Why Are We Orbiting Earth Instead of Landing on the Moon Again?

[bozo the clown]

only time you'l find me under 1km of ice is during the next ice age

 

[marcus]

only time you'l find me under 1km of ice is during the next ice age

we will just have to make a special little house for you at the surface then

 

[marcus]

come to think of it
as long as the ice has enough structural integrity
some of the living quarters could be near the surface

somebody has to be up there to keep an eye
on things up topside

so we ought to be able to accommodate you bozo

 

[bozo the clown]

Could anyone explain how astronauts on the way to moon survived van allen belt radiation ? And also how the ship stayed intact when there are micro metoers traveling very fast that would rupture the craft wouldn't it ?
Cant be luck as we repeated this feat 6 times with 1 failure

 

[Entropy]

Aluminium which the spacecraft is made of absorbs the particular radiation in the van allen belt. The radiation is mostly alpha particles (a helium nuclieus) which is easily stopped by just a few centimeters of air and beta particles (a rogue electron) which can really only make it a few meters of air or a centimeter or two of alumium. Only large consentrations of these particles pose a threat, which would usely come from solar flares, or gamma rays (high energy EM waves). You probably saw that show on Fox about how they faked the moon landing. They almost had me having doughts but a little research will show you its all rubbish.

As for micro meteors, space is a huge place! There are only a small few those small meteors per every dozen square kilometers. If you really think about it there's a very very low chance a small spacecraft will be hit, but its still possible.

 

[neutroncount]

Actually aluminium is bad for stopping radiation because its secondary decay products are sometimes as bad as the primary impacts (not to say its still wasn't/isn't being used today..it is). You want something with a lot of hydrogen in it...water, high density plastics, liquid hydrogen, ect.

But the astronauts didn't die because they didn't SIT in the belts. They passed through them rather quickly and they were on their way. Some shuttle missions themselves also pass briefly through part of the belts at times.

 

[marcus]

You want something with a lot of hydrogen in it...water, high density plastics, liquid hydrogen, ect.

.

ice

 

[shrumeo]

What Asimov book was it where they were living on Titan? Or was it A. Clarke?

The folks mostly lived underground, but they would come to the surface to enjoy the methane sea, and the ammonia lakes. (Enclosed, of course.)

God, what book was that?

 

[Janus]

What Asimov book was it where they were living on Titan? Or was it A. Clarke?

The folks mostly lived underground, but they would come to the surface to enjoy the methane sea, and the ammonia lakes. (Enclosed, of course.)

God, what book was that?

Imperial Earth, A.C. Clarke

 

[bozo the clown]

Was wondering why I've never seen any interviews with any astronaut that walked on the moon, apart from Armstrong's speech one small step i aint heard a word from any other, am I ignorant or are these guys of very few words, I heard a story though about Armstrong being at a dinner and was asked about the moon landing he apparently was in tears and walked out the room.

 

[TALewis]

I seem to recall seeing a lot of Aldrin and Cernan on TV these days.

 

[Phobos]

Was wondering why I've never seen any interviews with any astronaut that walked on the moon, apart from Armstrong's speech one small step i aint heard a word from any other, am I ignorant or are these guys of very few words, I heard a story though about Armstrong being at a dinner and was asked about the moon landing he apparently was in tears and walked out the room.

Certainly Buzz Aldrin does a lot with the popular media (including a recent fight with a conspiracy theorist). But I often have the same question as you. With only 12 people ever having set foot on the moon, you would think that each of them would have an amazing story to share with the world. I guess the first folks there (Armstrong & Aldrin) get the glory. Hopefully Michael Collins (who sat in the capsule orbiting the moon while Neil & Buzz walked around) doesn't mind. I hear that he's ok with it.

 

[TALewis]

I've read that Armstrong very rarely makes public appearances. The only time I recall seeing him on TV was briefly during the 1999 30th Anniversary of Apollo 11.

 

[enigma]

They all gave plenty of interviews in the days following the moon landings.

You don't see too many interviews today because 35 year old news isn't news.

They're there if you look for them, however.

 

[Nenad]

we NEVER went to the moon

 

[enigma]

Don't be absurd.

There are mirrors placed on the moon which have been used to bounce lasers off the surface.
There were hundreds of thousands of people who worked on the project.
Using simple triangulation, the Soviets (who we were racing there and would have make a huge stink if we tried to fake it) could find that the radio signals were coming from the moon.

If you want to believe the crackpot luddites, more power to you.

This is a science forum, and you won't get much credence from disregarding evidence in favor of ignorance...

 

[bozo the clown]

is the Hubble telescope powerful enough to see the us flag on the moon ?

 

[enigma]

Not the flag. It can resolve the blast crater caused by the Eagle's liftoff, though.

There's a possibility that the Clementine mission photographed the site. Still, satisfying the nutters (who wouldn't believe it anyway) isn't a priority of NASA. The landing site was photographed extensively by the 5 Lunar Orbservers prior to the Apollo landing, so there is little to no reason why they'd divert a multi-million dollar spacecraft just to prove what should be blatantly obvious.

 

[bozo the clown]

was wondering if it is possible to fly a modified space shuttle to the moon and land ?

 

[Integral]

No, it has insufficient fuel capacity. Its way to massive to even consider such a flight.

 

[FZ+]

He did say modified. And if you redefine 'land', to 'crash', and remove the need to return, you can divide the fuel requirement by 4, since you are cutting out the decceleration, the second acceleration, and the second decceleration phases. It might just be possible, though the fuel will probably have to be loaded on in space - I don't think the shuttle can carry the fuel required up, on its own.

For the moon 'haox' stuff, the best resource would be http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html.

 

[enigma]

I dunno.

If all it had to do was smack into the moon it might be able to get there. It's got a 23,500 kg cargo bay. If you use the main engines to do the trans-lunar injection it's possible. I'll have to run some numbers...

 

[Nenad]

how do you explain the van allan radiation belt?

 

[FZ+]

Well documented.

http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad19.html
http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/apollo/S2ch3.htm

 

[Entropy]

how do you explain the van allan radiation belt?

Read some of my previous posts.

 

[Dmcm01]

woah, howcome the Hubble can't photograph deep into the universe, but it can't photograph some flag on the MOON!? please help...

 

[TALewis]

Here is a short answer to your question, Dmcm01:

http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.id=77&cat=topten

 

[Dmcm01]

*edit to last post: the first 'cant' should be a 'can'*

Thanks TALewis, so its too close as the lenses are built for long range and don't need to be able to show such deatail...

 

[neutroncount]

As well as mine Nenad.

Why not go here?

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

 

[Nenad]

Ive read the whole thing and I have to say that it has the answers to the questions posed. BUT, y does the writer skip the fact about temperature in space. And another thing, if soo many skeptics are out there, y doesn't NASA send out another probe to the moon. If it was done like 6 times in the 60's, it should be easily attainable right now. It seems kind of suspicious to me. Half of me wants to believe it, but the other half does not.

 

[Entropy]

Another probe to the moon? We just sent two to search for water at the lunar poles and map the surface! Plus there really isn't that much of a reason to go back to the moon.

 

[bozo the clown]

One way to look at the moon landing is look at the great cathderals they built hundreds of years ago you think how the hell did they build these without construction technology we have today, but yet today we don't go exactly out of our way to build these again given their imense beauty.

Man can achieve great things with manpower ,dedication and purpose and of course not forgetting finances. Thats the way I look at it anyways.

 

[neutroncount]

Man can achieve great things with manpower ,dedication and purpose and of course not forgetting finances. Thats the way I look at it anyways.

Exactly. The space wars drove each side to pursue the moon, and use the above to try to achieve that goal.

Nenad what don't you get? When in sunlight you get radiative heat transfer via intrared radiation. When not, the surface cools down. But remember there is a lot of infrared being reflected around, from the moon as well as the Earth so you don't get down to too extreme temps granted its still pretty cold.

 

[russ_watters]

...y does the writer skip the fact about temperature in space.

What does the temperature in space have to do with anything?

And another thing, if soo many skeptics are out there, y doesn't NASA send out another probe to the moon. If it was done like 6 times in the 60's, it should be easily attainable right now.

There really aren't that many "skeptics," but regardless, why should NASA spend $10 billion dollars to try to convince a few crackpots of something that all of the existing evidence doesn't convince them of? It'd just be another page of notes on an already mile-high mound of evidence.

It is reasonably clear from Hoagland's actions that he's not a skeptic, nor is he mentally ill: he is, quite simply, a liar and a fraud.

 

[Phobos]

Ive read the whole thing and I have to say that it has the answers to the questions posed.

I certainly encourage you to thoroughly read the links provided and compare that to the stuff Fox TV put out. You'll find that there is a lot of well supported technical evidence, whereas the hoax-believers tend to make unsupported claims. (e.g., no stars in photographs? well, did they compare the actual photo exposure lengths to what would actually be needed to see stars? nope, they just assumed their imagined moonscape was accurate. Try taking a snapshot at night with your camera...you won't see any stars either unless you take an extended exposure over several minutes.)

And another thing, if soo many skeptics are out there,

Only 6% of Americans.
http://www.gallup.com/content/login.aspx?ci=1993
(ok 6% of the US population is still a large number...but 6% is small as far as typical polls go and it seems to me to be representative of fringe views)

y doesn't NASA send out another probe to the moon. If it was done like 6 times in the 60's, it should be easily attainable right now.

As Russ said, it costs billions of dollars. We need a good reason. But, in January, President Bush announced his plans to send astronauts back to the Moon and then to Mars. If they do it (it would take many years and the next president may not approve of it), it's going to require major restructuring of NASA. Check out the news articles about it. Even though we went to the Moon a few times from the late 60's to early 70's, all the equipment is now unusable and all the Apollo experts are no longer working at NASA. The current folks at NASA would need to dust off the old plans and start from the beginning.

It seems kind of suspicious to me. Half of me wants to believe it, but the other half does not.

Ok, be skeptical. But be skeptical of evidences/claims from both sides. See which makes more sense.

 

[bozo the clown]

Are you sure Bush announced plans to send man to moon then mars, I heard specualation that he would announce this in one of his speeches this summer but I didnt hear anything yet.

 

[TALewis]

Here is the text of President Bush's January 14, 2004 speech:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html

 

[Nenad]

honestly, like I said befoure, I do not know who to believe. you guyes sound soo convinced, but there's a lot of fishy business going on out there.

 

[Nenad]

and by the way, almost everybody in europe thinks the whole thing was a fake.

 

[neutroncount]

Well who cares what europe thinks? They must all be idiots then. They're just mad because they're not the ones that did it. Let me ask you this. Do you think the Russians, who were also listening to the mission telemetry every mission, would keep quiet if they had found out? We couldn't even keep the atomic bomb from them...and that was a secret project.

How bout the fact that they would have had to create a low gravity, vacuum chamber the size of a large warehouse...hell we can't even do that today.

They would have had to fake all the rocks that they brought back. They would have had to launch 7 Saturn Vs, the most powerful rocket in the world, just for the hell of keeping the hoax look real (not to mention that the russians were tracking us the whole time).

I can keep on going but you had a whole website to read through.

 

[russ_watters]

and by the way, almost everybody in europe thinks the whole thing was a fake.

I don't buy that - do you have a source?

 

[Integral]

I am amazed that anyone can have a realistic doubt that the landings occurred. I can say this based purely on a POLITICAL argument. Perhaps some you remember reading in your history books about the Cold War. As a reminder the cold was was a 30yr period of extreme political tension were the US and the USSR (check your history book for the meaning of that acronym!) following a doctrine call MAD. Which meant that a war would mean the end of civilization as we know it. To most of you kids this is all ancient history and is probably associated with WWII (more ancient history... Which means it all happened at the same time right? ) In reality the Cold War lasted from 1945-1990 (plus or minus a few years) Notice that the entire Apollo program happen right smack in the middle of the Cold war. The USSR had an advanced technology which enabled it to have a space program of its own. This means that it had the ability to monitor signals transmitted from space, further they had the ability to know WHERE in space the signals were coming from. The would not have been fooled for even a second by a Earth based hoax. The fact that the USSR never ONCE suggested that these missions were faked is testimony to the reality of the moon landing. Given the political atmosphere of the day had they NOT been monitoring signals from the MOON they would have screamed bloody murder. The Moon landings occurred as surely as the sun rose yesterday.

 

[Janus]

Just to add to what Integral has already said. If the Soviet Union could have raised even a shadow of a doubt that the moon landings were real, they would have. IOW, if they thought that any of the so-called evidence that the moon landings were fake would hold up in the court of international scientific opinion, they would have been the first to point it out. (And don't believe for one minute that they were less capable of finding said evidence than those who go around today claiming hoax). The fact that they didn't shows that they could not find any such evidence.


Another point is that much of the so-called evidence assumes that NASA was very sloppy in its fakery.

We are talking about experts here. If there were supposed to be stars in the lunar sky, they would have made sure that they were in the photos. If there should have been dust on the landing pads, they would have thown dust on them (How hard could that be?) etc.

If they were going to fake it, they would have made sure that they got all the details right (and not leave all kinds of clues for people to find).

 

[TALewis]

Unless--the Soviets were in on the hoax too! OMG, global conspiracy!

 

[Phobos]

We had the technology & drive to get there.
Our competitor/adversary/enemy at the time agreed that we got there.
We planted mirrors on the moon that you can still "see" by bouncing lasers off them.
We brought back moon rocks which are unlike anything to be found on Earth.
And each of the lines of argument for a "moon landing hoax" don't stand up to scrutiny.
We got there several times (for a hoax, once would be a safer bet).
Most of the thousands of people involved in the landing are still alive and are not indicating a hoax.

 

[Artman]

Forgive me if this has been said already (I have not read the entire thread). I just finished reading the book "October Sky" (great book. i highly recommend it!) a story about Rocket Engineer Homer Hickam's life in the coal mining area of West Virginia in the late 1950's.

In the book it talks about Senetor John F. Kennedy visiting the area during a very troubled economic period. He was campaigning and was speaking about bringing in government assitance to help the people. This was not what they wanted. They wanted to work and they were quickly losing interest in his speech.

Homer Hickam happened to be at the location where the future president was speaking and Kennedy asked for questions. Homer had been experimenting with rockets for a couple of years and was interested in knowing whether Kennedy had any interest in sending an astronaut to the moon. Kennedy saw the interest this question generated in all of the people and turned it to his favor by saying that we could work together as a nation to make it happen, yes he would pursue sending a man to the moon.

Kennedy saw then that this as a way of putting government money into the economy without it being a handout, as well as the feeling of national pride such a project could create.

 

[bozo the clown]

Was wondering the purpose of putting mirrors on the moon and why didnt they build a machine with solar pannels for energy supply. And do diff kind of experiments ( don't know what ) we could still be talking to this machine today.

 

[neutroncount]

The mirror was used to determine the changing distance from the Earth to the moon very accurately. I don't know about power supplies.

 

[Integral]

Was wondering the purpose of putting mirrors on the moon and why didn't they build a machine with solar pannels for energy supply. And do diff kind of experiments ( don't know what ) we could still be talking to this machine today.

The missions to the moon were planed to the ounce they took EVERYTHING they could. Of course since most of the payload (thats the total mass that could be carried by the rocket) was devoted to men and life support systems they had little room for meaningful science equipment. This is the trouble with sending men into space. The limited payload available is devoted to the men and keeping them alive, not to useful equipment.

Certain things have not changed and no amount of technology will over come them. It requires a certain amount of energy to transport a kg of mass into space, the more mass lifted the more energy required, this is a physical fact which cannot be altered. If we wish to put man into space we must sacrifice the scientific equipment needed to obtain the data that should be the primary objective of the mission. Men is space are a wasteful extravagance which impede the true purpose of going to space in the first place.

 

[bozo the clown]

well they made space for a lunar rover, what purpose was that supposed to serve