Topic: The Apollo moon landings thread

[lurganboy]

Forty years on from Neil Armstrong fluffing his lines on the lunar surface I thought it was time to boldly start a thread on the achievement.

Is it man's greatest achievement to date? Or an increasingly irrelevant and vastly expensive charade to a dead lump of rock?

It is still astonishing that all the computing power of Mission Control back then added up to about that contained in a modern mobile phone. And they got to the Moon and back on that.

Personally I feel the Moon landings were absolutely amazing. And gave us an incredible perspective on our own place in the Universe. To have human eyes gazing back at their homeland while standing on another world is worth a million words, a trillion dollars and all the rest.

I regret I was too young to watch it live - I'm 43 so I was three then, and wouldn't have been interested. But it happened in my lifetime. And as a young boy I remember well the subsequent Apollo missions.

Any other Apollo heads out there?

[Wilbur]

It still amazes me what a bunch of guys with crewcuts, slide rules and significant amounts of bravery could do.

[TSC]

Assuming it was real isn't it all a bit anti climax?  Following that there were films produced based on the prediction we'd have colonised Mars by now or something.  Rem 'Space Odyssey'?

I read in some paper last wk that the Americans were trying to fund another trip to the moon.

Why?  What's gonna be there that wasn't there in 69?  Better off spending the dosh on health care or something.

As they said at the time it was a giant leap for mankind.  But to be honest we've prob gone backwards since.

Bit like concorde and all that.  It's been scrapped and even though it was dated nothing has replaced it.  It still takes 6 hrs to fly to east coast of America from here, many yrs after concorde was invented.

[Fairytale of 2005]

BBC 4 @ 9pm today, Being Neil Armstrong.

Should be interesting.

[Garstonite]

It still amazes me what a bunch of guys with cameras, an impressive set and expensive lighting could do.

[Finn Solomon]

Still love this guy, 45 plus years on.



"We choose to go to the moon, and to do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard."

Must have been a great morale booster for the population during the time of the Cold War, winning one over the Russians.

[GBF]

Assuming it was real isn't it all a bit anti climax?  Following that there were films produced based on the prediction we'd have colonised Mars by now or something.  Rem 'Space Odyssey'?

I read in some paper last wk that the Americans were trying to fund another trip to the moon.

Why?  What's gonna be there that wasn't there in 69?  Better off spending the dosh on health care or something.

As they said at the time it was a giant leap for mankind.  But to be honest we've prob gone backwards since.

Bit like concorde and all that.  It's been scrapped and even though it was dated nothing has replaced it.  It still takes 6 hrs to fly to east coast of America from here, many yrs after concorde was invented.

I think I heard, this time they are going to find possible settlement areas, looking for ice patches etc.  There is a want to put a base on the moon in the near future.

The moon is also the closest thing to other planets than Huston for e.g., if they want to put a telescope or some launch areas there.

[electricghost]

It is still astonishing that all the computing power of Mission Control back then added up to about that contained in a modern mobile phone. And they got to the Moon and back on that.

A bit too astonishing for me. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but I don't believe man has been to the moon.

[Alan_X]

Forty years on from Neil Armstrong fluffing his lines on the lunar surface I thought it was time to boldly start a thread on the achievement.

Is it man's greatest achievement to date? Or an increasingly irrelevant and vastly expensive charade to a dead lump of rock?

It is still astonishing that all the computing power of Mission Control back then added up to about that contained in a modern mobile phone. And they got to the Moon and back on that.

Personally I feel the Moon landings were absolutely amazing. And gave us an incredible perspective on our own place in the Universe. To have human eyes gazing back at their homeland while standing on another world is worth a million words, a trillion dollars and all the rest.

I regret I was too young to watch it live - I'm 43 so I was three then, and wouldn't have been interested. But it happened in my lifetime. And as a young boy I remember well the subsequent Apollo missions.

Any other Apollo heads out there?

Yes, old enough to have watched it live. From the sheer unadulterated awe of take off to the first shots of the earth from the moon taken on the Apollo 8 mission:



A stunning human acheivement.

Yes it was probably a dead end but what a dead end. This was real space travel - three men at a time traveling a quarter-of-a-million miles, landing on the surface of our closest satellite and returning. No warp drives, no transporters but real technological and human triumph.

So do me a favour. Leave out the pathetic hoax bollocks and actually do a little research yourselves. You might learn a few things:

You might learn about system design - how you create the most complex machine in history with a (near) zero failure rate for all of its systems...

You might learn about the importance of human ingenuity - what do you when the system fails?... stick a pen top in a circuit breaker or make CO2 scrubber housings from duck tape and a manual cover...

You might learn about (and be staggered by) the way we used to calculate things back in the 60s and 70s without calculators and computers.

You might learn a bit about optics and photographic processes - why a cross hair would be bleached out by an area of brightness... why the stars don't show up, why a shadow is affected by the terrain...

You might learn about parallax - why things in the distance seem to move relatively less than things close to you



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

You might learn about the reflectivity of the moon's surface... you know - the moon that illuminates the Earth from a quarter of a million miles away, not with its own glow but with the reflected light of the Sun... just imagine how much light would be reflected back if you were actually standing on the surface of the moon...

You might learn about how dust behaves in a vacuum and 1/6th gravity... it doesn't hang in the air like it would on a film stage in the Nevada desert... it travels in a perfect parabolic arc and falls back to the ground...

Or... you could believe the word of morons like Bill Kaysing and devour his despicable theories... If you want to be a credulous idiot, feel free. Just don't waste your time posting in here*.

The Saturn 5 rockets:






Take off:




The CSM taken from the LEM after separation


(oops that's a fake - got a bit of cross-hair drop out...)

The Lem in lunar orbit



On the surface:



The laser target that has been in contiuous use since the landing



GoogleMoon - explore the landing sites:

http://www.google.com/moon/

THis is an amazing site - it shows the landing sites, routes for the EVAs and has links to photos, 360š panoramas and videos, transcripts etc...

Re-docking





* If someone can come up with any evidence that the landings were a hoax do let me know.

[GBF]

You might learn about system design - how you create the most complex machine in history with a (near) zero failure rate for all of its systems...

I think it is not entirely true (I might be wrong as well)....NASA build fault tolerant system and self-cure system instead of zero failure systems.  On a normal mission they can expect something like 6000 parts to fail during launch and its still considered a successful launch

[hide5seek]

It happened. Why does any achievement always have to belittled?

[Xabi Gerrard]

It happened. Why does any achievement always have to belittled?

How do you know?

(Not saying it didnt, just wondering why you're 100% sure, not even entertaining the very slight possibility that it was fake.)

[Alan_X]

A bit too astonishing for me. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but I don't believe man has been to the moon.

I don't understand why. Because it was difficult? How about independent verifcation from the Japanese space agency:

Here's an image taken on the Apollo 15 mission showing the Hadley Rill (site location 28 on the Apollo 15 mission shows a similar view - http://www.google.com/moon/ )



Recently, the Japanese sent a probe to orbit the Moon and they took 3d images of the Hadley Rill area:



When this 3D data is then viewed from the same "position" they are identical:



(except the Apollo 15 images have more detail)

For those who don't get the importance of this... to acheive that result it would mean the Apollo 15 "fakers" would have needed to find a location in the Nevada desert with identical terrain to the area surveyed by the  recent Japanese probe, or had access to super-computer 3D terrain modelling software superior to what we have today as well as a detailed survey of the lunar surface to allow them to construct the model.

The reason the 3D SELENE image and the Apollo image are the same is becasue they are of the same place... the sureface of the Moon

There is also a distinct "halo" at the site where the LEM took off, from disturbed dust:



There are a whole series of similar images on the JAXA site:

http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/selene_viewer/en/observation_areas/landing_site/

It's really difficult to know how much more evidence people need... I mean, why believe the evidence of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of scientists, endless photos, video footage and scientific data when some moron can point to "anomalies" which can be discounted by anyone with half a brain cell if they take the time...

[It's Jimmy Corkhill]

NASA went back last week.

Shite that it gets fuck all coverage though really:

http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[Alan_X]

How do you know?

(Not saying it didnt, just wondering why you're 100% sure, not even entertaining the very slight possibility that it was fake.)

Because it 100% did happen. There is perhaps at best a 0.0000001% chance that it didn't and that 0.0000001% chance is based on the assumption that the entire world we live in is a fictional construct and that none of the world around us really exists.

The technology required to fake it in a way that is still undetectable 40 years on would have been staggering. We aren't talking about Capricorn One here, we're talking about a full 3D computer model of all the 6 landing sites with resolution down to 10 metres (to allow for the SELENE probe), a film stage with a complete vacuum and a 1/6th anti-gravity machine. Post production would have been a bitch (editing out all the reflections of lightng rigs, cameras and the like from those spherical visors) as would the continuity required to match up the thousands of photos with survey shots of the moon taken by others (the Russians in particular), not to mention the painstaking addition of black cross-hairs to all those thousands pf photos (why did they do that?...), then there's the 400,000 individuals and tens of thousands of organisation that were involved - they all had to be kept quiet including assassination if necessary of course. Oh they'd special lighting rigs that only cast single shadows from specific objects in different directions without casting multiple shadows from objects right next to them...

Why would you have any doubts that it did happen? All the "hoax" theories have been completely disproved, so what would make you question it?

[Alan_X]

It happened. Why does any achievement always have to belittled?

I really feel sorry for people who believe the CT shite. If they want to believe in a world so small and petty, a world limited by lunatic ideas that only exist in the minds of morons like Bill Kaysing then good luck to them.

NASA went back last week.

Shite that it gets fuck all coverage though really:

http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Wow - 3metre resolution. 

[Xabi Gerrard]

Why would you have any doubts that it did happen? All the "hoax" theories have been completely disproved, so what would make you question it?

Because it's so difficult to do.

To discount myself as some "moron" or someone "with half a brain", or however you choose to describe anyone who doesnt agree with you, I have a degree in physics. Although this doesnt make my opinion any more valid than the next man, I like to think I have a very good idea of the difficulties involved in sending men to the moon and back in one piece.

And it is mind blowingly difficult.

Its funny you say things like "post production would have been a bitch" because it wouldnt have been 1% of a bitch as actually sending someone to the moon. And as difficult as it would have been to fake it by replicating the moon surface in Nevada, it wouldnt have been anywhere near as difficult as sending a man to the moon and back.


Throw in that the Soviets put a man into space first, and reached the moon before them, I can see why the Americans would deem it paramount that they put a man on the moon first, or appear to. And so I can see why they would go to the extremes they did to actually do it or fake it. 

For what its worth, I think they probably did do it, but anyone who wasnt involved and is 100% sure they did is as naive as anyone who is 100% sure they didnt.

[BazC]

Utterly amazing achievement. If you stop and think about it for a minute you begin to realise just how great those pioneers were.

I've always wondered about that photo- the earth looks like it's about the size of the moon in the sky on earth. Surely it should look much bigger than that? I thought it might be a photographic illusion- like when you see the moon on a video recording and it looks tiny?

I'd love to see how the earth would look in the sky- blue, green, white, brown- and constantly changing. Reckon I could watch it for ages just evolving through the sky.

[fudge]

Still love this guy, 45 plus years on.



"We choose to go to the moon, and to do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard."

Must have been a great morale booster for the population during the time of the Cold War, winning one over the Russians.

Read  a fascinating book about Kennedy and the Apollo programme, apparently if there was any way he could have stopped it and saved face he would have because once the costs started to spiral out of control he soon lost enthusiasm  for it

[guest]

Amazing. It is so poignant how it looks like you could just fall off the edge - what is beyond that edge has this mysterious quality to me.

[Thush]

Because it's so difficult to do.

To discount myself as some "moron" or someone "with half a brain", or however you choose to describe anyone who doesnt agree with you, I have a degree in physics. Although this doesnt make my opinion any more valid than the next man, I like to think I have a very good idea of the difficulties involved in sending men to the moon and back in one piece.

And it is mind blowingly difficult.

From a physics point-of-view, what were the additional difficulties of landing and returning from the Moon from a starting point of launching a spaceship into Earth orbit?

[electricghost]

Because it's so difficult to do.

To discount myself as some "moron" or someone "with half a brain", or however you choose to describe anyone who doesnt agree with you, I have a degree in physics. Although this doesnt make my opinion any more valid than the next man, I like to think I have a very good idea of the difficulties involved in sending men to the moon and back in one piece.

And it is mind blowingly difficult.

Its funny you say things like "post production would have been a bitch" because it wouldnt have been 1% of a bitch as actually sending someone to the moon. And as difficult as it would have been to fake it by replicating the moon surface in Nevada, it wouldnt have been anywhere near as difficult as sending a man to the moon and back.


Throw in that the Soviets put a man into space first, and reached the moon before them, I can see why the Americans would deem it paramount that they put a man on the moon first, or appear to. And so I can see why they would go to the extremes they did to actually do it or fake it. 

For what its worth, I think they probably did do it, but anyone who wasnt involved and is 100% sure they did is as naive as anyone who is 100% sure they didnt.

I agree with that (apart from your conclusion that they did do it.)
Alan you are obviously passionate about this, but to label people as "morons" and the like for having a different interpretation of the "evidence" does your argument no favours.
The fact is that some of the evidence put forward by NASA themselves is open to legitimate question, and I have seen your arguments and the arguments of many other people who try to offer an explanation, and I, like many others remain unconvinced by the reasoning.
I want to believe that it happened, just like I want man/woman to go to Mars and beyond in my lifetime, but I won't believe something absolutely extraordinary happened, not once, but several times, and then will not be repeated despite the great advancement in technology for a minimum of another 50 years.
Incidentally I read that when we do plan to "go again" ,  (not until 2020 ? ) one of the aims will be to determine what effects the radiation on the moon's surface will have on human life. Is that not something that we should already know if we have already sent several manned missions there ?

[CHOPPER]

Where have they gone in the forty years since? and I don't mean destinations.
The Hubble telescope is of greater significance than the landings IMO and lest we forget the political motives regarding being the first on the moon, after Yuri Gagarin the 'space-race' was truly a foot but after that it's been more about star wars projects and military spy satelites. Yes the landings were significant but were they there to further mankind or to win a 'space-race' over an old enemy?

[Zizou]

The mysteries of space, and the universe have this fantastic ability to make you realise the insignificance of everything.

[lurganboy]

The mysteries of space, and the universe have this fantastic ability to make you realise the insignificance of everything.

I disagree fundamentally with that. I think Apollo and the moon landings helped to underline the enormous significance of the Earth and how we should look after it. It's beauty and magnificence.

Earthrise is one of the most important images ever taken.

[Zizou]

I meant more individual insignificance. Human worries, concerns and our own selfish needs.

[CHOPPER]

I disagree fundamentally with that. I think Apollo and the moon landings helped to underline the enormous significance of the Earth and how we should look after it. It's beauty and magnificence.

And we've done a crackin job of that over the last forty years haven't we.

[lurganboy]

And we've done a crackin job of that over the last forty years haven't we.

Not at all. Wasn't claiming we had - but it helped to show that the Earth is all we've got. That it's something incredibly precious and delicate and that we are all on it together.

And we're doing a terrible job at looking after it.

[Ray K]

Watching the BBC docs recently (tonight's one on Armstrong is meant to be a bit of a clunker unfortunately) really brings back what the excitement must have been like back then.

And as Wilbur said, these guys at Nasa did it with slide rules, pencils, crew cuts and cigarettes. And with less computing power than on a mobile phone from 1999.

People will probably whine on about how much it cost, and we can feed the starving blah blah fucking blah, but (a) it was America's money - they can do what they like with it and (b) great discovery & exploration costs money. And this was simply the greatest human exploration ever accomplished.

And it also reminded me to buy The Right Stuff on DVD as there's no way I'm getting my old copy back off my brother.

[rowan_d]

You might learn about parallax - why things in the distance seem to move relatively less than things close to you

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/father-ted-small-far-away/14076332/

[Alan_X]

I agree with that (apart from your conclusion that they did do it.)
Alan you are obviously passionate about this, but to label people as "morons" and the like for having a different interpretation of the "evidence" does your argument no favours.

They don't have a different "interpretation" they say things that simply aren't true and their theories fall apart under the simplest analysis. So for me calling them morons is being kind... the alternative is lying scheming c*nts, who actually know they're talking shite yet continue to slander people and demean a truly incrredible achievement.

The fact is that some of the evidence put forward by NASA themselves is open to legitimate question, and I have seen your arguments and the arguments of many other people who try to offer an explanation, and I, like many others remain unconvinced by the reasoning.

Sorry mate but what evidence are you taking about: The thousands of photos, panoramas and videos that all corredlate, cross reference with each other and all surevy information of the moons surface (including the recent SELENE probe.

Here's a list of all the images from Apollo 17:

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/images17.html#MagJ

Have a look through and explain them to me, as well as those from 11, 12, 14, 15 & 16. Explain how big the set was that they used to shoot this fakery. How they took panoramas like this:



and how they matched them to the known terrain on the Moon:




How'd they do it?

And where are the multiple light sources in this panorama:



I'm game. You say "some of the evidence put forward by NASA themselves is open to legitimate question"... ok fire away. Which bits in particular?

[The Gulleysucker]

Worth every single penny, even if only for the impetus to compact computing that we all now casually take for granted.

Being a child of 1955 my teddy bear as a tiny tot was called Sputnik, and I can remember my Dad taking me into the back garden in 1960 to see ECHO 1 go over at night clearly visible over Liverpool and telling me just how important a step it was. I also remember the excitement at Gagarin going up the next year, followed by everything that incrementally followed, first dual flight Gemini, first space walk, first female cosmonaut, first docking of two craft, all of that, each year building on the previous years achievements and improving the technologies and methods, and then very clearly the the Apollo launch pad fire that killed Grissom who was for some reason a childhood hero. It was all indescribably exciting and inspiring, made me devour science magazines as a kid, and I really do feel quite privileged to have lived through that time of such firsts and been conscious of it all.

I stayed up to watch the first landing, about 4 in the morning I think, and at school we even had a TV on in the main hall and even though it was our O level years, we were allowed to watch some of the later launches and landings that occured during daytime hours here. Just brilliant.

But if ever there is one thing I regret about the way it has panned out since, it's that those childhood dreams and what we were told at the time what would happen in the near future about us living in space, just hasn't happened on the scale expected.

When I started school in 1960, one of the things I recall quite vividly, was in that first year in primary during crafts lesson or whatever it was called then, all of us lads would just make plasticine models of space rockets though they looked like V2's, and space wheels, and we just took it for granted that when we grew up we would be living in and exploring space as the TV and books seemed to say we would. One of the most popular comics then was the Eagle with Dan Dare in it and everything just seemed totally possible, and not even adults would spoil our fantasies but would actively encourage them. Even now, if there was ever a call for volunteers to go on an indefinite non return journey into deep space, I'd put my name in the hat.

And for anyone who seriously thinks it was all faked, yeah, your arguments are as plausable as someone telling me that Bill Shankly was never the manager of Liverpool either, and that was all faked as well. Fucking stupid so get a grip and just remember one thing, do you not stop to think that the Russians, who hated the US at the time, if they had the slightest inkling that there was anything fake, would not have broadcast it to the world to demonstrate the cheating nature of the Capitalist west?

[Xabi Gerrard]

And for anyone who seriously thinks it was all faked, yeah, your arguments are as plausable as someone telling me that Bill Shankly was never the manager of Liverpool either, and that was all faked as well.

Yeah theyre exactly the same. Thats a great comparison 

do you not stop to think that the Russians, who hated the US at the time, if they had the slightest inkling that there was anything fake, would not have broadcast it to the world to demonstrate the cheating nature of the Capitalist west?

Thats not exactly conclusive proof now is it.

[Finn Solomon]

Yeah theyre exactly the same. Thats a great comparison 

Thats not exactly conclusive proof now is it.

Let's see you disprove Alan's conclusive proof then, or have you decided to just gloss over his reams of photographic and scientific evidence?

[Alan_X]

Gulleysucker - there was a paperback which had all the stats and details of the mission - I got it for Christmas that year. There were amazing statistics about the amount of water pumped through the deluge system under the launch pad - 50,000 gallons a minute.

And everyone knows this was used for 2001 but I'll also always associate it with the BBC coverage

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/SLuW-GBaJ8k&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/SLuW-GBaJ8k&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>

and the great James Burke:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/pLiAwSKkm6k&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/pLiAwSKkm6k&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/I9BAP3cO9Bg&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/I9BAP3cO9Bg&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>

[Xabi Gerrard]

Let's see you disprove Alan's conclusive proof then, or have you decided to just gloss over his reams of photographic and scientific evidence?

Do you really think its that hard to fake a photo, even in the days pre-photoshop?

It's a hell of a lot easier to fake a photo (even in 1969) than it is to send men to the moon, land them, then bring them back in one piece.


I'll say again, I think they probably did go to the moon, but arguments such as comparing men going to the moon with Shanklys existance, or that the Soviets would have disproved it, are hardly conclusive.

[Alan_X]

Yeah theyre exactly the same. Thats a great comparison 

Why?... both are true and there's no evidence to the contrary.  Having said that... if some nutter made a YouTube video and managed to come up with a handfull of "anomalies" over an ominous soundtrack then I have no doubt there would be plenty of credulous people who'd believe it. Seems to be all that's needed...

[Xabi Gerrard]

Why?... both are true and there's no evidence to the contrary.  Having said that... if some nutter made a YouTube video and managed to come up with a handfull of "anomalies" over an ominous soundtrack then I have no doubt there would be plenty of credulous people who'd believe it. Seems to be all that's needed...

The difference is that as incredible as Shanks' acheivement were, theyre not even comparable in difficulty with sending men to the moon and back. This is why no one questions Shanks' existance.

Nothing to do with "anomalies".

[Finn Solomon]

Do you really think its that hard to fake a photo, even in the days pre-photoshop?

It's a hell of a lot easier to fake a photo (even in 1969) than it is to send men to the moon, land them, then bring them back in one piece.

I'll say again, I think they probably did go to the moon, but arguments such as comparing men going to the moon with Shanklys existance, or that the Soviets would have disproved it, are hardly conclusive.

Gulleysucker said what he said to be emphasize a point. All you've done is to say it could have been faked, could have should have, it's too hard to do it back then. You've said nothing that concretely disproves Alan's evidence, nor come up with a reason why the moon landings were faked beyond "It's too hard." You're underestimating the men of 1969. Technology does not progress uniformly, and as a science degree holder I'm surprised you don't seem to be able to grasp that point. It's weird, but not impossible that spaceflight was invented before the iPod or the cellphone.

[MichaelA]

I'll say again, I think they probably did go to the moon, but arguments such as comparing men going to the moon with Shanklys existance, or that the Soviets would have disproved it, are hardly conclusive.

Whereas you have provided what evidence to the contrary?

As an aside, I genuinely think that any individual who believes in conspiracy theories does so out of a innate and deep seated insecurity about their own intelligence. By demonstrating their scepticism about widely held beliefs of the majority, they somehow convince themselves that they're smarter than the average bear...but they're not. They're bottom feeders with a warped sense of self importance. IMHO. 


No offence intended to any if you out there wearing your tin foil hats.