We put a man on the moon?

shizz · 26-03-2012 2:11pm

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I just don't buy it.
It would be an absolutely enormous undertaking today. I just don't believe it was doable in the 60's, when calculators were still the stuff of sci fi films. I still haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise, and the russians saying they'll do in 18 years time, doesn't make those doubts any smaller!

Good tune though!!

That it was. Impossible? nope.

Yakult · 26-03-2012 2:16pm

I think humans should stay far away from any other planets. We've already ****ed this one up and still continuing, lets not wreck any where else.

shizz · 26-03-2012 2:23pm

Yakult wrote: »

I think humans should stay far away from any other planets. We've already ****ed this one up and still continuing, lets not wreck any where else.

I think learning to live on an inhospitable environment could only raise our awareness and respect for our home planet. We would be creating technologies to produce energy in environments where there are no fossil fuels. Advancement in this area could only benefit the earth.

Duggy747 · 26-03-2012 2:40pm

The moon landings were incredibly dangerous and had a huge probability of failure. I highly recommend the documentary about the 12 astronauts In The Shadow Of The Moon which you can watch on 4od.

Incredibly basic computers (by today's standards), sturdy engineering and hopeful mathematics got them up there. Any small thing that went wrong would've caused a chain reaction and ended their lives up there. Apollo 13 being one such case where they barely made it back alive.

In regards to the 1st moon landing, Nixon recorded a message to the public that would be released in event of them failing and dying up there. There was no backup plan to get them, they had one shot.

The 60's and 70's were an intense time for innovation and pushing boundaries given the limitations of technologies. Plus, it was the whole America Vs. Russia space race (along with raising morale during the Cold War for either side) that helped push it. If there was a grand conspiracy, Russia would love it and would try to expose it as it would absolutely destroy America's reputation and the public's morale. They also would've watched the whole mission carry out with a close eye since it meant them losing the race to the moon.

Nowadays, it's all about budgets, getting through endless red tape and gaining the public interest. The public doesn't care if we go back to the moon, Mars is the hyped up mission to send people to that interests them.

foxyboxer · 26-03-2012 2:49pm

I don't buy the concept of it being impossible.
When a superpower makes it a national goal then it's definitely possible.

The technology for guidance was basic by modern standards but it's function was entirely based around simply what it needed to do. No bells and whistles etc. Sextants were still used for guidance anyway and the digital computer was fed guidance data from an uplink from Heuston. Basically, you check, you double check and you treble check. Everything. Everytime.

I remember reading Andrew Chaikins "A Man on the Moon" and being deeply impressed reading the passage describing that the LEM would be able to 'land itself'. I'd always thought the Lunar Module was controlled by the crew. How would it do that? Radar plus thousands of hours of training and simulations.

So you pretty much go from Mach 5 in lunar orbit and touch down on the surface within circa 12 minutes. (Powered Descent). Awe inspiring stuff.

I can only imagine the sheer thrill and perhaps dread that the Astronauts felt when the guidance on the Lunar Module pitched over and gave them sight of the lunar terrain approaching them like a landing strip.

My stock response to naysayers will always be this. The apollo programme was carried out in the public view during a very Cold War. The Russians would have known exactly when the flights were planned. Hell even the flight plans were made available to the media. I'm sure they would have tracked the 'enemy' rockets. They would also have tracked the spacecraft all the way to the moon and possibly the lunar module too. They were able to do it having landed probes there previously. Now can you imagine if the whole thing was faked and the crew simply remained in low earth orbit for a week and re-entered. It would have been the PR coup of the century if the Russians presented the world with the telemetry data of a 'faked' mission.

Capt'n Midnight · 26-03-2012 2:53pm

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I just don't buy it.
It would be an absolutely enormous undertaking today. I just don't believe it was doable in the 60's, when calculators were still the stuff of sci fi films. I still haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise, and the russians saying they'll do in 18 years time, doesn't make those doubts any smaller!

There was no health and safety back in the 1960's , you could cut lots of corners

The three guys on Apollo 1 test died because they were using 100% oxygen at sea level , if you've never heard of a thermal lance it's what happens when you burn iron rods in pure oxygen and they work underwater too

They had computers back in the 1960's :rolleyes:
and one reason why the Russians beat the US to orbit was they had better mathematics especially on the calculus side

labour was also cheaper in the 1960's , you could employ hundreds of people to calculate, using paper and pencil or adding machines or slide rules, sometimes this was better than computers because people could spot patterns or make insights

The maths can be simplified to just calculating the variables once a second
F=ma force= mass x acceleration
v=at velocity = acceleration x time - you want this to be about 7,000 meters per second

mass drops by 15 tonnes per second on a Saturn 5
force is constant (first pass - you can change it later, eg: throttle down because of air resistance)
you have to correct a because of gravity drag ie. subtract 9.81m/s2 at the start - use a table to correct for current speed / direction , as you get closer to orbit this drops to zero
you have a set of tables from wind tunnel tests , and again you subtract drag, there is a limit and if you hit that limit you have reduce fuel flow to change a or make the rocket stronger

then you repeat the process with half second steps and see what the difference is, if it's close job done, otherwise you try smaller intervals until you reach a point where you answer is close enough.

It's only rocket science if you want to skip lots of boring steps

satellites exist.
to go to the moon you need a big satellite
life support systems for short duration are more difficult than on a submarine, but not by much

foxyboxer · 26-03-2012 2:59pm

Duggy747 wrote: »

The moon landings were incredibly dangerous and had a huge probability of failure. I highly recommend the documentary about the 12 astronauts In The Shadow Of The Moon which you can watch on 4od.

Incredibly basic computers (by today's standards), sturdy engineering and hopeful mathematics got them up there. Any small thing that went wrong would've caused a chain reaction and ended their lives up there. Apollo 13 being one such case where they barely made it back alive.

In regards to the 1st moon landing, Nixon recorded a message to the public that would be released in event of them failing and dying up there. There was no backup plan to get them, they had one shot.

The 60's and 70's were an intense time for innovation and pushing boundaries given the limitations of technologies. Plus, it was the whole America Vs. Russia space race (along with raising morale during the Cold War for either side) that helped push it. If there was a grand conspiracy, Russia would love it and would try to expose it as it would absolutely destroy America's reputation and the public's morale. They also would've watched the whole mission carry out with a close eye since it meant them losing the race to the moon.

Nowadays, it's all about budgets, getting through endless red tape and gaining the public interest. The public doesn't care if we go back to the moon, Mars is the hyped up mission to send people to that interests them.

One of the unsung heroes of the programme was Bill Tindall, one of the project managers. He was like an American Michael O'Leary in a way (i.e. zero BS, didn't suffer fools but a charmer at the same time). His approach to planning meetings was that everyone (engineering teams of this hugely complex machine) would get a fair hearing but that a decision would always be made. If you didn't like it well TS. Without such people they'd probably still be deciding what the crew would have for dinner on Day 4 at this stage.

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

120_Minutes · 26-03-2012 3:06pm

foxyboxer wrote: »

I remember reading Andrew Chaikins "A Man on the Moon"

Great book. I also recommend "Failure is not an option" by gene kranz, "Moondust" by andrew smith and "two sides of the moon" by Dave Scott and Alexi Leonov

spankmaster2000 · 26-03-2012 3:20pm

My grandmother has an iPhone; which has dozens of times more power than the computers used to plan the Moon missions.

Does she have the faintest idea how to use it though? No.

People seem to assume that computers nowadays are all-knowing intelligent and creative machines which can invent things independently.

In reality, they still need to be told what to do by people. (Or, specifically programmed by dedicated; educated individuals.)

Engineers / Scientists, etc did actually exist back in the 60's too y'know.
It's their planning / designs / hard work which got the astronauts on the moon.

To me; the non-believers who quote the "less power than a calculator" line must also be baffled at how the Pyramids / Stonehenge, etc were made "without cranes, bulldozers, etc"...

RichieC · 26-03-2012 3:20pm

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn191/codytebaldi/ap17lgnl.jpg

foxyboxer · 26-03-2012 3:27pm

/\/\/\/\/\

Hmmmmm, looks 'shopped.

Pace2008 · 26-03-2012 3:30pm

spankmaster2000 wrote: »

To me; the non-believers who quote the "less power than a calculator" line must also be baffled at how the Pyramids / Stonehenge, etc were made "without cranes, bulldozers, etc"...

Aliens.

Capt'n Midnight · 26-03-2012 4:30pm

spankmaster2000 wrote: »

My grandmother has an iPhone; which has dozens of times more power than the computers used to plan the Moon missions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

2048 words of 16 bits so 4K of RAM ( really it was 2K with large bytes )
1.024 MHz But instructions took at least 12 cycles so more like 85KHz

Integer Multiply took 8 times as long so it could only do 10,000 integer multiplications per second , if you wanted floating point it would be slower again

compared to iphone cpu at 412MHz
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0301h/Chdgbhai.html
thanks to pipelining it can chug along at one integer multiply per cycle

so it's ~ 41,200 times faster before you use sneaky tricks to take advantage of the wider bus

If you were to compare it to the latest GPU's then the figure would be in the millions

Capt'n Midnight · 26-03-2012 4:49pm

In reality a smart phone has most of the computery stuff you need built in

it's got GPS, accelerometer, temperature and magnetic sensors
and internet and phone for two way communication :pac:

you could use bluetooth or wifi to link in other sensors, or point the camera at a display panel,

you can interface from the smartphone by using an app that lights up parts of the screen, and fibre optics to the controls systems

Or you could spend 4 years doing this
"Block I Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC):
How to build one in your basement"
http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/

squod · 26-03-2012 5:58pm

foxyboxer wrote: »

My stock response to naysayers will always be this. The apollo programme was carried out in the public view during a very Cold War. The Russians would have known exactly when the flights were planned.

The Russians weren't given flight data and could not track them without it.

foxyboxer wrote: »

Hell even the flight plans were made available to the media.

The Russians watched it on TV just like everyone else.

foxyboxer wrote: »

Now can you imagine if the whole thing was faked and the crew simply remained in low earth orbit for a week and re-entered. It would have been the PR coup of the century if the Russians presented the world with the telemetry data of a 'faked' mission.

They couldn't track the flights. Didn't even build the equipment to do so 'till way into the Apollo program (Apollo 16 ish?). Even with that built, tracking without data is a gamble.

foxyboxer wrote: »

the Russians presented the world with the telemetry data of a 'faked' mission.

So your faith in Apollo comes down to that?

shizz · 26-03-2012 6:16pm

squod wrote: »

They couldn't track the flights. Didn't even build the equipment to do so 'till way into the Apollo program (Apollo 16 ish?). Even with that built, tracking without data is a gamble.

Care to explain how The Russian's tracked their own craft during the Luna program if this is true?

Capt'n Midnight · 26-03-2012 6:36pm

squod wrote: »

The Russians weren't given flight data and could not track them without it.

Jodrell Bank's role in early space tracking activities - Part 1
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part1.html

Jodrell Bank was tracking stuff too,

the whole point of the early warning radars is they could track objects in space, UK , US , USSR all had them by Apollo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr_radar

Brendog · 26-03-2012 6:39pm

One thing that always blows my mind is that a modern smartphone is 300 times more powerful than the Apollo 11 module.

OctavarIan · 26-03-2012 6:41pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPeEKXelphw

The budget % that NASA get is on a sad and steady decline. The USA are too focused on fabricating wars on their doorstep to look forward as a nation anymore. The torch has been passed to Russia, China and India.

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I just don't buy it.
It would be an absolutely enormous undertaking today. I just don't believe it was doable in the 60's, when calculators were still the stuff of sci fi films. I still haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise, and the russians saying they'll do in 18 years time, doesn't make those doubts any smaller!

Calculators the stuff of sci-fi? In the 60s?

I think you need to reevaluate your beliefs :pac:

brendog wrote:

One thing that always blows my mind is that a modern smartphone is 300 times more powerful than the Apollo 11 module.

Apollo 11 module was not a computer as we know them today. The real computing was done at NASA.

Capt'n Midnight · 26-03-2012 6:50pm

Brendog wrote: »

One thing that always blows my mind is that a modern smartphone is 300 times more powerful than the Apollo 11 module.

it's more like 30,000 times

check a few posts back

foxyboxer · 26-03-2012 7:42pm

squod wrote: »

So your faith in Apollo comes down to that?

No.

Take a dash of the public's general mistrust of big government.
Add a healthy dose of general ignorance of the basic laws of physics.

Hey presto, you've got a conspiracy theory.

cml387 · 26-03-2012 8:31pm

foxyboxer wrote: »

No.

Take a dash of the public's general mistrust of big government.
Add a healthy dose of general ignorance of the basic laws of physics.

Hey presto, you've got a conspiracy theory.

I put it down to the younger generation's disbelief that our generation could have achieved such a feat.
Nowadays our ultimate creation seems to be a phone that you can play Angry Birds on.

squod · 26-03-2012 8:36pm

shizz wrote: »

Care to explain how The Russian's tracked their own craft during the Luna program if this is true?

They had the flight plan and necessary data to do so. Care to explain how the Russians tracked Apollo without the flight plan?

squod · 26-03-2012 8:38pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Jodrell Bank's role in early space tracking activities - Part 1
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part1.html

Jodrell Bank was tracking stuff too,

the whole point of the early warning radars is they could track objects in space, UK , US , USSR all had them by Apollo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr_radar

[sarcasm]I did not know that.[/sarcasm]

shizz · 26-03-2012 9:17pm

squod wrote: »

They had the flight plan and necessary data to do so. Care to explain how the Russians tracked Apollo without the flight plan?

Well for starters, you said they did not have the equipment to do so. I was saying that of course they had the equipment necessary to track the apollo missions considering they have tracked their own missions to the moon.

Also, You do no need an exact flight plan of every movement to track it. The Russian scientists would of been able to deduce the optimum trajectory that they would have to take. It wouldn't of been that hard. Never mind the fact that the launch was filmed and broadcast worldwide. Seeing which way the launch was heading would allow them to make any corrections to their guessing. Not to mention many independent radio observatories around the world were able to track the apollo mission. I mean aren't there conspiracy theories who are based on the "fact" that they overheard astronauts mentioning aliens during a "faked" radio blackout?

Why does everyone think that just because the Russians didn't get to the moon they were incapable of doing even the most trivial things in space like calculating trajectories. A Russian scientist pretty much created modern rocket science. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

When the Apollo program was announced, the Russians were MILES ahead of America in the space race.

cml387 · 26-03-2012 9:56pm

shizz wrote: »

When the Apollo program was announced, the Russians were MILES ahead of America in the space race.

Since they now are the only nation capable of putting cosmonauts into space, I would say they still are.

shizz · 26-03-2012 10:00pm

cml387 wrote: »

Since they now are the only nation capable of putting cosmonauts into space, I would say they still are.

In that sense yes, but I wouldn't say so in interplanetary space missions. Hasn't been their fortay in many years.

Capt'n Midnight · 26-03-2012 10:30pm

squod wrote: »

[sarcasm]I did not know that.[/sarcasm]

http://www.mercurians.org/2002_Fall/arnold.htm

By the mid-1960s, several tracking ships, including Kosmo-naut Vladimir Komarov, Kosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and Akademik Sergei Korolev were in place. Each displaced at least 17,850 tons and had a crew of 121 plus a science team of 118.

...
Soviet engineers sometimes had to improvise in creating their satellite command and control system. In 1959, when Sergei Korolev first began developing inter-planetary spacecraft to fly to Mars and Venus, he proposed building a tracking network comparable to NASA’s Deep Space Network. Because they had a deadline of just eight months, Korolev came up with the ingenious idea of creating mounts for the dishes using left-over parts from the Soviet Navy.

Construction workers dug a huge crater out of the rocky ground, poured a foundation, took the revolving gun turret of a battleship consigned to the junkyard, and placed it on the foundation. Then workers mounted the open framework of a railroad bridge over the gun turret. The solid hull of a scrapped sub-marine, to which they had fixed antennas, covered the bridge. The facility was fully operational by December 1960. Located at Yev-taporia on the Black Sea, it ulti-mately would consist of three complexes, each with eight 16-meter antennas separated by several kilome-ters: one to send commands, and two to receive telemetry.

squod · 26-03-2012 10:36pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.mercurians.org/2002_Fall/arnold.htm

That's great. Dig me up the part where it says it tracked Apollo 11 all the way to the moon and back.

shizz · 26-03-2012 10:38pm

squod wrote: »

That's great. Dig me up the part where it says it tracked Apollo 11 all the way to the moon and back.

You really think that the only people capable of tracking an apollo craft was the Americans themselves?

shizz · 26-03-2012 10:42pm

Squod, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5737854/Russian-spacecraft-landed-on-moon-hours-before-Americans.html

This recording that was released is from an independent observatory tracking the apollo 11 mission and also the luna 15 probe.

Now, how do you suppose they could track it?

squod · 26-03-2012 11:20pm

shizz wrote: »

Squod, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5737854/Russian-spacecraft-landed-on-moon-hours-before-Americans.html

This recording that was released is from an independent observatory tracking the apollo 11 mission and also the luna 15 probe.

Now, how do you suppose they could track it?

Jodrell bank could not track Apollo 11 on the way to or from the moon because they didn't have the pointing data to steer the telescope. You can goolgle the technical stuff or whatever.

The fact is that NASA didn't seek third party verification.

Covered this stuff in previous threads on boards. I don't expect you'll change your mind. I won't take up any more of your time.

shizz · 26-03-2012 11:30pm

squod wrote: »

Jodrell bank could not track Apollo 11 on the way to or from the moon because they didn't have the pointing data to steer the telescope. You can goolgle the technical stuff or whatever.

The fact is that NASA didn't seek third party verification.

Covered this stuff in previous threads on boards. I don't expect you'll change your mind. I won't take up any more of your time.

Ignoring that they couldn't track to or from the moon, as I can't verify either way right now, how do you explain them receiving the transmission and data FROM the moon.

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm

So amateurs can track Apollo 17 to the moon but of course a super power like Russia can't.

Change my mind? Why would I change my mind? All the evidence points in the favour of a lunar landing.

Doc Ruby · 26-03-2012 11:36pm

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

So for all the people who don't believe the moon landings happened

What? My IQ dropped just by engaging the possibility. Are there seriously people stupid enough to believe that. I mean do international space agencies spend hundreds of billions annually for the laugh? How's that cellphone working, alright? Made any international calls lately? Welcome to Space! And goodness gracious, its not that far from low earth orbit to the moon.

Argh.

RichieC · 26-03-2012 11:59pm

Doc Ruby wrote: »

What? My IQ dropped just by engaging the possibility. Are there seriously people stupid enough to believe that. I mean do international space agencies spend hundreds of billions annually for the laugh? How's that cellphone working, alright? Made any international calls lately? Welcome to Space! And goodness gracious, its not that far from low earth orbit to the moon.

Argh.

Well, it is. the guts of 1/4 of a million miles.

BackScrub · 27-03-2012 12:20am

I hope we never get to Mars, one planet is enough to balls up.

ToddyDoody · 27-03-2012 1:47am

Funny. People are always willing to say 'we put a man on the moon' but never willing to say 'we killed 60 million jews'

RichieC · 27-03-2012 1:59am

ToddyDoody wrote: »

Funny. People are always willing to say 'we put a man on the moon' but never willing to say 'we killed 60 million jews'

Jesus i heard the holocaust was bad but I'd no idea it was this bad...

LH Pathe · 27-03-2012 2:06am

Just like marky didn't get to put a Wahlburger in ireland, we have always been as grounded as the beef therein

guitarzero · 27-03-2012 2:08am

ToddyDoody wrote: »

Funny. People are always willing to say 'we put a man on the moon' but never willing to say 'we killed 60 million jews'

Oh come on Toddy, leave that for the Conspiracy section, we're talking about indisputable facts that shouldnt be questioned here.

We put a man on the moon?

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