Lunar Landings are fake, page 6

posted on Jun, 28 2011 @ 12:16 PM

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Originally posted by pikestaff
reply to post by DJW001

Anyone else noticed the LEM shadow is at a different angle to the figure shadow in the foreground? or do I need new glasses?

The reason is because of the relatively wide-angle lenses used on the Apollo cameras.

As any photographer would tell you, wide-angle lenses will create a wider foreground, which in turn will give you non-parallel shadows when the light source is at your back. In a wide-angle photo, objects to the camera's right and left will appear farther forward, and cast a shadow that follows the laws of perspective to a common vanishing point.

Here are two examples:

[thanks to ATS member "Saint Exupery" for this second example, which I took from one of his posts]

You actually get this same effect with a normal lens (like the ones built into basic consumer cameras), but depending on the scene and lighting direction, it may not be as pronounced. The first picture above is probably taken with a wide-angle lens, while the second picture may just be a normal lens.

edit on 6/28/2011 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)

Qwenn

posted on Jun, 28 2011 @ 12:24 PM

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Originally posted by Frira
[reformatted for brevity and my own ease by this responder ~~ Frira]

Originally posted by Saint Exupery

* the Apollo 17 mission report
* the Preliminary Science Report
* the USGS' "Geologic Investigation of the Valley of Taurus-Littrow"
* the crew's tech debrief
* the oral history project
[including:]
** Gene Cernan's
** Jack Schmitt
* Cernan also published a personal memoir
...both men share reminisces in front of the camera in 2007's "In the Shadow of the Moon".
* the support personnel. Ed Fendell operated the remote TV camera.
** Chris Kraft
** Gene Kranz and
** Sy Liebergott
* Tom Kelly, Grumman's LM project engineer published an excellent book about designing & building the Lunar Modules, and supporting the flights.

Oh my word! I am in hog heaven! I knew nothing about the oral history project-- and I am thinking at least half of the rest of that material will be new to me. I can't thank you enough.

Yes my word ! Thank you for alerting people to some of the study resources on Apollo 17, of course some, like the misson report ( Volume 1 ) are particularly difficult to obtain, and can be very expensive, up to $100 and most come without the Bonus CD Rom disk, volume 2 can still come up now and again on E-Bay for about £25. Some of the other research material for this mission can be as high as $150 and as hard to get as a ticket to the Moon, but the search will pay off if you are a true searcher. I will leave it at that for now.

Saint Exupery

posted on Jun, 29 2011 @ 12:04 AM

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Originally posted by QwennA bloke on the bus told me, and I also saw a 30 second video on you-tube !

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Oh, touché, my friend. Touché!

Frira

posted on Jun, 29 2011 @ 12:33 AM

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In the fact is more fun than fiction category (also known as, "You just can't make this stuff up!") is this report of one my favorite stories of little-known drama I encountered in Joshua Stoff & Charles Pellegrino's Chariots for Apollo:

Post-Landing Fuel-Line Blockage

103:20:52 Duke: Tranquility, Houston. We have an indication that we've frozen up the descent-fuel helium heat exchanger - and with some fuel trapped in the line between there and the valves...And the pressure we're looking at is increasing there. Over.

103:21:10 Armstrong: Roger. Understand. (Long Pause)

[Later, the NASA Public Affairs commentator tells the press that there is a small amount of fluid trapped in a line and, if the pressure had continued to increase, the worst that could have happened would have been a small leak which would then have relieved the pressure.]

[The following post-mission analysis was taken from the Apollo 11 Mission Report: "During simultaneous venting of the descent propellant and supercritical helium tanks, fuel in the fuel/helium heat exchanger was frozen by the helium flowing through the heat exchanger. Subsequent heat soakback from the descent engine caused expansion of the fuel trapped in the section of the line between the heat exchanger and the engine shutoff valve ( fig. 16-10). The result was a pressure rise in this section of line. The highest pressure in the line was probably in the range of 700 to 800 psia (interface pressure transducer range is 0 to 300 psia). The weak point in the system is the bellows links, which yield above 650 psia and fail at approximately 800 to 900 psia. Failure of the links would allow the bellows to expand and relieve the pressure without external leakage. The heat exchanger, which is located in the engine compartment, thawed within about 1/2 hour and allowed the pressure in the line to decay. On future missions, the solenoid valve (fig 16-10) will be closed prior to fuel venting and opened some time prior to lift-off. This will prevent freezing of fuel in the heat exchanger and will allow the super-critical helium tank to vent later. The helium pressure rise rate after landing is approximately 3 to 4 psi/hr and constitutes no constraint to presently planned missions. Appropriate changes to operational procedures will be made." There were no similar problems on the later flights.]

[During my conversations with Neil and Buzz in 1991, I got the impression that they did not consider this to be a serious problem. Because I couldn't see how an anomaly in the descent stage could be of concern, I didn't ask them about it. However, late in 1995 I raised the issue with Neil and he provided the following comment: "After landing, we vented both fuel and oxidizer tanks as planned. The pressure subsequently rose, probably due to evaporation of residual propellant in the tank as a consequence of the high surface temperature. Then we vented again. The ground was getting a different reading than we were, due to a different transducer location - I think theirs was in a trapped line. The worst that could happen would be a line or tank split. As we would no longer be using the descent stage, It was a less than serious problem. In summary, I wasn't worried about it."]

[My question to Neil was triggered by Journal Contributor Tom Frieling, who called my attention to a discussion in the book Chariots for Apollo by Stoff and Pelligrino, pages 166-168, which indicates that the Flight Controllers and Grumman engineers considered this to be a hazardous situation in that, if the line burst and fuel was sprayed on the still-hot descent engine, an explosion might occur. Fortunately, while the problem was being discussed, it cleared up on its own. See, also, Murray and Cox, Apollo: A Race to the Moon, pages 363-364. In an early 1996 telephone conversation, Gene Kranz confirmed that the situation was of concern, primarily because it was unexpected.]

[During the 19 September 2001 interview by Ambrose, Brinkley, and members of the Oral History Project Team, Neil was asked about the fuel line.]

[Rusnak: "Well, then I had a few specific questions. One of the gentlemen we had in here some months ago was Bob [Robert L.] Carlton, who was a flight controller, who was on the LM Control console. He was recalling the lunar landing and the events shortly thereafter where he and his colleagues were having quite a few moments of tension because there was a problem with the LM descent engine. There was a piece of ice stuck in one of the fuel lines. So they were thinking some real problems were going on. I was wondering if you could give us your perspective, what you knew sitting there in the LM, and what you knew of what was going on on the ground."]

[Armstrong: "Well, we were spring loaded to the suspicion position at that point. We recognized that right after landing, where you had to do thermal conditioning surrounding the craft, that it hadn't seen before with all that hot surface underneath it and cold on top, that there were going to be all kinds of conceivable difficulties with plumbing and valves and pressure systems, relief valves and so on. So we were ready to leave if we had to, and we were listening carefully to their instructions. But I can't remember the details of what we were thinking at that point in time."]

[Finally, in his excellent 2001 book Moon Lander, Grumman's Thomas J. Kelly discusses the situation in some detail. Briefly, the temperature of the fuel trapped in the line was increasing because of the heat of the nearby engine. "The rocket fuel was a mixture of two forms of hydrazine and, at temperatures above four hundred degrees (Fahrenheit, about 200 Celsius), it became unstable. The temperature of the trapped fuel had climbed above three hundred degrees and would reach four hundred in just a few minutes. "We all felt that the consequences of an explosion, even of the relatively small amount of fuel remaining in that short section of line, was unpredicatable and unacceptable." Discussions between Grumman, NASA, and others resulted in a decision to have the crew to "burp" the descent engine by commanding it to fire and immediately shut down by performing a "momentary flick of the manual firing button". That would briefly open the valve on the engine side of the blocked section of line and relieve the building temperature and pressure. CapCom Charlie Duke was about to pass that instruction along to the crew when the fuel frozen in the heat exchanger thawed and the problem disappeared. Charlie informs Neil and Buzz of this fact at 104:46:11.]

Saint Exupery

posted on Jun, 29 2011 @ 03:26 AM
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I liked this gem the Apollo 16 tech debrief. Ah, the glorious adventure of space exploration!

YOUNG Here is a problem that was annoying to both of us. The night before, we filled the drink bags full of orange juice in the CSM; and the next morning prior to suit donning, we put them in the suit . Every time we bent our head, the microphone would get caught in the drink bag and put some orange juice into the air in zero gravity or would squirt the side of your face. Charlie really got covered up with it. It really was an annoying problem.

DUKE My valve was really bad.

YOUNG Mine didn't work all the time, and I was really being careful. I'm sure it got all over us because once we got on the surface and looked up at the lunar module, the travano cover had orange juice all over it. It was in dots, less than 5 percent, but there was a lot of orange juice on the travano cover. I'm sure orange juice is something you don't want to float around on wire bundles. I think we need something to stop up that hole in zero gravity and in one-sixth gravity until you are ready to use it. Maybe a cap that fits on the end of it that you could pull with your teeth would work. I think it's essential when you're going out for a 7- or 8-hour EVA, you have to have something in that suit to drink.

DUKE Yes, that really saved me out there.

YOUNG I took my suit off and didn't put the drink bag in right for the first EVA. I didn't get anything to drink while I was out on the Moon and that was bad. I sure could have used a drink about half-way through. You do sweat a lot while you are out there. You sweat in your hands, you sweat at the back of your neck, and you sweat on your feet where you don't have water cooling. We should have one that doesn't spend its time wetting you down. And there was another problem associated with this. Before we went out the next day, Charlie had to clean the orange juice out of his microphone to get it to work. We wasn't transmitting at all.

DUKE On VOX.

YOUNG He had a comm carrier with one mike gone because of a busted wire and had to suck the orange juice out of the other mike to get it to work. Now that's a pretty marginal operation.
(laughter).

DUKE Every time the left microphone hit that valve, the juice sort of migrated up that microphone in under my helmet, and this whole side of my head was just caked with juice.

YOUNG Charlie looked like he had been shampooing with juice.

DUKE It was really terrible.

YOUNG The whole side of his face was just one big mass of orange juice. We got it on the helmet seal between the second and third EVA. We cleaned the orange juice off the helmet seal because we couldn't get the helmets unlocked and off. I thought we were going to spend the night in the pressure suit.

DUKE It really wasn't on the O-ring; it was where the two surfaces mate together.

YOUNG Yes.

DUKE The stuff had seeped in under there.

YOUNG The vacuum dried out that thing, and left the glue there. When it was time to take the helmets off, I couldn't get Charlie's off and he couldn't get mine off. I tell you, I thought we were going to stay in the pressure suit. (laughter) I couldn 't pull the button out, and I couldn't get it to slide.

DUKE The button would come out, but I couldn't make it slide up or down.

MATTINGLY If that's the case with both of you, then is that really a case against the orange juice, or is that something else?

DUKE It's the orange juice.

YOUNG Mine was leaking, too. At least, it wasn't leaking as bad as Charlie's.

DUKE It was enough to solidify when he stepped out on the surface.

YOUNG Where you get the problem with the orange juice is during the prep. It's not bad once you get on the Moon. It's not bad because you're not bending into it all the time. While you're doing a prep, there's a lot of looking down you have to do, and every time you bend your head forward and wrap your microphone around that thing and pull back, that works .the plug and it squirts in your ear. It's already under pressure, because you have 32 ounces in there, and you're bending forward so your chest is pushing on it. It's just like a pump that pumps
orange juice right in your mouth, your face, or ear.

DUKE Maybe you could design a valve like the one for Skylab.

YOUNG Design one that works, Well, I'll tell you, I really believe that by having a lot of something to drink in a pressure suit is a way to go. I think it sure helped me and Charlie out on the surface, but it certainly got to be a problem with orange juice floating around the cockpit as an electrical conductor. With it floating all over you and getting in your comm carrier, it's a problem; and then floating down in the neckring or worse yet would be getting it on the neckring seal where you couldn't lock that helmet. In training, we had orange juice get on our neckring and the only way they could get the thing locked was to go back and take the neckring apart and clean the residue out of those locking dogs. They took the whole helmet apart and cleaned it out. That's the only way we could get it to work. That would bite you in lunar orbit , because I don't know how to do that; I don't know how you take that neckring apart.

DUKE Even with all those problems I'm glad we had something to drink.

YOUNG Yes, I am too. Now whether it has to be orange juice, I don't know. Maybe plain water would do. In fact, for the first EVA, water was what I had in mine. I drank the bag the day before. Maybe they could fortify the water with the potassium, if they insist on that being there - or maybe there would be a pill you could put in there. I don't have any idea whether it would make any difference whether you did it or not,.

SPEAKER They should be able to make that valve so that it doesn't leak.

DUKE They overdid it.

YOUNG It does exactly what it's supposed to. The trouble is every time you catch your microphone in it and pull back it pulls the valve forward and it works just like it's supposed to, and when you let up on it, it stops. But I mean it's sort of a rock and a hard place. If the microphones came around your nose you wouldn't have this interference problem with the thing but that would be a big redesign.

SLAYTON I don't think it would be worth it.

YOUNG I think they could make a little soft cap that you could pull off with your teeth because you sure don't want it leaking on you at zero gravity.

DUKE That was really terrible.

YOUNG It could drown you. Charlie was in there with a helmet full of orange juice when we were coming down to PDI.

SLAYTON Was it your plan to leave the helmets on once you'd landed or go straight out for EVA?

YOUNG No, no, we were going to take them off.

SLAYTON So we could put a cap on there that you could take off after you you take your helmet off.

YOUNG Take it off, just prior to donning your helmet for the EVA.

Soylent Green Is People

posted on Jun, 29 2011 @ 09:19 AM
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reply to post by Saint Exupery

Did they change the "orange juice delivery system" design for Apollo 16? Or maybe that was the first time they gave the astronauts a way to drink while suited for EVAs?

You would think if this wasn't a new design, or the first time, that they would have already worked out the problems they had with the juice.

EDIT TO ADD:
OK -- I did a little reseach for myself and found that the Apollo 15 astronauts suffered an electrolyte deficiency, so they added the orange drink in the EVA suits for Apollo 16. I suppose considering that Apollo 15 was the first to have very long EVAs (because of the lunar rover), maybe they were the first to need the extra electrolytes -- but I'm just guessing

John Young didn't seem to like the orange drink that much. In the transcripts from the Moon, you can hear Young (never one to be "shy" when he speaks) complaining about the juice and the stomach acid it created....

From the Apollo 16 transmission transcripts:

128:50:37 Young: I have the farts, again. I got them again, Charlie. I don't know what the hell gives them to me. Certainly not...I think it's acid stomach. I really do.

128:50:44 Duke: It probably is.

128:50:45 Young: (Laughing) I mean, I haven't eaten this much citrus fruit in 20 years! And I'll tell you one thing, in another 12 f--king days, I ain't never eating any more. And if they offer to sup(plement) me potassium with my breakfast, I'm going to throw up! (Pause) I like an occasional orange. Really do. (Laughs) But I'll be durned if I'm going to be buried in oranges.
source: history.nasa.gov...

Note: I don't want to upset the Mods here, so I censored Young's language (like I said, he wasn't shy). Young didn't say "12 f-ing days" -- he said the whole word.

edit on 6/29/2011 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)

Frira

posted on Jun, 29 2011 @ 11:26 AM
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Engine burping and orange juice toots!

These are very much on topic because of the details to which they point-- provides a context that most do not know-- especially the generations too young to remember when details were all over the TV, newspapers, magazine, and such.

I was looking for something else in the radio transcripts from Apollo XI but taking my time, just reading straight through. To my surprise, I found the conversation about the television used in the video upon which this thread was begun.

The troubled reporter claimed it was on the 18th of July (and that seemed important to him). It wasn't. It was 16th-- in the the tenth hour after launch.

And I think I found why he came to believe that it was a painted image on a transparency:

00 10 39 36 CMP Okay, Houston. You suppose you could turn the Earth a little bit so we can get a little bit more than just water?
00 10 39 45 CC Roger, 11. I don't think we got much control over that. Looks like you'll have to settle for the water.

The reporter, poor guy, hears Collins (CMP) joke with Houston (CC) to turn the earth so they can see something more than the Pacific Ocean. Mission control stubbornly refuses to turn the Earth to suit them. Not only does the reporter miss the humor, he also apparently swaps the sources speaking-- thinking Mission Control is prompting the astronauts to move the earth.

Also, the un-cited Von Braun... "memo," I think the reporter called it, has bothered me. I dug a bit. Looks like it came from a little book Von Braun wrote in 1953. The reporter makes the claim, vaguely, but implicitly, that the memo was from 1966-- so he was mistaken by 13 years.