We landed on Mars... again? [Mod note post #1]

Das Reich wrote: »

I did answered with numbers what is strange or not. You didn't aswered if you not find those numbers strange or not.

You haven't really. And if your answer is in there, it's buried under a lot of poorly worded ranting.

maybe try answering the points more directly and concisely?
What do you find strange? Why?
What technology was destroyed specifically and why was it destroyed?

Das Reich wrote: »

Who said Martian landings are fake? Definately not me.

The OP of the thread you are posting on.
Have you not read it?

Das Reich wrote: »

Probably you are right about the non existence of conspiracy theory, but are proud enough to not question some things.

This sentence doesn't make much sense. How am I not questioning things?

Das Reich wrote: »

So now I had answered all your questions, please answer the followings:

You still haven't really.

Das Reich wrote: »

1 - You not find strange that they did 10 travels to the moon in a very short period, and on the very starting of human space exploration, making a million km and after that they never went beyond the low Earth orbit? 50 after that? You don't find it strange? I do. Period.

No, I don't find it strange. Why would I find it strange?

Das Reich wrote: »

2 - You don't think that to build another program to go to the moon would be much easier, cheaper, safer, faster etc... etc... etc... with all the technology we got in 50 years?

No, not necessarily.
As I've explained before, to completely remake the Apollo program it would require a massive effort to rebuild the infrastructure.
To make a new program, especially today with new standards and with a goal for longer term trips and more detailed science, it's not necessarily easier.

Nearly 50 years ago we had a supersonic airliner. So surely now all planes should be supersonic because the technology has become cheaper, smaller, more advanced etc etc...

But we don't have any supersonic airliners...
Why not?
Can we conclude that Concorde was a giant hoax?

Das Reich wrote: »

Why going to the moon every few months and never again after that?

Lack of funding and political will.

Do you have a better explanation?

olestoepoke wrote: »

Side note, are there actually people out there that believe the Earth is flat? Or is that just a bit of name calling?

No, there are actually conspiracy theorists who believe the world is flat and there's a giant conspiracy to make people think it's round.
It's a surprisingly popular one.

In fact the linked video of the NASA guy seems to come from a youtube page that supports the idea of a flat earth.

A lot of the "Fake space mission" theories actually come from Flat Earth conspiracy peddlers.

I regurgitate the news wrote: »

I know very little on the topic

Pretty much sums it up.

I watched this live on my phone the other evening. Absolutely incredible what science and technology has brought us as a species.

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Not strange at all. What is the basis for these questions apart from you personally finding the Apollo missions "strange"? There are plenty of documentaries, etc on the subject.

No its not strange and in fact the basic science behind space flight is simple especially once you leave the gravity well. The hard part was designing a rocket light enough and powerful enough to lift the crew, equipment and food with greater thrust than to forces pulling it back down and really once people had learned how to break the atmosphere the rest came pretty quickly.


Its just rocket science

Das Reich wrote: »

I did answered with numbers what is strange or not. You didn't aswered if you not find those numbers strange or not. Who said Martian landings are fake? Definately not me. Probably you are right about the non existence of conspiracy theory, but are proud enough to not question some things. I don't have the fear to question things, I did grow up in a VERY CHRISTIAN country and when I was a child family members were very upset when I doubt about the existence of god. And 30 years later they are all non believers now. I would be called a conspirationist then.

So now I had answered all your questions, please answer the followings:

1 - You not find strange that they did 10 travels to the moon in a very short period, and on the very starting of human space exploration, making a million km and after that they never went beyond the low Earth orbit? 50 after that? You don't find it strange? I do. Period.

2 - You don't think that to build another program to go to the moon would be much easier, cheaper, safer, faster etc... etc... etc... with all the technology we got in 50 years? Why going to the moon every few months and never again after that?

1. There has been no political will to do it up to now. Outside of actually going to the moon, what would someone do a few hundred thousand miles out there. First off it’s kind of dangerous out there hanging around the van Allen radiation belts and secondly fuel and rocket science, when you go you need either a lot of fuel to come back or you need to sling shot back off the moon. So...you either go to the moon or you don’t leave low earth orbit. Why didn’t they go again, there was plans for Apollo missions up to #20 and they were canned due to cost. Why haven’t we gone since, again, no cost or political will. At one point there was plans to continue to the next program, Mars. Again when the moon capabilities were binned, Mars missions had no chance, read up on Werner Von Braun.

We could do it over the past 5 decades if we wanted to, but no nation with sufficient resources has wanted to enough. I don’t find it strange, I do find it a real pity and a lost opportunity.

The use of terms like “destroyed the ability to go to the moon” is making it sound like the astronauts with approval from NASA went around and blew up all the facilities, lined up all the engineers for summary execution, and burned all blueprints, to ensure we could never go back for some unknown reason. Lead engineers died over the following decades, the launch pad was repurposed for the space shuttle, manufacturing lines were closed due to lack of orders, others built the space shuttle, knowledge was lost over decades. It would take a huge effort to get it back as opposed to if the lights had been kept on all the time. That probably causes frustration and use of negative terms like destroyed to enable people to bemoan the fact we had it and we lost it.

2. We are going back to the moon. Look up the Artemis program. And yes, it will be cheaper in real terms, the fact people don’t know about it obviously demonstrates the scale of the effort versus last time around. Faster, in terms of the program, I don’t think so, speed is dictated by money although commercial entities like spacex are doing great work. Actual speed of the craft will be more or less the same, a rocket is still a rocket, and a fuel tank is still a fuel tank, we haven’t any fundamentally different propulsion since the last time we went. The program will be far more sophisticated in terms of electronics as an example, quality of cameras and streaming as an example. Why are we doing it, the space race is coming back, the US v China, space is the battleground again. Hence the USA under Trump launched the US Space Force recently as an example. First the moon, then on to Mars.

Das Reich wrote: »

1 - You not find strange that they did 10 travels to the moon in a very short period, and on the very starting of human space exploration, making a million km and after that they never went beyond the low Earth orbit? 50 after that? You don't find it strange? I do. Period.

2 - You don't think that to build another program to go to the moon would be much easier, cheaper, safer, faster etc... etc... etc... with all the technology we got in 50 years? Why going to the moon every few months and never again after that?

We could fly on supersonic passenger aircraft in the 1970s but we can't anymore. Do you find that strange?

Ger Roe wrote: »

No. We didn't need to then and we don't need to now. Concorde was too expensive to operate for the time gain it brought.

If there was a cheaper alternative way to fly supersonic or an increased commercially viable demand, we would be doing it now. We could do it now, if someone who didn't care about commercial return wanted to fund it as a vanity project. In the end, it was a French/UK government vanity project, flying the flag for UK French achievement.

Concorde fell victim to commercial market forces... the French and UK government were long looking for a way out of the loss making business, even before the Paris crash and subsequent relaunch finally put an end to it.

If Mick O'Leary thought he could make a Euro out of supersonic flight, he would be doing it.

You've answered your own question. Flying to the moon in the 1970s was massively expensive. At once point in the mid 60s nearly 5% of the US national budget was spent on NASA and Apollo - an unsustainable level of spending. By 1980 it was down to 0.8% and today the budget is just 0.5% of federal spending. If spending has been maintained at the Apollo era levels, we'd undoubtedly have permanent lunar bases today and the first human would've set foot on Mars by now! But no politician was going to propose that level of spending, especially after the goal of reaching the Moon had been met.

Also at the time the technology did not allow for long term stays on the moon. The Apollo hardware was built with one goal: getting people to the moon and returning them safely to Earth. That was it it. The longest Apollo mission was Apollo 17 and it spent just over 3 days on the Moon. That was pretty much stretching the capabilities of the hardware to the limits. Increasing the capabilities of the Apollo hardware would've cost billions of dollars, money which was not available.

In the meantime we've learned a lot more about long stays in space through the ISS - what it takes to keep humans alive for long periods in space and what effect that has on the human body. None of this was known in the 60s, 70s etc. And because so much has been learned and technology is much better today, the Artemis programme will look to establish longer term stays on the Moon this decade.

I regurgitate the news wrote: »

He is just an employee? He's NASA's oldest active astronaut and he's been on the ISS twice.

He's given TED talks.

To say he is just an employee kind of downplays him

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/donald-r-pettit/biography

He is still an employee, not a policy maker or official spokesperson. Arguing about his employment status doesn't take away from the coroprate policy facts that I stated. You were quoting what he said as coming from NASA - That is not correct.

NASA got out of the launch mission aspects, to give it over to commercial enterprise, so they could concentrate on other aspects and then buy back the required services at a cheaper rate than they themselves could ever manage.

There are going to be massive advances made in a much shorter future timeframe than would have been previously possible, thanks to NASA sub contracting critical aspects of the work that they previously undertook themselves.

Daz747 wrote: »

I'm not a 'Conspiracy Theorist' generally but it's hard to overlook the many challenges that Nasa would have faced during that time.

If you are suggesting that NASA faked or covered up things about the Apollo Program, then you are suggesting a conspiracy theory.
That makes you a conspiracy theorist.

Daz747 wrote: »

To answer the op question, most aerospace papers state that the dosage is not low.(Roughly 1.5 times the radiation the average person receives in 1 year for every hour travelling assuming 3mm shielding)
...
but they would certainly have had detrimental health issues after it.

And a large number of Apollo astronauts developed cataracts.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3580567?seq=1
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/22oct_cataracts

This wouldn't have prevented the missions though. Why do you believe it did?

Daz747 wrote: »

I was wrong using the word 'Toasted',

Yes. So why did you claim it?

Daz747 wrote: »

It's very difficult to explain something to someone who uses wikipedia as their source of information.

Wikipedia is a collection of sources. There is far more indepth info about the missions out there which compliments the info on Wikipedia.

I'm not a 'Conspiracy Theorist' generally but it's hard to overlook the many challenges that Nasa would have faced during that time.

To answer the op question, most aerospace papers state that the dosage is not low.(Roughly 1.5 times the radiation the average person receives in 1 year for every hour travelling assuming 3mm shielding) I was wrong using the word 'Toasted', but they would certainly have had detrimental health issues after it.

They travelled through the thinnest parts of the belt and received a dose equivalent to a chest X-ray. This information is fully available online, can I ask why you doubt it?

To point out the obvious here, anyone casting doubt on this is suggesting a) the info is all wrong or b) the missions didn't happen.

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

1. There has been no political will to do it up to now. Outside of actually going to the moon, what would someone do a few hundred thousand miles out there. First off it’s kind of dangerous out there hanging around the van Allen radiation belts and secondly fuel and rocket science, when you go you need either a lot of fuel to come back or you need to sling shot back off the moon. So...you either go to the moon or you don’t leave low earth orbit. Why didn’t they go again, there was plans for Apollo missions up to #20 and they were canned due to cost. Why haven’t we gone since, again, no cost or political will. At one point there was plans to continue to the next program, Mars. Again when the moon capabilities were binned, Mars missions had no chance, read up on Werner Von Braun.

We could do it over the past 5 decades if we wanted to, but no nation with sufficient resources has wanted to enough. I don’t find it strange, I do find it a real pity and a lost opportunity.

The use of terms like “destroyed the ability to go to the moon” is making it sound like the astronauts with approval from NASA went around and blew up all the facilities, lined up all the engineers for summary execution, and burned all blueprints, to ensure we could never go back for some unknown reason. Lead engineers died over the following decades, the launch pad was repurposed for the space shuttle, manufacturing lines were closed due to lack of orders, others built the space shuttle, knowledge was lost over decades. It would take a huge effort to get it back as opposed to if the lights had been kept on all the time. That probably causes frustration and use of negative terms like destroyed to enable people to bemoan the fact we had it and we lost it.

2. We are going back to the moon. Look up the Artemis program. And yes, it will be cheaper in real terms, the fact people don’t know about it obviously demonstrates the scale of the effort versus last time around. Faster, in terms of the program, I don’t think so, speed is dictated by money although commercial entities like spacex are doing great work. Actual speed of the craft will be more or less the same, a rocket is still a rocket, and a fuel tank is still a fuel tank, we haven’t any fundamentally different propulsion since the last time we went. The program will be far more sophisticated in terms of electronics as an example, quality of cameras and streaming as an example. Why are we doing it, the space race is coming back, the US v China, space is the battleground again. Hence the USA under Trump launched the US Space Force recently as an example. First the moon, then on to Mars.

First of all I have to thanks for answering without any circle around. I have to admit the fact that you have a point on saying that or you fo to the moon or don't leave the low orbit. Yes we all were told that the Apollo program was expensive and there was no political reason for that, yet I still think the Apollo mission after the Apollo 11 would make much more sense waiting few years from one to another than only few months and then never again. About the second we have to wait and see if it happens.

Daz747 wrote: »

Its only my opinion as I believed opinions were welcomed instead of being rubbished by the ill-infomed. I certainly would like to think we did go but unfortunately I don't believe we have as of yet.

Okay, so you believe that man hasn't landed on the moon. Which begs the question, what alternatively happened then?

(As a brief explainer, "conspiracy theorists" avoid this question, and if they do answer it will be deliberately vague along the lines of "I believe it was shot in a studio somewhere". The critical flaw and contradiction in this logic is obvious, they can't, with all the evidence believe that man landed on the moon, but will entertain a vague theory that has no evidence)

To be more specific, moon landing hoaxers convince other people by using a technique of casting doubt on the event. They claim it was e.g. impossible that astronauts could have survived passing through the Van Allen belts, which is patently untrue, but it can sound convincing to someone who doesn't know any better. This is part of a basket of tricks and techniques they use to discredit facts about the landings in order to get people to believe "something else happened" without ever detailing what that something is. It's how 99% of conspiracy theories function.

Which is why I am interested to see the response to the above question.

bfa1509 wrote: »

King Mob, you constantly accuse people of avoiding your posts, yet you have done nothing but avoid posts since the beginning of the thread. Any conspiracy theory thread you don't agree with (which seems to be all of them) you swarm with posts that add absolutely nothing to the discussion. You've been doing it for years and everyone is tired of it.

I'm going to ask you for a third time: What discoveries have we made about Mars that will benefit humanity for years to come? We've sent a robot there at least 5 times already, this should be a basic question

We send probes and landers and rovers to other planets because we are inherently curious as a species. The discoveries benefit science (and understanding) of the universe around us, and the technology we develop along the way can be used in other applications.

From your posts so far you seem to be complaining about the mission but also claiming it's fake, which is completely contradictory. Which is it, it happened and you don't agree with it? or it's fake?