Recent Posts

11

General Discussion / Re: SpaceX no longer reliable.

« Last post by Jason Thompson on June 19, 2025, 04:18:59 AM »

Oh dear....

I'm no expert in rocketry by any means, and most of what I do know I picked up from here, but surely we've generally got past the problem of rockets just blowing up on the pad, haven't we?

12

The Reality of Apollo / Re: Chandrayaan-2 views Apollo

« Last post by Luke Pemberton on June 18, 2025, 03:38:09 PM »

I'm not a liar Jarrah, I just think your ill-though out badly evidenced claims are bullshit. I also don't need your permission to quote you however I see fit .

Late to this post, but my friend helped my mindset today after a torrid time at work:

Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are the bird is going to crap on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

13

General Discussion / Re: The Trump Presidency

« Last post by Peter B on June 16, 2025, 05:10:22 PM »

TIFO that Saturday 14 June 2025 is No Kings Day.

I have no intention of encouraging people in the USA to go to protests which could have unpleasant consequences for them. But still, I thought I'd at least mention it.

The intent is to have protests everywhere but DC.  We're going to our local one.  I doubt ours will get shooty, but I can pretty much guarantee some of them will.

Well, congratulations USA. Millions attending the No Kings protests, and maybe tens of thousands attended the birthday parade.

I noticed the marching was pretty slipshod, and the crowd was quiet enough that Fox had to dub in cheering...

14

The Hoax Theory / Re: Watching the detectives...

« Last post by onebigmonkey on June 14, 2025, 11:03:26 AM »

As far as the "hole" is concerned, they're backtracking a little now - claiming that it was AI what made them say it, mainly because Jarrah has weighed in with an equally incorrect claim that it is a hole in the actual positive film. A hole that has changed size and shape over time.

Yeah right.

Anyhow, their latest effort has latched on to a different claim:L the tarnsition from 12 fps top 6ps in Apollo 11's magazine H of th e16mm film: the ascent from the surface. For some reason they're picking on interpoloated footage, rather than an unprocessed version. amnd because they find all kinds of extra things in there (you know, the kind of things entirely consistent with AI interpolation), then there must be some sort of faking going on.

The best bit is their insistence that the frame rate change represents an edit, and is really the transition from them filming over a model to filming lunar orbit images or some such garbage.

Here's your challenge "Detectievcs": find the lunar orbiter images that show the detail of the area that is contained in the Apollo 16mm footage. I'll even tell you which ones you need to look at: Lunar Orbiter 4, images 84 and 85.

You can get them here:

https://planetarydata.jpl.nasa.gov/img/data/lo/LO_1001/DATA/LO4/

Here's just a tiny example, taken at the point they get all excited about. I've rotated the AJF version of the 16mm footage

to match the LRO view.




Now let's zoom in to the area in the red box:



This is the best Lunar Orbiter view of the same wide scale area:



Where's the detail "detectives"? Where are all the craters and rocks that the 16mm footage picked out?

Lunar Orbiter images did not contain the detail required of the Apollo landing sites to produce a model of any kind that would show the detail in the 16mm footage and photos. You can claimn it was a model all you like, but how did they make it with information they didn't have?

15

General Discussion / Re: SpaceX no longer reliable.

« Last post by Dalhousie on June 13, 2025, 11:07:41 PM »

My disillusionment with Musk started pretty early in the early teens.  I always found his jingoism and xenophobia distasteful, and found the enthusiasm of his admirers increasingly cult like from about 2010.  His 2016 IAC announcement of the MCT I found interesting, but flawed, But his reaction to the Thai cave rescue was the end for me of any personal respect, and the risible saga of SS to date of any professional respect.  Now I see him as extremely dangerous.  Which is a shame for all the hardworking engineers at SpaceX, who deserve better leadership.

16

The Reality of Apollo / Re: Good reference3 on training suits

« Last post by Dalhousie on June 13, 2025, 10:41:20 PM »

This isn't bad for some early designs...

https://web.mit.edu/16.00/www/aec/spacesuit.html

But this is a pretty good ebook:

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dressing-for-altitude-ebook_tagged.pdf

Got the second of those.  Good source on the development of get me down suits.  Not EVA suits.

17

The Reality of Apollo / Re: Good reference3 on training suits

« Last post by Dalhousie on June 13, 2025, 10:37:08 PM »

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/pressure-suit-apollo-a7-l-shepard-training/nasm_A19750836000
http://www.astronautix.com/a/a7l.html
According to this, the training suits were just the suits, though a different one than the flown article. Which makes sense. Why go to the effort of creating something that replicates the the look and feel of the suit, when you can just have the suit? Cooling would be a little different, as sublimation cooling doesn't work so well in an atmosphere of any thickness, but the liquid cooling garment itself would work just fine as long as the water could be cooled.
In fact, fursuiters and cosplayers with big bulky costumes sometimes use the same idea with ice water pumped through tubing sewn into a vest or shirt to provide cooling while walking the floor of the convention and similar
To sum up a somewhat rambling post, almost any source for the flown A7L will be of use here as well.

I am familiar with the actual suits overall, I have real the primary and secondary sources extensively.   I am particularly interested in weights of the training suit(s) and backpack(s).  At close to 100 kg, using the real suits would not have been feasible for anything much.

18

The Reality of Apollo / Re: Good reference3 on training suits

« Last post by Obviousman on June 13, 2025, 09:07:17 PM »

This isn't bad for some early designs...

https://web.mit.edu/16.00/www/aec/spacesuit.html

But this is a pretty good ebook:

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dressing-for-altitude-ebook_tagged.pdf

19

The Reality of Apollo / Re: Good reference3 on training suits

« Last post by raven on June 11, 2025, 11:17:56 PM »

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/pressure-suit-apollo-a7-l-shepard-training/nasm_A19750836000
http://www.astronautix.com/a/a7l.html
According to this, the training suits were just the suits, though a different one than the flown article. Which makes sense. Why go to the effort of creating something that replicates the the look and feel of the suit, when you can just have the suit? Cooling would be a little different, as sublimation cooling doesn't work so well in an atmosphere of any thickness, but the liquid cooling garment itself would work just fine as long as the water could be cooled.
In fact, fursuiters and cosplayers with big bulky costumes sometimes use the same idea with ice water pumped through tubing sewn into a vest or shirt to provide cooling while walking the floor of the convention and similar
To sum up a somewhat rambling post, almost any source for the flown A7L will be of use here as well.

20

General Discussion / Re: SpaceX no longer reliable.

« Last post by raven on June 11, 2025, 02:30:19 PM »

Two households, both alike in dignity.
In fair America do we lay our scene.
That is to say, none at all.
My first inkling of what a twit  Musk was how he reacted when the Chilean government declined his assistance in a mining disaster, and the guy had just the worst hissy fit about. He didn't actually care about the miners.
It saddens me how much space exploration has been poisoned by this rampaging man child. Also, Starship is feeling more and more like the N1 rather than something that will be functional.

Just a thought, but do you mean the Thai children stuck in the cave?

But I take your point about Starship. I wonder whether SpaceX needs to trim its ambition and split the upper stage into an expendable second stage and a capsule - like a Falcon 9 on steroids.

My bad, it was a mini-sub, but, yeah, I can see that working better than this stainless steel boondoggle the upper stage is becoming.