Author Topic: Faking the moon landings  (Read 139268 times)

Offline ka9q

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #525 on: August 18, 2019, 05:50:27 PM »
I found somebody once that tried to argue that satellites were real but only low Earth orbit ones. According to him NOTHING could get past the Van Allen belts, not even radio.
Um, not even sunlight, moonlight or starlight? They're radio too, just at a higher frequency.

But actual radio frequency signals are regularly received from natural sources far beyond earth, from Jupiter's electron synchrotron radiation on the HF bands up to the cosmic background that peaks at a few hundred gigahertz. The field is called 'radio astronomy'.

Offline Count Zero

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #526 on: August 18, 2019, 09:05:24 PM »
The field is called 'radio astronomy'.

My dad was a radio astronomer.  Got his PhD at UC Berkeley.  He used to take me on his observing runs at Kitt Peak when I was a kid.

Love ya' Dad!
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Offline ka9q

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #527 on: August 19, 2019, 05:34:29 AM »
Why are all the clips so short? With all the hours of on-board footage, why would they not put the camera down once in a while and leave it running while they went about their business? Show me an Apollo astronaut floating around the capsule for three minutes and I may need to have a rethink, so until then, stop posting these ridiculous vomit comet videos.
OK, they did exactly that. Look at any of the in-flight videos returned by the Apollo missions 8, 10, 11 or beyond. Those were lunar missions that could be continuously tracked during their 3-day flights to and from the moon. Apollos 7 and 9 remained in low orbit where continuous wideband (video) communications coverage was not yet available; the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) didn't come along until the 1980s.

I eagerly await your back-pedaling.

As opposed to video, you won't find films of the Apollo astronauts floating around cabins for several minutes at a time for the simple reason that 16mm movie film magazines are very limited in capacity. It's easy to take modern HD camcorders for granted but they simply didn't exist in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But I'm especially amused by your apparent belief that the interior of a "Vomit Comet" (ie., airplane flying a parabolic trajectory) can provide a weightless environment indistinguishable from true space flight. It can't! Objects floating within an aircraft cabin during one of these flights will experience true free fall provided they do not contact the cabin interior. That's because the aircraft itself does not actually experience true free fall. Not only does it have to continually pitch down to maintain a tolerable angle of attack on the wings, small aerodynamic perturbations will keep it from flying a perfect parabolic trajectory.

You can see this "tell" in any number of scenes in the movie Apollo 13. Not only does the editing keep each camera shot much shorter than the ~20 second time of a single parabolic "lob", but objects floating within the set often move irregularly relative to the set as the latter (which is mounted to the airplane) is tugged around by those small perturbations of the aircraft's trajectory.

Carefully contrast those scenes with true free-fall video (and film) taken during the actual Apollo flights. Not only do the Apollo scenes last much longer but there is no residual acceleration of the spacecraft itself during a shot.

« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 05:46:21 AM by ka9q »

Offline smartcooky

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #528 on: August 19, 2019, 08:37:13 AM »
The field is called 'radio astronomy'.

My dad was a radio astronomer.  Got his PhD at UC Berkeley.  He used to take me on his observing runs at Kitt Peak when I was a kid.

Love ya' Dad!


There are radio astronomy dishes at Kitt Peak, as in Arizona... where the 36in Boller & Chivens telescope is?
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 08:42:08 AM by smartcooky »
If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Offline gillianren

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #529 on: August 19, 2019, 11:00:01 AM »
I'd be extremely happy if we improved the public health system and so forth.  However, Apollo did provide jobs, which itself boosts the economy.  I'm not enough of an economist to know much beyond that, but I know that the people who were earning money on Apollo were probably happy to have the jobs.  And they spent money.
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Offline raven

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #530 on: August 19, 2019, 01:23:18 PM »
I certainly would be rather building rockets and other components to learn more about the universe than for some war any sane person would hope never happens.

Offline jfb

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #531 on: August 19, 2019, 07:07:03 PM »
Why do you readily accept that a vomit comet can only give us 25 to 30 seconds of Zero G?

Because to simulate weightlessness, the plane has to fly towards the ground in a parabolic arc (a ballistic trajectory), starting in a shallow dive but getting deeper as your body accelerates towards the ground. 

Remember that absent any air resistance, Earth's gravity accelerates you towards the ground at a rate of 9.8 m/s2 - that is, for each second you fall, your velocity increases by 9.8 m/s (neglecting air resistance).  So for each second of the flight, the plane has to go into a steeper dive to keep up with how fast you are falling.  After 30 seconds or so the plane loses over 4 km (~14,000 ft) of altitude.  After 45 seconds you lose almost 10 kilometers (~32,000 ft), which is close to the cruising altitude of most commercial aircraft.  A full 60 seconds would require over 17 kilometers (~58,000 feet), which is significantly higher than what most commercial aircraft reach.   

And remember, it takes time to pull out of a dive, and the steeper the dive, the longer it takes and the more stress it puts on the airframe.  30 seconds is a practical limit that saves wear and tear on the aircraft and the crew.  To get 45 seconds you'd have to start at a much higher altitude than typical cruising altitude to give you enough room to pull out of the dive. 

A full 60 seconds is pretty much out of the question.  It just takes too much altitude. 

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Those planes are essentially commercial flights to give members of the public a chance to experience weightlessness, so it’s obvious that these planes are flying well within their safety limits. What would these planes be capable of if they were pushed to their limits and beyond? You all need to give yourselves a shake and stop swallowing everything you are told at face value and use your noggin and apply a bit of logic for a change.

I'm not sure you could push it much beyond 30 seconds unless you start at a significantly higher altitude and were willing to put that much more stress on the airframe.

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Why are all the clips so short?  With all the hours of on-board footage, why would they not put the camera down once in a while and leave it running while they went about their business? Show me an Apollo astronaut floating around the capsule for three minutes and I may need to have a rethink, so until then, stop posting these ridiculous vomit comet videos. 

They had a limited amount of film that was intended to capture scientific and engineering data, not home movies of astronauts just floating around the capsule.  And remember, for many of these clips the camera was undercranked (shooting less than 24 frames per second), so some clips do capture several minutes worth of activity, even if it only plays back in less than a minute.  The Apollo 10 footage I linked was shot at 12 frames/second (I think), so that bit where they're playing with the flashlights is actually a couple of minutes long. 

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Here’s that clip with sound at around 6 minutes in. What’s that background noise? Is it the air conditioning, or maybe it’s just audio interference. It can’t be an aircraft engine because they are in space, right? 



Fans, pumps, hiss from the audio track itself (analog media, remember).  And every time you dupe a tape to another tape (as they would have done for this presentation), the problem only gets worse.  Back in high school I played with "multitrack" recording by bouncing between two stereo tape decks - I'd play the left and right channels from the playback deck into the left channel of the recoding deck, and then played whatever instrument into the right channel of the recording deck.  To lay down another track I'd swap tapes between the decks.  You couldn't do more than 3 swaps before the accumulated noise was unbearable1.  When I got a job and could buy expensive things for myself, the very first thing I got was a 6-track tape deck.  Made a lot of really unfortunate music on that puppy. 

1.  That, and the speed of the two decks was slightly different, so after each swap you had to tune upwards a little bit.

Offline MBDK

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #532 on: August 19, 2019, 08:38:47 PM »
I'd be extremely happy if we improved the public health system and so forth.
If you consider all the spin-off technologies from the space program, I think you will find quite a few health care improvements you can attribute to it.  In the link below (which is also embedded in my link from post #522), I count 10 of the 23 listed NASA spin-offs that are health related.
https://interestingengineering.com/23-great-nasa-spin-off-technologies

Also, to quote that link, "Since 1976, there have been more than 1,500 documented NASA technologies that have improved our quality of lives and created many new industries."

As for the health of the general public, if you include all the lives saved and the reduction of health related problems that ensue (poor sanitation, exposure to the elements, etc.) from severe storm warnings we identify via satellite, it is pretty clear that the money was well spent, after all.
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Offline Count Zero

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #533 on: August 19, 2019, 08:54:41 PM »
There are radio astronomy dishes at Kitt Peak, as in Arizona... where the 36in Boller & Chivens telescope is?

It's a couple of miles before you get to the summit (because those irritating radio astronomers liked to have lights on in the open dome) (link).  Back then (the early '70s) it was known as the 36-foot (link).  It has since been upgraded to a 12-meter and is known as the ARO 12m Radio Telescope (link).
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Offline smartcooky

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #534 on: August 20, 2019, 03:19:38 AM »
There are radio astronomy dishes at Kitt Peak, as in Arizona... where the 36in Boller & Chivens telescope is?

It's a couple of miles before you get to the summit (because those irritating radio astronomers liked to have lights on in the open dome) (link).  Back then (the early '70s) it was known as the 36-foot (link).  It has since been upgraded to a 12-meter and is known as the ARO 12m Radio Telescope (link).

I never knew that. Despite being a mad-keen astronomy enthusiast for years, I did not know that Kitt Peak had radio telescopes. I wouldn't have even considered the possibility.

You see, this is why I like this site.... I never stop learning new stuff!
If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Offline smartcooky

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #535 on: August 20, 2019, 07:55:37 AM »
Quote
Why are all the clips so short?  With all the hours of on-board footage, why would they not put the camera down once in a while and leave it running while they went about their business? Show me an Apollo astronaut floating around the capsule for three minutes and I may need to have a rethink, so until then, stop posting these ridiculous vomit comet videos. 

They had a limited amount of film that was intended to capture scientific and engineering data, not home movies of astronauts just floating around the capsule.  And remember, for many of these clips the camera was undercranked (shooting less than 24 frames per second), so some clips do capture several minutes worth of activity, even if it only plays back in less than a minute.  The Apollo 10 footage I linked was shot at 12 frames/second (I think), so that bit where they're playing with the flashlights is actually a couple of minutes long.

Not to mention they couldn't possibly have known at that time that years later, there would be idiots who questioned the reality of everything they did.

I think that people today who have never experienced what it was like to shoot movies with film just don't have any idea how fast  irgot used up.

A 4" diameter roll of VHS tape lasts 3 hours
A 4" diameter roll of 16mm film lasts four minutes!
« Last Edit: August 20, 2019, 08:05:08 AM by smartcooky »
If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Offline gillianren

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #536 on: August 20, 2019, 10:29:06 AM »
As for the health of the general public, if you include all the lives saved and the reduction of health related problems that ensue (poor sanitation, exposure to the elements, etc.) from severe storm warnings we identify via satellite, it is pretty clear that the money was well spent, after all.

Oh, you're preaching to the choir on that one!  It's just that I also wish we'd, you know, have enough low-cost treatment options so that I could be in therapy for my chronic mental health condition.
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Offline jfb

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #537 on: August 20, 2019, 03:15:55 PM »
Quote
Why are all the clips so short?  With all the hours of on-board footage, why would they not put the camera down once in a while and leave it running while they went about their business? Show me an Apollo astronaut floating around the capsule for three minutes and I may need to have a rethink, so until then, stop posting these ridiculous vomit comet videos. 

They had a limited amount of film that was intended to capture scientific and engineering data, not home movies of astronauts just floating around the capsule.  And remember, for many of these clips the camera was undercranked (shooting less than 24 frames per second), so some clips do capture several minutes worth of activity, even if it only plays back in less than a minute.  The Apollo 10 footage I linked was shot at 12 frames/second (I think), so that bit where they're playing with the flashlights is actually a couple of minutes long.

Not to mention they couldn't possibly have known at that time that years later, there would be idiots who questioned the reality of everything they did.

Yeah.  cambo's inability (or deliberate refusal) to understand and process the vast public record of NASA missions, including but not limited to Apollo, is not NASA's problem.   

It is a problem for the rest of us, though, which is why I got short with him a couple of weeks ago.  I respect and admire LO's commitment to keeping the level of discourse as high as he can - I just think the effort is wasted on people like cambo.  It's that same combination of arrogance, ignorance, and narcissism that's fueling things like the anti-vaccine movement, a good chunk of the alt-right, and various other groups that are determined to tear down every positive thing that has occurred in my lifetime and make life objectively worse for everyone.  And some days abuse and invective are all I'm willing to offer, because nothing else seems to work. 

I'll do my best to offer it elsewhere (Usenet's still a thing).   

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I think that people today who have never experienced what it was like to shoot movies with film just don't have any idea how fast  irgot used up.

A 4" diameter roll of VHS tape lasts 3 hours
A 4" diameter roll of 16mm film lasts four minutes!

Not only did it get used up fast, you had to wait until it was developed to see if you actually caught what you were intending to.  And processing cost money. 

Offline Abaddon

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #538 on: August 20, 2019, 03:34:17 PM »
Quote
Why are all the clips so short?  With all the hours of on-board footage, why would they not put the camera down once in a while and leave it running while they went about their business? Show me an Apollo astronaut floating around the capsule for three minutes and I may need to have a rethink, so until then, stop posting these ridiculous vomit comet videos. 

They had a limited amount of film that was intended to capture scientific and engineering data, not home movies of astronauts just floating around the capsule.  And remember, for many of these clips the camera was undercranked (shooting less than 24 frames per second), so some clips do capture several minutes worth of activity, even if it only plays back in less than a minute.  The Apollo 10 footage I linked was shot at 12 frames/second (I think), so that bit where they're playing with the flashlights is actually a couple of minutes long.

Not to mention they couldn't possibly have known at that time that years later, there would be idiots who questioned the reality of everything they did.

I think that people today who have never experienced what it was like to shoot movies with film just don't have any idea how fast  irgot used up.

A 4" diameter roll of VHS tape lasts 3 hours
A 4" diameter roll of 16mm film lasts four minutes!
The very reason the DAC ran at such a low frame rate much of the time.

Offline raven

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Re: Faking the moon landings
« Reply #539 on: August 20, 2019, 04:44:17 PM »
And why people switched to video tape cameras in droves.  Those 8mm's are just gorgeous pieces of engineering though.