Soyuz - Space Adventures lunar flyby trips

[Dr Mordrid]

Soyuz TMA with passenger habitat for Apollo 8-style trips

Kyiv Post....

Space Adventures: Tourists could fly around Moon in 2016-2017

Zhukovsky (Moscow region), August 17 (Interfax-AVN) - Space Adventures will announce the names of two space tourists, who will fly around the natural satellite of the Earth on board the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in five or six years, before the end of 2017.

"Such a flight is feasible in 2016-2017," head of the Russian office of Space Adventures Sergei Kostenko told Interfax-AVN at the MAKS-2011 aerospace show in Zhukovsky.

In late January 2011, Space Adventures announced that it sold to a private individual one of the two tickets to the first commercial space flight on board the Soyuz around the Moon for $150 million.

The chance to fly around the Moon on the Soyuz spacecraft was announced by Space Adventures in August 2005. At the time, the ticket price was $100 million.

Space Adventures was founded in 1998 and offers space flights to private individuals. The company has organized eight space tourist flights to the International Space Station.

[UtwigMU]

More interesting read on the topic:

http://moonfaker.com/faqs.html

Note Van Allen belt, radiation doses sustained by the animals sent around moon by Russians (steppe turtle, grains). Some of the stuff on this topic is very scientific (this isn't the only source read).

I neither agree or disagree with the link provided herein. I simply provide it so as you can read it and then form your own opinion.


What I can say is that I downloaded and analyzed some pictures from official NASA website and I am convinced that they have been retouched/composed of several layers and they were not taken they way they were supposed to be taken. I don't know what the reason was for NASA doctoring images but I am convinced some of images on NASA site were doctored.

[Dr Mordrid]

If hey weren't taken with a Nikon, HD etc. then they were taken using either color filtered B&W's or they were colorized, just like most satellite imagery.

[UtwigMU]

Also note that while Russians were the first to flyby moon, impact moon, first sent pics from surface, had first flyby of living things around moon, they never sent a man on a flyby mission. Also India and Japan have sent a satellite in lunar orbit and an impactor but never did a flyby.

I'm highly skeptical of this future Soyuz flyby.



Doc, I'm talking about Hasselblad images from Apollo gallery: http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html Try it on some image, especially with earth rise, do a magic wand on background with low tolerance (2-10) and colorize selection. You will see edges of transparencies and light sources.

[KRSESQ]

More interesting read on the topic:

http://moonfaker.com/faqs.html

Note Van Allen belt, radiation doses sustained by the animals sent around moon by Russians (steppe turtle, grains). Some of the stuff on this topic is very scientific (this isn't the only source read).

I neither agree or disagree with the link provided herein. I simply provide it so as you can read it and then form your own opinion.


What I can say is that I downloaded and analyzed some pictures from official NASA website and I am convinced that they have been retouched/composed of several layers and they were not taken they way they were supposed to be taken. I don't know what the reason was for NASA doctoring images but I am convinced some of images on NASA site were doctored.

I actually feel dumber for having clicked that link.

[Dr Mordrid]

It's a "Moon truther" type page

Fact is that at trans-lunar velocities they go through the 'hot' parts of the Van Allen belts for it not to be a problem. Staying in that orbit would be different.

More troublesome would be a big coronal mass ejection. If one occurs you can put the thickest part of the spacecraft in line with it and the crew hab away or, if it really telegraphs the punch with a big cluster of sunspots and spicules, just delay the flight.

[Jammrock]

Didn't Mythbusters thoroughly bust the the fake moon landing conspiracy myths?

http://mythbustersresults.com/nasa-moon-landing

[Dr Mordrid]

It didn't stop the conspiracy theorists any more than it did the 9/11 truthers or any other.

[UtwigMU]

I until this year was 100% convinced moon landings happened the way NASA claims. However I'm starting to have doubts.

My main objections:
- No one has sent anyone outside earth orbit before Apollo 8 and since Apollo 17. There was one Shuttle and one Mercury mission beyond Van Allen belt
- Lots of unmanned Moon probes failed, Apollo had near perfect track record (Apollo 1 capsule burned and Apollo 13 accident)
- Russians were ahead with space program yet in 1969 USA did a perfect track record with Apollo. Furthermore Russians were again ahead (lunar rovers, space stations) and Apollo derived Skylab was a flop compared to Salyut and Mir. Yet Russians never sent anyone even around moon. Also they failed to launch N1 successfully. Russian engines from that time are still used, on the other hand Saturn V, which had a perfect track record was never reused.
- It took from 1961's Kennedy's speech until 1969 to get to the Moon with 1960's technology and computers yet it will take until 2025 or 2040 to go "back" and in inflation adjusted dollars it will cost more. The date keeps getting pushed into the future. Apollo was achieved with 15 years of rocket technology development (1945 V1) yet 40 years after Apollo we don't have anything matching Saturn V and it will take 15-30 years to go back. The Shuttle space suits weigh almost 2x more than lunar suits which were used for more time and with stark shade/light temperature difference.
- In no almost picture are the stars visible. Yet there are panoramic Russian pictures sent by Lunokhod from same period where starts are visible from Lunar surface.

My main pro argument:
- Russians had the technology to know whether Apollo really went. This used to be my nail in the coffin of conspiracy theory. Yet after researching I discovered, Russians did not have the antenna to track Apollo broadcasts.
- The pendulum. In order to fake pendulum movement the video would had to be slowed down considerably.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01A61jra37o

I have not found anyone who has busted this pro Apollo argument. While they could fake feather and hammer experiment the pendulum was unintentional. It could have been edited for slower swing time but I doubt they had been so thorough. Also would be very hard to edit it with 1960s editing technology.

The main problem is lots of conspiracy go along the line of NASA hiding aliens (it was actually Buzz Aldrin who said on CNN to have seen UFO during Apollo 11) and focus on really simple stuff such as footprints and waving flag. It took me quite a while to get to more meaty stuff.

The mythbusters focused on secondary illumination, which IMO is not proven in their video. Then on wires and slow motion, they haven't done those together which produces same result as in Apollo videos. On Moon the gravity is 1/6 yet never does an astronaut jump 2-3m (6-9') as can be seen in mythbusters vomit comet flight (other people jump not astronaut). Laser ranging targets: light can be reflected from the moons surface. Further many unmanned probes (Surveyor, Luna, Zond) could have left reflectors there. When some of this things were pointed out to David Savage of Myth busters he said, it's not science but entertainment.

The footprints and whether the flag was moving due to wind, static electricity or astronauts planting it doesn't prove anything either way.

See also this Apollo 15 video where astronaut says he peed and "gotta lie Jim"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SarTRL3USZI

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/a15.lrvload.html#1204049

Also see - this is the best pro conspiracy resource I have found.

http://nasascam.bravehost.com/

Also quite some pro conspiracy arguments can be torn down or are unscientific.


What I'm sure of is that NASA Hasselblad pics have been tampered with. I actually passed descriptive geometry exam and have eye for shades and perspective and there are point light sources and multiple light sources and shadows that couldn't have been made by parallel light source in official NASA pics. Also some pictures were layered out of transparencies.

Now the reason for tampered pics could have been simply they wanted really good quality pictures for media or that they didn't want to reveal some secrets.

[KRSESQ]

snip

Of all of the "evidence" out there, the "no stars in pix" one has got to be the stupidest.

Try this experiment. Take a good quality SLR onto a nice big paved parking lot at noon and snap a bunch of photos. Normal settings for good exposure should be 'prox f11 or f16 @ 1/250th/sec, depending on film speed (can you tell I'm old?).

Now, DON'T CHANGE ANY OF THOSE SETTINGS. Wait til night, and take some photos of the stars. If you can, get as far from city lights as you can so the stars are as bright as they can possibly be. See if you get any stars to show up on the image. You won't. The stars are too dim to register. To get the stars to register you'll have to open the aperture all the way and hold the shutter open a MINIMUM of fifteen seconds to get the stars to register.

It's the same way on the moon. Photographic exposure settings for the surface of the moon in broad daylight are approximately the same as that parking lot at noon. THE STARS ARE JUST TOO GODDAMNED DIM. TRY IT YOURSELF.

[UtwigMU]

Yes but they could have set exposure to take a picture of stars as well. Also the Hasselblads were mounted to chests of astronauts yet some pictures appear to be taken from eye or above eye level.

Why do there appear to be stars in Lunokhod panoramas?

http://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod2.php?page=0&language=russian

Also stars can be seen in some pictures taken aboard the Space Shuttle, yet the reflectivity of the Earth is better than that of the Moon.

[Dr Mordrid]

The Hasselblad EL's had 80mm and 250mm lenses with a minimum f-stop of 5.6.

The films were Kodak Panatomic-X fine-grained b/w in 80 ASA, a special very thin base/thin emulsion Ektachrome in ASA 68 and ASA 121 and a special Kodak Hawkeye 2485 surveillance film in ASA 16,000.

First; to get decent images of star fields the aperture needs to be opened up to below f-3.5 or f-4. To get images you need photons, and a small iris reduces the count. The EL's could only go down to f-5.6.

Second; those Ektachromes and the Panatomic-X are very thin emulsion, relatively slow films with insufficient dynamic range (KRSESQ's argument) to expose something as dim (yes - dim) as a point-source star the angular size of a few film grains during an exposure metered to show the exceedingly bright lunar surface. That would be a tough nut with modern digital HDR photography.

No way was the very large-grain Hawkeye film going to resolve point-source stars as anything but noise, and it wasn't used for anything but photos in deep shadow anyhow.

The Lunokhod had it easier using scanning cycloramic cameras that used photomultiplier tubes. These had a wide dynamic range and AGC, and could be perfectly stationary to get sharp 300×6000 images. For it to resolve star fields is a duh?

[KRSESQ]

NASA definately valued high-rez detail over light sensitivity in their moon photos.

I have to ask: where did you get the images that you ran through photoshop? Are they High-resolution scans of the original negatives, or are they jpegs downloaded from some conspiracy site? It makes a difference.

Granted, a well-resolved starscape whould certainly enhance the drama and grandeur of the event. Maybe one could be digitally added.

[UtwigMU]

I downloaded hi-res images from NASA site. Try it. Especially good candidates are images with rover, images with earth and images with shaded side of landing module visible and with objects in lunar orbit.

[Dr Mordrid]

Post one that you've processed please.