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Post by lowell on Aug 25, 2015 22:28:33 GMT -6
We were in a race with Russia to get to the moon. We got there first so Russia had less incentive to go after that. China at the time of our race had a lot of catch up to do. There are things a nation needs to do first, to be confident about success. They need to put people in orbit around the Earth and bring them back alive. China had not done that at the time we made our first trip to the moon. A nation needs to put landers on the moon and orbit the moon with spacecraft to measure the gravity at different locations. China finally put a lander on the moon (the jade rabbit) in 2013. That does give us motivation to go back to the moon, because the Chinese have announced their intentions to build a moon base and mine the moon for metals.
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Post by matador on Aug 25, 2015 22:42:20 GMT -6
Believing we went to the moon would mean that we had the technology 50 years ago that Russia, China or anyone else still does not possess. I am skeptical. Technology?? What would surprise most is the technology we did have and it makes a lot wonder how in the heck did they do it with vacuum tubes, analog gauges & dials and resisters. Go down to NASA, the space center in Houston and admire the fact that what we had at that time is nothing compared to the technology we have today and with that technology they still could put a rocket on target and land and bring people back to land withing a few hundred yards of where they were programmed to land. Back in 69 when the first moon landing was taking place our military in their best fighter aircraft still had vacuum tubes, our ICBMs still had vacuum tubes, radar had vacuum tubes, our air-to-air missiles had vacuum tubes and yet the accuracy was as good then as it is today. Yes technology had a lot to do with the moon landing but so did the urge to do something nobody else had done. That is what makes things happen and that is why there is no doubt that the moon landing was a real accomplishment.
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Post by lowell on Aug 25, 2015 23:03:30 GMT -6
Part of the reason we haven't made a Moon base is to quiet fears about the militarization of space. We were afraid the Russians would claim the Moon. Calming the fears of militarization of space was one of the reasons for teaming up with the Russians on the space station.
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orogenicman
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Post by orogenicman on Aug 26, 2015 0:07:29 GMT -6
Believing we went to the moon would mean that we had the technology 50 years ago that Russia, China or anyone else still does not possess. I am skeptical. Technology?? What would surprise most is the technology we did have and it makes a lot wonder how in the heck did they do it with vacuum tubes, analog gauges & dials and resisters. Go down to NASA, the space center in Houston and admire the fact that what we had at that time is nothing compared to the technology we have today and with that technology they still could put a rocket on target and land and bring people back to land withing a few hundred yards of where they were programmed to land. Back in 69 when the first moon landing was taking place our military in their best fighter aircraft still had vacuum tubes, our ICBMs still had vacuum tubes, radar had vacuum tubes, our air-to-air missiles had vacuum tubes and yet the accuracy was as good then as it is today. Yes technology had a lot to do with the moon landing but so did the urge to do something nobody else had done. That is what makes things happen and that is why there is no doubt that the moon landing was a real accomplishment. Actually, the Apollo rockets did not have vacuum tubes. They had analogue, transistorized circuit boards.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2015 3:45:25 GMT -6
It is said that there is more technology in a smartphone than in the first spacecraft. Something that primitive went to the moon and back? Hmmm, okay.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2015 3:59:56 GMT -6
There is a thing called the Van Allen Radiation Belts that has enough radiation to have killed the space crew 10 times over. Even today NASA engineers admit they can't get past the Van Allen Radiation Belts. How did they do it in the 60s? It should have killed them.
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Post by matador on Aug 26, 2015 9:23:23 GMT -6
There is a thing called the Van Allen Radiation Belts that has enough radiation to have killed the space crew 10 times over. Even today NASA engineers admit they can't get past the Van Allen Radiation Belts. How did they do it in the 60s? It should have killed them. Actually the belt is not as harmful as they thought. In the early 60s they held that belief and thought that an atomic explosion would pave the way through, but that experiment was a failure and actually created a larger radiation belt. In the end though the shell of the Apollo, the instrumentation, the suits, and the speed proved to be safe for the Astronauts to pass through. Nobody spent any real length of time in the belts to cause harm. www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-rocketed-through-van-allen-beltsAs I have posted before, the base I was stationed at was a west coast backup for all the Apollo missions and we had a voice and video backup and that there were just way too many people involved in the missions for them to be faked. You know it is hard for two people to keep a secret and there is no way the thousands of people involve to keep a secret this big. I don't know how many flights they did but do know we had a few that went to the moon but did not land and then there was 13 that was to land but had equipment failure that almost cost the lives of three astronauts.
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Post by lowell on Aug 27, 2015 0:13:35 GMT -6
We send satellites through the most intense part of the van allen belts. Our TV satellites are Geo-synchronous and in order to be able to remain in the same position they have to be much farther away from Earth than the space station. Yet they are not destroyed by the van allen belts. They have some shielding but you know that the shielding is not a foot of lead. The shielding the astronauts had on their trip to the moon was adequate in the same way that the shielding of Geo-synchronous satellites is adequate.
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Post by lowell on Aug 27, 2015 0:15:03 GMT -6
Another way to know that our first visit to the moon was real, is Russia's reaction. The race to the Moon was over. If it had been a hoax, the Russians would have continued efforts to get there.
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orogenicman
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Post by orogenicman on Aug 27, 2015 16:48:53 GMT -6
It is said that there is more technology in a smartphone than in the first spacecraft. Something that primitive went to the moon and back? Hmmm, okay. The first men that made it to the bottom of the Marianna trench had far less than what was used to go to the moon. And yet they were successful. The Apollo spacecraft were the most advanced machines made in their day. They were designed to do exactly what they did - travel to and land on the Moon, and no more. They did not need all the technology that is used in a smart phone, and in fact, had technology that isn't even in a smartphone (like radar altimeters, hypergolic reaction motors, and fuel cells, for instance.). And while we are discussing technology, the Space shuttles used four mainframe Honeywell computers that were, together, far less powerful than what is in any smart phone. Do you deny that the space shuttles worked?
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orogenicman
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Post by orogenicman on Aug 27, 2015 16:52:49 GMT -6
Most of the radiation in the Van Alan Belts is alpha emission, which cannot penetrate a sheet of paper. The rest is ionizing radiation that can penetrate deeply though a lot of material. And while it is dangerous, the astronauts in their command module were afford a measure of protection from the craft itself, and from the fact that they were travelling at 25,000 mph, and so didn't linger very long in the belts.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2015 17:05:33 GMT -6
If they went to the moon and back they would have had to work. I'm just skeptical, to do that even today would be a major accomplishment. To do it nearly 50 years ago it would have been tantamount to Moses parting the Red Sea. If NASA did pull that off they were very fortunate.
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Post by lowell on Aug 28, 2015 15:52:10 GMT -6
The first mission was a scary one. They did get lucky.
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orogenicman
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Post by orogenicman on Aug 28, 2015 23:12:05 GMT -6
If they went to the moon and back they would have had to work. I'm just skeptical, to do that even today would be a major accomplishment. To do it nearly 50 years ago it would have been tantamount to Moses parting the Red Sea. If NASA did pull that off they were very fortunate. Of course they had plenty of work to do. Duh. And of course, anytime you travel into space it is a major accomplishment. If it was easy, we'd all be doing it. Actually, it was far more difficult than Moses parting the Red Sea, which, of course, is because while we have plenty of evidence that we landed on the Moon, there is no evidence whatsoever that Moses did any such thing. And for the record, you brought it up.
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Post by carpathianpeasant on Aug 29, 2015 6:03:46 GMT -6
I never have believed they went to the moon. Why haven't they went back? Sydney, you can't take the Bible as a whole literally. If I say to you, "Two and two is four," that describes a truth of existence as our minds perceive it -- the idea for someone who speaks another language is the same even though the words used in another language are different. When a teacher or parent tells us that, they are merely giving us the words to help us identify that little point of existence. A human (maybe even some animals) can figure out the idea without anyone giving them words to describe it. That's a God-given inspiration never written down in the Bible. There are other truths that are not written down in the Bible. A person who thinks he/she may have figured out a truth of existence may tell others. When others agree that it makes sense, it becomes an accepted idea even if it is not correct. Things like that were recognized by many thinkers down through human history. [One of the main reasons the Roman Catholic church does not trot out the Bible for everything is because of "thinkers" like St. Thomas Aquinas who, while going heavily on the existence at hand, sought to reconcile religion and reason (existence). He didn't dump the Bible as myth but looked at it with an eye for truths of existence. Therefore, the Catholic church leans heavily toward reason rather than the actual words of the Bible especially as translated into English.] Some of the things -- material things like rockets -- shot into space never came back (they weren't meant to come back) and there is evidence that they did exist and still exist. Now, if they are not "out there somewhere," where are they?
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