Apollo 16 Flag is Still Casting Shadows

ThinkingCap
The real question is, why has it taken so long to return? Do you really think they stopped exploring?

Skylab, the Shuttle, and the ISS might have something to do with it. Do you honestly think NASA could keep going to the Moon while belting out these huge, time-consuming and resource-consuming projects? en.wikipedia.org...

The exploration of Moon continued using robotic spacecraft in lunar orbit.

radkrish
Who cares about a piece of cloth hanging intact on the moon.

LOTS of people do,because of how iconic this sort of thing has become since it was put there.The same as putting a national flag on top of a mountain when you're the first person to get there,it's a symbol of man's triumph over all the obstacles put in his way.

If it (and the flags at the other Apollo landing sites) were to all have crumbled away so that nothing apart from the flag poles were left,in a metaphorical way it'd be like mankind's (oooppps,I almost wrote America's there) achievements and the memory of them were also crumbling away into dust.All the time the flags are still there and visible as to what they are,it's proof that we actually did set foot on something that's not our own planet for the very first time.

deadcalm


This can't be stressed enough. They have spy satellites that can read a newspaper headline from space THROUGH Earth's dense atmosphere....and these photos are the best that NASA has to offer?

Total garbage. Those photos prove absolutely nothing.

No, you can't read a newspaper headline from space. Physics of normal lensing systems won't allow it. An absolutely perfect lens is limited by diffraction effects. You can't resolve smaller details than the aperture limit allows.

Most spy sats are in geosynchronous orbit at a distance of 22,160 mi [35,663 km]....REALLY folks.

And I'm the one thats crazy?

You'd be the best judge of that, but most optical imaging satellites are NOT in geosynchronous orbit. Comsats are. But not ground imaging sats. That 10" resolution is for low earth orbit.

reply to post by Bedlam


A geosynchronous spy satellite! I've heard it all now.

Funny stuff.

Saint Exupery
Actually, the fact that our flags are still there came as a surprise to a lot of people, including myself. The assumption was that in addition to bleaching-out the colors, the Sun's UV would break-down the nylon to the point where small jiggles from thermal expansion & contraction during the day/night cycles would crumble the flags into faint lines of powder radiating from the base of each flagpole.

Yes that's the surprising thing about this, that they still cast shadows. Here's a link which elaborates:

Six Flags on the Moon: What is Their Current Condition?

"Bleached", “disintegrated”, “ashes”, “rough shape”, and “tattered”. Intuitively, experts mostly think it highly unlikely the Apollo flags (See Platoff's article Where No Flag Has Gone Before: Political and Technical Aspects of Placing a Flag on the Moon for details), could have endured the 42 years of exposure to vacuum, about 500 temperature swings from 242 F during the day to -280 F during the night, micrometeorites, radiation and ultraviolet light, some thinking the flags have all but disintegrated under such an assault of the environment.

Let's take the description "ashes" for example. Not completely accurate for how nylon breaks down, as it's a polymer and the UV breaks up the polymer chains, which can make it seem sort of fragile like ashes after a while, but it's not really ash.

I suspect the material is in terrible shape and would disintegrate from touching it, but I'm only slightly surprised that it hasn't disintegrated from "microvibrations" due to thermal expansion. it might not be so easy to shake the degraded flags apart, though it may have already happened on Apollo 14's flag which apparently isn't casting any obvious shadow. The others will probably end up the same as Apollo 14 over time.

reply to post by Imagewerx


Its the U.S flag over there..a country´s..It does not represent the whole of Earth. I wish badly if it were a white cloth with peace-making doves on it Then it will be fitting. But all we get to see is a flag that got there as a result of a cold-war. A meaningless race won finally. This is how most people see it. Not taking any credits away from NASA though and nothing to be proud of.

radkrish
reply to post by Imagewerx

 

Its the U.S flag over there..a country´s..It does not represent the whole of Earth. I wish badly if it were a white cloth with peace-making doves on it Then it will be fitting. But all we get to see is a flag that got there as a result of a cold-war. A meaningless race won finally. This is how most people see it. Not taking any credits away from NASA though and nothing to be proud of.

Well, look at it this way, the citizens of America paid the bill, it was going to be somebodies flag so why not theirs? Yeah a 'world flag' or some peace token would have been better in some people's eyes, but let's be honest, as you have pointed out, the whole endeavour was driven by rivalry, so to the winner the spoils.

Right now we have people in the space industry, and elsewhere, worried about China's lunar ambitions because if/when they get there many believe that China is going to actually claim the moon as property of China! Now have a think about that, when you look up at the moon at night and know that China says it belongs to them. They probably try to rig some giant projector or something so that on a full moon we will see a gigantic Chinese flag on the moon's face. Everybody else can go nuts and dispute their claim, but what difference will it make, the Chinese don't give a rats what everybody else thinks. And when, in the future, the moon becomes a commercially viable resource, the Chinese are going to be up there stripping the s**t out of the place whilst telling the rest of us to frack off! World peace? It's a nice sentiment and all.

reply to post by seabhac-rua

China signed and ratified the outer space treaty which prohibits them from claiming the moon as Chinese territory.

However the treaty does nothing that I can see to stop the Chinese from being the first to set up mining operations on the moon and stripping the most valuable resources before anybody else gets there. They don't have to claim the moon is their territory to do that.

When we get to the point that there is competition for moon resources, we may need a new treaty, but such a problem would require a major breakthrough in the economics of space travel, or alternatively, development of a reactor that can actually use He3.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Mining of the Moon may be a century or more in the future, many political things may happen in the mean while. The upcoming decades will be occupied with just getting humans there again, and establishing first outposts. Realistically speaking, the governments of this world are so preoccupied with politics, wars, and global domination, that human space exploration and industry beyond the low-earth orbit seems like a distant dream.

wildespace
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Mining of the Moon may be a century or more in the future, many political things may happen in the mean while. The upcoming decades will be occupied with just getting humans there again, and establishing first outposts. Realistically speaking, the governments of this world are so preoccupied with politics, wars, and global domination, that human space exploration and industry beyond the low-earth orbit seems like a distant dream.

So LOW-EARTH-ORBIT is not a problem but after that we have serious problems ?

We do agree there ;-)

Mianeye
reply to post by DJW001

 

Well, that one is easy....It was a race, get there and plant a flag before everyone else(Russia)

I'm not a "Moon hoax believer", just saying

Nice shadow btw...

Thanks for being a believer but something that is obviously left out by the hoaxers, as you say, it was a race to get a man to the moon FIRST, which we did...... so if we were going to fake it, we only needed to fake it ONCE, why would we send all the other Apollo flights? We set out to do what was intended with Apollo 11, 'nuff said!

seabhac-rua

radkrish
reply to post by Imagewerx

 

Its the U.S flag over there..a country´s..It does not represent the whole of Earth. I wish badly if it were a white cloth with peace-making doves on it Then it will be fitting. But all we get to see is a flag that got there as a result of a cold-war. A meaningless race won finally. This is how most people see it. Not taking any credits away from NASA though and nothing to be proud of.

Well, look at it this way, the citizens of America paid the bill, it was going to be somebodies flag so why not theirs? Yeah a 'world flag' or some peace token would have been better in some people's eyes, but let's be honest, as you have pointed out, the whole endeavour was driven by rivalry, so to the winner the spoils.

Right now we have people in the space industry, and elsewhere, worried about China's lunar ambitions because if/when they get there many believe that China is going to actually claim the moon as property of China! Now have a think about that, when you look up at the moon at night and know that China says it belongs to them. They probably try to rig some giant projector or something so that on a full moon we will see a gigantic Chinese flag on the moon's face. Everybody else can go nuts and dispute their claim, but what difference will it make, the Chinese don't give a rats what everybody else thinks. And when, in the future, the moon becomes a commercially viable resource, the Chinese are going to be up there stripping the s**t out of the place whilst telling the rest of us to frack off! World peace? It's a nice sentiment and all.

edit on 6-4-2014 by seabhac-rua because: (no reason given)

Show me proof the Chinese sent a robot-rover to the moon (other than the strange looking pictures from them)..
If you ever buy stuff from Harbor Freight (almost all their junk is made in China) I think you would agree China walking on the moon or making a giant 'projector' is stuff of fairy tales!

webstra
So LOW-EARTH-ORBIT is not a problem but after that we have serious problems ?

We do agree there ;-)

The cost of the shuttle was about $1.5 Billion per mission which comes out to

$60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO.[5] This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per kilogram (approximately $53 per pound) of payload in 1972 dollars ($658/kg, [approximately $296 per pound] adjusting for inflation to 2013).

So we can't say that spending $60,000/kg to low earth orbit wasn't a problem when the intent was to only spend $658/kg, which was supposed to only be 118/kg in 1972, right?

The cost of going to the moon is even more problematic. I suspect the first "mining" operations of using resources on our moon, or Mars or the moons of Mars will be for "local" use, like "mining" for water on the moon for a moon base since that should be more economical than ferrying water from Earth to the moon.

reply to post by wulff


I'll admit I was basing that idea about China claiming the moon on an interview I heard with Robert Bigelow.

As for the giant projector that was a joke.

Arbitrageur

webstra
So LOW-EARTH-ORBIT is not a problem but after that we have serious problems ?

We do agree there ;-)

The cost of the shuttle was about $1.5 Billion per mission which comes out to

$60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO.[5] This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per kilogram (approximately $53 per pound) of payload in 1972 dollars ($658/kg, [approximately $296 per pound] adjusting for inflation to 2013).

So we can't say that spending $60,000/kg to low earth orbit wasn't a problem when the intent was to only spend $658/kg, which was supposed to only be 118/kg in 1972, right?

The cost of going to the moon is even more problematic. I suspect the first "mining" operations of using resources on our moon, or Mars or the moons of Mars will be for "local" use, like "mining" for water on the moon for a moon base since that should be more economical than ferrying water from Earth to the moon.

That's going to have to be done in stages: (1) Launch a vehicle into moon trajectory, (2) Have a robot system that can prospect for water, (3) Have a robot system that can extract water, (4) Have a robot system that can return transfer water back to permanent storage. I'd image they would do this for construction as well. Imagine if you could have a robot that could collect rock dust or just rock, bind it together then fuse everything together using lasers, and create prefabricated pieces.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I want to drink moon water.

wildespace

ThinkingCap
The real question is, why has it taken so long to return? Do you really think they stopped exploring?

Skylab, the Shuttle, and the ISS might have something to do with it. Do you honestly think NASA could keep going to the Moon while belting out these huge, time-consuming and resource-consuming projects? en.wikipedia.org...

The exploration of Moon continued using robotic spacecraft in lunar orbit.

If I was suggesting public operations, then of course it'd be difficult given their budget.
But I wasn't.

Very cool. Makes you wonder. If for some reason, the entire historical record was destroyed, people lost their memories of the past and everyone just in general lost any info of the moon landings and one day, centuries later, we regained the technology to observe space the way we do...

...would a world unaware of our moon expiditions be able to find the flags on the moon and ask...."what is that?"

wulff
Show me proof the Chinese sent a robot-rover to the moon (other than the strange looking pictures from them)..

LRO images are a good proof. This animated "before and after" GIF shows the Chinese Chang'e lander (large white dot in the center of the second image) and Yutu rover (smaller white dot below the lander):


Four LRO views of the Chang'e 3 landing site. A) before landing, June 30, 2013 B) after landing, Dec. 25, 2013 C) Jan. 21, 2014 D) Feb. 17, 2014. You can see Yutu's path around the lander.

Animated GIF:


www.nasa.gov...
www.nasa.gov...

Craters around the lander and rover seen in the Chinese images have been matched to those in LRO images, so the Chinese images are genuine.

reply to post by wildespace


Not only are the pictures beyond useless, but the actual supposed landing vehicles etc. look completely out of focus or something, like they were added in using a felt pen and a flashlight.

I am terribly sorry but this is like believing the shroud of Turin validates Jesus Christ, you just have incredibly lousy, and also SUSPICIOUS looking squares that are less easy to make out than the supposed FOOTPRINTS LOL.

It is pretty sad to see the excuses that are made in this matter, just because people believe it makes no difference, they should be demanding far better pictures, far better space program.

Now you can join the Elon Musk bandwagon, which btw will be no more successful since they are using the same useless tech from 50 years ago.

Ahh SpaceX is running into all kinds of unforeseen delays, whodathunk it ? Oh wait they are a private company, a private company that keeps getting told what they cannot do !