Yeah, I know it’s all been discussed before…
But I’ll toss in a few things that the Bad Astronomy Board
(www.badastronomy.com) has come up with:
No blast crater?
Okay, first off, the “10,000 lb thrust” decent engine was only running at about 10% on landing, or between 1,000 and 2,000 lbs of thrust. Second, the “bell” or exhaust nozzle of the descent engine is something like five feet in diameter, or almost 3,000 square inches. So at the BELL of the engine, the thrust pressure was less than one pound per square inch at best. Couple that with the fact that the engines were shut off completely over six feet from the surface, where the blast, not being restrained by any atmospheric pressure, was certainly down to a very small fraction of a psi, or about what a hairdryer will put out.
Remember your physics- the rocket thrust does not push against air, it pushes against itself and the engine “combustion chamber”. It’s already done it’s work by the time it’s left the exhaust bell.
Also, in at least two occasions during the six successful Apollo missions, instruments were VERY difficult to hammer deeper than six to nine inches into the “soil” because it becomes very densely packed underneath the thin layer of dust. Some temperature probes were supposed to be hammered in 12", only made it 9" in and could be hammered no more. A drill, designed for core sampling of soil, could not be forced deeper than about 14". The lunar regolith is NOT like terrestrial dirt. Why would you expect it to behave the same way?
No dust on the lander pads?
This one is evidence they DID go. With no air, dust does not “swirl”. It’s blown out and travels a ballistic arc. The only way dust could have resettled on the pads would be if “swirling” air could have brought dust back from that being blown by the exhaust.
The flag waving?
If you actually watched the FOX tripe, ALL shots of “waving” flags quite clearly showed the astronaut attempting to plant the flagpole. Ever seen a shot of the flag waving without the astronaut being there?
Perfectly aligned shots with no viewfinder?
This one’s subtle. Yes, 99% of the shots we’ve all seen over the past 30 years are clear, well-lit and nicely composed. That’s tough to do WITH a viewfinder, let alone with the thing bolted to your chest.
However, remember that over the course of the six Apollo missions, over 100,000 photographs were taken, and over six million feet of 16mm film.
How many Apollo photos have you seen? Twenty? A hundred? Maybe 200 on the outside?
I’m sure that thousands of Apollo photographs are all but worthless- showing a bland, featureless landscape, a closeup of some unidentifiable and unremarkable rock, a too-close shot of the other astronaut showing a blurred portion of an arm, a washed-out overexposed blob, etc.
Is it too much of a stretch to assume that NASA would only release the best and clearest of the photos?
Also, having dealt with “real” film in the past, doing my own enlarging, cropping and developing, etc, it’s quite obvious to me that many- if not most- of the most popular/most seen photos were cropped, corrected for color and exposure and generally treated like photos of a momentous occasion to be released to a worldwide audience.
Note the Reseau marks, the “+” marks engraved on a plate inside the camera. In some pictures they’re huge, in others they’re tiny, in still others they’re not even there.
Because they’re etched in the camera, they show up in the exact same spot in each and every negative or each and every shot. But when a photo is enlarged and cropped to show, say, that astronaut down there in the lower-left corner, the Reseau marks are enlarged and cropped as well.
What about the marks “behind” the images in the photo?
Take some black thread, stretch it out in front of you, and hold it up in front of a strong light source. Gee, it disappears where it goes in front of the light, doesn’t it?
In all three instances pointed out in the FOX tripe, the “objects” the marks are “behind” are bright white. It’s a simple matter of contrast- the glaringly bright object simply washed out the tiny, thin black line of the Reseau mark.
Radiation?
Easy- Van Allen radiation is NOT “nuclear” radiation.
I’m not up to speed on this myself, not being a high-energy-particle physicist, but the radiation encountered in the Van Allen belts (which is solar radiation shunted around the earth by it’s magnetic field) is relatively low-energy stuff, predominantly stopped by the skin of the spacecraft, and the aluminized layers of the suits.
No, the suits will not withstand the gamma and X-ray (?) radiation of a hot nuclear pile, but again, that’s a different type of radiation altogether.
Plus, the astronauts went through the VA belts at something like 45,000 Km/h, spending only a little over an hour in the belt itself.
Things visible in shadows?
On a clear night with a full moon, you can read a newspaper by it’s light. Think of how much more intense that light is, being 240,000 miles closer to it’s source.
Can you see things in the shadow cast by your house on a bright sunny day? Of course- the light is reflected from, well, everything. The lawn, the fence, etc. Same goes on the Moon, light is reflected from the regolith/soil- shown in nearly every shot as a light-to-medium grey- which illuminates the astronaut’s white suit, or gold foil, or white “United States” background.
No exhaust plume?
Of course not, there’s no air for it to react to- seeing an “exhaust plume” is an artifact we’re used to seeing here on Earth.
The fuels used are unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, hypergolic fuels that burn on contact with each other. The tetroxide is the oxidizer, supplying the oxygen for the fuel to burn. Had the video feed been clearer or higher quality, supposedly one might have seen a faint blue glow up inside the engine bell… But remember that by the time the exhaust leaves the bell, it’s already done it’s job. Combustion- leaving a visible flame- outside the bell is a waste of fuel.
Can’t hear the engines?
Remember that the astronaut’s mikes were about an inch from their mouths, inside three layers of helmet.
And who says the descent engine was terribly loud? It was, as stated, only providing some 10% thrust, and it had no air in which to provide sound transmission- any noise would have to have been conducted through the body of the craft.
Again FOX shows huge, loud, massive earth-based rockets in a “comparison”. The Saturn 5 was lifting off literally millions of tons from full Earth gravity, in an atmosphere. The LEM’s descent engine was only slowing a few thousand pounds, in no atmosphere, over a sixth of a Gee.
Any questions?
