Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Moon Landing... true or not?.. waht do you think?

OzOz · 07-11-2003, 07:22 AM

Another claim that gets used as a method of saying it didn't happen is that all missions, despite being horrendously complex, went flawlessly. Here's how 'flawlessly' the Apollo missions went.

VII (First manned Earth orbit test of the Command Module) - Hardware fine, but the crew gets head colds early on and became so argumentative and rebellious against Mission Control that the controllers are half-ready to have them splash down in the middle of a typhoon! The mission commander had announced his retirement before the flight, so he could not really be reprimanded effectively, but the other two crew members were never allowed to fly in space again.

VIII (First lunar orbit flight) - Mission commander Borman comes down with a 24-hour flu early in the flight. Mission Control seriously considers aborting the mission - although this still would have meant looping around the Moon to get back to Earth.

IX (First manned test of the Lunar Module in Earth orbit) - Due to Lunar Module Pilot Schweickart coming down with motion sickness, flight test of the Lunar Module is almost abandoned.

X (Dress rehearsal for the landing - Lunar Module flies to within fifty thousand feet of the lunar surface) - Due to astronaut error in setting a switch in the Lunar Module, the LM goes into wild gyrations just before dropping the descent stage in lunar orbit, placing the crew at real risk of crashing into the Moon.

XI (The Big One!) - Communications problems immediately before descent make things very difficult for Mission Control to decide whether or not to continue. During descent to the surface, a mis-set switch causes a computer overload, almost aborting the landing.

XII (First precision landing) - The giant Saturn V booster gets struck by lightning not once, but TWICE, within the first minute after lift-off from Cape Kennedy. If that isn't potentially a serious problem, then frankly I don't know WHAT is! NASA seriously tightens up weather restrictions for all future manned launches.

XIII (The only actual Apollo abort) - 'Nuff said.

XIV - Crew almost unable to dock with the Lunar Module and extract it from the third stage of the Saturn rocket on the way to the Moon. Just before the landing attempt, Mission Control detects the Lunar Module computer reading a faulty abort signal, which would cause the landing to be automatically aborted by the computer as soon as the engine starts to brake them out of orbit towards a landing. MIT rewrites the software on the spot just in time for the landing to proceed. Landing radar fails to lock on to the lunar surface until very late in the landing sequence, almost at the stage at which mission rules would require an abort. Radar locks on with about a minute to spare.

XV (First use of the "moon buggy") - No major problems.

XVI - A problem with a backup engine control system on the Service Module delays the landing by six hours and almost causes it to be scrubbed.

XVII - A failure of a cheap electrical component in the launch control equipment causes a $450 million mission to be held on the launch pad over two hours past the scheduled launch time (the only Apollo launch delay). Otherwise, the most successful mission of all.

The engineers who built and flew Apollo KNEW that they were building a massively complex system, so they subjected it to MASSIVE amounts of testing, which accounted for a large part of the $20 billion (in 1972 US dollars) pricetag of Apollo. For instance, they had a test stand which could hold a complete Saturn V rocket, with the two Apollo spacecraft, and SHAKE THE WHOLE THING to see how it would hold up to the vibrations of launch. They did things like tune the engine exhaust nozzles to vibrate at different frequencies to avoid resonance - i.e. the vibrations of two or more engines adding to shake the whole vehicle to pieces, the same reason the military gets troops to break step when crossing a bridge.

In comparison, the Russians spent only about a tenth of this amount on their lunar landing program. The only occasions that all of the engines in the first stage of their rocket, the N1, were fired at the same time were when it flew - and none of the four test flights reached Earth orbit, let alone the Moon.

07-11-2003, 07:22 AM	#57 (permalink)
OzOz Psycho Location: Right here, right now.	Another claim that gets used as a method of saying it didn't happen is that all missions, despite being horrendously complex, went flawlessly. Here's how 'flawlessly' the Apollo missions went. VII (First manned Earth orbit test of the Command Module) - Hardware fine, but the crew gets head colds early on and became so argumentative and rebellious against Mission Control that the controllers are half-ready to have them splash down in the middle of a typhoon! The mission commander had announced his retirement before the flight, so he could not really be reprimanded effectively, but the other two crew members were never allowed to fly in space again. VIII (First lunar orbit flight) - Mission commander Borman comes down with a 24-hour flu early in the flight. Mission Control seriously considers aborting the mission - although this still would have meant looping around the Moon to get back to Earth. IX (First manned test of the Lunar Module in Earth orbit) - Due to Lunar Module Pilot Schweickart coming down with motion sickness, flight test of the Lunar Module is almost abandoned. X (Dress rehearsal for the landing - Lunar Module flies to within fifty thousand feet of the lunar surface) - Due to astronaut error in setting a switch in the Lunar Module, the LM goes into wild gyrations just before dropping the descent stage in lunar orbit, placing the crew at real risk of crashing into the Moon. XI (The Big One!) - Communications problems immediately before descent make things very difficult for Mission Control to decide whether or not to continue. During descent to the surface, a mis-set switch causes a computer overload, almost aborting the landing. XII (First precision landing) - The giant Saturn V booster gets struck by lightning not once, but TWICE, within the first minute after lift-off from Cape Kennedy. If that isn't potentially a serious problem, then frankly I don't know WHAT is! NASA seriously tightens up weather restrictions for all future manned launches. XIII (The only actual Apollo abort) - 'Nuff said. XIV - Crew almost unable to dock with the Lunar Module and extract it from the third stage of the Saturn rocket on the way to the Moon. Just before the landing attempt, Mission Control detects the Lunar Module computer reading a faulty abort signal, which would cause the landing to be automatically aborted by the computer as soon as the engine starts to brake them out of orbit towards a landing. MIT rewrites the software on the spot just in time for the landing to proceed. Landing radar fails to lock on to the lunar surface until very late in the landing sequence, almost at the stage at which mission rules would require an abort. Radar locks on with about a minute to spare. XV (First use of the "moon buggy") - No major problems. XVI - A problem with a backup engine control system on the Service Module delays the landing by six hours and almost causes it to be scrubbed. XVII - A failure of a cheap electrical component in the launch control equipment causes a $450 million mission to be held on the launch pad over two hours past the scheduled launch time (the only Apollo launch delay). Otherwise, the most successful mission of all. The engineers who built and flew Apollo KNEW that they were building a massively complex system, so they subjected it to MASSIVE amounts of testing, which accounted for a large part of the $20 billion (in 1972 US dollars) pricetag of Apollo. For instance, they had a test stand which could hold a complete Saturn V rocket, with the two Apollo spacecraft, and SHAKE THE WHOLE THING to see how it would hold up to the vibrations of launch. They did things like tune the engine exhaust nozzles to vibrate at different frequencies to avoid resonance - i.e. the vibrations of two or more engines adding to shake the whole vehicle to pieces, the same reason the military gets troops to break step when crossing a bridge. In comparison, the Russians spent only about a tenth of this amount on their lunar landing program. The only occasions that all of the engines in the first stage of their rocket, the N1, were fired at the same time were when it flew - and none of the four test flights reached Earth orbit, let alone the Moon. __________________ Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you wanna keep fighting evil today. Last edited by OzOz; 07-11-2003 at 07:32 AM..