "what-if" series on xkcd. What fun!
Naturally I had to spot-check at least one of his calculations. A regulation US baseball has an average mass of about 146 grams, so if it were moving at 0.9c - and ignoring relativistic effects - it would have a kinetic energy of about 5e15 J or about 1.2 megatons of TNT. So yeah, there'd be a large fireball and the stadium would be replaced with a large crater.
Relativistic effects would only increase this.
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The one thing where I think his analysis goes wrong is that the ball stays too intact and behaves too much like a solid object speeding through a fluid medium. From the ball's perspective, it's being blasted with 17 GeV N and 19 GeV O nuclei (lots more than the binding energy of those nuclei), plus 7 660 keV beta particles for each of the former and 8 for each of the latter.
I think it's going to look less like a fusion zone in front with a vacuum behind, and more like atoms splattering and fusing all through the ball with a trail of nuclear debris and reaction products behind, the ball itself more or less instantly ceasing to resemble a solid object and instead smearing out along its trajectory.
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I didn't know about that "what-if" series on xkcd. What fun!
Naturally I had to spot-check at least one of his calculations. A regulation US baseball has an average mass of about 146 grams, so if it were moving at 0.9c - and ignoring relativistic effects - it would have a kinetic energy of about 5e15 J or about 1.2 megatons of TNT. So yeah, there'd be a large fireball and the stadium would be replaced with a large crater.
Relativistic effects would only increase this.
Heh. The relativistic mass increase would be by a factor of 2.29. So 2.9 megatons of TNT. That would make a crater about 1 km in diameter and one fourth of that deep. The 5 PSI blast radius (most buildings inside the 5 PSI blast radius are destroyed) would be 7.3 km. Exposed people would receive third degree burns out to 17 km.
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'standard by twelve'
:)
Always makes me smile to see a Blake's 7 reference...
Me too! Haven't seen that in a long time...... :)
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I didn't know about that "what-if" series on xkcd. What fun!
Naturally I had to spot-check at least one of his calculations. A regulation US baseball has an average mass of about 146 grams, so if it were moving at 0.9c - and ignoring relativistic effects - it would have a kinetic energy of about 5e15 J or about 1.2 megatons of TNT. So yeah, there'd be a large fireball and the stadium would be replaced with a large crater.
Relativistic effects would only increase this.
Heh. The relativistic mass increase would be by a factor of 2.29. So 2.9 megatons of TNT. That would make a crater about 1 km in diameter and one fourth of that deep. The 5 PSI blast radius (most buildings inside the 5 PSI blast radius are destroyed) would be 7.3 km. Exposed people would receive third degree burns out to 17 km.
Can you show your work?
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I used these sources:
Lorentz factor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor#Definition) for relativistic mass.
1 gram TNT = 4184 J (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent)
Nuclear Weapons Archive FAQ Effects of Nuclear Explosions Section 5.6 (http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html#nfaq5.6) for blast and thermal effects.
Crater diameter from impact effects website (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/)
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And we've only considered the kinetic energy of the baseball. We've not considered the energy released by fusion as the ball slams into air molecules. N and O might not fuse but what about the hydrogen in the ball?
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And we've only considered the kinetic energy of the baseball. We've not considered the energy released by fusion as the ball slams into air molecules. N and O might not fuse but what about the hydrogen in the ball?
As I noted, the impact energy dwarfs the total binding energy of the nuclei. It in fact exceeds the energy you'd get by converting the ball directly into energy. Any fusion or fission going on is insignificant.
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Reminds me of this recent article (http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/) on relativistic baseball.
(http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/1/04.png)
The rest of the what-if articles are just as fun.
I think the end is my favorite:
"A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered "hit by pitch", and would be eligible to advance to first base."
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Hi, Jockndoris (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=169.msg5702#msg5702). Welcome to the board.
Wonderful Photographs from MARS
I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.
Yes, I was excited too. Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars. And, yes, those people at NASA, or more accurately JPL, are pretty clever.
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
That makes my point precisely . There is no way in several million years that the site they have apparently landed on is just like the southwestern United States, much more likely that it was actually shot in lot 171 which of course is right there in the southwestern United States
This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Wrong on a few different counts. First, that's a sub-heading, not a headline. Second, Astronomy thinks the mission is quite real. Third, that description was issued by NASA and quoted by the magazine.
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Have you been to Nevada? I have. The parts I've seen don't look like the Moon. Of course, your unsupported assertion fails on many other counts as well, but there's no point in discussing them unless you actually supply some details for your claim. You confirmimg my point again of course it is not like the Moon.
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Non sequitir. It takes radio signals only minutes to make that voyage. We have routinely received "high quality photographs" from spacecraft much farther away. Preoblably through a NASA controlled craft !!
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
Meaningless. MSL was on a trajectory designed for the launch vehicle constraints and coasted almost the entire way to Mars. The notion of "full speed" has no particular definition in this case. You might as well say the Moon orbits the Earth at "full speed".
and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality
First, it's been done before. A lot. Second, you are simply appealing to personal incredulity. I don't find it hard to believe, and I work in this business. Do you? Third, can you supply a specific reason the systems should not work as claimed?
of a near perfectly flat landing area.
Of course. The landing area was selected to be flat. It's merely flat enough.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Wrong. (http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/Mineralogy.pdf) Again. You have no idea at all what you're talking about.
What are they going to find this time ?
Several very interesting things, I expect. That's the beautiful reality of these missions, quite unlike the cramped, dreary fantasy world of the ignorant conspiracy-mongers.
Y'all come back now, y'hear?
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“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States” - This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Evidence? 'Resembles' is not the same as 'is'. Just how different do you expect a desert plain on Mars to look from a desert plain on Earth? Massive differences of course There is apparently no water there, the temperature range goes from massive highs to massive lows
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
And your evidence for that is...? You own website is full of assertions that this happened - look all around you
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Why not? And what does the time taken for a spacecraft to reach somewhere have to do with the time taken to send back information via radio waves?
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
What is 'full speed' when referring to space flight?
and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality of a near perfectly flat landing area.
What exactly is so challenging about that?
I await your answers, and some indication that you understand the first thing about space flight.
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'standard by twelve'
:)
Always makes me smile to see a Blake's 7 reference...
Yes weren't they absolutely fabulous
Me too! Haven't seen that in a long time...... :)
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Obvious trolling already? Not even trying this time, are you?
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Obvious trolling already? Not even trying this time, are you?
It certainly looks that way.
Jockndoris if you have something to say, please say it. I do not understand why you are quoting other posts in their entirety with no other response or comment.
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This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Evidence? It is obvious the contents of a crater on Mars must be different in every way possible - no water - high and low temperatures all worn away over millions of years and we are expected to believe that it looks just like the southwestern United States is just preposterous! - Mind you it is quite handy for the boys in Hollywood when they were doing the filming for the simulation ! cut down the travelling time
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Evidence?
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Please explain why the fact that it took a spacecraft months to physically travel to mars has any bearing on the transmission of images by radio waves, as has been done for decades at this point?
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
what I meant high speed
You have no idea how space travel works, have you? Please feel free to explain the speed at which the spacecraft travelled on its journey.
The craft was sent in slightly roundabout way so as to approach Mars at an angle making it easier to get into orbit round MARS - a bit disappointing if they just flew close by off into the middle distance.
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Please learn how to use the quote tags and preview your post before putting it up.
It is obvious the contents of a crater on Mars must be different in every way possible - no water - high and low temperatures all worn away over millions of years and we are expected to believe that it looks just like the southwestern United States is just preposterous!
Who said it 'looks just like' the US? It 'resembles' the US, in that it's a large flat plain with some rocks in it. Please explain why the things you picked out would result in it actually looking vastly different from a desert plain in the US? In fact please explain why the things you picked out are in any way different from the conditions in the US deserts in the first place! They're pretty low on water and high on wind, the temperatures go up and down, and Mars and Earth are both made of similar kinds of materials.
what I meant high speed
I still await your explanation for what the speed of a spacecraft travelling through space has to do with sending information via radio waves.
The craft was sent in slightly roundabout way so as to approach Mars at an angle making it easier to get into orbit round MARS - a bit disappointing if they just flew close by off into the middle distance.
What is this supposed to mean?
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*Gets popcorn*
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...
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
That makes my point precisely . There is no way in several million years that the site they have apparently landed on is just like the southwestern United States, much more likely that it was actually shot in lot 171 which of course is right there in the southwestern United States
First, please learn to use the quote function correctly. As an example, I have excerpted your single reply and placed it inside its own quote so that it is clear who is saying what. If you need help with the quote tags, feel free to ask.
Second, you cannot have paid much attention to what I actually said. Mars is like but not "just like" the southwestern U.S. Yes, both are arid places with dirt and rocks. The resemblence ends there. Mars has no vegetation at all, for one. It does not have clouds like Earth's. It does not have features indicating sporadic rainfall or ample but occasional liquid surface water.
Third, your claim that "there is no way..." is simply a bald, unspported assertion, especially given the observable fact that Mars does not look "just like" the southwestern U.S. in many ways. I have no idea what you mean by "lot 171", but if you wish to identify it and provide any actual evidence for your assertion, I will be happy to take a look.
Finally, you made a number of other claims which were rebutted, but you have ignored the rebuttals. Please address them.
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The craft was sent in slightly roundabout way so as to approach Mars at an angle making it easier to get into orbit round MARS - a bit disappointing if they just flew close by off into the middle distance.
No. You have no idea what you're talking about.
First, MSL was sent on a trajectory that was optimized for the capability of the launch vehicle, and took advantage of the favorable positions of Earth and Mars during the launch window, to get there as fast as it could given the ability of the launch vehicle to send it on its way and the ability of the entry system to get it safely into the atmosphere. That's not "roundabout" in any meaningful sense.
Second, MSL did not enter orbit around Mars. It was a direct-entry mission; it flew to Mars and directly into the atmosphere, slowing down by the simple expedient of plowing straight into the atmosphere. This is called "aerobraking" and has been used by all the Martian rover missions.
Your claim is simply wrong. Perhaps you should re-evaluate your position in light of the numerous errors of fact you have made. No one will think badly of you for this.
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The craft was sent in slightly roundabout way so as to approach Mars at an angle making it easier to get into orbit round MARS - a bit disappointing if they just flew close by off into the middle distance.
It is a very common misunderstanding that spacecraft can fly in straight lines between planets. It is impossible to do that without an almost infinite fuel supply. All paths between planets must be made using orbits around the Sun of various sizes and eccentricities.
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I've not found the papers that discuss the design of a direct descent trajectory to the Martian surface, but I can make an informed guess about why it was done as it was.
As sts60 pointed out, the interplanetary trajectory was designed simply to get MSL to Mars using the least amount of fuel. This required launching when Earth and Mars were in the right positions, something that happens for only a few days at a time every 2+ years. It also required launching at a specific time of day when KSC passed through the plane of the desired Earth parking orbit. As with Apollo, MSL first entered a low Earth parking orbit, coasted, and then fired its upper stage a second time to inject it into its trajectory to Mars. And in both missions the launch azimuth (direction) and coast period were adjusted to account for the exact launch date and time.
The trajectory designers could have aimed MSL anywhere on or near the Martian disc as seen by the approaching spacecraft. Because it was headed for Gale Crater on the equator, it obviously had to target some point along the equator. But where? Had it hit the center of the disc, it would have entered the atmosphere at a very steep angle and been quickly destroyed by the extreme deceleration and heating. It had to shoot for the edge of the disc, just Apollo did when returning from the moon. During cruise MSL's speed was adjusted very slightly so it would arrive at this point above Mars just as Gale Crater was passing under it.
But which edge? If you shoot for the 'left' or western edge (with north 'up'), your velocity relative to the Martian atmosphere (which rotates with the planet) would be your own heliocentric velocity plus that of Mars own west-to-east rotation. If you shoot for the 'right' or eastern edge, then Mars' rotation speed subtracts from your own velocity and your velocity relative to the atmosphere is lower. That makes the entry much less stressful, so that's the one you choose.
So you shoot for a target point somewhere in the Martian atmosphere that is low enough to ensure capture but not so low that you descend too steeply and burn up. It was just like an Apollo re-entry from the moon except that Mars has only 1/3 Earth's gravity and 1% of Earth's surface atmospheric pressure. The Apollo entry angle was 6.5 degrees; anybody happen to know the figure for the MSL entry?
This created one unavoidable problem: as seen from Earth, MSL went around the right edge of Mars shortly after entry, making it impossible for MSL to communicate directly to earth all the way to the surface. Fortunately, JPL arranged for the active Mars orbiting spacecraft to be in the vicinity at the time so they could relay real-time communications to Earth. This worked remarkably well; without them we would not have known about the successful landing for another 12+ hours when the landing site came around the other edge of Mars and in view of Earth again.
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The Apollo entry angle was 6.5 degrees; anybody happen to know the figure for the MSL entry?
This MSL Interplanetary Navigation Analysis (http://www.issfd22.inpe.br/S6-Interplanetary.Navigation-IN/S6_P3_ISSFD22_PF_001.pdf) (1,74 MB PDF) from JPL looks like it assumes -15.50 for EFPA (Table 5). I've also seen the number -15.7 while looking around, but haven't seen anything stating that it's the actual value.
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So let me get this straight...the new Mars rover is also a hoax now? Why on Earth would NASA fake this? I swear to god NASA beats out MgM or Universal for big budget feature films or something. Just spend billions on research and development to produce films that the Zionist Jews in Hollywood produce for much less(I at least got that right don't I? All Jews are Zionists and underhanded aren't they?)
It's total truly about a inability to distinguish between creditable sources and info leads to everything being a conspiracy.
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As night follows day, someone will be making a case via text or video or dissection of the information sent back to prove their claim of a fake.
It will happen on the next one, and the next etc.
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I'm confused about why conspirators would point out something that would suggest their duplicity.
Much like the way conspiracy theorists get in a tizzy over Armstrong saying Tranquility base looked the high desert of Earth. If it actually was, it's probably best to ixnay such omparisonscay.
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The craft was sent in slightly roundabout way so as to approach Mars at an angle making it easier to get into orbit round MARS - a bit disappointing if they just flew close by off into the middle distance.
It is a very common misunderstanding that spacecraft can fly in straight lines between planets. It is impossible to do that without an almost infinite fuel supply. All paths between planets must be made using orbits around the Sun of various sizes and eccentricities.
Well done you understand how it is done
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Yes he does. And so do most of us. What does it have to do with your earlier point?
You're not really big on the whole 'discussion' part of this forum, are you?
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Well done you understand how it is done
So you admit that the mission is real now?
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Absolutely not - NASA may have sent three craft to MARS but I don't trust their photographs at all. They are far too good and far too quick.
They did exactly the same with the supposed landings on the Moon which were only acheived on the NASA Mission Control simulators.
"Failure is not an option " and NASA control everything - orbiting craft and all the communications so they can send us anything they choose.
They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!
Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?" Have you ever thought about that ? If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him - it couldn't be Buzz Aldrin as he was still inside - so it must have been CNN or SKY?
In fact the whole thing was set up in advance as a simulation and when we all swallowed the first one the next few Apollo missions were easy.
I am absolutely certain they couldn't do it then and I am far from convinced that they could do it now.
Lets see what the spectroanalysis shows from this wondrerful gadget they have - if they don't produce something new then my case is proved.
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Absolutely not - NASA may have sent three craft to MARS but I don't trust their photographs at all. They are far too good and far too quick.
Then tell us what should of happened and why your expectations of the photo quality and transmission times are relevant. Please show your work. Until you do this, your argument can be dismissed as just bluffing.
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Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?" Have you ever thought about that ? If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him - it couldn't be Buzz Aldrin as he was still inside - so it must have been CNN or SKY?
Is this one on the bingo card as well?
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Is this one on the bingo card as well?
I'll have to check. If not, I'll have to add it.
Edited to add: The bingo card includes "Who filmed Neil Armstrong making his first steps?" and also "Who filmed the LM lifting off from the moon?". I will allow any variation of "Who is the mysterious third person who took this picture or film?"
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Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?" Have you ever thought about that ? If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him - it couldn't be Buzz Aldrin as he was still inside - so it must have been CNN or SKY?
Seriously? Is that the best evidence you've got? You need to think. Have you ever considered that there might have been a remotely operated camera mounted to the outside of the spacecraft for specifically that purpose?
Are you really going to tell me that that makes less sense to you than the idea that the whole Apollo program was faked?
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Who shot Armstrong? Really? You are actually saying that's an anomaly? Really? Did it not occur to you that the LM was designed to hold the television camera in a storage compartment on the outside that could be opened by an astronaut from the Z+ strut so that this historic moment could explicitly be recorded for posterity? Really?
For information Top return for Googling LM MESA (http://www.myspacemuseum.com/mesa.htm)
Of course the photo quality (http://www.clavius.org/photoqual.html) argument is stock. It is simply an untruth told by conspiracy theorists. Thousands of photos were taken. Judging by the level of knowledge you possess I doubt you are aware of any of them bar the usual some handful that appear in all the books simply because they are the minority that happened to turn out well or at the very least could be edited to look good. (And by edited I mean cropping, rotating and maybe removing an unsightly lens flare.)
As to the Mars image returns, how much bandwidth do you think it requires to return such images and what bandwidth do you think they had to work with? We need you to answer these questions because simply asserting it was insufficient isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to show your work to justify your implicit assertion that you know what you're talking about.
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Welcome back, Jockndoris. Please answer my rebuttals to your original claims (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5707#msg5707).
Absolutely not - NASA may have sent three craft to MARS
Wrong. NASA has sent more than a dozen successful missions to Mars since Mariner IV first flew by in 1964. In fact, NASA has successfully landed more rovers on Mars (4) than your claimed total.
At this point, since you cannot get even the most basic facts right, shouldn't you take a deep breath and reconsider your belief?
but I don't trust their photographs at all.
Wrong They are far too good and far too quick.
On what basis, exactly, do you base your disbelief? Can you point to a specific issue that would prevent said imagery from being returned? If not, why should your uninformed opinion be given any weight at all?
They did exactly the same with the supposed landings on the Moon which were only acheived on the NASA Mission Control simulators.
No, this is laughably wrong.
First, your statement is simply a bald assertion. You have provided no evidence for it, and your demonstrable ignorance of the original topic lends no confidence to your personal opinion.
Second, the Apollo missions are amply supported by a mountain of evidence. Your claim does not address that.
Finally, I have actually participated in simulations at the JSC MCC, as well as in other facilities at JSC. The idea that they could fake the landings there is ludicrous. The simulation facilities are for training the crews and flight controllers, and can't fake anything to anyone else. And they couldn't fool the crews or controllers into thinking they had flown an actual mission.
Look, I have been there, and not as a tourist either. You have no idea what you are talking about.
"Failure is not an option " and NASA control everything - orbiting craft and all the communications so they can send us anything they choose.
Wrong. Again.
First, the lunar landings you claimed were faked were tracked by independent entities around the world - countries, organizations, even radio amateurs.
Second, the Mars data is looked at by scientists and engineers all over the place. The idea that they are all going to be fooled is just silly.
They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!
And they trained with those cameras - a lot - and they also took lots of lousy pictures too. Again, you have no idea what you are talking about: you clearly know as little about Apollo as you do about Mars missions.
Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?" Have you ever thought about that ? If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him - it couldn't be Buzz Aldrin as he was still inside - so it must have been CNN or SKY?
Thirty seconds of Googling would have told you that a camera mounted on the LM, activated by Armstrong by pulling a lanyard, did this automatically.
Clearly, you have not done the slightest amount of research into any of these subjects; you have no idea what you are talking about.
I have to ask at this point, are you deliberately trolling? Because it is hard to be so completely wrong, so consistently, by accident.
In fact the whole thing was set up in advance as a simulation and when we all swallowed the first one the next few Apollo missions were easy.
I am absolutely certain they couldn't do it then and I am far from convinced that they could do it now.
There is no way to put this delicately: why should anyone care what you think when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about? This is not a rhetorical question; I'd like to know the answer.
Lets see what the spectroanalysis shows from this wondrerful gadget they have - if they don't produce something new then my case is proved.
First, you were wrong earlier about "nothing new" from lunar materials.
Second, you are not qualified to interpret spectroanalytical results, so your view of them is irrelevant.
Third, your claim pivots on a non sequitir - the second part does not follow from the first part.
Again, given your utter ignorance of the topics you have been discussing, don't you think it's time you stopped, reconsidered your convictions, and spent some time trying to learn something? Or will you just dig in and stubbornly repeat your beliefs?
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They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!
I am going on a trip where I intend to try the manual method and not use the auto function on my camera. There is a wheel calculator I can down load from a person that has been kind enough to make it FOC on the web. I want to set the camera to a particular setting for the lens fitted and just shoot away safe in the knowledge that the subject will be in focus and the depth of field with the settings will give me a good shot.
This is something I think you can try.
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I don't trust their photographs at all. They are far too good and far too quick.
What exactly is 'too good' and 'too quick' about them? how good a camera can be put on a spacecraft, and how long should it take, by your estimates, to get a photo back? What is it that makes good quality images so hard to get? We await your explanation.
"Failure is not an option "
You're using a quote from a movie made in 1994 in an argument about a space program from thrity years before? Seriously?
and NASA control everything - orbiting craft and all the communications so they can send us anything they choose.
Utter rubbish. Do smoe research about ham radios, and check out the Soviet tracking of Apollo. Then explain that.
They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!
Exactly what about the spacesuit was cumbersome, and what about the camera made it so hard to operate in a space suit?
Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?" Have you ever thought about that ? If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him
Which shot of him? There are no photos of Amrstrong making his first steps. There is film, shot from a 16mm camera mounted inside the LM, and video, captured by a camera mounted outisde the LM for precisely the purpose of recording the historic first steps on the Moon. Are you seriously telling us that idea never actually occurred to you? Do you really think a TV camera needs a person standing behind it to work?
The only Apollo 11 still images of an astronaut descending the ladder are taken by Armstrong and are of Aldrin.
In fact the whole thing was set up in advance as a simulation and when we all swallowed the first one the next few Apollo missions were easy.
Again I ask for evidence. Do you have any, or is this all argument from incredulity: you can't see how it was done therefore it is impossible?
Lets see what the spectroanalysis shows from this wondrerful gadget they have - if they don't produce something new then my case is proved.
Why is your case proved? First of all you need to prove that your case actually has a reasonable basis.
Do you have anything in the way of evidence to bring to this discussion at all or is it all going to be 'it's too good' or 'it's too quick' or 'they definitely couldn't have done it'? One will provide a sensible discussion, the other will get old and tired very quickly.
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Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?"
Not only did we see it, we answered it as well. (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=2465) You posted once, ignored the explanations, and never returned to acknowledge them.
Have you ever thought about that ?
Yes, we have thought about it. When will you, since you clearly have not done so yet?
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If failure isn't an option, why did so many things sent to Mars fail?
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If failure isn't an option, why did so many things sent to Mars fail?
They just want you to THINK that they fail. In reality those missions are the only ones that succeed. ;)
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The Hasselblad camera on the astronauts chests could be unclipped if necessary for more unusual angles. It wasn't "set" on their chests.
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Absolutely not - NASA may have sent three craft to MARS but I don't trust their photographs at all. They are far too good and far too quick.
Inasmuch as several cameras on the new Curiosity rover are essentially identical to the millions of digital cameras on earth, and produce exactly what one would expect, why are they "far too good"?
What's so 'quick' about the images? Curiosity has been on Mars for several weeks and we're still receiving new pictures taken on landing day and shortly thereafter. The links from Mars are anything but 'quick'. Inasmuch as this is my field of expertise, I challenge you to work up a 'link budget' showing exactly what is and isn't possible from Mars. And I expect you to do it with at least as much precision as JPL itself.
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Also, the first images sent back were tiny thumbnails sent directly to Earth over a slow link (32 kbps max) with the protective dust covers still on (and covered with dust), leading to stupid comments by the hecklers in the crowd about how their cell phones took better pictures. It took them a while longer to get the high bandwidth link through MRO and Odyssey up and start getting high quality images from the rover.
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They did exactly the same with the supposed landings on the Moon...
Gish gallop from MSL hoax to Apollo hoax noted. If you have any evidence for an MSL hoax, other than your own uninformed incredulity, please present it. If you want to present evidence that Apollo was a hoax, there's another section for that discussion.
BTW, who is "they?" Is anyone from the Apollo program currently working at JPL on the MSL program?
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Also, the first images sent back were tiny thumbnails sent directly to Earth over a slow link (32 kbps max) with the protective dust covers still on (and covered with dust)
I do wish those covers could have been removed more quickly. We'd have a much more impressive shot of the skycrane impact.
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I do wish those covers could have been removed more quickly. We'd have a much more impressive shot of the skycrane impact.
And dusty camera lenses for all the pictures afterward.
I'm just glad all the covers came off when they were supposed to. Look at the issues the Venera landers had...Venera 9 and 10 each lost the use of one camera due to a stuck lens cap, Venera 11 and 12 lost the use of both cameras for this reason. And then Venera 14 dropped a lens cap right into the path of the surface compressibility probe...
Or more recently, look at all the problems Phoenix had, particularly the oven doors that wouldn't open.
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I do wonder why things seem to be moving (literally) so slowly with the Curiosity rover since the landing. I understand the bottleneck imposed by the communication links and the new software load, but as with Spirit and Opportunity days go by when it seems very little happens. Curiosity has been on Mars almost 3 weeks now, and it only just moved for the first time a few days ago, and then only for a brief test.
I understand the desire to play it safe especially after such a harrowing EDL sequence, but the clock is nonetheless ticking. With its nuclear power source Curiosity certainly should have a very long life, but no one knows how long that life will really be. Infant mortalities do happen, and each day is one day closer to whatever will be its eventual failure.
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I'm glad that this is a forum where you can call someone a troll and not get dinged for it.
Jockndoris, you are such a troll.
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I don't trust their photographs at all.
But why do you trust your disbelief?
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I'm glad that this is a forum where you can call someone a troll and not get dinged for it.
Jockndoris, you are such a troll.
What scares me is if they aren't a troll, but actually sincere in their, frankly absurd, claims.
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In fact the whole thing was set up in advance as a simulation and when we all swallowed the first one the next few Apollo missions were easy.
Actually, I think this statement is 180o off true. I was thinking about this just the other day - following another one of those "Kubrick" claims - and, y'know, if there had just been the one mission (AS-11) it would be a lot easier to swallow the hoax notion.
But those other missions provided hours and hours of clear color television, thousands of photographs, and close to half a ton of lunar rocks and soil. Not to mention thousands of hours of audio tapes. Maybe - MAYbe - you could get away with some kind of simulated lunar conditions in front of a slow-scan B&W TV, but all those hours of riding and bouncing and digging and such? Not a chance in hell.
Do smoe research about ham radios, and check out the Soviet tracking of Apollo.
Is that short for 'some more', like in s'mores? ;) Joking
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Also, the first images sent back were tiny thumbnails sent directly to Earth over a slow link (32 kbps max) with the protective dust covers still on (and covered with dust), leading to stupid comments by the hecklers in the crowd about how their cell phones took better pictures. It took them a while longer to get the high bandwidth link through MRO and Odyssey up and start getting high quality images from the rover.
I was going to ask about this ... I am glad I read through first. :) I assumed they were beaming to the MRO and from there to here ... didn' think about Odessy. :D
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I think all of the active Mars-orbiting spacecraft can relay data from landers. The protocol is called Proximity-1. It operates on UHF frequencies in the 400 MHz range (one of them, 437.1 MHz, is in a ham band but because it's at another planet I won't complain). When the orbiter comes up over the horizon at a lander, it sends an interrogation. If the lander has data, it responds and transfers the data up to the orbiter. The orbiter then stores it and relays it to earth at the next opportunity.
This works very well. The usual rule for Earth/space communications is to put as much on the ground and as little in space as possible, but that rule is reversed at another planet like Mars. Because it's so difficult to soft-land on the surface, and because of the relatively long and cold night, you want to keep as many elements in orbit as possible, especially large and heavy items like batteries, high power RF amplifiers, solar arrays, and large steerable communication antennas. That makes an orbiter better able than a lander to achieve a high data rate back to earth. Because of the short range to the satellites above, the landers can transmit at a high data rate with minimal power and a simple, nearly omnidirectional UHF antenna that doesn't need any pointing. The high speed overcomes the shortness of the passes made by the orbiters over the landers. Relaying also allows data to be relayed when a lander is on the night side of Mars and out of direct communication with earth.
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That information and description is very helpful indeed. Thank you
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That information and description is very helpful indeed. Thank you
And you accept it is correct and the Curiosity mission is real, or not?
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That's it? That's all you have to say? Do you accept the responses or are you still unsure?
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"Failure is not an option" is an interesting quote. Although the option of failure was not acceptable for the Apollo program, the potential of failure was considered for any single mission. Even the Apollo 11 astronauts themselves considered the probability of successfully completing the mission to be roughly 50-50.
Part of the reason for scheduling Apollo 12 for November 1969 was to be able to correct any deficiencies found during Apollo 11 and still keep Kennedy's promise of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
The black and white Apollo TV cameras had a very slow-scan high resolution (1280 lines) mode that was reserved for situations where the lunar crew was unable to return the film images (euphemism for 'stranded').
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Quote
Do smoe research about ham radios, and check out the Soviet tracking of Apollo.
Is that short for 'some more', like in s'mores?
No, it's a phonetic spelling of "schmo," meaning idiot or cuckold. Thus, the suggestion is to perform an idiot's research on the subject, which would be one step up from the usual HB's research.
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Wonderful Photographs from MARS
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Nope, they were filmed at a variety of locations on earth, but not that one.
proof = posts 8, 17 and 24 of this thread (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=858).
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It looks like Jockndoris has picked up his ball and gone home, but if he returns to this thread, I have two points I'd like him to clarify:
1. What sort of "new chemical compounds" would he expect a genuine mission to find?
2. Why would conditions on Mars make formation of "new" compounds (by which I assume he means those not found on Earth) virtually certain?
Because as a chemist, I'm not particularly perturbed by the lack of totally unEarthlike compounds. We have the same elements on Mars, and they can only combine in a finite number of ways, due to the nature of chemical bonding. While we might see some differences in rock formations due to pressure/gravity/low water content for Mars, I would be interested in knowing why Jock expects there to be so many differences that not finding new compounds is proof of faking.
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Wonderful Photographs from MARS
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Nope, they were filmed at a variety of locations on earth, but not that one.
proof = posts 8, 17 and 24 of this thread (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=858).
Half a dozen years have passed since you blew your cover and the story, and they still haven't gotten to you? They are as sloppy ending employment arrangements as they are in making payments. For me, as long as they keep the weekly open bar happy hour going, I am fine without a check.
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Yeah, but I don't drink!
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Neither do I (much) but I've built up a clientele among the muggles at the bar that will pay cash for discounted drinks and I get to pocket the money. It makes up for the missing checks. And the tips aren't bad either. You just have to be entrepreneurial.
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Where does this "lot 171" crap come from anyway?
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There are pictures of Mars from more than NASA. Are they faked?
When other agencies land on AMrs and send their pictures that confirm the NASA pictures, will theybe faked as well?
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Thanks for all your responses. I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks which explains why I have not yet responded to your many comments. . It is clear that my post has raised a lot of interest and I will reply to each one in turn. We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
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We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
I have bolded what I see as the problem. What are you basing your expectations on? A profound knowledge, understanding, and experience of science and engineering or is it just sheer ignorance?
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We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
You've been a member of this forum for almost one month and we have still heard nothing exciting or useful from you. I suspect you're a hoax.
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We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
Thing is, that's also what everyone who actually knows what Curiosity is doing expects. It's the most complex piece of machinery ever landed on mars. There is a LOT of testing and checking to do. It has barely begun its exploration mission yet. Why are you in such a hurry for the data? And what exactly do you expect to hear from it if it is real?
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Thanks for all your responses. I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks which explains why I have not yet responded to your many comments.
Like the way you never responded to the "Who Shot Armstrong?" thread (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=2465), yet cited it in this thread?
It is clear that my post has raised a lot of interest and I will reply to each one in turn.
It's clear that you have said a lot of things which are completely wrong, and have been rebutted, but have yet to deal with any of the replies in any substantive matter.
We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
Those of us who actually know something about the subject don't agree with you. Just the landing alone provided a massive amount of useful engineering data, and MSL hasn't really even started its science phase yet.
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We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
If you've seen nothing of interest in the Mars mission, you are the one lacking in curiosity.
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We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
Nothing?
Now I admit that "excitement" is an emotion, and emotions are inherently subjective. But the mere fact that they just successfully landed a rover on Mars with almost 5 times the mass of the previous model using a complex and novel landing mechanism and procedure that worked on the very first try -- well, I certainly consider that exciting even if you don't.
As someone I once knew used to say, if Beethoven's 9th Symphony doesn't get you going, then you must be dead.
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For those getting impatient for results from the new Mars rover Curiosity, consider the following.
Radio signals, like light, are subject to the inverse square law. That is, when you keep everything else the same and double the distance, the received signal strength drops by a factor of 4. Electrical power is very expensive to generate in space, so that necessarily means that the achievable data rate also drops by a factor of 4.
Mars is currently 15 minutes 38 seconds light time from earth. That's just about 7,000 times as far as a geostationary communications satelllite. Applying the inverse square law, that's a data rate of .00000002 times what you can get from geostationary orbit. If you could get 1 gigabit/second from geostationary orbit, that would be only 20.5 *bits* per second from Mars. Not megabits. Not kilobits. Not even bytes. Bits.
In the first 20 sols (Martian days), a total of about 7 gigabits was received from Curiosity. All in all, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job.
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Well, since Jockndoris is back, perhaps he can respond to my enquiry about his own expectations?
1. What "new elements" would you expect to be found on Mars? Where would they fall on the periodic table? How would the Martian environment create them, compared to Earth?
2. What "new compounds" should be formed in the Martian environment, assuming there are no "new elements" to be found? What specifically about the Martian environment would force the elements to combine in ways not found on Earth?
3. Are you sure that your definition of "new and interesting" is not simply based on what you want to see on Mars (Catwomen!)?
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Thanks for all your responses. I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks which explains why I have not yet responded to your many comments.
Good for you. But now that you have replied we can await your responses. Oh wait, that was three days ago, and nothing since.
It is clear that my post has raised a lot of interest and I will reply to each one in turn.
Yet you have not.
We still have heard nothing exciting or useful from Curiosity just as I expected.
Define "exciting" and "useful". How did you come by your expectations? What were you expecting?
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So far, it looks like the data rate from Curiosity is much greater than the data rate from Jockdnoris.
How many photos have we gotten so far from the rover? And how many from Jock?
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So far, it looks like the data rate from Curiosity is much greater than the data rate from Jockdnoris.
Considerably more entropy, too.
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Thanks for all your responses. I have been away enjoiyng a wonderful holiday for the last two weeks
Nice, not too expensive I hope, somewhere economical?
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Nice, not too expensive I hope, somewhere economical?
Since he apparently chose to go on another one shortly after posting that, apparently not.
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I really wonder why people like this post. Did he, perhaps, expect everyone here to follow his first post with "OMG! You're RIGHT!"? Did he not expect, even want, the cut and thrust of a debate?
I imagine people like this sitting at their computers going, "... what? They offered counter-arguments? How dare they! Well, I'm not going to play that game! Either they believe what I say, or I leave the thread."
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Sorry, at this point I think jockndoris is pretty much a casual troll. Remember his reference to his Who Shot Armstrong? (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=2465) thread on the old board? He seagulled a single post and never returned to the board. He's pretty much doing the same thing here - nothing.
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This is too funny. What exactly is full speed in space?
Warp Factor 9?
Is there a half speed?
Warp Factor 8?
What would idle speed be?
Full impulse?
Well at least then, the "Wonderful Photographs from Mars" could be printed on a nice little Epson ink-jet printer (available from Walmart for $59.95, so insignificant budgetary impact) and shipped back to earth on a probe at light speed in time to hit the morning papers ::)
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and .. here's a picture:
Mars panorama - Day 2 (http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar-day-2)
(I think I've already posted that link, but it's worth repeating. hint - turn the room lighting down, go fullscreen, hide controls .. and feel what it would be like to be there... don't forget to look down at yourself..)
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I think the OP would prefer this version: http://www.360cities.net/image/martians-on-mars-panorama#262.53,5.24,23.7 (http://www.360cities.net/image/martians-on-mars-panorama#262.53,5.24,23.7)
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Very goo
I think the OP would prefer this version: http://www.360cities.net/image/martians-on-mars-panorama#262.53,5.24,23.7 (http://www.360cities.net/image/martians-on-mars-panorama#262.53,5.24,23.7)
Very funny. Though, I've always imagined a Martian city to be more like Mos Eisley. With the surrounding countryside populated by moisture farmers and the occasional old hermit.
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The best take I've ever seen on the theme of Martian natives vs robots from Earth:
Yes, it's Youtube but it's actually worthwhile. And it's pretty short.
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Attention sts60
The reason I have not responded is that I have been away from my desk for nearly three weeks of the six since I first put up my post.
Also I am not as skilled as you chaps at picking up the quotes to respond directly to them but I am here to respond to any oustanding points.
The fact that there have been 2772 views and 128 replies shows that I have caused a fair amount of interest and nobody has shot me down in flames. I think NASA are doing the same thing again that they did it the 1960's and give out far too much detail because thats what they think the American public expect for the money spent (some estimates show $7 for every preson in America).
I want them to succeed and show us something useful that we have not seen before. Surely the Curiosity is going to find something new.
Why I am still shouting about the original hoax is because all the scientists in other countries have assumed that they did it and have not looked for other ways of getting to the Moon or Mars. Completely different ideas are needed like anti-gravity or using springs to get us into orbit.
We have lost 50 years of innovation.
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So that's a 'no' to the question about having evidence then?
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The number of views and replies couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that there aren't many other people spouting conspiracy nonsense, so we're kind of bored, could it?
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It's OK jockndoris. Didn't think you could prove it, no need to try to dodge it.
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The number of views and replies couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that there aren't many other people spouting conspiracy nonsense, so we're kind of bored, could it?
Is it not the hallmark of your garden variety troll to dwell on the view and reply counts? After all, their goal is attention seeking.
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Jockndoris wrote: (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg6398#msg6398) Attention sts60
The reason I have not responded is that I have been away from my desk for nearly three weeks of the six since I first put up my post.
The time between answers is not the problem. The problem is that you put no thought into your answers, nor do you attempt to learn anything between answers.
Also I am not as skilled as you chaps at picking up the quotes to respond directly to them but I am here to respond to any oustanding points.
No, your history here does not support that assertion.
You never answered the bulk of my questions and rebuttals to your opening post (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5707#msg5707), in which post I noted that you couldn't even figure out the source of your quote - not a promising start, and you went downhill from there.
You eventually waved your hands vaguely about "lot 171" - a place you have never bothered to identify - and made some garbled, self-contradictory claim that the places you thought looked too much like another place didn't actually look like another place, but have ignored subsequent rebuttals (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5906#msg5906), including an explanation as to your completely incorrect handwaving about "roundabout" trajectories (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5907#msg5907), as well as a dissection of your profoundly silly claims about "three crafts to Mars" and "Mission Control simulators" (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?action=post;quote=5938;topic=177.75;last_msg=6400). You have responded to none of these in any substantive manner.
You abandoned the "Who shot Armstrong?" (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=2465) thread you started on the old board, yet brought it up again here despite the fact that the very simple explanation had been provided to you years ago!
The fact that there have been 2772 views and 128 replies shows that I have caused a fair amount of interest
Don't hurt your arm patting yourself on the back. There are no other conspiracists active on this board, and the bulk of the replies corrected your many wrong claims, but you have largely ignored them only to reappear as if nothing had happened.
and nobody has shot me down in flames.
Fantasy.
You have repeatedly demonstrated that you don't understand the engineering or scientific principles involved, have made many errors of fact, and your opinions are simply bald and manifestly uninformed assertions. I alone have corrected something like a dozen major errors you have made.
I think NASA are doing the same thing again that they did it the 1960's and give out far too much detail because thats what they think the American public expect for the money spent (some estimates show $7 for every preson in America).
Wrong. Again. NASA puts out so much detail because it is the organization's mission to disseminate scientific information.
I want them to succeed and show us something useful that we have not seen before. Surely the Curiosity is going to find something new.
You've previously made claims about "nothing new" which were promptly shown to be wrong. You have yet to admit your errors.
Why I am still shouting about the original hoax is because all the scientists in other countries have assumed that they did it and have not looked for other ways of getting to the Moon or Mars.
No, this is completely untrue. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Completely different ideas are needed like anti-gravity or using springs...
Troll. And not a very entertaining one either.
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Anti-gravity or springs??? Bwahahaha!
Is that how you get to "full speed" in space? Bwahaha!
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I think NASA are doing the same thing again that they did it the 1960's
If you mean actually travel to another stellar body to study it, what a coincidence, I think they're doing that, too.
I want them to succeed and show us something useful that we have not seen before.
Scientific exploration is not always necessarily "useful."
Surely the Curiosity is going to find something new.
Such as new elements? :o
And stop calling us Shirley.
Why I am still shouting about the original hoax is because...
...you don't have any actual evidence of a contemporary hoax, so you're asserting a historic hoax to invoke guilt by association.
all the scientists in other countries have assumed that they did it...
Minor typo there, you misspelled "evaluated the mountain of evidence in favor of the Apollo program's authenticity and found it satisfactory, especially in light of the hoax theory's stunning lack of even a molehill's worth of supporting evidence."
Completely different ideas are needed like anti-gravity or using springs to get us into orbit.
Why?
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Attention sts60
Why him in particular?
I am here to respond to any oustanding points.
But you're not, because you haven't responded to a single point.
nobody has shot me down in flames.
You must be reading a different thread from the rest of us. Or, more likely, doing the 'fingers in the ears going "la-la-la"' thing that most conspiracy theorists do when confronted with rebuttals to the points they make. Tell me, is it conscious ignorance of what has been written in reply or do you genuinely just not see the myriad ways you have been shown to be wrong in even your most basic assumptions?
I think NASA are doing the same thing again that they did it the 1960's
So far you have yet to demonstrate they did anything other than what they say they did in the 1960s.
and give out far too much detail because thats what they think the American public expect for the money spent
That is what people expect of a publicly funded organisation. Is there some reason this expectation is unjustified?
I want them to succeed and show us something useful that we have not seen before.
They have. For some reason you don't seem to realise that everything that we 'have seen before' was actually new when we saw it before.
But you don't even know what you really mean by 'show us something new we've not seen before', do you?
Why I am still shouting about the original hoax is because all the scientists in other countries have assumed that they did it
Justify the statement that scientists anywhere have assumed anything rather than concluding on the basis of the evidence that they did it. Science does not work by assumption, and if the evidence is so deficient that you can see it, then there is no way in hell a bunch of professional scientists all over the world would be fooled. Or do you really think you know more than them? Your knowledge of even basic chemistry is so lacking you think new elements should be discovered.
Completely different ideas are needed
Why?
like anti-gravity or using springs to get us into orbit.
You're not even trying to be serious, are you? Really, if you've barely got time to participate in this forum at all, why bother wasting time in this manner?
We have lost 50 years of innovation.
No, it just doesn't follow the path you expect. And since you are clearly ignorant of the relevant fields anywhere, we can safely discount your view of it as baseless.
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nobody has shot me down in flames.
Have you launched anything worth shooting missiles at? All I have seen is a few under filled balloons without enough lift to carry their own weight.
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Completely different ideas are needed like anti-gravity or using springs to get us into orbit.
We have lost 50 years of innovation.
Oh, that is priceless! Springs to put things into orbit?
As for "anti-gravity". well, until someone changes the Laws of Physics, that isn't going to happen, so you can read "never" for that one.
As for losing 50 years of innovation, well that really is a preposterous statement. Since 1969 we have had...
1971 - Mariner 9 first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mars, mapping the entire surface.
1972 - Pioneer 10 mission to Jupiter
1973 - Pioneer 11 mission to Jupiter & Saturn, Skylab launched
1974 - Mariner 10 dual-planet mission to Venus and Mercury.
1975 - Apollo 18 - Soyuz 19; the handshake in orbit
1976 - Vikings 1 and 2 on Mars. First soft landing on another planet
1977 - Voyager 1 & 2 on the "grand tour" mission to the gas giant planets
1978 - The Einstein Observatory (HEAO) an X-Ray imaging orbital observatory
1981 - First launch of the Space Shuttle
1989 - Galileo spacecraft mission to Venus, Minor planet Ida and Jupiter's moons. First launch of an interplanetary probe from Shuttle orbit.
1990 - Pegasus rocket is deployed from a B-52 bomber, and launched the Pegsat satellite. First satellite launched from an aircraft.
1990 - Hubble Space Telescope launch
1990 - Magellen spacecraft to Venus. Radar mapping of surface
1992 - Spacecraft Ulysses flies around Jupiter, on its way to the sun. (joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA)
1996 - Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft launched
1997 - Mars Pathfinder becomes the first probe to successfully land on Mars including a separate roving robot probe (Sojourner)
1997 - Mars Global Surveyor arrives at Mars and begins the process of adjusting its highly elliptical orbit into a circular one using aerobraking
1997 - launch of the double probe Cassini/Huygens to Saturn.
1998 - Lunar Prospector is the first NASA mission to the Moon in 25 years
1998 - Space Technology EXperiment (STEX) satellite tests 29 new spacecraft designs, including a four-mile-long tether, advanced solar panels, and an ion engine test.
1998 - Deep Space 1, a technology test spacecraft evaluating 12 spacecraft designs. First use of an ion engine to leave orbit for and rendezvous with asteroid Braille.
1998 - Launch and Construction of the International Space Station begins
1999 - Stardust lifts off for a rendezvous with the Comet Wild-2
2001 - Mars Odyssey probe is launched to study Martian weather
2004 - Spirit & Opportunity
2004 - Cassini-Huygens orbits Saturn
2005 - Cassini-Huygens - soft landing on Titan
2009 - Kepler Mission is launched, first space telescope designated to search for Earth-like exoplanets
2011 - Messenger spacecraft orbits Mercury
2011 - Dawn spacecraft orbits the minor planet Vesta
2012 - Nuclear-powered NASA rover successfully lands on Mars to seek clues to past Martian life.
The last 40+ years has been nothing BUT innovation and exciting new missions into space. Ion engines, new launch systems, a return to the Moon & Mars. Not even listed above are the efforts of agencies other than NASA. They include a sample return mission to an asteroid (Japan), a huge Orbital Radio Telescope (Russia), an Ultraviolet to gamma ray spectrum orbital observatory (Russia, France, Denmark and Bulgaria), and numerous missions to Venus and Mars by the Russians.
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Oh, that is priceless! Springs to put things into orbit?
Well, springs are commonly used to separate spacecraft from upper-stage rockets after reaching orbit. The separation velocity is usually on the order of a half a meter per second to a meter per second. Considering a low earth orbiting satellite is moving about 7,000 meters/sec, it would only take maybe 10,000 springs to do the job.
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The reason I have not responded is that I have been away from my desk for nearly three weeks of the six since I first put up my post.
No more excuses. If you had time to post that message then you had time to respond to us properly. Instead, all you did was repeat the same baseless claims you've made before. Just saying "NASA faked the Mars photos the same way they faked the Moon photos" doesn't make it true, you have to prove it.
So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to place you under moderation. That means I will have to approve your posts before they can appear in the forum. I will approve any post you make, whether I agree with you or not, as long as you are responding to us and providing the proof you claim to have. Once you have responded to us satisfactorily I will take you off moderation and you can post freely.
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The last 40+ years has been nothing BUT innovation and exciting new missions into space.
To be perfectly fair, there has been significant innovation in some areas of space flight but little or none in others.
Apollo-era avionics are of course utterly obsolete now. Modern electronics is much smaller and lighter, uses far less power, and is (or can be) much more reliable. It can do things that weren't even conceivable during Apollo.
In stark contrast to avionics, chemical rocket engines have advanced very little since Apollo. We've seen some incremental improvements, mainly in the use of more advanced combustion cycles in larger engines, but we're still using the same propellants: RP-1/LOX, LH2/LOX, hydrazine/N2O4, and APCP (ammonium perchlorate composite solid propellant).
No new chemical propellants have matured despite some experiments with methane and a NASA-sponsored search for replacements for the classic hypergols that are less toxic and corrosive. Hybrids burning plastic or rubber with nitrous oxide were used on SpaceShipOne, but they have yet to find their way into orbital flight. SpaceX deliberately chose the low-tech combination of RP-1/LOX for all their engines to reduce technological risks.
And we've discovered that the basic Apollo spacecraft and mission design wasn't bad at all. That's why Orion (and the rest of Constellation, before it was cancelled) was essentially Apollo on steroids, using nearly identical engines except for the solid first stage of the Aries-1 (which was a really bad idea, IMHO). With the shuttle we discovered the hard way that a launch escape system and a protected heatshield are still valuable features.
Elon Musk (SpaceX CEO) is probably the latest to promise low cost through reusability, yet this has yet to be demonstrated (the shuttle being a spectacular failure in this regard).
The one big advance in reaction propulsion since Apollo is electric (ion and plasma). It's great for low-thrust applications like stationkeeping and some long-duration robotic exploration but not very relevant to human spaceflight.
But in my opinion, the single biggest advance since Apollo in space propulsion, broadly construed, is the gravity assist trajectory, including the use of chaotic trajectories involving Lagrange points. This became a demonstrated reality in the mid 1970s with Pioneer 11 at Jupiter and Saturn, Mariner 10 at Venus and Mercury, and of course the two Voyagers at Jupiter, Saturn and beyond. It's now a routine element of almost every robotic mission beyond earth orbit.
Like electric propulsion, gravity assist doesn't seem directly useful for human space flight because of the long times involved. But it could be useful for support flights delivering hardware and supplies for human flights to the moon, Mars or asteroids.
So I find it kind of frustrating that we've seen enormous advances in some fields related to space exploration but few in the one that actually gets us there: propulsion. I had hoped by now that we would have overcome our allergy to things nuclear and begun to use nuclear thermal rockets for human exploration beyond earth orbit. It's more than technologically feasible; working nuclear rockets were actually demonstrated in the early 1960s before the program was canceled. I don't see how we can have any kind of practical interplanetary human spaceflight program without it.
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Others have covered most of what Jockndoris has said, so I'll look at this bit:
...the money spent (some estimates show $7 for every preson in America).
Given a cost of $2.6 billion and around 315 million Americans, that's around $8.25 per person. :-O
Now, the cost of the Iraq War is, according to Wikipedia, $845 billion. That's $2682 per person.
Given that comparison, I think Curiosity's dirt cheap.
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Apollo-era avionics are of course utterly obsolete now. Modern electronics is much smaller and lighter, uses far less power, and is (or can be) much more reliable. It can do things that weren't even conceivable during Apollo.
Which influences other systems as well. Improved sensors and control electronics can detect engine trouble and do a safe shutdown...in the case of SpaceX's most recent launch, shutting things down before the vehicle leaves the pad and allowing quick troubleshooting leading to a successful launch a few days later.
No new chemical propellants have matured despite some experiments with methane and a NASA-sponsored search for replacements for the classic hypergols that are less toxic and corrosive. Hybrids burning plastic or rubber with nitrous oxide were used on SpaceShipOne, but they have yet to find their way into orbital flight. SpaceX deliberately chose the low-tech combination of RP-1/LOX for all their engines to reduce technological risks.
It's a really nice engine, though. 310 s vacuum specific impulse (quite good for a gas generator engine, close to what staged combustion engines get) and thrust to weight ratio of 150 for the Merlin 1D, beating the previous record of 137 for the NK-33. The RD-180 used on the Atlas only gets 78.5.
The lack of changes in propellant are really largely down to the existing ones being pretty much ideal. LOX is cheap, available, and reasonably easy to handle. RP-1 is cheap and dense. Hydrogen's a pain to work with, but you can't get a lower molecular mass. Most of the alternatives are a much bigger headache to handle, and/or much more expensive.
Methane seems like it could get some of the benefit of hydrogen while being much easier to handle, though. It unfortunately doesn't seem to get much attention, and projects using it keep getting canceled (JAXA's GX comes to mind).
So I find it kind of frustrating that we've seen enormous advances in some fields related to space exploration but few in the one that actually gets us there: propulsion. I had hoped by now that we would have overcome our allergy to things nuclear and begun to use nuclear thermal rockets for human exploration beyond earth orbit. It's more than technologically feasible; working nuclear rockets were actually demonstrated in the early 1960s before the program was canceled. I don't see how we can have any kind of practical interplanetary human spaceflight program without it.
I agree. There's one space reactor project (SAFE-400 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Affordable_Fission_Engine)), and it's not even a major project. Even for robotic missions, practical ISRU will require a dense power source, and operations in the outer system will require something other than solar power. And reactors are far superior to RTGs in terms of handling and launch safety, as they don't have any highly radioactive components until they start operating.
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Isn't a rocket "anti-gravity" anyway?
:D
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Isn't a rocket "anti-gravity" anyway?
:D
Depends on the thrust vector.
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Isn't a rocket "anti-gravity" anyway?
Not if it's pointed down!
I still remember watching the cheesy SF flick Crack In The World as a kid. There's a scene with a missile (closely resembling a V2, as they all did in those days) on a stand pointed down toward a hole in the earth. This carried the nuclear bomb that started the title problem. That seemed like a particularly stupid way to send a bomb into the earth. Why not just drop it in the hole?
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I think rocket propulsion for getting off the planet is pretty much the only way we are ever going to to do this when we want to "launch" a vehicle into orbit. We may discover more efficient propellants, that give us more "thrust for our buck", but in the the end, the rough ratio of "tonnes of fuel to pounds of payload" is going to be around for a long while yet. Solid chemical rockets give us a much better ratio, but its their lack of controllability that is the problem. The two speed (stop and full thrust) aspect is always going to be the big drawback; after all, they are little more than a slowly exploding bomb. If some clever person can ever invent a way to build a variable thrust solid rocket motor they'll be set up for life.
Another idea has been the Air Launch (e.g. Pegasus). IIRC, the original idea for the Space Shuttle was to launch it off the back of a purpose built flying wing but the idea was quickly dropped as impractical. Other ideas have popped up from time to time, Maglev/Rocket Sled Launchers, flyback boosters, but they are beyond our technical capacity at this time.
The only other alternative I can see in the future is the Space Elevator idea (anyone who has read Arthur C. Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise" will know what I am talking about) We do not have the technical expertise or the advanced materials as yet to make this work, but it is something that needs to have some serious research done. It would the the cheapest system to operate (but the most expensive to build) with the least stresses on the payload; human or machine.
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Solid propellants actually have lower Isp than most liquid propellants. The shuttle SRBs had an Isp of 242 seconds at sea level and 268 sec in vacuum. The figures for the SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines), among the most efficient rockets ever flown, were 363 and 452.3 sec.
Part of this was due to the use of hydrogen as fuel; liquid rocket engines burning hypergolic fuels typically get a little over 300 sec. Even those burning kerosene and LOX, often the lowest-performing liquid propellants, do better than solids. The F-1s used in the first stage of the Saturn V got 263 sec at sea level and the Russian-designed RD-180 on the Atlas V gets 311 and 338 sec.
The big advantage of solids is their simplicity and their ability to provide truly huge amounts of thrust. Each shuttle SRB produced 1.8 times the thrust of a single F-1. Thrust can be more important than Isp at liftoff when the launcher is flying straight up and gravity losses are greatest.
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There actually is a controllable solid-fuel rocket. Well, partly solid: the hybrid rocket. The fuel is almost always the solid and the oxidizer is almost always the liquid. For small to medium hybrids, N2O (nitrous oxide) is the oxidizer of choice. It's reasonably cheap and available, not terribly toxic, can be liquified under pressure at room temperature, has a vapor pressure high enough to flow into a combustion chamber without a pump or pressurant, and is a good oxidizer.
Fuels are various hydrocarbon polymers like a plastic or rubber. Because the fuel won't burn without an oxidizer, by shutting off the oxidizer feed you can throttle or shut down the engine.
For some reason hybrids have never been scaled up to the sizes required for orbital flight. (The SpaceShipOne used hybrids, but it only achieved 4% of the energy required to reach low earth orbit.) Among other problems, apparently the oxidizer stream can literally blow out the flame if it is fed too quickly into the combustion chamber in an attempt to increase thrust. One of the advantages of nitrous oxide for smaller hybrids would probably not apply to orbital launchers, as a tank strong enough to withstand its vapor pressure at room temperature would be far too heavy. You could cool it, but then you might as well use LOX and pump it.
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The thrust of a solid rocket can be controlled by the way the propellent is packed. That's probably not what anyone means by controllable though.
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Yeah, that's controlling the thrust beforehand. The Shuttle SRBs had a "thrust bucket" during the max-Q region to minimize stresses. The main engines throttled back for the same reason. Watch any of the videos taken in the shuttle cockpit during launch and you'll hear the wind noise peak quite loudly during this period. Those forces are what destroyed Challenger.
There is a way to "terminate thrust" on a solid fuel rocket: you blow the nozzle off and/or slit the case lengthwise. The latter was done by the range safety officer some time after the Challenger stack came apart, as the SRBs were flying unguided and at least one was turning back toward land. Unfortunately this doesn't stop the propellant from burning, but at least it stops thrust.
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Hybrids also don't mix the propellants as well as liquid engines, and share the problems solids have of the combustion chamber volume and surface area changing over time and problematic vibrations at large scales, while needing nearly as much plumbing as a real liquid engine. Liquid engines often use a single turbine to drive to drive the fuel and oxidizer pumps, and all you're getting rid of is the fuel pump. Reducing its size, really...you still need a tank of liquid fuel and fuel plumbing to run the oxidizer pump. Unless the engine's pressure fed, in which case you need a much heavier oxidizer tank.
Solids can be customized for a certain thrust profile, but doing so is rather complicated and has to be done when the fuel is being cast. They also aren't as simple as they seem.
Manufacturing the fuel grains takes a lot of work and testing to ensure the fuel is consistently mixed and cast without any flaws (with an interesting disposal issue for failed or expired fuel), and there are additional handling concerns: you have to ship big chunks of solid fuel around, and keep an inventory of different fuel castings if you need different burn profiles for different launches. The stuff does have a limited shelf-life, as well. The handling problem is made worse because the vehicle can't be fueled on the pad. The fuel grains have to be installed while the vehicle is being assembled, which leads to incidents like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Alcântara_VLS_accident).
Their poor performance also means an all-solid system has to use a large number of stages. 2 or 3 stages is about ideal for liquid rockets, all-solid launch systems are rarely less than 4 stages and I've never heard of one with just 2 stages.
The fact that they can't be shut down non-destructively is really a major issue...the most recent Falcon 9 launch would have been a loss-of-vehicle accident if it had been using a solid first stage, instead it shut down before liftoff on the first attempt and was launched a few days later.
Poor performance, inflexible, safety and reliability issues...it's not surprising that none of the CCDev candidates are using them (Liberty is out, fortunately). All-solid launch systems are limited in capability and expensive...the cost per kg to orbit of the Pegasus air-launched all-solid system was about twice that of the already-expensive Shuttle, making it the most expensive launch system on a kg to orbit basis, and not even being particularly affordable on a cost per launch basis (where tiny all-solid systems try to compete with liquids).
Solids are used in US and ESA systems as boosters, but Russian and Chinese systems seem to favor liquid fueled boosters. These give better performance and don't seem to be overly expensive, considering that the cheapest rides into orbit are those same Russian and Chinese rockets. The heaviest variants of the US Delta IV and Atlas V also use liquid boosters, though the latter hasn't actually been flown.
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I want them to succeed and show us something useful that we have not seen before. Surely the Curiosity is going to find something new.
While waiting for any reply since my rebuttal (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg6403#msg6403) to Jockndoris' now month-old post, I thought it worthwhile to mention one of the several interesting new things that Curiosity has found. There were unexpected increases in power generation from the RTG during the Martian evening. It turns out that the likely explanation is that cooling air after nightfall causes a breeze to come down the mountain, providing extra cooling and temporarily increasing the Carnot efficiency of the thermoelectric conversion. Neat stuff, and something not observed on previous planetary RTG missions (Vikings 1 and 2 landed in plains).
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Neat stuff, and something not observed on previous planetary RTG missions (Vikings 1 and 2 landed in plains).
The Viking landers also had covers over their RTGs, so breezes would not provide much extra cooling. The Curiosity RTG cooling fins can be seen partly exposed; I presume heat is picked up from the sides of the RTG and circulated through loops to the rest of the rover to keep it warm.
I sent some questions to the Idaho lab that fabricated the Curiosity RTG and was pleased to get a quick response from the director. One of my questions was the temperature of the cooling fins and whether they were a burn hazard to the staff. The answer was "200F" and "yes". That would be on earth, of course; I don't know about Mars. The lower ambient temperature would suggest lower radiator temperatures, but the thinner atmosphere means less convection and more dependence on radiation, and that would drive the temperature up. I had asked about the radiative properties of the paint on the fins, but he didn't know the answer to that one.
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Hybrids also don't mix the propellants as well as liquid engines
Yesterday I got into a debate (more like an argument, of course) with a Youtube hoaxer about mixture ratios in rocket engines. He thought the "rich black smoke" from the Saturn first stage (where?) somehow proved NASA wasn't serious about making an efficient rocket engine.
I pointed out that every bipropellant liquid rocket engine I know runs rich to lower the temperature in the combustion chamber and to improve Isp by lowering the average molecular weight of the exhaust. Then I realized I didn't know the mixture ratios of hybrid rockets, or even how you might control it.
Looking through Rocket Propulsion Elements by Sutton & Biblarz I found that the mixture ratio of a hybrid varies with the oxidizer flow rate, richer at low flow and leaner at high flows. That makes sense, and I guess hybrids are harder to throttle than I thought.
This happens a lot, and it's the one reason I still argue with hoaxers. In the process of rebutting their nonsense I often learn something even though they never do.
problematic vibrations at large scales
When I first got into high power rocketry a few years ago, APCP was in short supply because of the disasters at their production plants, so hybrid rockets were the rage. I noticed they had a very characteristic "throaty" sound, apparently because of significant combustion oscillations. I can think of several causes. The oxidizer tank is just above the combustion chamber with the N2O fed by both vapor pressure and acceleration. There could be a lag in getting the necessary heat of vaporization into the tank to maintain pressure. Increasing combustion chamber pressure could slow the oxidizer flow. And changes in acceleration could change the flow rate too (i.e., pogo).
Unless the engine's pressure fed, in which case you need a much heavier oxidizer tank.
Right. Fine for (relatively) small hobby rockets, not so fine for space launch systems.
with an interesting disposal issue for failed or expired fuel
What's the shelf life? Minuteman and Peacekeeper (sic) missiles are/were on standby for many years.
Can't it just be burned in small amounts in an incinerator? Assuming it hasn't already been cast into a huge grain...
The fuel grains have to be installed while the vehicle is being assembled, which leads to incidents like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Alcântara_VLS_accident).
I've heard of at least one fatal accident with a solid rocket motor at a NASA facility, in the early 1960s I think. But given how many SRBs have been handled since without incident, apparently the proper safety precautions pay off. I can think of a few: protective covers on the nozzles, installing igniter pyros as late as possible, electromechanical safe & arm systems, grounding everything, and the obvious "no smoking" rule. What else?
Their poor performance also means an all-solid system has to use a large number of stages. 2 or 3 stages is about ideal for liquid rockets, all-solid launch systems are rarely less than 4 stages and I've never heard of one with just 2 stages.
Yes. Scout was 4 stages. The Pegasus that largely replaced it is only 3, but the carrier aircraft could be considered a zeroth stage. There are several ground-launched versions of the Pegasus (the Minotaur) that add another solid stage.
The fact that they can't be shut down non-destructively is really a major issue...the most recent Falcon 9 launch would have been a loss-of-vehicle accident if it had been using a solid first stage, instead it shut down before liftoff on the first attempt and was launched a few days later.
To be fair, solids generally do start more reliably. Both can certainly fail during flight, though as we also saw with the recent Falcon 9 liquid failure mechanisms aren't necessarily as catastrophic as those of solids so it's easier to design in some redundancy.
All-solid launch systems are limited in capability and expensive...the cost per kg to orbit of the Pegasus air-launched all-solid system was about twice that of the already-expensive Shuttle, making it the most expensive launch system on a kg to orbit basis, and not even being particularly affordable on a cost per launch basis (where tiny all-solid systems try to compete with liquids).
How much of Pegasus' high cost is due to being solid, and how much simply to its small size? People don't use it for low cost per kg, they use it to give their small satellite its own orbit instead of having to hitch a ride with a primary payload going somewhere close.
Solids are used in US and ESA systems as boosters, but Russian and Chinese systems seem to favor liquid fueled boosters. These give better performance and don't seem to be overly expensive
The Ariane 4 also had liquid boosters as an option.
How are those Russian and Chinese boosters fueled? The Ariane used hypergols, so you don't have to load a whole bunch of cryogenic tanks shortly before launch. It seems likely that both Russia and China have less stringent environmental and safety regulations than either Europe or the US and that could make it cheaper for them to use hypergols.
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What's the shelf life? Minuteman and Peacekeeper (sic) missiles are/were on standby for many years.
Depends on the sort of reliability you require, presumably. Ares 1-X was apparently a Shuttle SRB that was no longer usable on the Shuttle.
Can't it just be burned in small amounts in an incinerator? Assuming it hasn't already been cast into a huge grain...
Not sure what you mean. The stuff is cast as soon as it's made, it's the cast form that has a shelf life. Small grains are easier to dispose of than big ones, yes.
I've heard of at least one fatal accident with a solid rocket motor at a NASA facility, in the early 1960s I think. But given how many SRBs have been handled since without incident, apparently the proper safety precautions pay off. I can think of a few: protective covers on the nozzles, installing igniter pyros as late as possible, electromechanical safe & arm systems, grounding everything, and the obvious "no smoking" rule. What else?
Switching to liquid systems, so even an unforeseeable accident can't set the stuff off during shipping or assembly...
You can make accidents very unlikely, but it becomes more difficult and more costly as you scale up.
How much of Pegasus' high cost is due to being solid, and how much simply to its small size? People don't use it for low cost per kg, they use it to give their small satellite its own orbit instead of having to hitch a ride with a primary payload going somewhere close.
I don't have access to the details, but I suspect the operational costs of launching from an aircraft (transporting a large, heavy load of explosives to an airport, slinging them under a commercial aircraft, flying around carrying an orbital rocket ready to fly, etc) are significant, considering that the Minotaur I was evidently cheaper in cost/kg while having only slightly larger payload.
How are those Russian and Chinese boosters fueled? The Ariane used hypergols, so you don't have to load a whole bunch of cryogenic tanks shortly before launch. It seems likely that both Russia and China have less stringent environmental and safety regulations than either Europe or the US and that could make it cheaper for them to use hypergols.
Hypergolics...but solids may easily be worse environmentally, actually. They produce huge amounts of particulate and perchlorate pollution. Hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide are unpleasant substances to encounter, but both are unstable substances that don't last long after release. Hydrazine is produced by some yeasts, fungi, and bacteria, and quickly gets broken down or metabolized by something. Nitrogen tetroxide reacts with water to form nitric acid, much like the nitrogen oxides produced by lightning...excessive concentrations can cause problems, but plants require that nitric acid as a nitrogen source.
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ka9q wrote: (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg7114#msg7114)
The Viking landers also had covers over their RTGs, so breezes would not provide much extra cooling. The Curiosity RTG cooling fins can be seen partly exposed; I presume heat is picked up from the sides of the RTG and circulated through loops to the rest of the rover to keep it warm.
You are correct; the MMRTG currently generates over 1900 watts of heat, some of which is converted into electrical power, and most of which is radiated by the housing and fins. Some of this is picked up the by the curved plates flanking the generator and pumped to the rover. (The tubes on the surface of the generator were only used in flight and pumped the heat to radiators on the cruise stage.)
I sent some questions to the Idaho lab that fabricated the Curiosity RTG
INL fueled, tested, stored, and shipped the MMRTG to the Cape, but it was built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (California) around thermoelectric modules fabricated by Teledyne (Maryland). Los Alamos provided the fueled heat sources. As you can well imagine, a host of subcontractors were involved, and not simply to spread the work but because some of it is fairly specialized.
and was pleased to get a quick response from the director. One of my questions was the temperature of the cooling fins and whether they were a burn hazard to the staff. The answer was "200F" and "yes". That would be on earth, of course; I don't know about Mars.
The temperature at the base of the fins could get well in excess of 200 F in storage, depending on load conditions and whether forced air cooling was present. On Mars, the surface temperatures are running over 300 F.
The lower ambient temperature would suggest lower radiator temperatures, but the thinner atmosphere means less convection and more dependence on radiation, and that would drive the temperature up.
Most of the cooling is radiative - less than a fifth is removed by convection and conduction through the mounting. A few hundred watts is taken from that for the rover heating.
(BTW, all the Mars rovers have used isotope heat, but Curiousity's three solar-powered predecessors all used tiny passive heaters - three on Sojourner, eight each on Spirit and Opportunity. Also, the Viking landers also used waste heat from their SNAP-19 generators.)
I had asked about the radiative properties of the paint on the fins, but he didn't know the answer to that one.
I don't remember whether it was Aptek 2711 (http://www.apteklabs.com/products/2711.pdf) or AZ-2100 (http://www.aztechnology.com%2Fmaterials-coatings-AZ-2100-IECW.html); either one is roughly a/e about .2/.9.
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BTW, all the Mars rovers have used isotope heat, but Curiousity's three solar-powered predecessors all used tiny passive heaters - three on Sojourner, eight each on Spirit and Opportunity. Also, the Viking landers also used waste heat from their SNAP-19 generators.
Yes, and I'm glad that wasn't more widely known or the people who protested Cassini would probably have gotten all riled up about the Mars missions too.
The seismometer deployed on the moon during Apollo 11 also had radioisotope heaters even though power came from solar panels. It didn't seem to help it survive the first lunar night, though.
either one is roughly a/e about .2/.9.
That's almost as good as OSR (optical solar reflector).
I've been meaning to do a piece on heat transfer in vacuum, as so many Apollo hoax claims are based on a misunderstanding of this topic. (Well, to the extent that any of them are based on an actual misunderstanding as opposed to other, more complex reasons.)
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Lunokhod 1 & 2 also used radioactive sources for heating during the lunar night, and they did survive several lunar cycles.
Now, this probably sounds very ignorant, but why is it necessary? What is so bad about extreme cold for electronics? I know it can increase conductance and have an idea why it would harm chemical cells, but otherwise my knowledge is extremely limited.
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What is so bad about extreme cold for electronics?
Good question. I think it mainly has to do with differential expansion and contraction breaking connections, including those inside components like integrated circuits.
Device parameters, like the gain of a transistor amplifier, can vary with temperature. Unless there's enough design margin some circuits can stop working in the cold but come back to life when warmed back up. This is especially common with oscillators.
Some electrical components other than batteries also contain fluids. Electrolytic capacitors, for example. They're generally avoided in space applications because of general unreliability but I don't know if that's always possible.
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Not sure what you mean. The stuff is cast as soon as it's made, it's the cast form that has a shelf life. Small grains are easier to dispose of than big ones, yes.
Now I see the problem. I'm not sure how you'd safely cut up the grain in a large SRB. Somehow I can't envision a bunch of guys with hard hats and chain saws climbing inside.
I don't have access to the details, but I suspect the operational costs of launching from an aircraft (transporting a large, heavy load of explosives to an airport, slinging them under a commercial aircraft, flying around carrying an orbital rocket ready to fly, etc) are significant, considering that the Minotaur I was evidently cheaper in cost/kg while having only slightly larger payload.
I was wondering about that exact comparison - Pegasus vs Minotaur - as it's about as direct a comparison as you could find. It goes without saying that air-launching a liquid fueled rocket is probably out of the question, and that's why Pegasus is all solid.
BTW, APCP is not an explosive. Tripoli and NAR, the two amateur rocketry societies, went to a lot of trouble to get a federal judge to overrule the BATFE's ruling on that exact issue.
Orbital Sciences certainly claims a lot of advantages to air launching, and some of them are undoubtedly valid. They can launch from almost anywhere, including the equator, without the azimuth limits or dogleg maneuvers imposed by range safety at a fixed launch site. The carrier aircraft doesn't contribute much of the orbital energy but it does allow the rocket to avoid climbing through the dense lower atmosphere and to begin its flight in a near horizontal attitude to reduce gravity losses. I don't know how much benefit the first stage gets from its wings, as lift always costs something in drag.
They don't use a commercial aircraft, they have their own L-1011 modified for the job, and they work out of existing space launch facilities like Vandenberg, KSC, Wallops Island and Kwajalein.
Hypergolics...but solids may easily be worse environmentally, actually.
I've heard that. I think the main problem is the chlorine/chloride released at high altitude that may be an ozone destroyer. Certainly any solid exhaust particles that end up in stable orbits contribute to the space debris problem. I doubt this is the case for launch vehicles but it could certainly be true for apogee kick motors.
Nitrogen tetroxide reacts with water to form nitric acid, much like the nitrogen oxides produced by lightning...excessive concentrations can cause problems, but plants require that nitric acid as a nitrogen source.
Nitric acid is a major component of acid rain, and nitrogen oxides (especially nitrogen dioxide, which is the same thing as nitrogen tetroxide) are major air pollutants.
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Good question. I think it mainly has to do with differential expansion and contraction breaking connections, including those inside components like integrated circuits.
Device parameters, like the gain of a transistor amplifier, can vary with temperature. Unless there's enough design margin some circuits can stop working in the cold but come back to life when warmed back up. This is especially common with oscillators.
Some electrical components other than batteries also contain fluids. Electrolytic capacitors, for example. They're generally avoided in space applications because of general unreliability but I don't know if that's always possible.
Thanks! :) Derp, forgot about electrolytic capacitors. :o
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I was wondering about that exact comparison - Pegasus vs Minotaur - as it's about as direct a comparison as you could find. It goes without saying that air-launching a liquid fueled rocket is probably out of the question, and that's why Pegasus is all solid.
Stratolaunch Systems is apparently going to try it with a scaled down 4 engine version of the Falcon 9. With a bit under half the payload capacity of a full Falcon 9.
So...rocket built by someone else (loss of the vertical integration that's helping SpaceX keep costs down), the largest aircraft ever built, custom made for the job by another company (Scaled), integration of a what's basically a launch pad for a decent sized rocket into an aircraft (apparently done by yet another company, not Scaled or SpaceX), with loading/topping off of LOX, aerial ignition and release in horizontal flight (I have to assume they're sacrificing the hold-down capability), who knows what contingency plans for a launch failure (drain the fuel in flight? Dump it? Drop the whole thing somewhere? Attempt to land while carrying hundreds of tons of LOX and RP-1?)...
You can probably guess I'm not too optimistic about this.
BTW, APCP is not an explosive. Tripoli and NAR, the two amateur rocketry societies, went to a lot of trouble to get a federal judge to overrule the BATFE's ruling on that exact issue.
Solid rockets are quite capable of exploding, however. When a mistake in handling can lead to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2003_Alcântara_VLS_accident.jpg
...whether the fuel is formally classified as an explosive or not doesn't matter much. An in-flight accident prior to launch could bring the whole plane down, send uncontrolled solid motors flying in random directions, or just drop motors from high altitude, with eventual impact causing casing, grain, and nozzle damage simultaneous with possible ignition by friction, static discharge, sparking metal, or simple rapid compression.
Orbital Sciences certainly claims a lot of advantages to air launching, and some of them are undoubtedly valid. They can launch from almost anywhere, including the equator, without the azimuth limits or dogleg maneuvers imposed by range safety at a fixed launch site. The carrier aircraft doesn't contribute much of the orbital energy but it does allow the rocket to avoid climbing through the dense lower atmosphere and to begin its flight in a near horizontal attitude to reduce gravity losses. I don't know how much benefit the first stage gets from its wings, as lift always costs something in drag.
Flight starts out horizontal but with essentially zero vertical velocity...it must swing back to upward flight for a bit. It does reduce the time spent burning upward, which is helpful for small rockets for which atmospheric and gravity drag are a major penalty, but the initially horizontal attitude isn't a benefit.
They don't use a commercial aircraft, they have their own L-1011 modified for the job, and they work out of existing space launch facilities like Vandenberg, KSC, Wallops Island and Kwajalein.
Okay, I should have said a private aircraft. And yeah, the claimed benefit of being able to operate out of any airport hasn't materialized. Despite the claims of some air-launch fans, you do still require specialized equipment and facilities.
Nitric acid is a major component of acid rain, and nitrogen oxides (especially nitrogen dioxide, which is the same thing as nitrogen tetroxide) are major air pollutants.
Again, in excessive concentrations, it's otherwise just a side branch of the nitrogen cycle. Major releases are something you really want to avoid no matter what the environmental effects are...it's not friendly stuff. It could become an issue with really high launch rates, particularly if the area is prone to stratification and photochemical smogs. In areas where occasional minor releases are quickly mixed and diluted, however, it's just fertilizer. Russia may be a bit sloppy with these propellants due to looser environmental regulations, but the major problem is handling.
Solids: any perchlorate that isn't decomposed also contaminates the ground and water near the launch area. Open burning of fuel for disposal releases more due to less complete combustion. IIRC, Cape Canaveral is fairly contaminated...though a good part of the contamination is apparently attributed to failures. And the perchlorate that does decompose ends up producing hydrochloric acid, which also contributes to acid rain but does not do anything particularly beneficial.
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Stratolaunch Systems is apparently going to try it with a scaled down 4 engine version of the Falcon 9. With a bit under half the payload capacity of a full Falcon 9.
I did not know that. And I'm skeptical too. It'll be interesting.
Solid rockets are quite capable of exploding, however. When a mistake in handling can lead to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2003_Alcântara_VLS_accident.jpg
Solid rocket propellant is extremely flammable and potentially dangerous as hell, but it still doesn't detonate. That's very different.
I still won't store it in my house even if I can do so legally.
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Solid rocket propellant is extremely flammable and potentially dangerous as hell, but it still doesn't detonate. That's very different.
Solid rocket propellant doesn't detonate? Really?
http://www.chemaxx.com/explosion1a.htm
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Solid rocket propellant doesn't detonate? Really?
Ammonium perchlorate isn't solid rocket propellant, it's just one component. It can detonate, but the mix with binder, aluminum powder, etc may not.
However, ability to detonate is only a requirement for something to be classified as a high explosive. Apparently the combustion rate of APCP is low enough that it can't even be classified as a low explosive, but a rocket motor using it can certainly still explode.
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For what it's worth, the SRB'S were placarded and had shipping instructions as Explosives 1.3 when they were moved by rail.
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So "detonation" is distinctly different from "burning extremely bloody fast"?
Isn't it just a matter of how fast the chemical reaction is; an explosive chemical burns so fast that it appears to explode
e.g. detcord burns at a rate of about 21,000 f.p.s. a one hundred foot length would burn in about 5 milliseconds. To all appearances, the stuff appears to detonate; only a very slow motion camera would show that it burns from one end to the other.
Is there some other definition that draws the line between detonating and burning so fast that the appearance is one of detonation?
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I have always heard that the difference between combustion and explosion was that in explosives, the reaction traveled faster than the speed of sound. That difference in speed makes the boom.
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So "detonation" is distinctly different from "burning extremely bloody fast"?
Isn't it just a matter of how fast the chemical reaction is; an explosive chemical burns so fast that it appears to explode
Detonation requires the reaction to occur faster than the speed of sound in the material. In a detonation, the explosive can't even start moving under the influence of the explosion before the detonation front goes through. This is what lets shaped charges and such work. High explosives will often burn vigorously but non-explosively, detonation is a quite distinct process. (However, some will quickly go from burning to detonation, and others will just detonate at any excuse.)
Low explosives burn slower than the speed of sound in the material, and burning is burning...there's no distinction between explosive burning and non-explosive burning. I'm not sure what formal definitions are in use for making a distinction between low-explosive and non-explosive...one possibility might be the ability to burn fast enough that the gas expands faster than the speed of sound in sea-level air, allowing a shock wave to be produced in the surrounding air even though the material itself is burning subsonically.
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Ammonium perchlorate isn't solid rocket propellant, it's just one component.
Right. And the polyethylene that combined with the ammonium perchlorate in that plant isn't a component of APCP.
When solid rocket motors "explode", what generally happens is that the case ruptures suddenly and there's a sudden release of high pressure gas. That may look like a violent explosion but it's still not a detonation.
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Ammonium perchlorate isn't solid rocket propellant, it's just one component.
Right. And the polyethylene that combined with the ammonium perchlorate in that plant isn't a component of APCP.
When solid rocket motors "explode", what generally happens is that the case ruptures suddenly and there's a sudden release of high pressure gas. That may look like a violent explosion but it's still not a detonation.
As can be seen from the results, the difference can be somewhat academic.
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True.
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They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise. What are they going to find this time ?
Hey, Jockndoris, you might want to follow the news for the next few weeks because it sounds like Curiosity might have found something worthy of your attention.
From NPR (http://www.npr.org/2012/11/20/165513016/big-news-from-mars-rover-scientists-mum-for-now):
The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission, says during my visit last week to his office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That's where data from SAM first arrive on Earth. "The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down," says Grotzinger.
SAM is a kind of miniature chemistry lab. Put a sample of Martian soil or rock or even air inside SAM, and it will tell you what the sample is made of.
Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something earthshaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.
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I posted about this in the MSL thread over on JREF... but Jockndoris is a casual troll, and I doubt he will bother to read or reply to any of the rebuttals to his claims; his "last active" date was Oct. 26.
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I heard a rumour today that MSL has found a box with a cat in it, that was dead or alive
Apparently, it belonged to a Mr. Schrodinger, and a NASA spokesman said they were unsure if Curiosity had killed it.
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I heard a rumour today that MSL has found a box with a cat in it, that was dead or alive
Apparently, it belonged to a Mr. Schrodinger, and a NASA spokesman said they were unsure if Curiosity had killed it.
GROAN!
(Actually, I'll be stealing that, thank you!)
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Jockndoris, since you are active on the board, I am refreshing my earlier post. You made a number of claims, addresses long ago and again here. Please defend them or retract them.
Wonderful Photographs from MARS
I was very excited to see the first pictures which have just arrived from Mars directly from those wonderful people at NASA.
Yes, I was excited too. Especially since I particpated in the design analysis of the generator currently powering MSL on Mars. And, yes, those people at NASA, or more accurately JPL, are pretty clever.
“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
This is the headline in Astromony Magazine who are the first people to spot that NASA are pulling the same fast one on us again.
Wrong on a few different counts. First, that's a sub-heading, not a headline. Second, Astronomy thinks the mission is quite real. Third, that description was issued by NASA and quoted by the magazine.
We all fell for it in 1969 when we believed what we saw on the supposed telecasts from the Moon which were in fact shot in lot 171 in the Nevada Desert.
Have you been to Nevada? I have. The parts I've seen don't look like the Moon. Of course, your unsupported assertion fails on many other counts as well, but there's no point in discussing them unless you actually supply some details for your claim.
There is no way that they would be able to get high quality photographs half way across our solar system which took the craft 7 months to cross.
Non sequitir. It takes radio signals only minutes to make that voyage. We have routinely received "high quality photographs" from spacecraft much farther away.
It took the craft 7 months to get to Mars at full speed
Meaningless. MSL was on a trajectory designed for the launch vehicle constraints and coasted almost the entire way to Mars. The notion of "full speed" has no particular definition in this case. You might as well say the Moon orbits the Earth at "full speed".
and we are supposed to believe that they can just beam back at the first attempt pictures of exquisite quality
First, it's been done before. A lot. Second, you are simply appealing to personal incredulity. I don't find it hard to believe, and I work in this business. Do you? Third, can you supply a specific reason the systems should not work as claimed?
of a near perfectly flat landing area.
Of course. The landing area was selected to be flat. It's merely flat enough.
They found no new chemicals compounds on the Moon much to everybody’s surprise.
Wrong. (http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/letss/Mineralogy.pdf) Again. You have no idea at all what you're talking about.
What are they going to find this time ?
Several very interesting things, I expect. That's the beautiful reality of these missions, quite unlike the cramped, dreary fantasy world of the ignorant conspiracy-monger.
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And a followup.
Jockndoris wrote: (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg6398#msg6398) Attention sts60
The reason I have not responded is that I have been away from my desk for nearly three weeks of the six since I first put up my post.
The time between answers is not the problem. The problem is that you put no thought into your answers, nor do you attempt to learn anything between answers.
Also I am not as skilled as you chaps at picking up the quotes to respond directly to them but I am here to respond to any oustanding points.
No, your history here does not support that assertion.
You never answered the bulk of my questions and rebuttals to your opening post (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5707#msg5707), in which post I noted that you couldn't even figure out the source of your quote - not a promising start, and you went downhill from there.
You eventually waved your hands vaguely about "lot 171" - a place you have never bothered to identify - and made some garbled, self-contradictory claim that the places you thought looked too much like another place didn't actually look like another place, but have ignored subsequent rebuttals (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5906#msg5906), including an explanation as to your completely incorrect handwaving about "roundabout" trajectories (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=177.msg5907#msg5907), as well as a dissection of your profoundly silly claims about "three crafts to Mars" and "Mission Control simulators" (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?action=post;quote=5938;topic=177.75;last_msg=6400). You have responded to none of these in any substantive manner.
You abandoned the "Who shot Armstrong?" (http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=2465) thread you started on the old board, yet brought it up again here despite the fact that the very simple explanation had been provided to you years ago!
The fact that there have been 2772 views and 128 replies shows that I have caused a fair amount of interest
Don't hurt your arm patting yourself on the back. There are no other conspiracists active on this board, and the bulk of the replies corrected your many wrong claims, but you have largely ignored them only to reappear as if nothing had happened.
and nobody has shot me down in flames.
Fantasy.
You have repeatedly demonstrated that you don't understand the engineering or scientific principles involved, have made many errors of fact, and your opinions are simply bald and manifestly uninformed assertions. I alone have corrected something like a dozen major errors you have made.
I think NASA are doing the same thing again that they did it the 1960's and give out far too much detail because thats what they think the American public expect for the money spent (some estimates show $7 for every preson in America).
Wrong. Again. NASA puts out so much detail because it is the organization's mission to disseminate scientific information.
I want them to succeed and show us something useful that we have not seen before. Surely the Curiosity is going to find something new.
You've previously made claims about "nothing new" which were promptly shown to be wrong. You have yet to admit your errors.
Why I am still shouting about the original hoax is because all the scientists in other countries have assumed that they did it and have not looked for other ways of getting to the Moon or Mars.
No, this is completely untrue. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Completely different ideas are needed like anti-gravity or using springs...
You don't understand the current ideas; you have no business proposing fantasy alternatives.
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It's pretty clear by now Neil Burns has absolutely no clue how spacecraft work. The notion of Earth launch systems based on "springs" would be especially entertaining, if not for Burns' shameless trampling all over the grave of Ellison Onizuka by claiming his ghost "confirmed" to him that his spring idea was the way to go.
I live in Utah and I visit Nevada about six times a year. No part of Nevada looks anything like the Moon or Mars.
I'm still boggling at the notion that someone who claims expertise in physics doesn't understand how telemetered photographs travel at the speed of light while spacecraft in transfer trajectories move substantially slower. I literally know children who have a more accurate grasp of physics than Neil Burns.
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I think NASA are doing the same thing again that they did it the 1960's and give out far too much detail because thats what they think the American public expect for the money spent (some estimates show $7 for every preson in America).
Wrong. Again. NASA puts out so much detail because it is the organization's mission to disseminate scientific information.
... and long may that be the case. For a US Government Organisation they sure do have long reaching tentacles to the rest of the world. The NASA product has an incredible legacy, and I simply don't understand the hatred that is directed toward an organisation that is so devoted to science (my cuddly UK view of it anyway).
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“The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States”
Resembling, not "identical to". I grew up in the southwestern United States. It's not the same as Mars.
And I live in the southwestern United States. It certainly doesn't look like Mars. In the Mars pictures I see no houses or other buildings, no trees, bushes or other vegetation of any kind, no roads, animals or people, no tracks or trails other than those of the rover itself, no power or telephone lines or any other human artifacts but the rover and its associated parts, no rivers or bodies of water of any size, and no cumulus clouds in the sky -- which is butterscotch in color rather than blue. I haven't seen the sky take that color here since the last big wildfire, and there's no flaming vegetation in the Mars pictures since there's no vegetation whatsoever.
What the pictures from Mars do look like is Mars: a small, sterile (so far), rocky planet with a very thin atmosphere and no liquid water, with extremely fine iron oxide dust suspended in the atmosphere giving the sky a pink/butterscotch color, and two very small moons that occasionally transit the sun without producing eclipses. Oh, and two morning/evening stars instead of just one.
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More ghosts? Burns, are you simply a magnet for deceased astronauts? ::)
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<snip>....Oh, and two morning/evening stars instead of just one.
Wow, that had never dawned on me before, thanks! :)
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<snip>....Oh, and two morning/evening stars instead of just one.
Wow, that had never dawned on me before, thanks! :)
I think there has been at least one photo from Curiosity of the two of them. I know there have been some of the second "star" that we don't see here.
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<snip>....Oh, and two morning/evening stars instead of just one.
Wow, that had never dawned on me before, thanks! :)
I think there has been at least one photo from Curiosity of the two of them. I know there have been some of the second "star" that we don't see here.
I'm sure there are! :) I guess sometimes I just suffer from a lack of imagination.
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<snip>....Oh, and two morning/evening stars instead of just one.
Wow, that had never dawned on me before, thanks! :)
I seem to recall the ending of one of Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers stories revolving around the idea of there being 2 morning/evening stars when seen from Mars...
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Well, strictly speaking earth has two morning stars, though one is only rarely visible. So Mars has three, and the one is probably even harder to see.
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Would it be possible to see Earth's moon as a separate object with the naked eye? If so, that brings the count up to four.
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The moon is near enough 384,000 km away. Mars at its closes to us can be only about 56 million km; at its furthest about 400 million.
My rough back of the envelope calculation gives a maximum apparent separation between Earth and Moon as viewed from Mars of 0.39° when Mars its at its closest, and 0.06° when its furthest away.
The figure for when Mars is closest (0.39°) is about 80% of the Moon's diameter as viewed from the Earth, so theoretically, seeing the Earth and Moon as separate objects from Mars ought to be easy.
As to the Moon's apparent magnitude from Mars, I'm not so sure.
ETA
Curiosity has seen them
(http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2014/02/Mars-Earth-Moon-Curiosity-Jan31S.jpg)
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I had seen of Curiosity's photo, which why I was curious about the naked eye possibilities. According to Wikipedia, the moon would, indeed, be potentially visible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_skies#Earth_from_Mars).
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I have wondered how different our history might have been had Venus possessed a large satellite, the size of the Moon clearly visible from the Earth. It would have been obvious, not only that its moon orbited the planet, but that the planet orbited the Sun (and not the Earth) since it not only got brighter and dimmer, but the separation between Venus and its moon increased and decreased with its brightness. It was Ptolemy's dogma of the Sun centred universe (endorsed by the Church) that essentially held back astronomy for 1,500 years. A large, visible Moon around Venus might have meant that the Sun centred idea never eventuated in Ptolemy's time.
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I doubt that Luna and Earth would be easily distinguished by the naked eye from Mars except under very unusual conditions because:
The distance between Earth and Mars varies widely. Most of the time they're much farther apart than their minimum of 0.5 AU.
The apparent angular separation between Earth and Luna also varies widely over each month.
Earth is an inferior planet to Mars so near closest approach both Earth and Luna would appear in crescent phase, with Luna's surface properties dimming it considerably. Luna is only 1/4 the diameter of Earth and even at opposition has a considerably lower albedo, so it would tend to be lost in Earth's glare. (Most published spacecraft pictures of the two together have Luna artificially brightened just to make it visible.)
I'm sure they could often be readily distinguished by optics as Curiosity has done, but the naked eye just isn't that great a telescope.