Lessons of the "Fake Moon Flight" Myth (corrosive media culture alert)

The Skeptical Enquirer ^ | March, 2003 | James Oberg

[MikeD]

Thanks for the heads-up on Hoagland. I'll have to check out his stuff.

LOL -- Howard Cosell of spaceflight. I'm picturing JO in Star City interviewing the Russian/Soviet Director of Spaceflight...

MD

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Laughter bump.

[CaptRon]

It'd be a lot easier to get hold of if you gave us the title.

[LanPB01]

UFO's, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to be Crazy To Believe

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345429184/qid=1053113693/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3032434-2018233?v=glance&s=books

[atomic conspiracy]

"It'd be a lot easier to get hold of if you gave us the title."

or even if I did...UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies you don't have to be crazy to believe

Note that one of the gushing jacket blurbs is from CNN newscaster Lynne Russell.

[CaptRon]

Thanks!

[kjam22]

I'm confident that we went to the moon. But that being true, there are a lot of things that I don't understand about our ablility to set down something that has no wings and is not aerodynamic in anyway gently on the moon. I realize the moon has 1/6 the earth's gravity and no atmosphere.... but even at that .. the thing must have still been pretty heavy.... and it must have burnt a bunch of fuel. And I guess my main question is in light of the fact we were successful at landing on the moon, why can't we slow the suttle down more in space so that it doesn't burn up when it re-enters the atmosphere?

Stupid questions I know... but then I'm no rocket scientist.

[RightWhale]

Stupid questions I know... but then I'm no rocket scientist.

There is no such thing as a stupid question.

Yeah. Well, anyway, the moon orbital and landing approach speed is very low compared to earth orbital speeds. Moving slower to begin with, a lot slower, makes the rest a lot easier.

[Gary Boldwater]

The moon landing is really a hoax. The government put the Apollo LEM on the moon using captured UFO technology from Area 51. It was all to make the Russians believe we didn't have ultra advanced technology.

[atomic conspiracy]

I used the radiation ring (of course I am NOT a rocket scientist and don't remember what it was called). I said how come the shuttle astronauts go through it just fine?

van Allen radiation belts. The Shuttle doesn't actually pass through them, but there are many other rebuttals to the radiation danger claim, the most ironic being that comsats do pass through the belts and their electronics would be instantly fried by the radiation of the intensity the show claimed: we couldn't have seen the show if its claims had been correct.

The show claimed that the radiation was so intense that a full meter of lead shielding would be required to protect the astronauts passing through it. The top proponent of this nonsense was one Ralph Rene, a "self-educated physicist" and "investigator" who has written a number of conspiracy books. Rene also claims that pi cannot be accurately determined past a few decimals points, and that there are fundamental (non-relativitic) errors in Newton's laws of motion. Rene has since branched out into 9-11 conspiracy theories.

[Billthedrill]

Oh, come on. Does anybody still believe in that silly stuff?

The moon, I mean.

[discostu]

Think helicopter. They do their stuff by beating the air into submission until it does what it's told. Lander did simething very similar only with thrust instead of air.

The shuttle is coming out of orbit, orbits are nothing more than a controlled fall, you've got to be going fast or you won't fall in a circle (gross over simplification but it works). Then it's got to punch into the atmosphere because it's not friendly, you want to get through the nasty outer bits fast and at a specific angle otherwise the shuttle will come apart.

[atomic conspiracy]

This is probably the most reasonable and convincing case for the moon hoax that I have yet encountered.

[kjam22]

you've got to be going fast or you won't fall in a circle

yeah.... I'm to dumb about science. What's the maximum fall speed on this planet? A lot less than the speed the shuttle his hitting the atmosphere at.

[Billthedrill]

ROTFLMAO! Yeh...yeh, the little pink guys have me convinced, too...

[Incorrigible]

Bump for Harry!

[discostu]

Well in orbit there's no a max. The trick with orbit (as explained by Mr Wizard) is that you're falling towards the earth thanks to gravity, but you've also got thrust trying to push you in a straight line (which would take away from the earth). When you've got the right amount of forward momentum (right amount being a function of a LOT of things and a very heavy duty calculation) you wind of circling the earth. Too little and your orbit decays (you start getting closer to the earth and will eventually hit the atmosphere at a really bad angle), too much and you break out of orbit.

Maximum fall speed (aka terminal velocity) within the atmosphere depends. Again on a lot of things: how high up you are (thinner air higher up), your mass and your aerodynamic footprint (if you've seen skydivers go "small" to catch up to others all spread out you've seen that last one in action); effect it, a body maxes out when the forces pulling it down (acceleration) reach equilibrium with forces resisting the pull (deceleration). According to some stuff I've seen there are species of frogs who's terminal velocity is so low with such miniscule impact that they can survive a fall from almost any height (thus possibly explaining the occasional "rain of frogs" you read about in Fortean circles), I've never seen any serious math on the subject nor have I tested it. But it is theoretically possible if an object has the right combination of low mass poor aerodynamics and ability to take a punch.

[RansomOttawa]

But that being true, there are a lot of things that I don't understand about our ablility to set down something that has no wings and is not aerodynamic in anyway gently on the moon.

Aerodynamics are irrelevant when there's no air. Since the LM was never intended to fly in an atmosphere, it could essentially be shaped any way.

the thing must have still been pretty heavy.... and it must have burnt a bunch of fuel.

It did. In fact, the Eagle was only seconds away from burning too much fuel during the first moon landing.

But it would take less fuel than you think. Since the moon has only 1/6 of Earth's gravity, it required only 1/6 the force to resist the moon's pull, and hence significantly less fuel (I won't say 1/6 the fuel because I'm not certain of the math and I might be wrong).

The AV8B Harrier jet hovers here on earth; the LM has approximately twice its mass, which means on the moon it would weigh one-third of what the Harrier does on earth. So vertical take-off and landing of a craft that size is perfectly feasible.

why can't we slow the suttle down more in space so that it doesn't burn up when it re-enters the atmosphere?

Because the shuttle needs the atmosphere to slow down. Velocity is inverse to altitude - the closer you are to the planet, the faster you orbit. The shuttle is a low earth orbit craft that might typically circle the earth in about 90 minutes. Needless to say, it's going wicked fast. So it needs the friction of the earth's atmosphere to slow it down to the point where it can actually land on a runway. (And the shuttle's reliance on atmospheric braking is another reason why it is aerodynamic and the LM is not - look at what happened, supposedly because of one hole in one of the wings!)

I'm no rocket scientist either, though I'm a bit of a space buff and did well in high-school and early university physics. I'll be a happier person if I'm corrected where I'm wrong.

[kjam22]

So could a person say theoretically, if fuel capacity were no issue, that the shuttle could theoretically fire thrusters in a manner that ceased its orbit, and yet maintained altitude? Then decend at a safe speed?

[MalcolmS]

Well in orbit there's no a max.

There is absolutely a max and it's called escape velocity. Any faster than that and you are on your way to mars or beyond. That being said, you can have some very large orbits. If you have an excessively large orbit, the object can be pulled away by other heavenly bodies.