ApolloHoax.net
Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: ka9q on February 09, 2015, 02:31:19 AM
-
I know I've seen this one before, and it's possible it's been discussed here before:
http://www.aulis.com/apollo11saturn_v.htm
The basic claim is that an analysis of a shadow cast by the Apollo 11 stack as it punched through a deck of clouds "proves" the vehicle was going much slower than it should have been (by a factor of 9!) at that point in the launch.
It took me a few minutes, but I soon identified the quicksand on which they'd built their entire case: a private 8mm movie of the launch posted here on Youtube:
The authors go to great lengths to claim that the timestamps on the video transfer of the film are accurate, but just a casual viewing of the film immediately reveals a serious problem: everything happens far more slowly than in every other movie and videotape of the event. Apparently Popov and Bulatov don't know that 8mm cameras (like most motion picture cameras) have selectable frame rates. The higher the frame rate, the better the time resolution, the greater the film consumption rate, and the slower the action will appear when the film is shown at the standard frame rate. The camera owner probably considered the Apollo 11 launch important enough to burn a lot of film on it at a high frame rate.
But that was only their first bone-headed mistake. They claim that staging occurs at 162s in the film, on time according to NASA, when the launcher is surrounded by a big cloud of "hot gas". For a moment I rashly assumed they were talking about the plumes of the retro and ullage rockets. But I've learned through considerable experience to never, but never accept even the simplest factual claims from a hoaxer. Even if you think an idiot couldn't screw it up, check it anyway!
Sure enough, when I looked at that part of the film it was immediately obvious that what they took for staging was in fact the sudden formation of a vapor trail as the launcher rose into the cold stratosphere. The film ends long before staging actually occurs. Those familiar staging sequences were made with a large and expensive tracking camera platform with long lenses specifically designed for this sort of thing. There was no way that some guy with an 8mm handheld camera was going to see it so he either stopped filming or it ran out..
I do love tearing these things apart.
Edited to add: If I wrote up a critique of this paper, what are the chances that Aulis would publish it in the interests of the search for truth? :)
-
I saw this somewhere a bit ago (it may have been aulis), and like their supposed 'analysis' of parallax in Apollo photographs at some point in the 'research' they resort to what we in the trade call 'making shit up' in order to bend the numbers to their already defined conclusion.
I also dispute the claimed 'PhD' of the author.
-
And a really quick squint at both CBS and ABC footage of the launch shows that the 'cloud punch' occurs at around 60-61 seconds (as calculated from a quick glance at youtube's timestamp).
This puts the altitude of the Saturn at around 21000 feet - well within the range of altitudes for cirrostratus of 18-40000 feet.
So there are multiple sources of footage that show the Saturn behaving exactly as it should, and they find one that doesn't and go with that one.
-
And a really quick squint at both CBS and ABC footage of the launch shows that the 'cloud punch' occurs at around 60-61 seconds (as calculated from a quick glance at youtube's timestamp).
This puts the altitude of the Saturn at around 21000 feet - well within the range of altitudes for cirrostratus of 18-40000 feet.
Yes. This occurs at the same time the Saturn is approaching Mach 1 and shock clouds are starting to form as seen in other camera views. (I think Mach 1 is nominally reached at +66 sec). Is that just a coincidence and the cloud shadow is just what it appears to be, or is some strange shock front behavior also involved in forming the shadow? (Fluid flow, sub or supersonic, has never been my forte.)
-
If the film was shot at 18fps, it is standard procedure to transfer it at 15 2/3 frames pesecond in order to have flicker free viewing. That obviously slows down the motion.
-
If the film was shot at 18fps, it is standard procedure to transfer it at 15 2/3 frames pesecond in order to have flicker free viewing. That obviously slows down the motion.
I'm seeing a ratio that's more like 5:3, i.e., 1.66:1. If the film was transferred at the nominal 18 fps, that implies a filming frame rate of 30 fps. The narrator who took the film sounds like an American, so I presume the transfer was done to NTSC video. When I still frame the video and count the number of different film frames in one second, it appears to be around 18.
-
Yeah it is a bit of an unknown. How Aulis could treat that as solid evidence is dishonest to say the least. The other transfer mode is to project at 30fps and then slow down the video to approximately 18fps. Either method is not accurately representing a true 18fps speed.
-
I believe the shadow thing has been discussed before. It's the shadow of the stack AND the exhaust they measure. The exhaust plume is - even though quite bright - not transparent to sunlight.
-
Well, it's interesting that I get an apparent camera frame rate of 30 fps. I wonder if the guy was thinking about having his film transferred to video. I understand that was common practice when TV shows were shot on film.
-
I believe the shadow thing has been discussed before. It's the shadow of the stack AND the exhaust they measure. The exhaust plume is - even though quite bright - not transparent to sunlight.
Maybe, but you can resolve the entire "discrepancy" with the fact that the film is not in real time as claimed. Not only was the Saturn moving faster than shown, but the "cloud punch" is actually much earlier in the launch when it should be moving much more slowly.
-
They do claim to have "proved" the film speed correct by the timing of tower clear matching the advertised 9 seconds. But one look at the film makes it obvious that its poor quality makes an accurate measurement impossible. The smoke and flame is backlit by the morning sun and seriously overexposes the film. It's hard to see the Saturn clearly at liftoff but I could approximate the time by swingarm retraction, which occurs just after first motion. It was harder to pinpoint tower clear because of the overexposed flame obscuring the bottom end of the S-IC. Combine these inaccuracies with the slowness of the liftoff and you can get almost any tower-clear time you want.
In any event, once the Saturn clears the tower it becomes absolutely obvious that the film is much slower than real time.
-
And added to that is the fact that the time difference between the actual event and the film's depiction of an event at the start of the launch is going to be much smaller than later on, so it would be easy to explain away a small discrepancy in timings at the start and claim normal running time.
-
For those interested, here is a two-year old thread on this topic:
Anyone familiar with this 'claim' at Aulis.com? (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=378.0)
-
I also dispute the claimed 'PhD' of the author.
Vehemently. There is a growing trend of citing Russian authorities whose purported credentials and activities are nearly impossible to verify. There seems to be no end of "Russian physicists" crawling out of the woodwork to verify any and every crackpot theory some Westerner wants to make. And as you can see, they have no actual skill at science.
-
The exhaust plume is - even though quite bright - not transparent to sunlight.
Most liquid-fuel plumes are transparent to sunlight, counterintuitively so even for incandescent ones. Do we have any specific data on the Saturn V?
-
Is this a rehash of the claim made by Stanislav Pokrovsky?
-
Is this a rehash of the claim made by Stanislav Pokrovsky?
Kind of, although in that one they use a NASA supplied clip and seem quite happy with the timings that gives.
http://www.aulis.com/pdf%20folder/Pokrovsky1.pdf
I'd also like to point out that the basis for assuming that 26000 feet is the right height for cirrostratus is because that's the height they were for Apollo 13. These clouds never form at any other height over Florida, ever ::)
Surely then the obvious thing to do would be to verify their data with Apollo 13's launch - right?
-
Is this a rehash of the claim made by Stanislav Pokrovsky?
Probably, because I tried to find my comments in the old Popov/Bulatov thread, only to discover they were made toward Pokrovsky instead.
-
Probably, because I tried to find my comments in the old Popov/Bulatov thread, only to discover they were made toward Pokrovsky instead.
That's why I asked, as I was sure that you, sts60, Bob and others have discussed something similar at length. I couldn't find the thread, I thought it was in the archive at the Proboard site.
Did Pokrovsky also claim that the Saturn was travelling an order of magnitude slower at staging than the speed claimed by NASA, and he based this on using shadow to measure distance?
-
He claimed the Saturn V was less powerful than advertised, but not by an order of magnitude. He analyzed the frames of film (read: he drew some lines on them and waved his hands vigorously), and determined that at a certain moment in the canonical video the rocket could not be at the altitude NASA claimed.
-
That's why I asked, as I was sure that you, sts60, Bob and others have discussed something similar at length. I couldn't find the thread, I thought it was in the archive at the Proboard site.
I found the old thread here: http://apollohoax.proboards.com/thread/2732/pokrovsky-theory
Did Pokrovsky also claim that the Saturn was travelling an order of magnitude slower at staging than the speed claimed by NASA, and he based this on using shadow to measure distance?
He claimed it was traveling about 1/2 the velocity reported by NASA. I don't think it had anything to do with a shadow; I seem to recall it being based on observations of the exhaust plume. It was the same type of nonsense, however.
-
Ah, sure enough. I knew the topic seemed familiar. I even contributed to the thread.
We're getting so old we're starting to repeat ourselves.
And we're saying a lot of the same things more than once, too.
-
Not only that, we're saying a lot of the same things too.
-
Not only that, we're saying a lot of the same things too.
Sorry, but didn't you say that before?
Deja vu is a curse.
-
They really are grasping at straws these days. So the several million people along the Florida coast saw what launch on July 16, 1969 exactly?
-
Just for fun, I'm still thinking of ways that one could build a rocket that would have the readily verifiable characteristics of the Saturn V, yet still be unable to make it to the claimed cutoff velocity for the S-IC stage.
The fatal flaw that makes it impossible, of course, are the readily observed shock clouds forming just as the stack approaches Mach 1. But let's say NASA has some fiendish way to fake those too. Besides, the average person doesn't understand supersonic fluid flow, therefore all that science is bogus and can be ignored.
"Readily verifiable" includes the external dimensions of the entire rocket, the height of the launch tower, and the liftoff acceleration. We can include the known physical properties of kerosene and liquid oxygen, and we can assume Newton's laws of motion and Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation are correct. It would not include any mass, thrust or engine Isp figures as those are obvious NASA propaganda. Dummy upper stages (e.g., containing extra propellants for sub-performing first stage engines) would be permitted as it's assumed the eyewitnesses could not verify proper operation of the S-II and S-IVB stages.
We can assume that NASA would not secretly sabotage their rocket to lower its performance, as the whole point is to fake a better-performing rocket than the one they were able to build.
Have at it...
-
Ah, sure enough. I knew the topic seemed familiar. I even contributed to the thread.
Nonetheless, I read through the thread again and seemed to understand a bit more this time around.
We're getting so old we're starting to repeat ourselves.
Like a good cheese with crusted port, we repeat on ourselves.
And we're saying a lot of the same things more than once, too.
At least you are consistent. That's more than can be said for CTs.
-
Not only that, we're saying a lot of the same things too.
I'd just like to say good luck. We're all counting on you.
-
And don't call me Shirley.
-
Ah, sure enough. I knew the topic seemed familiar. I even contributed to the thread.
We're getting so old we're starting to repeat ourselves.
And we're saying a lot of the same things more than once, too.
It can't be all blamed on our advancing ages; the HBs trot out the same old arguments so often that you're forced to use the same old rebuttals.
Now what were we talking about again?
-
Now what were we talking about again?
The latest in a long string of "experts" no one has ever heard of, who advance claims based on the most inept caricatures of science, all saying that for one reason or another the Saturn V couldn't possibly have done what vast numbers of people physically saw it do.
-
Now what were we talking about again?
What forum is this? Apollo what?
-
Even if you think an idiot couldn't screw it up, check it anyway!
Ain't that the truth. My favorite example is a self-described amateur astronomer in Australia who said he filmed "Planet X" in the southeast. He was actually filming Jupiter off towards the north. Out of all the things to screw up, how does one screw up which direction you're looking? Especially by 135°?
I'm on a Facebook group and it took five of us amateur astronomers two hours to teach someone, who thought the Earth's axis had shifted by 90°, how to locate north.
-
Even if you think an idiot couldn't screw it up, check it anyway!
Ain't that the truth. My favorite example is a self-described amateur astronomer in Australia who said he filmed "Planet X" in the southeast. He was actually filming Jupiter off towards the north. Out of all the things to screw up, how does one screw up which direction you're looking? Especially by 135°?
Would 117° count
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_254
"While First Officer Zille was making an external inspection of the aircraft, Captain Garcez consulted the flight plan for the magnetic heading to Belém, the flight plan read 0270. Garcez interpreted this as 270 degrees, but the intended meaning was 027.0 degrees (Varig's flight plan notation did not explicitly specify the position for the decimal point, which was implicitly located to the left of the rightmost digit). That confusion was the primary cause for the disaster, along with other minor errors. The captain therefore set the left-side Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) to 270 degrees, i.e. a due west course. This heading was inconsistent with flying from Marabá to Belém."
The aircraft ended up crashing in the Amazon jungle, hundreds of miles away in the opposite direction from its destination.
-
"This heading was inconsistent with flying from Marabá to Belém."
Perhaps I am a horrible person, but this ling cracks me up. It's obvious to the point of sounding dryly sardonic. ;D
-
I actually got the following when I was processing reconnaissance reports during a Army Reserves field exercise.
"The stream is fordable with difficulty. Average water depth is three feet, but there is a large sinkhole just to the left of the roadway that is fifteen feet in depth.
"The depth in the middle of the stream was measured by a soldier standing in the water, holding a yardstick. The depth of the sinkhole was measured by a soldier standing on top of the sunken command vehicle (11.5" bridge clearance), holding a yardstick."
-
Even if you think an idiot couldn't screw it up, check it anyway!
Ain't that the truth. My favorite example is a self-described amateur astronomer in Australia who said he filmed "Planet X" in the southeast. He was actually filming Jupiter off towards the north. Out of all the things to screw up, how does one screw up which direction you're looking? Especially by 135°?
I'm on a Facebook group and it took five of us amateur astronomers two hours to teach someone, who thought the Earth's axis had shifted by 90°, how to locate north.
Somewhere on Cosmoquest, IIRC, there's a thread discussing a UFO group's report on a UFO sighting near Crawford, Texas.
Among other things, the report included quotes from witnesses who were interviewed. One of the interviewees was apparently unable to describe how far above the horizon the object was that he saw - because he didn't understand the concept of 'angle above the horizon'.
I was so intrigued at the idea that this witness was nevertheless one of the (again IIRC) eight best witnesses interviewed for the report that I felt moved to post a comment, to the effect of: how reliable can this report be when one of their star witnesses didn't understand what it meant to visualise how high above the horizon something was in the sky?
Apparently there are quite a lot of people Out There who seem quite incapable of positioning themselves in the world.
-
Just for fun, I'm still thinking of ways that one could build a rocket that would have the readily verifiable characteristics of the Saturn V, yet still be unable to make it to the claimed cutoff velocity for the S-IC stage.
The fatal flaw that makes it impossible, of course, are the readily observed shock clouds forming just as the stack approaches Mach 1. But let's say NASA has some fiendish way to fake those too. Besides, the average person doesn't understand supersonic fluid flow, therefore all that science is bogus and can be ignored.
"Readily verifiable" includes the external dimensions of the entire rocket, the height of the launch tower, and the liftoff acceleration. We can include the known physical properties of kerosene and liquid oxygen, and we can assume Newton's laws of motion and Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation are correct. It would not include any mass, thrust or engine Isp figures as those are obvious NASA propaganda. Dummy upper stages (e.g., containing extra propellants for sub-performing first stage engines) would be permitted as it's assumed the eyewitnesses could not verify proper operation of the S-II and S-IVB stages.
We can assume that NASA would not secretly sabotage their rocket to lower its performance, as the whole point is to fake a better-performing rocket than the one they were able to build.
Have at it...
Yeah put like, someone at some point must have said, "You know what, this just isn't worth it. Let's just do a real moonlanding."
Even if you think an idiot couldn't screw it up, check it anyway!
Ain't that the truth. My favorite example is a self-described amateur astronomer in Australia who said he filmed "Planet X" in the southeast. He was actually filming Jupiter off towards the north. Out of all the things to screw up, how does one screw up which direction you're looking? Especially by 135°?
Would 117° count
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_254
"While First Officer Zille was making an external inspection of the aircraft, Captain Garcez consulted the flight plan for the magnetic heading to Belém, the flight plan read 0270. Garcez interpreted this as 270 degrees, but the intended meaning was 027.0 degrees (Varig's flight plan notation did not explicitly specify the position for the decimal point, which was implicitly located to the left of the rightmost digit). That confusion was the primary cause for the disaster, along with other minor errors. The captain therefore set the left-side Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) to 270 degrees, i.e. a due west course. This heading was inconsistent with flying from Marabá to Belém."
The aircraft ended up crashing in the Amazon jungle, hundreds of miles away in the opposite direction from its destination.
To be brutal, that's still bad airmanship. Gross errors checks are essential. At some point, he should have though, "Does a due westerly course make sense for the sector we're doing?"
-
Reminds me (again) of the exchange among the Apollo 11 astronauts on the far side of the moon preparing for their trans-earth injection burn:
C: I'm graphically reminded of it at this moment. Yes, I see a horizon. It looks like we are going forward.
Armstrong: Shades of Gemini.
C: It is most important that we be going forward.
C: There's only one really bad mistake you can make there.
Aldrin: Shades of Gemini retrofire. Are you sure we're...No, let's see. The motors point this way and the gases escape that way; therefore imparting a thrust that-a-way.
-
"If starts pointing toward space, you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today." in the words of the description of the Up Goer Five's description (http://xkcd.com/1133/).
-
The exhaust plume is - even though quite bright - not transparent to sunlight.
Most liquid-fuel plumes are transparent to sunlight, counterintuitively so even for incandescent ones. Do we have any specific data on the Saturn V?
Don't forget that distinctively sooty turbopump exhaust layer, thick enough to partially obscure the actual rocket exhaust. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/F-1_Engine_Test_Firing.jpg
Also, in the right conditions a transparent plume can still cast a shadow on a distant surface due to refraction of the light. The light may get through the plume just fine, but not end up in the shadowed area.
-
That sooty exhaust only lived for a few meters, before it was ignited and burned in the atmospheric air.
-
Whether plumes are translucent, transparent or invisible is beside the point.
The real problem with the analysis is that the (silent) 8mm film is in obvious slow motion compared with every other record of the event (and there are many). The Saturn V really did punch through the clouds much more slowly than NASA claimed it was going at the 108-sec point for a very simple reason: This isn't the 108-sec point; it's actually around 62 sec. And it appears even slower on the film because the film is in slow motion.
Nothing else is needed to completely demolish it.
-
Also, in the right conditions a transparent plume can still cast a shadow on a distant surface due to refraction of the light. The light may get through the plume just fine, but not end up in the shadowed area.
This can be demonstrated by shining a flash light through a candle flame. The shadow of the wick will be apparent and the flame will cast a slight diffuse shadow. One will see the swirling refraction shadow of the hot rising gases well above the flame area too.
A church I attended burned candles in the sconces. The spot lights focused on the pulpit would also strike the nearby candles, which would cast shadows that were often more interesting than the sermon.
-
Don't forget that distinctively sooty turbopump exhaust layer, thick enough to partially obscure the actual rocket exhaust.
Exactly the motive for my question. The default guess for liquid-fuel exhausts is that it will be transparent. But the F-1 is unique for its annular turbine exhaust. But again, intuition is notoriously wrong on these questions. In later years, knowing the optical characteristics of rocket plumes would become enormously important in military applications.
And yes, transparent doesn't mean like glass. You can get the Schlieren effect if you're lucky.
-
Of course those militarily-significant optical aspects of rocket plumes are not limited to visible light. Sutton and Biblarz talk at length about their infrared and ultraviolet emissions. Organic fuels seem to emit a lot of infrared while I think ultraviolet is important for hydrogen. Solid fuel plumes tend to be opaque from lots of condensed solid matter (mainly Al2O3).
Their radio-frequency properties are important too for their effects on radar and communications. I've seen a lot of otherwise excellent rocketcam videos spoiled by plume interruptions at their most interesting moments, like staging. I suspect that retrorocket and ullage rocket plumes are the main culprits. As a comm engineer, I know how to fix this...
-
Don't forget that distinctively sooty turbopump exhaust layer, thick enough to partially obscure the actual rocket exhaust.
Exactly the motive for my question. The default guess for liquid-fuel exhausts is that it will be transparent. But the F-1 is unique for its annular turbine exhaust. But again, intuition is notoriously wrong on these questions. In later years, knowing the optical characteristics of rocket plumes would become enormously important in military applications.
And yes, transparent doesn't mean like glass. You can get the Schlieren effect if you're lucky.
Annular? How was the F-1 annular?
I hate annular. We produce our wells that way. Modelling is such a pain. Plus it's just bad practice. Greater capacity though.
-
Amphiboly attack!
I mean the exhaust is annular -- the turbine exhaust forms the annular layer to the propulsive plume before they mix.
-
Now what were we talking about again?
The latest in a long string of "experts" no one has ever heard of, who advance claims based on the most inept caricatures of science, all saying that for one reason or another the Saturn V couldn't possibly have done what vast numbers of people physically saw it do.
It wasn't about how Apollo was staged to distract the public, while our extraterrestrial Bigfoot overlords completed their infiltration of the NWO, the Illuminati, Freemasonry, and the Federal Reserve? My bad ;D
-
I have really learned a lot about the Saturn V performance from the Pokrovsky thread and this one. Makes the Auils claim very weak. But the HB's don't need strong evidence, they only need a misguided reinforcement to make them salivate.
-
But the HB's don't need strong any evidence, they only need a misguided reinforcement to make them salivate.
I hope you don't mind, but I've corrected that for you...
-
Of course, how careless of me. :)
-
I have really learned a lot about the Saturn V performance from the Pokrovsky thread and this one. Makes the Auils claim very weak. But the HB's don't need strong evidence, they only need a misguided reinforcement to make them salivate.
That's a nugget of wisdom. Conspiracism is a shortcut to erudition. Some people latch onto them because it makes them feel smart to believe that they know something few others do, and that it's because of their special acumen that they know it. Some expressions of conspiracy theories are just pseudo-scientific veneer over what people have already decided they want to believe. It gives it the feel of an intellectual conclusion without needing to acquire any actual skill or expertise.
-
Well I wanted to major in aeronautical or aerospace engineering, but they didn't offer scholarships. So I took and petroleum engineering and haven't kept up on the stuff you guys are involved. But I was/am very interested in manned/unmanned space endeavors.
Edit: Forgot to say Univ. of Wyo.
-
You dont even need to look at most of the article to conclude that this is bogus.
The first question that I had when I first looked at this Aulis article was: "How can a rocket travel that slowly about 100s into the flight ?"
To travel this slowly the thrust-to-weight ratio would have to be just above 1 during the whole ascent but a rocket burns fuel and the TWR rises since the rocket gets lighter which accelerates it more and more quickly.
So there are basically only 2 options I can think of:
1. The rocket shuts down some of its engines during flight but this cant be seen and it would also make no sense to do that. The Saturn V only shutted down its inboard engine on the first stage but at this point the acceleration was already at 4 G's anyway.
2. The mass flow rate of the propellant is very low and therefore the rocket doesnt lose that much weight and the acceleration stays roughly the same. However to have such a low mass flow rate you would need an specific impulse that is physically impossible for chemical engines. Also with such a high specific impulse your rocket couldnt just get you to the moon but also far beyond. So basically it would have been overpowered and not underpowered as the author tries to suggest.
-
Thread necromancy alert, almost 3 years.
Fred