LunaTrick

I said I was done posting on this, but you ask a fair question. I will review some things and try to get you an STS number. But I have to tell you, I must have 24hrs or more of VHS tape to look through. I used to tape everything about NASA from CNN for a few years starting with the first shuttle disaster. I fear I might piss someone off if I bring this up again.

OK. My last post on this. When you guys try to connect me to the hoaxers, and start talking about lead, and I am not, and the big article above which treats any skeptic like a child, it's insulting. I made semiconductors for the defense industry. I have seen the failures analysis photos of failed devices on the Shuttle. I know why they have redundancies. I like data in my hands that I can examine. I have pictures. I have logic. You can't blow away dust and have footprints. There either was an interaction or there wasn't. I never used numbers for the Van Allan belt because I can't verify that. I have pictures that are purported to be a historical record. That is something in my hands that I can work with. I applied logic to it. Some treat me like a crack pot, or like I'm naive. Many have tried to shut this discussion down, telling me to go away. They suggest I should be banned, but they are the name callers. Freedom of thought folks. It's real important. Good night.

I would be interested to read about such long lines. That is news to me. Didn't the Mars skycrane leave burnt marks from "above" the surface? But that is hovering combined with take off - not the same thing as the LM. If the Apollo pic cited above is a burn mark, it is inconsistent with any other Apollo mission pics that I cited, and even barring that, it would prove that there IS an interaction between the engine and the surface. With that in mind, look at the other missions. Let's say for the sake of argument the engine pressure obliterated the dust from the nozzle outward for a good distance, then it's hard to explain footprints near the perimeter of the LM. Be safe everyone.

I've seen that. The discoloration is only under one half of the bell, so I see that as possibly exposed bedrock, but not a color change from the engine because the "stain" wouldn't be asymmetrical. Again, either it affected the surface, or it didn't. And it has to work for all the missions. If it burnt here, it should have burnt on each mission. They are all said to be perfect landings, right? Things should be consistent.

NASA is closed but look at these photos. Maybe Space.com? LM shots from Apollo 11, 12, 14, etc AS11-40-5864 AS12-47-6907HR AS14-66-9261HR AS15-87-11840HR AS16-107-17435HR AS17-140-21370HR EDIT: The patterns I see in those photos under the nozzle, is the same thing I see around the outside of the edge of the LM. Yet there is enough dust for great footprints not far from the craft. The author above says it was blown away. And also says there wasn't enough pressure to blow it away. But you can see in the photos that it isn't blown away. I am looking at photos. Not repeating things. I have the audio. It's been a while since I have listened to Armstrong. But I could have sworn he says touchdown....then engine off. That audio is on the NASA site too. I have done the research on this matter. So, a 5' probe, plus I estimate another 18" above that where the bell ends is our distance from the ground. The engines were shut off less than 6 1/2 feet from the surface. The author says this is why the dust isn't blown away, then in the closing paragraph he says it was mostly blown away. Armstrong says "touchdown" then "engine off". The engine turned off *after* touchdown (probes?), by a moment, according to Armstrong. I repeat, there is no sign I can detect of any interaction of the engine pressure with the surface dust, on any mission. There should be. Either the dust was blown away, or it wasn't. If it was blown away, I should be able to see that. I don't. That has always been my position. You guys don't agree with each other. The author above contradicts himself. There is room for discussion.

We have one person saying that the dust will fall like a rock, and another says it goes ballistic. Seems like there is a little room for discussion there. I tend to agree with the ballistic view. That makes sense to me. But, the dust beneath the LMs is pretty much untouched. I don't see any bedrock exposed, for example. Wouldn't you expect to see some radial pattern form in the remaining dust from the ejecta? I have the NASA photos on my hard drive. It honestly looks undisturbed. I am also thinking back to a science project IN THOSE DAYS where I used a very fine gray dust that simulated what is on the surface of the moon. We dropped ball bearings coming in at various speeds and angles. We looked at the spray across the dust, the depth of the craters, etc. It was a crude experiment, but it showed me some things. And I know terrestrial experiments like this have a heavy gravity component compared to the same experiment on the moon. But it seems to me that if the pressure is great enough to make dust go ballistic, an immediate pattern of some kind could be expected. I wish you all weren't so touchy. I figured this was the perfect place to discuss these space science issues. There are a lot of smart people here. Real people. Just like me. What's wrong with questions and answers? The questions fit the original posting - moon landings. Actual history. And we are touching on photographic interpretations. This seems like valid grounds to be discussing these things. I have not been rude. Cheers!

I worded my position carefully. I never said no man has walked on the moon. I said someone probably did, but I didn't think it was Neil. They/we needed a hero - not one rotting from radiation poisoning. And after all the money spent, and with all the publicity - they just couldn't fail in full public view. And in the history of aviation, things working perfectly the first time, would be a very rare event. And the LM was said to be the most complex machine ever devised at the time. And it worked first time out of the box - save for a few alarms. (I refer to the lander). That is kind of surprising.

First of all, I thank those who had a thoughtful reply. I am talking about science. I am trying to understand. I am not talking conspiracy. The Van Allen belt is the radiation that concerns me the most. I know that time is a factor in the radiation dosage calculations. So if you could travel through the belt fast enough, little harm would be done. But there is one important factor in that calculation. What is the actual radiation level? I read recently that they have discovered that the radiation is so high in the belt, that inches of aluminum would not block it. That is info they did not have in the 60s. As to "experts" telling me what's up....I have heard NASA debunkers say things like "in the vacuum of space the thrust from the engines would go in all directions, so that is why no dust is moved." I moved on. Also, 10% of 10000 is 1000. That's still a lot of pressure. As to dust settling. I know there is no air to offer resistance, but with little gravity to pull it back downward, I still do not see how the dust could settle "fast". Have a good day!

I use MechJeb because of problems I have with the user interface. If they fix my maneuver node issues in 0.22 I will return to using it. But as of now - it's MechJeb.

This is all understood, but MechJeb is said to be a miser on fuel. So one assumes that it would choose the best alignment, not the worst. This is more of a MechJeb question I guess.

There was no radiation shielding for the command module. There was no radiation shielding in the space suits. They launched during a solar peak. There is no blast crater under any of the LM shots you can find at NASA's website. Not for Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, or 17. I believe the thrust was said to be 10,000lbs. The engine nozzle looks to be ~18" off the ground. No crater? There is an abundance of flour-fine moon-dust all around the LM (as evidenced by the footprints) yet there should have been a dust cloud from the landing that would have lingered in the low gravity. This would have covered the landing leg pods with dust. There is none. If you listen to the audio that is found at NASA, Neil Armstrong says just before touchdown "kicking up some dust". He also says "touchdown" then a moment later "engine off". The engines were on for a moment while the LM sat on the surface. Yet no blast craters can be found from any of the missions. No other human beings have ever crossed the Van Allen radiation belts. A space shuttle mission went out to about a 300 mile orbit (if memory serves) and their eyebrows started glowing green from radiation. NASA instructed them to lower their orbit. (this was reported on CNN) And I won't even go into the photographic and shadow anomalies from the moon photos, as that is not my forte'. Something is fishy about the American moon landings. Our photographic record does not add up. The audio does not jive with the photographs. I don't think Neil ever walked on the moon. Someone who died of cancer may have, but I don't think Neil did. Something I am still looking into is....was there a double door airlock? If there wasn't, the pressurized ascent module would have evacuated it's air every time there was a EVA. So my question there is, was there a double doored airlock? And, did they carry enough 02 to allow for several repressurizations of the ascent module? I watched Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Pioneer, Voyager, the Space Shuttle, you name it. I wanted to be an astronaut. But I do not believe the photographic evidence given to us is in any way real. Those LM's look like a crane has set them in place. And Stanley Kubric had the studio to film it all in, in 1968. Who also happens to be the only guy who ever was allowed to borrow a one of a kind camera from NASA for the filming of Barry Lyndon. Don't believe anything I say. You can look into all this yourself. I'd like to believe that our American heroes did what they said they did, but that claim looks dubious to me.

Why is it when I go to Jool, most of the time the delta v needed is ~1900. But every now and then it is something like 4000. What is going on? I should mention that I am using MechJeb v2.0.13252.1108.

That sounds like a winner! Thanks!

What I usually "break off" the rocket is a booster section complete with struts, fuel lines, engine, stabilizer, etc. I do not want to discard it. And I do not want to manually put it back on the rocket because sometimes you get a new rotation that sends struts to places that will crash the rocket once on the launch pad. Like a "new" strut with an angle that now hooks to the red launch stabilizers, which ends up in a pretty failure at launch. To the developers, I would like to see things changed in the VAB: 1) That lime green color that parts turn when you hover over it, please change that to the dark blue you get when you select something in the action group mode. I think that will be easier to see what section is really selected. (old eyes) 2) Sometimes when selecting load/save/launch while the rocket is zoomed in (in your face mode) and the rocket is actually behind the buttons, you'll grab the rocket instead of hitting the button resulting in the problem that this thread describes. Sometimes this happens behind the parts menu too. Those areas need to be XOR'd out or something. 3) There needs to be an absolute easy way to overcome the problem I first brought up in this thread. I swear I have seen videos on Youtube where they were doing what I want. Oops! I didn't want to take that off. And whatever they do, in an instant the part is back where it came from. They are not waiting on the "undo cycle". BTW, a hourglass or something is needed so we can see the undo cycle is "working" on it.

What do you mean by this? Setting the rocket section off to the side in the VAB and then hitting ctrl z? I am so tired of reloading my rocket. I need to figure this out.Thanks

I know if I add a part that I don't like, I can use CTRL Z to undo. I need to know if there is another "undo". If I am building a rocket in the VAB and I go to grab an individual part, but instead take off a huge section of rocket, how do I recover? Is there a undo the will take what is "in my hand" and reconnect it exactly as it was? What would that key sequence be? (also is there a redo? ctrl y maybe?) Thanks

I've had enough of this. I learned what I need to know to go interplanetary, and now the maneuver node editor is such a pain that I will never get to the other planets. What a friggin let down! All I want to do is to establish an intercept with Duna and the mn is such a pain that I am ready to walk away from the game, or at least resolve to never see anything outside of the Kerbin orbit. That's not what I paid for. The mn thingy keeps reducing to the asterisk. I cannot grab the white circle to slide it while the zoom is set to see the Duna orbit. I know at one time you guys were playing without the mn editor (I read some old posts) but essentially what I would have to do because of these problems is fly by my pants instead of using the poorly designed tools provided in the game. Why does the frigging thing constantly minimize? How can it easily be expanded - hopefully with a keyboard press? A 3500 DPI mouse and I cannot select things on the screen? Unbelievable! If the six arms of the mn were longer and if the mn node wouldn't minimize, this thread would have never been started. But they have my money, I feel I have a right to give feedback. Also, stacking the ship, the planet of origin, the mn asterisk, the text associated with these items, all on top of each other just seems to be a bad idea. I mean....if I have Duna selected as the target and I have the mn open, why am I constantly getting asked if I want to set Kerbin as the target, when all I want to do is leave Kerbin?!! I'm sorry...I am just so disappointed to get this far and find its the UI that is stopping me.

I was not aware of this - thank you! But....there are lots of problems with the UI. How about when you are doing a maneuver node and you are pulling on the prograde maker, let go, and then the maneuver node collapses back to that asterisk looking thing just because you release the mouse button, and then you have the planet, the ship and the node all stacked up on top of each other making it difficult from a far off view to select just the node? Or how about when all three axis of the maneuver node stack up on top of each other and you are trying to grab the white circle to slide the node and you get one of the three controls instead? Am I the only one suffering from all this? Hard to believe. But thank you very much for the tip. Hopefully this can hold me over until they fix this stuff. BTW, I was born just a month after Sputnik went up. I am the space age!

I have been playing for about a month. I love this game, but it tests my patience. I am older than most of you, I presume. So my eyes are not as good as yours. I run the resolution at 1280X960 just so the text is big enough for me to read. Of course I give up a lot by doing this, but I have to read the clock etc. I find the UI inconstant and that is where most of the my problems with this game lie. There are data on the screen that have a background and data that do not. The ones that do not drive me nuts. How can I dock if the lime green numbers on the bright white SS gives so little contrast that I can't even see the numbers? I can't tell if I am moving forward or backward while docking, or moving at all sometimes. I rotate the camera all day long trying to get the lime green distance number to be over the black of space so I can read it, but it always falls on the ship where there is low contrast there AND no back ground. There are several ways to fix this. But it needs to be fixed - unless this game is only going to be for the young. The clock and the delta/v numbers near the nav ball have the same problem. Sometimes stars pass through the numbers making it unclear whether I am seeing an 8 or a 3. This is especially important during precise maneuvers. These things waste so much of my time trying to overcome, that I feel at some point I will have to walk away from the game, which I do not want to do. Please keep this in mind for the next release. BTW, I am not color blind. Contrast seems to be my biggest issue - which can be fixed with a background.

My space station has lots of vehicles. I bet there are 75 boosters there. I only want to fire ONE booster to circularize, or to move the orbit. Any more than that would rip the station apart. I know I can click 74 boosters and disable them. I was hoping the opposite could also be done - tell the SS to only burn with ONE user selected booster?

Can a MechJeb module be used to send a rover to specific coordinates on a moon/planet? If not, could it be considered? Thanks.

This is my first posting after lurking for months. First I'd like to say that I can finally be an astronaut! I was 11 years old watching Apollo 11 land, and then all the other missions. As a result, I wanted to be an astronaut as a boy. Thanks to the very hard work and great inspiration by Squad, I can now live that dream! Questions: 1) Can a fully loaded space stations with multiple landers and rovers attached orbiting in Kerbin be pushed out to a Minmus orbit? Or a planet? 2) What happens to the actions I set up once two craft are merged by docking? Do they come back when separated? 3) Can I launch ships from Kerbin that have some tanks empty with the intent of refueling them once they dock at the station? 4) If I try a burn with this SS having all but one engine turned off, can I still circularize the orbit after other ships are attached to the SS? Thanks folks!