Will man return to the moon??

[LunaTrick]

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.

[Natsarugiy]

Unless anyone here has worked for NASA on any lunar landing mission, you probably won't get any great answers for your questions, LunaTrick. The radiation concerns seem to have been dealt with adequately, but you still seem to have questions about how the dust reacted to the thrust of the engines. We can give you our best answers as to why we think it happened the way it did, but without another moon landing, we just won't get the data necessary to find the exact answer.

Some things we do know:

• the moon's gravity is about 1/6ths the Earth's. This can lead us to believe that any force applied to the extremely light dust will impart a significant dv on the dust, which means the dust will be carried far away from the landing site, which may explain why there is not a obvious dust ring around the nozzle.
  
• there is no air on the moon's surface. Here on Earth, we have a very dense atmosphere, especially near the surface. This produces air resistance which has an extreme effect on objects traveling through the atmosphere at any speed. Things like paper, or dust, or anything that is light weight will appear to gently float to the ground. We can imaging that because there is no air resistance on the moon, and dust that is dropped from a height will seem to fall unnaturally fast, as we are so used to it floating around.
  

Both of these situations can occur. In the instance of the lunar rover, no significant dv was given to the dust, so it would rise, then very quickly accelerate back to the surface thanks to the lack of air resistance to slow it's acceleration. In the instance of the force of the thrust from the lander, the dust may have been given a significant dv to carry it far from the landing site.

But we didn't have any cameras on the surface to document these landings as they happened, so we don't have good data to study to accurately tell you why or why not the dust behaved the way it did, regardless of how smart we may be. The best answer I can give you is to wait for the scientists at NASA to return to their jobs, then send them an email including any questions you may have. As they have direct access to the data from all their landing missions, they'll be able to most accurately answer your questions.

And if not enough data currently exists to find these answers, we can always return to the surface to study more. Infact, google will even reward private companies to do so! The Google Lunar X Prize was announced in 2007 and they're offering the reward to any privately-funded mission to the Lunar surface.

But to bring this back on topic, I do think it would be profitable for man to return to the moon. Just like how the ISS is giving us valuable knowledge on life support systems, the moon could help us expand that knowledge if we ever intend to colonize another planet, like Mars. We could first send rovers to dig/build us a shelter (like a cave for shielding from radiation) and then practice installing life support systems on the surface to support a long-term visit. The moon is the perfect place to practice colonizing because of it's proximity and low gravity. So I do feel we will be returning to the moon eventually, but it's definitely not the highest priority right now.

Oh, and final note:

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.

That is precisely what makes NASA's job so difficult. The engineers who design these vehicles and missions don't really have room for mistakes. They must spend years working on the designs, testing every detail possible. Their designs are held to a much higher standard than most other machines in the aviation business. Regardless of their complexity, a lot of time was spent in designing, testing, and redesigning, and on top of that, the missions were designed to include many many redundancies. The vehicles were designed so that pieces could fail and the mission could still be completed.

[Eric S]

Those LM's look like a crane has set them in place.

Only because you insist that there should be a crater, without any scientific basis. As an FYI, that thrust you mentioned is at full thrust. That would be a TWR on the moon of 2.0 with a full fuel load, and anyone that's played KSP can tell you that if you touch down and then shut of your engines when you're under that much thrust, you're not on the ground by the time you turn off your engine.

As others have pointed out, all of this has been debunked thoroughly. If you spent as much time reading the science behind the debunking as you did reading this stuff, you'd realize the same thing I did when I looked into the various claims that we didn't really go into the moon. I'm not telling you to believe the debunking without research, but trust me, the science behind every "we didn't go to the moon as reported" claim I've seen has less bearing to real science than your typical Hollywood movie hacker has to the real hackers. They use some of the right buzzwords, maybe a bit of the math, but are blissfully unaware of anything beyond that.

The realization I spoke of is that it is easy to come up with a claim that sounds quite reasonable to anyone that doesn't understand the science the claim is supposed to represent, even if that realization crumbles if anyone with an introductory level understanding of the science involved.

Radiation isn't anywhere near as straightforward as most people think, and you don't actually have to shield radiation to the point that it's down to normal background radiation levels. For example, the claims that you'd need feet of lead to stop radiation are ignoring how radiation works. Lead is actually a bad radiation shielding for the types of radiation they're talking about there. As has been mentioned elsewhere, the types of radiation that lead blocks can be significantly blocked by foil, let alone feet of lead, and for the types that it isn't good for, other stuff is better by far. So lead would be the worst radiation shielding going. Being on the surface of a celestial object actually shields you from a fair bit of the radiation, and even without that, a round trip to Mars which would take a lot longer than a trip to the moon would leave someone under the federal standard for radiation exposure, and even if they hit the limit, that's not "OMG you've got cancer!" it's a 5% increase in the chance of getting cancer. Going through the Van Allen belts are the peak radiation exposure, and the math on that has been done so many times with hard numbers that there's no real point to hash that out yet again. Every time I've seen someone bring up radiation exposure, they've either not provided any numbers or provided numbers that no actual scientific authority agrees with.

In the absense of an atmosphere, dust is going to fall as fast as anything else, and the moon isn't microgravity. Gravity on the moon is about 1.6 m/s^2, so 80 cm of travel from a standstill in the first second, 240 cm in the second second, etc. So no, there won't be dust clouds. And unless your experiments were done in a vacuum, then they don't correlate to what you're discussing enough to matter.

Solar peaks are a statistical event, not a constant flow, and even during a solar peak, the event rate of anything that would have put any radiation in our direction (they're not omnidirectional) was low enough that it was very unlikely to happen during the relatively short missions.

The highest Space shuttle mission by a large margin was the Hubble telescope repair, and lowering their orbit would have meant not repairing the telescope. I think you'll have to give a reputable link if you expect anyone to consider that anything more than the space version of an urban legend.

Honestly, if you want your claims to be taken seriously, you'll need to put a little more work into understanding the science behind the claims. Given how obviously wrong some of these claims are, we've got no reason to believe that they aren't all equally wrong. You say that the photography analysis isn't your forte, but as we've shown, even in the other areas, your understanding of the science is flawed.

[dharak1]

The Mars skycrane was pretty high off the ground and had a bit of thrust, it doesn't surprise me it left marks. Now imagine something with more weight closer to the surface. We have to remember that dust behaves totally different too. These lines went farther because they are in vacuum. On Earth there is air resistance pushing against the gasses coming out of the engine. The footprints are because the landing probably didn't blow all the dust away. Also, if it was a different crew why can we see all 6 landers in their specified locations? If the landers were sent afterwards they would have been off a few hundred meters.

[Natsarugiy]

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.

Not exactly, as there is no air pressure on the surface of the moon. We'd expect something similar to what you suggested on Earth because any engine firing would create air currents that would push outward from the craft. The 1 atm of air pressure here on Earth plays a big role in air currents. It severely limits vertical movement without impeding horizontal movement, which is why on earth we usually see a ring of dust pushing outward instead of an expanding bubble. Furthermore, the air currents will pick up a lot of nearby dust that isn't directly affected by the engine thrust. Another major factor to the air currents is the difference in air temperature. Thrust from an engine is usually significantly warmer than the air around it, and after the air heats up, it will begin to create upward currents which will then carry dust upwards after the primary force pushes the dust outwards. After the air cools off, the dust will settle back down. Overall, this will form the ring which will be carried a short distance from the nozzle, then drift upwards a meter or so because of the warm air, then settle back down in a visible ring-shaped pile.

On the moon however, with no air, there will be no air currents. So only the dust directly getting affected by the nozzle thrust (which again, is much less than thrust levels we experience on Earth) will drift, and there will be no air pressure to hinder it's vertical speed, so the moon dust will travel much higher and much further than what we experience on Earth. And finally, because of the lack of air currents, the dust won't clump up in a nice ring, but it will spread out over a much wider area.

[LunaTrick]

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.

Edited October 13, 2013 by LunaTrick

[dharak1]

The dust doesn't blow away though. There is no medium for force to travel through. This isn't skepticism either. It's denial of fact. Big difference. Quick question, were the hairs, eyelashes and fingernails on the astronauts glowing too? They should have. All of those are made of keratin if I remember correctly. Would you mind telling us what mission this was? Also the van allen belt is 600 miles up. Double the altitude of this shuttle mission. If radiation that close to the earth was enough to make hair glow then we would probably all be dead. If we weren't any complex spaceflight below LEO would be a no go.

[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.

[dharak1]

I am actually pretty interested. I like the idea of taping things on VHS. DVDs don't give the same feel. If you could make digital copies and e-mail them to me or even physical copies I would have no way to thank you. I always wanted to see a live shuttle launch, but by the time I knew anything about them the program ended. I don't think anyone would get mad at you for talking about this.

[LunaTrick]

I'm sitting here wondering if I even have one working VHS. Can't remember when I last looked at a VHS. But those "NASA" tapes were not thrown out like a lot of my old collection was. Anything I had replaced with a DVD got tossed. I have the Dream Team on tape. Tracking sucks though. But the "NASA" tapes are in the cabinet right in front of me. So I guess it comes down to, which is more practical, buying a video capture card and come up with one working VHS to make a digital copy, or come up with two working VHS's and dub them.

Edited October 13, 2013 by LunaTrick

[Eric S]

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 think I'm more trying to draw parallels than connect you to hoaxers, though to be honest, you claim it was a hoax at at least some level, so you do fit the definition, and I don't think that hoaxers are some kind of organization with membership and such. Every item in that list you gave has been brought up before and torn apart. I've actually gone looking for hoaxer claims that were backed up by reasonable science, and I haven't found any. I'm saying to look up the science behind the claim, then read a good, scientific writeup by someone debunking the claim, and then compare the science behind the two. Don't take either at face value.

I don't know which post you're saying is treating you like a child, though I do see at least one post just telling you to go away. I'd rather you learn than just take anyone else's word for it.

You can't blow away dust and have footprints. There either was an interaction or there wasn't.

I can agree that there was or there wasn't, however, just because there was doesn't mean that there was the kind that would be necessary to result in your initial statement. One of the biggest problems I've found reading "hoax" claims is that people assume that all their experience here translates out to things out there following their common sense.

I never used numbers for the Van Allan belt because I can't verify that.

This is where you get into the kind of thinking some of us might find annoying. You say you've never used numbers because you can't verify them. So what are you using to support your claim that whoever did go to the moon died of cancer? You're assuming a sufficient level of radiation to cause cancer, then handwaving the radiation because you can't verify it, but letting the cancer result stand.

The first objection you had was the lack of radiation shielding in the capsule and space suits. Without numbers like this, you don't know how much shielding was necessary, and without knowing the type of radiation you're shielding from, you don't know what type of material to use as a shield. What were you expecting to see that you didn't, and what's science are you using to support that need?

Freedom of thought folks. It's real important. Good night.

Noone's saying it isn't. On the other hand, so is critical thinking. I have no problem at all with people thinking critically about whether or not the moon landings were a hoax. The problem I find is when they stop thinking critically as soon as their initial criticism produces something they think contradicts the official story. If you're not thinking "what might I have overlooked or gotten wrong" until you're out of arguments and counterarguments, then you're not following through. And yes, when I read articles debunking hoax claims, I'm making sure I understand what's being said, verifying the science if it's something I didn't know before reading that article, etc. Believing a debunking based on bad science is just as wrong as believing a hoax claim based on bad science.

I think the high point of this non-critical thinking was on a video I saw one time, with a roundtable discussion between seven people all who had their own conspiracy theories about the moon landing. Early on in the segment, one of the people made a statement about the Van Allen belts that anyone that had ever read an encyclopedia entry on them would have known was horribly wrong, and yet was a critical assumption to her theory. I expected someone to correct her, and instead, everyone just nodded and carried on with the conversation. This means that every person there either didn't know it was wrong (despite the fact that almost every one of them brought up radiation as part of their reasoning), or they knew it was wrong and chose to let a blatantly wrong fact stand in what was supposed to be scientific discourse. At that point, I stopped watching because it stopped being scientific discourse and became a hoaxer PR piece in my mind.

Edited October 13, 2013 by Eric S

[Natsarugiy]

You can't blow away dust and have footprints. There either was an interaction or there wasn't.

First of all, I managed to find a resources today from NASA itself responding to questions similar to yours: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/media/2001/lunar_landing.pdf

Next, I already tried to explain this but I'll try again: dust will not "blow away" on the moon. Only dust that directly interacts with the thrust from the engine will will be affected, and all neighboring dust will be left alone. This is far different than what happens on Earth. Now, as I can't find any studies regarding this event, I can't give you a 100% accurate answer, but I can give you my best answer.

On Earth, we'd expect the thrust from the engine to generate wind, and the wind in turn would simply blow all neighboring dust away. In a vacuum, the dust will not be affected by any wind. Thrust from the engine will immediately spread out when it leaves the bell, because particles leaving the engine, the propellent, will only experience collisions with themselves. On Earth, the propellent will collide with itself, and the air around the engine, which will in turn greatly limit how much it expands. Without the air, we can be sure the propellent will exit the engine in a generally downward, but random, direction and expand in a mostly uniform circle at a rapid rate.

We don't know how rapid it will expand, but we do know it will expand. And as the propellent expands in its also travels towards the surface where it will soon after collide with the dust on the surface. Here the propellent will collide with dust on the surface over a larger range than expected. Any dust that interacts with the propellent will then bounce off the surface and leave the area, not forming a "ring of rust" which is what would later be described as a crater. And since the propellent won't generate a wind effect as it travels through the surface, far fewer interactions will occur. This is the point I must stress, wind on Earth is the main cause of the dust being blown here on Earth, and that will just not happen on the moon. With far fewer interactions occurring, far fewer dust particles will be affected by the engine thrust, leaving much of the nearby dust unaffected by the event.

Further explanation of the bouncing I mentioned earlier. Because on Earth there is 1 atm of air pressure at sea level, a "bounce" effect would be greatly diminished. But on the moon, with no overhead air pressure, collisions with the surface would bounce off much like how light is reflected off a mirror. Example: On Earth if you blow air at a dusty surface, the air will expand the further away from the source it is, then collide with the surface. After it hits the surface, it will mostly hug the surface as it continues to expand. Had there been any dust on the surface, the dust would then be carried by the air you blew across the ground, gradually dropping out of the weakening air flow and settling on the ground in a visually noticeable pattern. On the moon, we'll see something very different. If you were to blow air at the moon's surface at an significantly high speed, then we can assume the majority of the air would make it to the surface. However, once it collides with the surface, it would bounce upwards instead of hugging the surface like it did on Earth. Without the overhead pressure to stop it from bouncing, any dust picked up by the wind would rise into the air and travel very far away (as there is no air pressure to slow it's travel). The dust would travel through the air like a rock does on Earth.

So in conclusion, we can determine:

• that there will be no cloud of dust, as without air resistance, the dust will continue in it's direction of travel unhindered, rather than float around as it would on Earth,
  
• that the dust will not settle next to the vehicle either, but will travel much further than it would on Earth, so there will be no ring-like crater forming around the vehicle,
  
• and finally, that without the generation of wind, far fewer dust particles will be affected by the thrust, resulting in far fewer visual clues that the thrust had even occurred.
  

LunaTrick, this is all just a basic attempt at explaining what happened on the moon. I didn't make any models to run simulations with, I don't have access to a vacuum chamber for experiments, and I don't have a degree in physics. I'm just applying basic Newtonian mechanics to particle collisions in a vacuum as a sort of thought experiment. I tried to remain general, and by no means is this the correct solution to your question. This is just my best attempt at explaining why I feel the pictures are accurate representations of the event. Also, I truthfully have no intention of insulting you in any way. At first glance, it did appear as if you were just repeating the same arguments every conspiracy theorist has ever thought of, but as I read through you post I realized you were just interested in the points presented by the hoaxers, and wanted answers to your questions. I very much respect you for that. But again, as I have stated in a previous post, unless someone on this forum as directly working on a Lunar landing mission, much of our answers will be nothing more than speculation. If you really want solid answers, I suggest you email NASA once they are back to work. They would be the best source for answers to your questions.

Edited October 13, 2013 by Natsarugiy

[K^2]

On Earth, we'd expect the thrust from the engine to generate wind, and the wind in turn would simply blow all neighboring dust away. In a vacuum, the dust will not be affected by any wind. Thrust from the engine will immediately spread out when it leaves the bell, because particles leaving the engine, the propellent, will only experience collisions with themselves.

That is a pretty major failure in understanding how rocket engine operates. The entire purpose of the engine bell is to accelerate particles in one direction. The spread, therefore, is greatly reduced by how fast the particles are moving.

. You can see precisely the effect the engine has. Anything directly in the stream does get blown away. What LunaTrick completely fails to understand is that this only affects things directly under the engine, and that this actually shifts a very small amount of surface material. The ascent engine is also fired at full thrust and has much smaller area. Descent engine would have kicked off dust, but only from directly under LM, and nowhere near enough of it to leave any sort of a crater, because the actual pressure underneath the engine is very small.

I made semiconductors for the defense industry.

And you can't tell the difference between force and pressure? If you were there just to move barrels with hydrochloric acid, don't try to misrepresent yourself by saying that you "made" semiconductors.

[Natsarugiy]

The entire purpose of the engine bell is to accelerate particles in one direction. The spread, therefore, is greatly reduced by how fast the particles are moving.

I don't see how I misunderstood the operation of the engine. I was describing the behavior of the propellant after it leaves the bell, not how behaves as it passes through the bell. After it leaves the bell, there will be particle collisions inside the thrust stream (the collisions also happen inside the bell, but the spread will be limited by the bell). On Earth there would also be collision between the air around thrust stream as well, which will act to limit the spread of the particles. These extra collisions will not happen on the surface of the moon, therefore after the particles leave the bell, the collisions will send the particles in an outward direction (still traveling in the direction of the thrust), expanding freely where the expansion would have be limited on Earth. I was just comparing how different the particles would behave in a vacuum. I do not know the degree to which this will occur, however. The particles are traveling very fast so they will quickly collide with the surface before they have time to greatly expand. I just know that the thrust will expand more in a vacuum than it will on Earth. The force of the thrust will still be the same on the engine, but it will be spread out over a wider area than we are used to by the time it hits the ground. It difference may not be that noticeable, but it could be like the difference between a quick burst from a spray paint can inches from a surface, and the difference between a quick burst a foot from a surface. The propellant will spread more.

[K^2]

Yes, the translational degrees of freedom in the propellant stream are going the thermalize via collisions. That means there is going to be average velocity of the particles which depends on effective temperatures in the stream. However, the entire point of the engine's bell is to reduce the effective temperature and increase the net velocity of the gas. So what you end up with is a gas that's moving very fast along the axis of the thrust and relatively slow in directions perpendicular to it. In other words, the stream will not diverge too much even in vacuum. In fact, particularly in vacuum, since in the limit of very long engine bell you can reduce temperature of the gas a lot more than you could in atmosphere.

Again, that's entire point of the bell. That's what it's there for. If you don't understand that, you do not understand how the rocket engine works. Not that it's a big deal. That is rocket science after all.

[Natsarugiy]

In other words, the stream will not diverge too much even in vacuum.

Really? In almost every rocket launch video I've seen, the exhaust will very notably expand as the engine raises in altitude. I've assumed that, to some degree, the thrust would mirror this in a vacuum regardless of bell shape. Once the propellant leaves the bell, there will be internal pressure in the thrust stream, and no external pressure to stop the stream from expanding. Is the expansion really a negligible amount?

[K^2]

It's not negligible, but it's far from just flying in every direction evenly as you would expect with pressurized gas.

Know what? Lets do an estimate for LM. The Descent Propulsion System (DPS) burned Aerozine 50 (50-50 mix of Hydrazine (N2H4) and UDMH (C2N2H8) ) with Dinitrogen Tetroxide (N2O4) for an oxidizer. The I_SP of that engine was 311s. So the average exhaust velocity was 3,050m/s. Believe it or not, that's all we need to know about the engine. Now we need a few more things. First, the stoichiometric reaction.

2 N2H4 + N2O4 -> 3 N2 + 4 H2O

C2N2H8 + 2 N2O4 -> 3 N2 + 2 CO2 + 4 H2O

Then the molecular weights and enthalpies of formation of everything involved.

[table=width: 400, class: grid, align: left]

[tr]

[td]Compound[/td]

[td]M (g/mol)[/td]

[td]H (kJ/mol)[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]N2H4[/td]

[td]32.045[/td]

[td]+50.630[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]C2N2H8[/td]

[td]60.10[/td]

[td]+48.3[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]N2O4[/td]

[td]92.011[/td]

[td]+9.160[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]N2[/td]

[td]28.013[/td]

[td]0[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]CO2[/td]

[td]44.01[/td]

[td]−393.5[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]H2O[/td]

[td]18.015[/td]

[td]-241.818[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

What this table lets us do is write down an overall reaction by mass of the compounds.

1.000g Aerozine 50 + 2.249g N2O4 -> 1.355g N2 + 0.732g CO2 + 1.162g H2O + 23.402kJ of heat.

Now let us assume that after passing through the bell, all of the exhaust moves with the same average velocity. So we have 3.249g of stuff moving at an average of 3,050m/s. That gives us total energy of 15.111kJ. This means that at the most, 8.291kJ are still in the gas.

What I'm sweeping under the rug here is any initial temperature of the fuel. It isn't cryogenic, so it will have some, but even at room temperature, it's going to be fairly small amount of energy once distributed between available degrees of freedom. On the other hand, I'm going to give you an assumption that gas is fully thermalized, which isn't strictly true. If it was, CO2 lasers would not work.

What we need to do now is count available degrees of freedom. Every molecule will have its own. N2 will have 7, CO2 9, and H2O has 10. If we add this up throughout exhaust resulting from burning 1g of Aerozine 50 above, we get 1.132 mols of degrees of freedom. Each one takes up (1/2)RT of energy. So the temperature of the gas is roughly 1,762K after exiting the bell. Which is a LOT cooler than it was before it expanded.

So given that, we know that H2O molecules will move the fastest relative to the gas as they are the lightest. Furthermore, if we pick a direction, the average kinetic energy is, again (1/2)RT per mol. So the average velocity of H2O molecules perpendicular to the stream is about 900m/s.

So what do we have? We have a stream that's going along the axis of thrust at about 3,000 m/s and expanding at approximately 900m/s. This is average, and some molecules will fly out faster, but majority of the exhaust will be confined to this cone, which, by the way, is about 33°.

[Natsarugiy]

Know what? Lets do an estimate for LM.

Wow, thank you very much for that. I found it extremely interesting and helpful. I was not trying to imply before that they would fly out in every direction, but that they would just spread out during their trip to the surface. But I had no idea how to calculate it. 33° is actually more than I thought it would spread, but since H20 is the lightest it is probably going to the the molecule that spreads the most.

[Nibb31]

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.

You've got to understand that being skeptical of the Moon landings is like being skeptical of WWII extermination camps or 9/11. There were thousands of people involved in those historical events, and you are basically calling all the very smart and competent people who worked on Apollo liars. There is no way so many people could keep a lie, or a government could bribe or pressure people into keeping such a huge secret. Whenever more than 3 or 4 people are involved in a conspiracy, someone always ends up spilling the beans.

Thousands of people were involved in the Apollo program, including NASA employees and private subcontractors and consultants who worked at various NASA facilities, planning mission details, monitoring the telemetry data, analyzing the data. There were also folks from the international science community as well as foreign military and intelligence organizations who were watching the program very closely, including monitoring the spacecraft from launch to splashdown, intercepting communications from the Moon, and analyzing moon rocks. There are tons of documentation, from blueprints, to meal recipes, to flown artefacts, to procurement contracts for the slightest screw on the Saturn V rocket. The laser reflectors that were left on the surface have been used routinely by astronomers to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon for decades. There is a lot more data than the handful of photographs that you have seen. All this information is freely available and has been under scrutiny of historians and space geeks from all over the World for decades, yet no credible scientist or organization has ever had any reason the question the authenticity of any of the data.

There are also pictures of the landing sites taken by the LRO probe that has been orbiting the Moon since 2009, in which you can clearly see the actual LM descent stage, the rover, and even the tracks left by the astronauts walking and driving around, which also happen to match the maps that were included with the Apollo debriefing material 45 years ago. Do you mean that the hundreds of folks who currently work on LRO data at GSFC are still actively faking photographs from LRO today?

To fake the actual landing sites as can be seen today with modern satellites, NASA would have needed to land robots that could deploy flags, ALSEP modules and miles of fake footprints and rover tracks that nobody would have been able to see with the technology of the time, and then return Moon rocks automatically. Do you realize that with 1960's technology, that would have been harder than actually flying men to lunar surface and back? If they were capable of that, why would they fake footage of engine plumes underneath the LM if they could have simply filmed the same footage with their radio-controlled LM.

To keep something as big as fake Moon landings would be harder than actually doing them. You would basically have to spend billions to design everything to make a mission that would be believable by the entire scientific community, and then above that, you would need to add a huge effort to coverup the truth, including bribing and threatening hundreds of people over 50 years, including foreign citizens, intelligence agencies, and politicians from opposing sides. And you really think that none of those people would have spilt the beans after all these years? No whistleblower? No Deep Throat? No KGB? No congressman taking a jab at the administration of the time? No trace or evidence whatsoever? Even on their deathbeds or with the assurance that they would make millions from writing a book about the whole story or selling it to the press?

Coming from an administration that can't even cover up things like Watergate or the Monica Lewinsky affair, which only involved a dozen people or less, I really find it hard to believe. It would have been much harder than actually landing men on the Moon. It also implies that they would have faked the Apollo 13 failure, the inquiries and the expensive delays that came afterwards, and the reworking of Apollo 14. That would have been a particularly far-fetched and stupid thing to do.

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.

No you are not applying logic. Applying logic would be using Occam's Razor. Among these two options, which one is more likely:

- You are misinterpreting the pictures due to your lack of knowledge.

- NASA faked a Moon landing program that involved thousands of people all over the World and has kept the secret for nearly 45 years with all the implications mentioned above.

Think about it.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Nibb31

[LunaTrick]

So what do we have? We have a stream that's going along the axis of thrust at about 3,000 m/s and expanding at approximately 900m/s. This is average, and some molecules will fly out faster, but majority of the exhaust will be confined to this cone, which, by the way, is about 33°.

See, this is why I come here. Pure analysis. Bravo.

Look, people. Others are going to have questions like mine. For those of you who think this subject was already dead and buried when I brought it up - well it's not, and never will be. New people are going to be running across these arguments all the time. Think Youtube (but that is not where I learned of it). Only a few of them are going to go research for themselves. And another one might end up in here.

I don't understand everything NASA writes, and neither will the next new comer. So please chill out. And you are, gradually. So thank you for that. Let's leave a complete record for you guys to point to, when the next curious person comes along.

I listed things when I first got here that sent everyone into a tizzie. There were a number of subjects listed. I could go point by point and say no one refuted point x or y, or that I lost on this point and that point. But that is not what I want to get across to you.

I have looked into terrestrial radiation sources, including isotopes found in nuclear fallout, how to shield from that, half-lives, where my local nuke plants are located, what the seasonal prevailing winds are for my state. OK? But I don't know jack about space radiation other than high energy radiation like xray and gamma rays are the worst, and of course what I have read about the Van Allen belt, and the cross section pictures of it. Van Allan and NASA disagree on facts. I just know that kind of radiation is never good for humans and there was zero shielding, except for the mass of the ship itself.

I want you to consider the pictures. You can say I have misinterpreted this or that. Some have already accused me of "just repeating what others have said". When you cite NASA, you do the same thing. But obviously the pictures are going to have to come from NASA, there is no choice.

So as a regular Joe Layman, I download all the moon photos I could get in one evening. All the missions. I looked into this lack of crater thing. That's a label I don't like because I never expected a crater, just evidence of a change. I set aside the fact that as a preteen and teen I was allowed to stay up for all hours of the night watching all the moon footage I could. I witnessed it. I am not like the current generation who learns about it after the fact because of their place in time, I saw it live.

That list of specific photos did not come from some conspiracy site. I made that list myself out of the files I downloaded because I thought they were they best shots to look at for this issue. Some missions didn't offer the greatest viewing opportunity under the LM, but you can certainly see what's around it.

I have not read the NASA PDF provided above, yet. I will. You want to talk science? Then please repeat the experiment. PLEASE look at the pictures I cited. And not to beat a dead horse, but afterwords review the things I said about them, what I found, and what I expected to find, and then we include the historical story line. SEE for yourself WHY someone could come in here and say things that goes against the grain. Gentlemen, I saw both things with my own eyes. I saw the live B&W footage, and I am looking at the archival photos and it still raises an eyebrow. I know what happens if I shutdown my engine too early, even on low gravity Mimnus.

Now I know a good portion of you will say something like, it's been proven therefore I don't need to look at it, you're too lazy to research for yourself, yadda yadda yadda.

But I want YOU to understand something, and that is why people can think like this. Look at the photos! I swear the ground below the nozzle looks like there has been no interaction at all, regardless of the actual "blast radius" size arguments, velocities involved, whatever. There was mass. It has to slow down and not gain velocity. And I expect something to happen when my thrust, as minor as it is, hits that long undisturbed, dust layer. I think of those very perfectly defined footprints and I know that tells me that fine particle size is needed to leave those sharp 90 degree angles in the flour fine dust that makes up those beautiful footprints. That same kind of dust had to be under the LMs. If it is moved by pressure, I expect to see some pattern or design, or a clearing away; some evidence of a recent change. You never see any of that. In fact the Apollo 11 pic I cite looks like rain droplets have hit the thick dry dust, not a directed blast of some pressure level. Another picture looks like animal footprints under it (and I didn't say there were any animals involved for those who like to put words in my mouth). But these features are not only immediate to the nozzel but off as far as the edge of the LM.

I think someone suggested that the LMs came down with some lateral motion. If so, then those 5' probes should have made some short lines in the ground until the vehicle started dropping straight down. You don't see any indication of lateral movement from that perspective either.

If science says there would be no change to the surface, fine. I'd find that hard to believe, but would try. If science says there should be a change, then WOW, I don't see it! That's where I was at when I came in here.

So, as a witness to all the live broadcasts, and as one who has looked a long time at those photos I cited, and even AFTER getting the "treatment" here, I am still going to tell you, and you can quote me "It looks like the LM's were set in place by a crane, due to the lack of any visual disturbance to the areas immediate to the nozzle." It just looks damn odd and unexpected to my eye. And I would really like the reader to understand that someone could come to that conclusion, based solely on what is, and what isn't in the photos cited.

Please look.

PS Please stop trying to tie me to a fake moon landing. My stance was this. The photos of the LM don't add up. That just says the photos are in question - not the landing. And that we probably landed on the moon, but I suggested that maybe it wasn't Neil. Patriotic men will do what their country asks them to do. All that suggestion requires is a swap of personnel and following orders. It's not my burden to defend a hoax theory, because I never said that. I do not require secret Saturn Vs. You do, You're going there. I am not. Secrecy? Compartmentalization? I would reference the Manhattan project. Arguably the second most important thing that America ever did. Keeping big secrets is a piece of cake, when you do it like they did.

I question some of the archival photos, and the Van Allan radiation thing. That is as far as I am willing to go. I can be convinced. But I also like independent verification whenever possible. I cannot do that with space radiation, but I can do that with photos. However, the photos raised more questions than they solved. I am curious about a few other things too, but will probably no longer ask about them.

[SargeRho]

I have looked into terrestrial radiation sources, including isotopes found in nuclear fallout, how to shield from that, half-lives, where my local nuke plants are located, what the seasonal prevailing winds are for my state. OK? But I don't know jack about space radiation other than high energy radiation like xray and gamma rays are the worst, and of course what I have read about the Van Allen belt, and the cross section pictures of it. Van Allan and NASA disagree on facts. I just know that kind of radiation is never good for humans and there was zero shielding, except for the mass of the ship itself.

This is outright wrong. The Apollo CSM had a double hull made of aluminium, and in between that were thermal blankets, and quite a bit of plastic. That is all the shielding they needed against the radiation they were going to encounter.

I want you to consider the pictures. You can say I have misinterpreted this or that. Some have already accused me of "just repeating what others have said". When you cite NASA, you do the same thing. But obviously the pictures are going to have to come from NASA, there is no choice.

There are nothing to indicate the pictures are fake. Nothing.

That list of specific photos did not come from some conspiracy site. I made that list myself out of the files I downloaded because I thought they were they best shots to look at for this issue. Some missions didn't offer the greatest viewing opportunity under the LM, but you can certainly see what's around it.

And yet, there is nothing on those photos that suggests that the landings were faked. Quite the opposite.

Look at the photos! I swear the ground below the nozzle looks like there has been no interaction at all, regardless of the actual "blast radius" size arguments, velocities involved, whatever.

Nope. The opposite is the case. You can clearly see that dust has been moved.

I think of those very perfectly defined footprints and I know that tells me that fine particle size is needed to leave those sharp 90 degree angles in the flour fine dust that makes up those beautiful footprints.

Flour fine? You're being generous. It's far, far finer than flour. It's like talcum powder. Also it's extremely jagged. The particles interlock. Exept for the topmost bit, they will interlock when you point a rocket engine at 2000lbf at it, not be blown away.

That same kind of dust had to be under the LMs. If it is moved by pressure, I expect to see some pattern or design, or a clearing away; some evidence of a recent change.

Which you do, in fact, see.

I think someone suggested that the LMs came down with some lateral motion. If so, then those 5' probes should have made some short lines in the ground until the vehicle started dropping straight down. You don't see any indication of lateral movement from that perspective either.

Unless they killed their horizontal velocity just prior to setting down.

If science says there would be no change to the surface, fine. I'd find that hard to believe, but would try. If science says there should be a change, then WOW, I don't see it! That's where I was at when I came in here.

Glasses would come in handy at this point.

"It looks like the LM's were set in place by a crane, due to the lack of any visual disturbance to the areas immediate to the nozzle."

See above. You can clearly see a streak of discoloured soil under and next to the lander. It clearly is disturbed.

[check]

I'm sad that this thread got derailed by conspiracy mumbo jumbo.

[Bioman222]

Heh heh, we're sorry 'bout that...

[Vonar]

Indeed. We will be back to the Moon, however given the lack of support NASA has had I'm willing to bet that China will be the next nation to land a man and plant a flag on the Moon.

[Eric S]

I don't understand everything NASA writes, and neither will the next new comer. So please chill out. And you are, gradually. So thank you for that. Let's leave a complete record for you guys to point to, when the next curious person comes along.

Actually, this is calmer discussion than normal for this topic, I'm assuming that's why this thread hasn't been locked yet, since discussions of this sort normally are locked before they reach a second page, though since this is actually off topic, it may not have come to the mod's attention. That said, I'm going to stick to clarifying stuff. If I ever made you feel like I was attacking you, I apologize.

Van Allan and NASA disagree on facts.

In what regards? (not denying it, asking for specifics) The reach and intensity of the Van Allan belts changes on a constant basis. Heck, there was one solar event that actually managed to remove one of the two most concentrated regions, and it stayed that way until a second solar event restored the previous state. Then there was the artificial radiation belt caused by Starfish Prime that dissipated by itself.

I just know that kind of radiation is never good for humans and there was zero shielding, except for the mass of the ship itself.

Fair enough, though to split hairs, "is never good" doesn't equate out to "is always bad." Below a certain amount, the body tends to repair the damage faster than it happens. Normal background radiation is well below that threshold. If it weren't, airline pilots would be dropping from cancer left and right because they get higher than normal radiation exposure just from spending so much time with less atmosphere above them. There are people living in areas that exceed the official recommended radiation exposure limits without any statistically relevant health effects (which isn't to say that this is the case in all areas that exceed said limit).

When you cite NASA, you do the same thing.

Actually, I'm telling you to go read what people have said about this and check their science. I've done that for arguments on both sides of this issue. There is a distinct lack of science in what you're saying. I'm not saying you're contradicting science, but you never go into the science other than "it seems to me."

I want you to consider the pictures.

To be honest, looking isn't going to mean much unless we can agree on what we should and shouldn't see. The moon is an alien world for all intents and purposes, and until you take that into account, what we see or don't see doesn't matter. You seem certain that there should be more pronounced visible effects. Others here have a different opinion. You're trying to apply common sense, they're trying to apply science (that's not a dig, they could still be wrong).

SEE for yourself WHY someone could come in here and say things that goes against the grain.

Actually, I said a message or two ago that I understood why people would believe in hoax claims. Given an environment that is alien, it's very easy to make claims based on things that feel like common sense that don't stand up to scientific scrutiny. If you're not a scientist that has studied this stuff, it can very easily not make sense, and I say that as a person quite willing to admit this is not my area of expertise, nor do I consider myself any kind of authoritative opinion on the subject.

If science says there would be no change to the surface, fine. I'd find that hard to believe, but would try. If science says there should be a change, then WOW, I don't see it! That's where I was at when I came in here.

It's more that science says that the change would be hard to see. Actually, on this topic, I'll suggest this article. I haven't looked around to see if there's a better article, but it should sort out this discussion a bit. It's a bit heavy on the math, but I wouldn't trust anything that wasn't on a topic like this. It wraps up with "In reality, the exhaust stream blew away very little soil because there wasn't enough energy in the gas to move a large volume of surface material." and then shows a photo where you can tell that some soil was blown away. Given that image, I'd say it would be hard to spot that amount of change on the irregular surface of the moon unless you knew exactly what to look for.