Flat earth believers

Wossack wrote: »

its just a thought experiment that people (from both sides) get far to worked up about

It started years ago as a thought experiment but now there are quite a few people who honestly do believe its true and NASA are at the head of this grand conspiracy

The physics of how to go to the moon has been known for hundreds of years. Newton was one of the people who worked out the maths of how it could be done theoretically. Thankfully, the threat of total annihilation fueled (pardon the pun) the creation of bigger, more reliable rockets at the top of which warheads could be placed. Not only was the moon a theoretical target, with Rockets it now became a physical possibility. Chastened by the success of Sputnik and Gagarin's orbit, the US needed to think big and chose the moon as it's goal. Now placing capsules instead of warheads atop those same rockets, they managed to make the deadline of the end of the 60's, though not without extensive years of intensive practice of rendezvous (Project Gemini) before even dreaming of doing such dangerous maneuvers over a quarter of a million miles away.

The orbital rendezvous techniques used decades old technology such as RADIO communication (that wavey stuff goes quite fast) and RADAR technology ( i.e. microwaves, same 'thing' as radio). We should know the basics of how these work. By the mid-60's, we became quite competent in the use of both. You need to be able to communicate, and you need to be able to tell how quickly something is moving towards or away from you, be it another space capsule or the lunar surface. Those technologies were understood and were necessary for landing on the moon. Radar capabilities were so sophisticated that the Lunar Module was completely capable of using it to land itself albeit with a little help from a primitive digital computer. All the crew needed to do was sit back (or rather stand) and monitor the feedback from the radar and keep communication lines open in the event of an abort. Every commander took manual control to actually land.

The thing with Apollo was that it required newly invented guidance systems whose primary purpose was basically to tell the crew and the ground crew which way was 'Up'. That was the technological challenge of Apollo. Navigating accurately at 1/4 of a million miles away. Those newly fangled guidance systems even used a technology that was centuries old as a back up. Sextants. Which they used to align the crafts X Y Z axis in the craft's Inertial Measurement Unit, a gimbal based guidance system.

So landing on the moon is not difficult. It is incredibly dangerous but if we can accept the physical reality that objects, including people, spacecraft etc can FALL then it is certainly not a difficult thing to accomplish particularly given the intent and the enormous resources the US threw at the Apollo programme. And you can be rest assured that each and every mission was tracked by the Soviets too. You don't launch the most powerful rocket ever devised and not arouse interest from your enemy during a 'cold' war. It would have been the PR coup of the century for the Russians to pwn the US with telemetry tapes presented to Reuters of each supposed flight to the moon. They knew how to use radio waves as well.

I asked my own dad when watching ISS footage a few years back why the astronauts floated. His reply was that there is no gravity. Yes, he said with full confidence that they floated because there was no gravity in space.

I explained the concept of free fall to him, I explained to him Newtons thought experiment about the cannon (i.e. the Saturn V) on the mountain to explain orbits which is basically a fancy word for falling around something but never hitting it but his eyes glazed over.

Guess what? He thinks the Moon landings were faked too.

For people like my dad and the OP's friend, just think of Waylon Smithers and say with me "Sometimes...I don't know why I bother"

Korvanica wrote: »

Suggest going on a trip to see the edge ?

U2 are touring at the minute so now’s your chance

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I believe that in the case of Loch Ness it is about money, but

1: Pretend Earth is flat
2: ?
3: Profit!

Makes a lousy business plan.
No, these people are either trolls or morons.
It easy. Just pretend the sky is pink and maintain that belief against every single thing that's said to you. I guess people do it out of boredom, wanting to be the center of attention or just simple arseholery.

Not ONLY Loch Ness dr.fuzzenstein
Dig deep enough you will find at the back of these loony tune ideas there is someone making a pretty penny somewhere out of the gullible.
Adieu

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Because it's massively almost prohibitively expensive

Man landed on the moon in 1969 mainly due to an intense ideological battle between the US and USSR, for which no expense was spared. Once it had "been done" several times public and scientific demand simply hasn't been sufficient to fund another trip

Various presidents have mentioned a return, but it appears NASA would rather use the budget to focus on Mars. We're more interested on a "first time" on Mars than a fifth time on the Moon.

Yeah this exactly, its also the same answer to the questions "why has no other country gone back?" because america's already been there first and several more times too, there's nothing to be gained publicly from going there and any country capable has signed a treaty agreeing no country can own/claim a piece of the moon or any other non earth body so there's no strategic benefit either.

Mars, asteroids and comets are where the money is in both scientific and material terms

Wibbs wrote: »

Maybe the simplest one would be to go I dunno Dubai and stand at sea level at the beach with a powerful telescope and see how far you can see in one direction. Then go to the tallest building in Dubai with the same telescope and see how far you can see then. Because the earth is curved you will be able to see farther from the tall building than at sea level. If the earth were flat this wouldn't be the case. Or look at the moon during a lunar eclipse where the earth's shadow crosses it and you can see it's circular. Indeed the phases of the moon wouldn't happen unless the earth were a spinning globe.

All the logic in the world doesn't matter. Give people a safe space on the internet with plenty of group validation and they can and will believe anything, no matter how ridiculous.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Because it's massively almost prohibitively expensive

Man landed on the moon in 1969 mainly due to an intense ideological battle between the US and USSR, for which no expense was spared. Once it had "been done" several times public and scientific demand simply hasn't been sufficient to fund another trip

Various presidents have mentioned a return, but it appears NASA would rather use the budget to focus on Mars. We're more interested on a "first time" on Mars than a fifth time on the Moon.

The irony is that if another trip to the moon was made, then there would be requests which would probably be fulfilled, waste of time that it would be, to show evidence of the previous missions. And even then the doubters would be doubt it I'd imagine.

One of the things about the doubters I love is how the radiation from the Van Allen belts was given as proof that the moon flights couldn't have been made. The radiation from the charged particles from the Sun which collects in the earths magnetic field was simply too dangerous, thus any spacecraft would have been charred and the crew given lethal doses of radiation and KILLED! by the intensity of the radiation. It became so popular for that conspiracy theory that James Van Allen himself debunked it by suggesting that the intensity of the radiation would be no more dangerous to the crew than an X Ray procedure in any hospital. Still though, when you preach to any group with no solid grasp of basic physical concepts and you sprinkle them with pop phrases such as 'magnetic fields', 'alpha particles' etc then you can basically make up any BS you like and they will believe it as they don't have the knowledge to actually question it.

knucklehead6 wrote: »

it's quite easy Bellend.

Go to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, bring three sticks, all the same length and a LOT of rope.

Hammer one stick into the ground and tie one end of the rope to it at the top.
Walk for about 10 miles holding the rope taut.
Hammer a second stick into the ground, and tie the other end of the rope to the top.
Walk back along the rope holding the third stick upright beside it and you will see the rope doesn't stay at the top of the stick for the entire walk.

Proof that there is curvature, which by extrapolation can be used to prove the earth isn't flat

no need for the 20 mile walk. put a 1 foot long stick into the ground. walk about a mile and a half. the stick will be hidden by the curvature of the earth.