ApolloHoax.net
Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: ka9q on June 20, 2013, 07:33:49 AM
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Hunchbacked just put up a video supposedly exposing all the 'incoherences' in the Lunar Module's electrical power system.
He devoted a whole section to his computation of the lifetimes of the ascent and descent stage batteries. He took the stated ascent energy capacity (17.8 kWh for two batteries), voltage (28V) and typical load current (50A/battery) of an ascent battery and computed:
Power drain = 28 V * (50A)2 = 70 kW * 2 batteries = 140 kW [sic]
17.8 kWh / 140 kW = 7.62 minutes
and then triumphantly concluded that the batteries could not possibly handle the requirements of an LM ascent, thus proving Apollo was faked. Wow.
Hunchbacked's videos always provide a "target-rich environment" but I didn't even know where to begin with this one. For the non-EEs out there, power is volts times amps, not volts times amps squared. A load of 100A at 28V is therefore 2.8 kW, not 140 kW. At this rate, the ascent batteries would last over 6 hours, not 7 minutes.
I gleefully pointed out that not only should a genius like him know Ohm's Law, but that most normal engineers would at least recheck their own work after getting such an absurd result.
To my utter amazement, within minutes he pulled the video down and sent me a message saying "I acknowledge my error, but it remains absurd".
I would like to read this as saying that his error remains absurd, with which I certainly agree, but I don't think that's what he meant.
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You have to wonder while he was writing that formula if it occurred to him why is electricity bill was so low.
Too bad you didn't download his video and share it.
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Actually, I did download it. Where would you like it?
edited to add: Here you go. enjoy:
http://www.ka9q.net/The_special_power_subsystem_of_the_lunar_module-360p.mp4
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Excellent! Thanks.
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One of his masterpieces.
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He's got a revision up; the bogus P=VI2 Ohm's Law stuff is now silently down the memory hole. But to save face he replaces it with a few other misunderstandings regarding voltage drop in batteries under heavy load, and displays his ignorance of Peukert's Law. Admittedly that's more specialized than Ohm's Law, but it's still something everyone should know who purports to be knowledgeable about batteries.
And of course all the rest of his howlers are still there, including his claim from an earlier video that the ascent stage was deliberately imbalanced by the asymmetric propellant tank placements.
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I have a vague understanding of batteries and consider it a dark art. Peukert's Law is something I have touched on but not really understood. I know (I think I know!) different battery construction is used for differing purposes, e.g. a car battery needs to gives it all when you turn the key as opposed to a UPS battery that needs to let it out at a measured rate over a period of time.
Or have I got it all wrong?
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Peukert's Law is a property of every battery I know - it relates the amp-hour capacity to the discharge rate. The more quickly you discharge the battery, the fewer amp-hours you get out of it before it goes flat. The generic formula is
effective discharge rate ~ Ip
where p is the Peukert exponent. That is, the effective discharge rate is proportional to a power of the actual discharge rate. The exponent p varies with battery chemistry and construction. p=1 means no Peukert effect at all, but for real lead-acid batteries it's typically 1.1-1.3.
This is why battery specifications give tables showing amp-hour capacity as a function of either the discharge current or the number of hours over which the battery is discharged.
The Lunar Module used silver-zinc batteries, but Peukert's law (with different values of p) applies to every battery I know of.
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For the non-EEs out there, power is volts times amps, not volts times amps squared.
It's part of the curriculum for 9'th graders :)
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For the non-EEs out there, power is volts times amps, not volts times amps squared.
It's part of the curriculum for 9'th graders :)
Perhaps this slightly confused individual tried to use a formula expressing power in terms of current and ohms, thinking the latter were similar to volts.
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Yeah, that occurred to me too. He was thinking of I2R.
He posted and has now taken down a second version of the video.
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It's part of the curriculum for 9'th graders :)
Not when I was a ninth grader. We took health class that year.
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It's getting harder and harder for me to believe that hunchbacked is serious and not just pursuing one long-running joke mocking the hoaxer community.
He does at least provide some amusement, mostly because he is constantly coming up with claims that are not the same old tired parroting.
But he seems to be working his way through all the available documentation about Apollo and finding "incoherencies" in each and every one. Not too long ago he even said that when he looks at one of the photos or videos he knows that if he looks long enough he will find an 'incoherency".
Even if one assumes (for the sake of argument) that the landings were hoaxed, is it reasonable there would be something evident in EVERY piece of documentation? I don't think so.
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he even said that when he looks at one of the photos or videos he knows that if he looks long enough he will find an 'incoherency".
"long enough"?
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Doesn't he mean "inconsistency"? Hoax believers never know science; is it too much to ask that they maybe understand English?
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Doesn't he mean "inconsistency"? Hoax believers never know science; is it too much to ask that they maybe understand English?
Yes. Yes it is.
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Right. I keep forgetting.
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he even said that when he looks at one of the photos or videos he knows that if he looks long enough he will find an 'incoherency".
"long enough"?
Long enough, and with:
- sufficient ignorance (of the environment and how photography/videography works)
- sufficient confirmation bias
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Hunchbacked is French, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. But he tends to persist with his rather idiosyncratic language even when he's informed of the correct terminology. "Incoherence" (as a noun) is one of his favorite words, so I like to use it in quotes.
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But he tends to persist with his rather idiosyncratic language even when he's informed of the correct terminology.
Remember how many times we tried to tell him what was the proper abbreviation for the Command Service Module? Yeesh.
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Hunchbacked is French, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. But he tends to persist with his rather idiosyncratic language even when he's informed of the correct terminology. "Incoherence" (as a noun) is one of his favorite words, so I like to use it in quotes.
Okay, but here's my thing. If he's going to argue in English, he needs to improve his English. Gods know I speak no language other than English well enough to argue in it. (I can order meals and a few other things in Spanish, I can talk about the weather in Gaelic, and I know scattered words in about a dozen other languages, and that's it.) I admire the heck out of people who do. I've never made fun of Jackie Chan's accent, because I know how awful I would sound if I tried to learn Chinese. However, two of the people whose spelling/grammatical errors I jump on most are both non-native speakers, and I do it because they asked me to. They're trying to improve their English, which they know isn't perfect.
I know we end up dealing with non-native speakers sometimes, and it always makes me wonder--why? Are there no sites in their native language that they can bother, where they aren't fighting an uphill battle against science and English? Sometimes, it's obvious that they're trying to improve their English, and that's fine. I actually kind of admire that. But when we get "English isn't my first language, so don't waste your time correcting me," I keep thinking that it's got to be easier to get your point across when you're actually fluent in the language. Or even just working on improving it. When you're struggling to make yourself understood, why are you wasting your time?
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But when we get "English isn't my first language, so don't waste your time correcting me," I keep thinking that it's got to be easier to get your point across when you're actually fluent in the language.
But isn't that just an extension of the science-illiteracy mindset? "I don't know science, but I can just learn enough buzzwords to bluff my way through it." Same with a foreign language. Scientific experts won't sway their ignorance, so why should native speakers?
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Cognitive dissonance at work, I guess. Literally everyone knows that words in foreign languages are not the same as words in yours, and the vast majority of people know that it takes more than speaking LOUD . . . LY AND SLOW . . . LY in order to make yourself understood in another language. Science can be a lot more esoteric than that; there are things in science that don't make sense to a layman. Science is one of those subjects where it's hard to know how much you don't know. Foreign languages are not. And yet.
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I think it was Asimov (or maybe Clarke) who said something like..
"No matter how eminent a scientist may be, when he speaks on any subject that is outside his speciality or area of expertise, his word can be taken no more seriously than that of a layman."
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I think it was Asimov (or maybe Clarke) who said something like..
"No matter how eminent a scientist may be, when he speaks on any subject that is outside his speciality or area of expertise, his word can be taken no more seriously than that of a layman."
Very well put. A lot of people here (http://www.bautforum.com) seem to think self-identication with something called "science" (which doesn't bear much resemblance to what I think of as "science") makes you an expert in everything.
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Heck, it's even a trope! ;D
No, I am not linking to the Great Geek Attractor.
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I've seen a similar quote from biochemist Erwin Chargaff:
"Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain form of semiparasitic living."
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I think it was Asimov (or maybe Clarke) who said something like..
"No matter how eminent a scientist may be, when he speaks on any subject that is outside his speciality or area of expertise, his word can be taken no more seriously than that of a layman."
Then again, one would expect a "scientist" to have the general knowledge of someone who finished High School, whereas most Hoaxers act and argue as if they just flunked Middle School.
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The problem with most of the HBs who actually argue the point (I maintain that we can know essentially nothing about those who don't) is that they seem to be ignorant of all relevant information. That's not just science. Here's the list off the top of my head.
Engineering
Photography
Stage Arts (specifically wirework)
Cold War Politics
Post-World War II History
Journalism
Physics
Aerodynamics
Orbital Mechanics
Psychology
Radiation
The Specific History and Psychology of Actual Conspiracies
Internal US Politics
The History of Test Piloting
Radio Communications
Television
Fluid Dynamics (that's the term I'm thinking of to explain behaviour in a vacuum, right?)
Geology
I'm probably missing some, but that's enough to get us started.
Now, it's perfectly acceptable to be at least somewhat ignorant of all of those things. We live in an era of specialists, and you can't know everything. Even my personal life goal of knowing at least something about everything leaves a lot uncovered. However, there are some of those that it is inexcusable to be completely ignorant of, and at the very least, you should know that you don't know anything in a field. If you've never studied geology, you should be aware of that and not make pronouncements in geology. That's the real problem. It isn't the ignorance. It's the determination to argue despite ignorance.
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Throw in some chemistry, biology and regular math.
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To be completely fair, there is a lot in there I don't understand either.
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Oh, goodness, yes. Don't ever believe me if I claim to understand, say, orbital mechanics! The important point is that I then don't make claims based on a presumed knowledge of orbital mechanics. In order for a hoax belief to make sense, though, everything explained in all those fields must be wrong! Which means that you have to be ignorant in all of them to believe in the hoax--or else just not thought of the implications.
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That's probably where you'll find the fence sitters. They didn't think of the implications of their claims, like the contradiction between, "We placed the mirrors with unmanned landers capable of pin-point accuracy in rough terrain." and, "We didn't have the computers powerful enough to get us to the moon."
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Yes, probably. It's one of the reasons I refuse to ascribe mental illness as a cause for everyone who believes in the hoax. In a lot of cases, I think it's just because they really haven't thought about what it would all mean. In a lot of cases, I think it's because they have an idea that sounds interesting and haven't considered everything it would mean. It isn't all that important to them. We just see the ones to whom it is important.
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Oh, absolutely. Claiming mental illness is just a lazy way to dismiss people without having to look at the root causes for their behaviour, not to mention incredibly ignorant.
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Yes, probably. It's one of the reasons I refuse to ascribe mental illness as a cause for everyone who believes in the hoax. In a lot of cases, I think it's just because they really haven't thought about what it would all mean.
Gilian's Variation on Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to insanity what can be explained by stupidity."
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Gilian's Variation on Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to insanity what can be explained by stupidity."
Ignorance, at any rate. And definitely mental illness, not insanity. "Insane" is an overused term that doesn't mean what most people think it means.
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Gilian's Variation on Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to insanity what can be explained by stupidity."
Ignorance, at any rate. And definitely mental illness, not insanity. "Insane" is an overused term that doesn't mean what most people think it means.
"Dunked in a certain Parisian river"?
I do have to wonder how so many conspiracy theorists all ended up in the world's longest river though. :o
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"Insane" is a legal term, not a medical one. It means "incapable of understanding that society thinks the person's behaviour is wrong," or thereabouts. This means, for example, that people like Ted Bundy and Charles Manson aren't legally insane (hence the fact that both were initially sentenced to death, not a hospital), because they knew society thought what they were doing was wrong. They just didn't care.
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Hunchbacked is French, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. But he tends to persist with his rather idiosyncratic language even when he's informed of the correct terminology. "Incoherence" (as a noun) is one of his favorite words, so I like to use it in quotes.
Okay, but here's my thing. If he's going to argue in English, he needs to improve his English. Gods know I speak no language other than English well enough to argue in it. (I can order meals and a few other things in Spanish, I can talk about the weather in Gaelic, and I know scattered words in about a dozen other languages, and that's it.) I admire the heck out of people who do. I've never made fun of Jackie Chan's accent, because I know how awful I would sound if I tried to learn Chinese. However, two of the people whose spelling/grammatical errors I jump on most are both non-native speakers, and I do it because they asked me to. They're trying to improve their English, which they know isn't perfect.
I know we end up dealing with non-native speakers sometimes, and it always makes me wonder--why? Are there no sites in their native language that they can bother, where they aren't fighting an uphill battle against science and English? Sometimes, it's obvious that they're trying to improve their English, and that's fine. I actually kind of admire that. But when we get "English isn't my first language, so don't waste your time correcting me," I keep thinking that it's got to be easier to get your point across when you're actually fluent in the language. Or even just working on improving it. When you're struggling to make yourself understood, why are you wasting your time?
Why does Hunchy argue in English? Because when he's cornered, it becomes a shield. Hunchy's English isn't bad, but when you press him on highly technical points or otherwise get him flustered, he starts spewing jibberish (more so than his usual baseline amount). It's a defense mechanism, whether intentional or not. He may be grasping at any words that come to mind, much as a drowning man grabs for anything that may be floating in the water. Or he may be intentionally kicking up a verbal "cloud of dust" to (in his mind) obscure his ignorance. Either way, it's a great "tell" that you've struck a nerve.
If he were arguing in his native language, he would not be able to pull off such a stunt.
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You're probably right that he uses it as a shield, but you'd think that after hundreds (!) of videos over three years and replying to what has to be thousands of comments, he'd be more fluent by now. He's certainly had the practice.
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Eh, though that may be part of it, I think there is a much simpler explanation. English is the most international of languages. Hunchbacked wants to reach a large audience as possible, so he uses the language most likely to be understood. Also, English is tough. It is full of loan words that break every 'rule' of grammar and spelling we have. I am not surprised he still has trouble with it.
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As one of Hunchbacked's primary antagonists I have to cut him some slack. There's plenty to criticize in his writings without getting anywhere near his English language skills.
An old joke that's relevant here:
Q: What do you call a person who can speak several languages?
A: Multilingual.
Q: What do you call a person who can speak only one language?
A: An American.
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As one of Hunchbacked's primary antagonists I have to cut him some slack. There's plenty to criticize in his writings without getting anywhere near his English language skills.
I'll have to agree with that one - I can usually understand what he's trying to say, although sometimes his arguments are so convoluted they'd be hard to follow in any language.
I still have to give him points for attitude, though. He's pretty much the only HB who doesn't quickly devolve into insults and personal attacks (although he does get a little cranky on occasion).