How is it possible that NASA lost its technology from the Apollo Program irretrievably?

[kerbiloid]

We even don't know what the ancient wooden ships with >3 raws of oars in name looked like.

[Aegolius13]

21 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Or the Great Pyramid?

Wait, we may have actually found some documentation for its construction...

The blueprint was hiding in ASCII this whole time!

▲

[StrandedonEarth]

13 minutes ago, Aegolius13 said:

The blueprint was hiding in ASCII this whole time!

▲

Yeah, but as pointed out upthread, the big trick is turning that blueprint into a pyramid 147m high on a base that is 230m on a side. A big part of that is sourcing the materials and getting them on site

Edited March 6, 2019 by StrandedonEarth

[wumpus]

9 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

We even don't know what the ancient wooden ships with >3 raws of oars in name looked like.

No finds?

Archeologists have determined the layout of viking burial ships by locating rust deposits and determining that there had to be nails (and thus planks) in those positions.  I guess nobody bothered to sink a trireme anywhere one could be dug up.  Then again, I'm not sure triremes used nails...

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

No finds?

Archeologists have determined the layout of viking burial ships by locating rust deposits and determining that there had to be nails (and thus planks) in those positions.  I guess nobody bothered to sink a trireme anywhere one could be dug up.  Then again, I'm not sure triremes used nails...

Afair, only once they have found a quadrireme, and just making theories what were quinquireme, heptares, and other ships been so great in "Legions of Death" for ZX Spectrum and irl.

Edited March 7, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

7 hours ago, wumpus said:

I guess nobody bothered to sink a trireme anywhere one could be dug up.  Then again, I'm not sure triremes used nails...

Wooden ships are very recycling-friendly.

[Green Baron]

7 hours ago, wumpus said:

No finds?

Quite a few actually, partly very well preserved, with construction details and trade goods and all.

Besides the "usual" shipwreck there are medieval burial sites with complete Viking ships in Norway, Ireland, Denmark and Germany, partly with exceptional preservation. Original ships have been reconstructed and are being sailed even in regattas based on these finds.

As to antique Greek/Roman/Carthaginian/Phoenician/Egyptian marine traffic and seafaring, the find situation is ... vast ;-)

Edited March 7, 2019 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

On 3/7/2019 at 10:06 AM, Green Baron said:

Quite a few actually, partly very well preserved, with construction details and trade goods and all.

Besides the "usual" shipwreck there are medieval burial sites with complete Viking ships in Norway, Ireland, Denmark and Germany, partly with exceptional preservation. Original ships have been reconstructed and are being sailed even in regattas based on these finds.

As to antique Greek/Roman/Carthaginian/Phoenician/Egyptian marine traffic and seafaring, the find situation is ... vast ;-)

Plenty of Viking ships found, as you say burials and some found after getting sunk, you also have some Egyptian ships buried next to the great pyramids. 
Add that Viking ship design evolved into ships used up into modern times. 

No triremes preserved, environment did not preserve any also they moved over to ships with multiple men on each ore, an trireme is very vulnerable to rowers getting hurt from arrows and require well trained rowers. 
Romans preferred to have soldiers row as they could double as boarding party / invasion force. 

Much the same is seen in modern times, WW2 movies there one side use T34 and the other use Sherman simply as they was produced in idiotic high numbers, you need an Tiger tank as main boss so you use some cold war design. 
 

[Green Baron]

On 3/5/2019 at 9:41 PM, Bill Phil said:

Or the Great Pyramid?

Wait, we may have actually found some documentation for its construction...

Enough to have a rough estimate of how, who and where. I spare you all the details in order not to derail :-)

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

No triremes preserved, environment did not preserve any also they moved over to ships with multiple men on each ore, an trireme is very vulnerable to rowers getting hurt from arrows and require well trained rowers. 

Triremes and smaller ships at least are well-documented. There were special callnames for the oarmen of different rows, salaries, social conditions, etc.
Their oars were short, so the highest and the lowest oar could be operated by one man, and work with same frequency.

The multi-row ships afaik are more problematic. It's even not clear how many rows of the oars did they have, how were the oarmen distributed, and so on.
Their oars were probably too long to be operated by one man. So, they could have 4 rows with 1 man per oar, 1 row with 4 men per oar, or, say, two rows with 1 man and the upper one with 2 men. So, while "quadri-" is more or less imaginable, quinqui- and more look unclear., 

[Green Baron]

The find situation is sufficient to build replicas of different types of ships from different times and folks, your triremes or warships in general as well as and more so merchant ships from different cultures and times, helping to document trade routes and goods as well as giving insight into technology.

Speculating about the imaginable but not reasonable or even doable and above what is known from descriptions and find situations may be nice but doesn't help and blurs the view on reality :-)

 

Which may be an aspect of the OT: technology has advanced. Any blueprints or a replica of a mighty F1 belongs into a museum next to a trireme, if i understand it right today's existing engines and those under development will be better(tm) in terms of efficiency (isp) and usability (throttling) ... but i may be wrong with this.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

The find situation is sufficient to build replicas of different types of ships from different times and folks, your triremes or warships in general as well as and more so merchant ships from different cultures and times, helping to document trade routes and goods as well as giving insight into technology.

Speculating about the imaginable but not reasonable or even doable and above what is known from descriptions and find situations may be nice but doesn't help and blurs the view on reality :-)

Any proven quinquireme description?
(While afaik it was the main Roman combat ship.)

Edited March 10, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Not that i knew of.

There are limits to what the material can stand (wooden ships of these sizes need to have some calculated flexibility or they break in dynamic waters), the crew can do (difficult to stack more than 3 oarsmen in the available space) how they perform (the length of an oar is limited by the lever necessary to row it in perfect stroke with the others as well as keeping clear from neighbour ships) and to the number of oars per unit of space (immanent interference with the ones above, below and around). Manoeuvrability and stability (centre of gravity) is another thing and sets limits to size as well.

That's why i tried to lure you away from speculating about the impractical :-)

And an oarsman who touches another while rowing has to pay the evening in the harbour bar, y'know ;-) That's expensive for 170 oarsmen/-women ! :-)

Edited March 10, 2019 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

39 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

speculating about the impractical

If the 1st row is at 1 m height, the 5th should be obviously is at 5 m height. So, the oars should be 5 times longer, and it's hard to imagine. This hardly could be considered practical. But how did it look irl, stays unknown.
And this device is much simpler than Saturn and Apollo.

[Green Baron]

And afaik archaeology has not found remains of such a contraption yet, but i may have missed something because i don't specifically follow this newfangled metal ages stuff. Written history alone is not always a reliable source.

--------

It would surely be possible to make the tools and materials to build an Apollo style spaceship, and maybe in 400 years, if all goes well until then, a reenactment group will build such a mission and fly it, listening to silly rock'n roll music, just as some people practice medieval style weekends, listening to pentatonic music out of drone instruments :-)

Edited March 10, 2019 by Green Baron

[DDE]

@kerbiloid, @Green Baron, basically everyone's confused because the ancients used the number of oarsmen per column while neglecting to mention the number of levels. Back in fifth grade we were told with a straight face that the quinquereme had five rower decks.

[Bill Phil]

We did lose the ephemeris data for all but Apollos 15, 16, and 17, sadly. That was because of degradation though.

[Green Baron]

11 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

We did lose the ephemeris data for all but Apollos 15, 16, and 17, sadly. That was because of degradation though.

Don't they use microfiche or so and copy every now and then (between 10 and 50 years, depending on media) ? Or wasn't the data considered as important as other historical data, like in national archives ?

---------------

@DDE: I know of no real world iron age naval archaeology on larger ships than the triremes and smaller ones, and a plethora of antique merchant ships from the neolithic to the medieval, which makes for a nice picture through the times and spaces. At least one trireme has been experimentally reconstructed and sailed. While larger ships existed according to the narrations of contemporaries e.g. from the Punic wars, we do not exactly know how they were constructed and rowed, so the number of decks and oarsmen per oar is speculation. Experience shows furthermore that once real world findings emerge somewhere somehow, this frequently relativizes the contemporary writings. I want to say that the stories told and traded may not be correct and archaeologists are usually not the kind of people who live for the "bigger is better" credo :-).

But again, i am not an expert in the antique, and modern day archaeology is more about every day life than about warfare. So, i'd have no problem with corrections if they are underlain with sources :-)

 

[Bill Phil]

27 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Don't they use microfiche or so and copy every now and then (between 10 and 50 years, depending on media) ? Or wasn't the data considered as important as other historical data, like in national archives ?

 

According to this site: http://apollo.sese.asu.edu/EPHEMERIS/

The originals were degraded and not recorded on microfilm.

[Cheif Operations Director]

On 3/3/2019 at 5:16 AM, Pawelk198604 said:

How is it possible that NASA lost its technology from the Apollo Program irretrievably?
The Saturn V rocket project has been lost. Also, no new rocket can be built based on Saturn V.

I'm starting to wonder if those crazy people who postulate that we have never been to the moon, maybe they are right?

 

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20190303101632AAFql0U

 

Image now hard it is to build a 18th century British Royal Navy fleet nowadays. It's because the tech is not around anymore to made a replica. In the same way if NASA really wanted too it could build a Saturn V but each engine would need to be redrawn and retested as all the engines were fined tuned and not mass produced. The tanks are a pain to remake and the infrastructure is not their to make them. Does it really make sense to use 1960s tech to go back to the moon. An iPhone has more processing power than the entire Apollo flight computer! It makes more sense to get actual engineeering plan done and make a "Saturn X" or a revamped mass producible version of a Saturn V. At that point it makes more sense to just make a more versatile mars rocket that can by definition launching heavy objects to LEO and medium object to the moon.

As a note to all those make ridiculous examples, It's fine to ask a question I'm sure he wanted an honest anaswer. I'm not attacking anyone here but just answer the question well. 

[mikegarrison]

Where I work, when I first started working there in the 1990s we had already had problems with data on magnetic disks becoming unreadable. So we went out and bought a bunch of magneto-optical drives and disks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_drive

Ah, these would be perfect! They would last forever, and our data would always be readable. ... Hah. Not five years later you couldn't buy drives for them anymore, and then it turned out that the data on such disks does degrade over time. In just a few years we lost critical data that we were supposedly archiving forever.

When I changed jobs from noise control to emissions, it wasn't more than a year or so when people came asking me for data on old tests I had done, and I couldn't find it anymore.

Losing old data is SO EASY.