Yeah this is another variation of a well worn theme:
[...]
And so on in ever decreasing circles...
Indeed. No matter what document is produced, it will lack some property that the claimant will have newly decided is essential to understanding the Apollo program fully and answering all the questions of authenticity that a critic could possibly conceive. This is why, for the time being, I'm sticking to the documents at the one site our claimant has identified. We all know other sources exist. All his concerns so far regarding the RCS can be answered from documents residing there. If he is unable to find them or interpret them, then we will have our answer to the question of whether his standards of documentation are rationally informed.
However, I am more than capable of solving the simple equation M+X = 89D1 - 59D2 for the available ranges of D1 and D2 that will a) fit within the dimensions of the LM and b) result in the negative M+X that leads to a control instability for an automated attitude control system.
When I said the author wrote the memo with the presumption that the reader would understand free-body dynamics, that wasn't strictly true. The author has given a simple, correct equation that governs one particular issue of a highly eccentric mass distribution, such as would occur when the LM is docked to a heavy-laden CSM. It takes knowledge of free-body dynamics to know
why that equation governs the issue. But to solve the equation for different mass properties requires only a teenager's understanding of algebra and geometry. This is what we're asking Jr Knowing to do. His claim that the plume deflectors made the LM less stable under solo flight than with the CSM attached is soundly refuted from his own sources. If he cannot explain why or why not, then we have no obligation to respect his judgment of technical content or applicability. The longer he stalls or tries to change the subject, the more apparent it is he's bluffing.
Even the free-body dynamics aren't rocket science. The equation we're talking about is a simple torque calculation. Rather, it derives straightforwardly from the definition of torque itself -- a specific force acting perpendicular on an arm of specific distance. Even the most innumerate of humans probably knows how a cheater bar works, or simply
that it works. If you've got Cletus pulling on a wrench in one direction, and his son Bubba pulling the other way on a long cheater bar attached to the wrench, the cheater bar can become so long that Bubba's weaker pull oustrips Cletus pulling harder on a shorter moment arm.
The level of detail contained in the various archives about the broad moon landing program is unprecedented in history.
Yes, when we say that Apollo was the most meticulously documented civil engineering project ever in history, this is what we mean.
One of the sources at the ibiblio.org archive goes into some detail about how the plume deflectors were built, including materials, measurements, and finished assembly diagrams. It goes right down to the level of how the films were attached to the Inconel substrate, and what tests were done to assure its mechanical and thermal properties. If I needed to restore an LM to flight condition, i believe I have enough information to get the plume deflectors right.
Similarly, the memos with file names starting with COL and LUM describe the day-to-day revisions of the software and the results of validation tests. Some of them were written by the illustrious "M. Hamilton," who (I believe) was presented a few years ago with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her career efforts. Many here who work in modern information technology will recognize the pattern if not the actual technical content of the memos. They transmit to the Apollo distribution network the revisions to the software and the results of testing them. Such information is what today would be curated in source-code repositories and defect-tracking tools. The bottom line is that to have any greater technical knowledge than what was documented in those memos, one would need to have been an engineer working on the project at the time, because the only significant information lacking from the available body of documentation is what would have been discussed around the water cooler.
And these days the entire source code for Colossus (CSM) and Luminary (LM) is up on Github. So we do have a context for investigating the content of those updates.
If the documentation that exists is sufficient to enable someone skilled in the field to reproduce it, it's extremely difficult to argue that "technical" detail is lacking. As Onebigmonkey notes, it then devolves into an exercise of rapidly moving and rapidly narrowing goalposts. The endgame is usually as absurd as claiming that if you can't tell me the surface finish of the screws that held the FDAI in the LM cockpit, then we can't know enough to know that Apollo wasn't fake.
