Soyuz - Space Adventures lunar flyby trips

[Jammrock]

I'm all for a good conspiracy theory, but the moon landing is not one of them I can swallow.

The now versus then argument is horrid. Completely different eras. NASA back then was a lean mean space machine with a virtually unlimited budget and the greatest minds of the time backing it. NASA is now a bloated bureaucracy that gets the private sectors sloppy leftovers.

The Apollo record was far from perfect. Apollo 1 lost all three astronauts due to a fire. Apollo 13 blew up in space and nearly lost her crew. Apollo 6 had severe launch issues and failed to attain lunar velocity.


You counter your own Van Allen belt argument. Furthermore the Van Allen belt was first discovered in 1958 which gave NASA plenty of time to shield against radiation.

As for why no one has gone back...priorities change. There's only so much you can do on the moon and with public interest waning in favor of more local uses of the money there has been no funding or need to go back.

The Saturn V does not have a perfect track record. Furthermore, the US has moved to solid fuel rockets, lighter and cost less, versus the liquid fuel engines in the Saturn V. Easily explained.

In addition to the photography solution to no stars, have you ever looked up at night in a big city? No stars. Wonder why? Too much light on the surface. The moon, as you point out later on, has a highly reflective surface. Ergo...no stars can be seen from the surface of the light side because the intensity of the solar light reflecting off the surface exceeds the intensity of the starlight.

As for the 8 years to the moon bit and the Russians. The US simply threw more resources at the problem than anyone else. It's amazing what people can accomplish when there is lots of money and prestige to be earned. Said money and prestige has drastically dwindled since then. That is, until the private sector got into the game. Now there are plans to go to the moon and mars at a fraction of the Apollo cost, all things considered. NASA can't do that anymore. Far too bloated.

As for the mirror on the moon, while the moon surface is reflective there is a difference between bouncing a laser off dust versus a mirror. Specifically you would have an unpredictable angle of return off the lunar surface (as solar winds actually slowly change the lunar surface). The mirror(s) give a predictable, consistent return angle and light intensity return.

Not that any of this will likely sway your opinion. Experience says little can sway the mind of someone entrenched in a conspiracy theory.

[Dr Mordrid]

I woul correct only that we have moved on from liquids to solids. There were several attempts to replace them with liquid boosters for safety reasons (can't be shut down for starters, plus the Challenger problem) but politics got in the way.

When NASA tried to recycle them as the Ares I first stage for launching the Orion spacecraft it didn't work out because of vibration issues that were dampened in the shuttle stack. These 'thrust oscillations' were severe enough to turn a crew into spam, and the dampening hardware was so heavy Ares I could no longer lift Orion without being made larger which started another cycle of expensive changes. Finally NASA gave up and went all-in with liquids for Orion and commercial crew.

Another problem with solids is pollution; the fuel matrix is mostly ammonium perchlorate, powdered aluminum, synthetic rubber (PBAN), epoxy and other traces. That white smoke it produces is mostly hydrochloric acid, unused perchlorate particulates and the burned rubber. You can't go near the pad for hours after launch.

Making matters worse, the EPA just classified perchlorates as a ground water pollutant - which presrnts a big problem at both production and integration sites and for miles around the pad.

[Umfriend]

In addition to the photography solution to no stars, have you ever looked up at night in a big city? No stars. Wonder why? Too much light on the surface. The moon, as you point out later on, has a highly reflective surface. Ergo...no stars can be seen from the surface of the light side because the intensity of the solar light reflecting off the surface exceeds the intensity of the starlight.

I am not advocating the conspiracy theorie in any way but this statement, IMHO, is false. It is irrelevant that the moon is highly reflective. The difference with Earth is that the moon has no atmosphere which breaks/disperses light and mirrors it back again to your POV. It is this that makes it hard to see stars in an environment where there is a lot of light. Just look up and you should see stars as the light reflected by the moons' surface should never reach your eyes.

[cjolley]

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

Eg Birthers

As each of them shows, no amount of evidence or discussion will convince the doubters.
Like a wife with an abusive husband, they rapidly gain too much emotional investment to let go.


PS, Also climate deniers

[UtwigMU]

I'm not entrenched in conspiracy theory. If you read I wrote I cannot explain the pendulum video with the conspiracy theory. Until I read up about it this year I thought conspiracy is based on moving flag and that it is bullshit. I would have argued against it. I haven't heard about the Van Allen belt argument for the conspiracy. After digging deeper I found NASA invites guys like Adam Savage of Mythbusters and Phil Plait (Apollo advocate) to conferences and gives them funds.

The NASA Apollo pictures are however interesting:

Take this image. Here is a link to NASA site:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo14/hires/as14-66-9306.jpg

"front view of the Apollo 14 Lunar Module (LM), which reflects a circular flare caused by the brilliant sun, as seen by the two moon-exploring crew men of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission during their first extravehicular activity (EVA)."

Let's analyse where the light casting shadows is: If you know anything about descriptive geometry and perspective, rays from the light emanate from the light and where the plane on which a line representing a ray intersects ground plane, those line converge under the spot where the light is.

Since sun is infinitely far compared to objects usually drawn, rays from sun are parallel (think cylinder). On the other hand a point source such as lightbulb or spotlight casts rays which are not parallel (think cone).

We can reconstruct where the light illuminating LEM is by drawing lines from end of shadow of joint of feet of LEM through joints. We can reconstruct point on the ground above which light is by drawing line from shadow of joint through ground projection of joint.

As you can see this light is not on the horizon (in infinity) but considerably closer.

Also how can you explain highlights in the foil on this side of the LEM and illumination of it in the shadow.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo12/hires/as12-46-6729.jpg

Both visor reflection and horizon line go at the eye level. The Hasselblads were chest mounted but the picture has been taken from the eye level.



NASA actually built lunar simulation in building 9 as attested by this foto:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo11/html/s69-32233.html

"Two members of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission participate in a simulation of deploying and using lunar tools on the surface of the moon. The rehearsal took place during a training exercise in building 9 on April 22, 1969. Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. (on left), lunar module pilot, uses a scoop and tongs to pick up samples."

So some of the pictures claimed to have been taken on the moon are taken with point light sources or from the eye level. You can look at some other pictures (I don't plan to become conspiracy theory advocate and I don't have time to go through all images) without preconceived notion they were taken on the Moon and simply try to find where light sources were and how many of them were there. A bit like how many and where the lights were exercises on strobist.com.


Also in no picture do you see any hole in the ground under descent engine. and there is no dust on the feet of LEM kicked up by the descent engine. You can look up video of Apollo 11 descent and see at what height the engine has been cut off.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo17/hires/as17-146-22294.jpg

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo17/hires/as17-137-20979.jpg

Where are trails left by wheels of rover?

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo11/hires/as11_40_5868.jpg

Based on illumination of rucksack, right hand and left foot heel highlight, the second light was in front to the lower left of the subject in picture.


Like I said, they might have just needed good PR pictures so they took them in studio. Taking good pictures with chest-mounted camera with pressurized gloves and then having films go through cosmic radiation on the moon and on the way back might had been too risky.

[KRSESQ]

The stupid! It burns!

Forgive me if it sounds like I'm insulting your intelligence, but these moon-hoax conspiracists are a continuing insult to mine.

Think about this analytically. Let us assume for a moment that NASA and the US government DID fake the moon landing. Some theorists claim that none other than Stanley Kubrick directed the affair.

DON'T YOU THINK THEY WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF ALL THIS?

Don't you think that at some point in the planning stage someone, probably Kubrick himself, would have said "Hey, guys, this thing has to be BULLETPROOF! This thing has to be 100% convincing so that some photography expert somewhere doesn't look at the pictures someday and say 'the shadows are all wrong!' We need to make sure EVERYTHING is PERFECT!"

Under this scenario, the fact that there are no stars in the photos would be a testament to the GENIOUS of the hoaxters; they would have KNOWN that the cameras could never register stars on film under those conditions and would have made sure none showed up in the images.

Visible stars in the Apollo moon photos would have been a DEAD GIVEAWAY of a hoax!

Finally, in order to believe any of this BS, one would have to believe that the US Government has the incredible power and the authority to perpetrate a hoax on THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE, a hoax involving at least HUNDREDS and perhaps even THOUSANDS of co-conspirators in DOZENS of industries and multiple countries, with an enforcement arm ready to immediately silence any would-be whistle-blower ANYWHERE, BEFORE he can blow the whistle, DECADES after the fact.

And yet this same staggeringly all-powerful government is INCAPABLE of the comparatively simple task of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth!

You give Uncle Sam a LOT more credit than he deserves!

[UtwigMU]

As for the mirror on the moon, while the moon surface is reflective there is a difference between bouncing a laser off dust versus a mirror. Specifically you would have an unpredictable angle of return off the lunar surface (as solar winds actually slowly change the lunar surface). The mirror(s) give a predictable, consistent return angle and light intensity return.

Russians also put a reflector on the Moon with unmanned probe. There were also surveyor unmanned probes that could have had brought a mirror.

The proof is inconclusive - could be Apollo mirror, could be Russian mirror.

[UtwigMU]

Like I said I'm not convinced either way, but some of the pictures claimed to have been taken on the Moon in my opinion have not been taken on the Moon.

The simplest explanation for this would be that they wanted really good pictures, so they took them in the studio. They still could have gone though.

Also I emailed Jarrah White (who seems to be at the wedge of pro conspiracy theorists) about pendulum (swing time of tape roll from the tool box is correct for the moon gravity and this cannot quite be explained with videoediting. This happened randomly and was not a staged experiment like feather and hammer.). He never wrote back, though the email might have ended up in his spam folder.

So to the original post (Tourists on Lunar flyby). I have found several credible sources that radiation in space outside Earth orbit is dangerous. Apart from Apollo and central Asian steppe turtles no other living thing from Earth has flown outside Earth orbit. While Russians had only plans for Apollo-like lunar landing, they had the technology to send someone around Moon in Soyuz and they didn't. Russians generally cared less about radiation and effects on their population. So I don't think this tourist trip will happen.

[KRSESQ]

Yes, because we all know that it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE to take good photos on the Moon!

[UtwigMU]

Yes, because we all know that it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE to take good photos on the Moon!

Unless they brought softboxes or beauty dishes and spotlights no. There is a video interview of Hasselblad rep who cannot explain the pictures either.

Either there is a point light sources in the analyzed image or 100s of years of descriptive geometry and perspective are wrong.

[cjolley]

Either there is a point light sources in the analyzed image or 100s of years of descriptive geometry and perspective are wrong.

Those are the only options only if you assume that analysis of the images is correct.
Oddly, I assume the analysis is wrong for the very same reasons

[UtwigMU]

I did the analysis of that image today. Can you point out with geometry that light rays are parallel?

[cjolley]

I did the analysis of that image today. Can you point out with geometry that light rays are parallel?

Awkward.



How do you take into account the geometric distortion in the exact lens type in the camera that took the picture? For example, does it have a wide angle profile that produces barrel distortion?
Do you know what the exact lens type that was used for that photo is?
If so, how do you know?

And that leaves aside the fact that you don't have access to the original photo, only a digital copy, or more likely, a copy of a copy that has been through some amount of processing.

And, as KRSESQ said, you are assuming that PROFESSIONAL photographers and cinematographers wouldn't have known to take your objections into account.

That's a mighty tiny hook to hang a plot involving tens of thousands of people keeping a secret.
Keep in mind that NASA has gone through several generations of employees since then and some large number would have to be in on the plot in order to keep the secret going.

[Jammrock]

Time to beat the dead horse some more.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-sites.html

NASA has been taking pictures of the Apollo landing sites with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). THe LRO is currently orbiting the moon in preparation for a manned return to the moon.

They are not close-ups, being taken from low lunar orbit and all, but the footpaths and landing modules are obvious in the images. There is actually a series of articles you can look at here.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/revisited/index.html

And a nice consolidation about the LRO and finding on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter

The first article offers the highest resolution pictures available to the public so far.

[KRSESQ]

I wonder what the highly reflective material in some of the features on the left is? Not a photographic artifact. they're visible in the 2009 images too.