A FAIR DEBATE

[twik]

OK, I'll bite - let's take one topic only. Let's choose the trajectory of Apollo 11.

Your main objection seems to be that it was a figure 8. Why, exactly, is that less believable than any other possible trajectory? Because to me, it seems a quite intuitively logical method of switching from one gravitation center to another.

Please show your calculations for this. I'm sure your Grade 9 math will be adequate to do so.

[gillianren]

I think to avoid confusion we should probably debate only one CLAIM at a time.

That certainly makes a lot more sense, yes. 

I have no problem with ignorance per se, and two of my dearest friends are high school dropouts.  One of them is even also dyslexic, meaning his spelling and grammar can be all over the place.  But that's why he respects my education (and, you know, not-dyslexia); he knows that I have a skill that he doesn't, and he values it.  Why should we waste our time with someone who doesn't value what we have to offer?

[Bob B.]

3. The APOLLO 11 trajectories are completely inaccurate(CRAZY EIGHT)

There is no such thing as a "crazy eight" trajectory.  All spacecraft follow trajectories that are one of four conic sections - circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola.  The circle and parabola are special cases that are virtually nonexistent in practice, thus we are left with elliptical and hyperbolic orbits.  An elliptical orbit occurs when the spacecraft is traveling at a velocity below that necessary to escape the gravity of the body about which it is orbiting.  Examples include the Moon's orbit around Earth and Earth's orbit around the Sun.  A hyperbolic orbit occurs when a spacecraft is traveling at a velocity exceeding escape velocity.  In this case the spacecraft will follow a curved path past the planet (or moon) and then fly off into space, not to return.

The trajectory flown by the Apollo spacecraft started out as an Earth-centric elliptical orbit with an apogee (the part of the orbit farthest from Earth) that was about 1.5 times the Earth-Moon distance.  A spacecraft in such an orbit will reach the distance of the Moon in about three days.  If the orbit was not timed to encounter the Moon when it reached the appropriate distance, the spacecraft would have continued in its elliptical orbit.  However, the orbit was timed so that when the spacecraft neared the Moon's orbit, the Moon was approaching so that it and the spacecraft arrived at the same location in space at the same time.  As the spacecraft drew close to the Moon, the Moon's gravity began to dominate over Earth gravity, thus the spacecraft transitioned from an Earth-centric elliptical orbit to a Moon-centric hyperbolic orbit.  The Moon-centric hyperbolic orbit took the spacecraft on a path that flew behind the Moon, as observed from Earth.

On a normal mission, the spacecraft would fire its engine when it reached its closest distance to the Moon on the far side from Earth.  This would slow the spacecraft to below lunar escape velocity so that the orbit would transition from Moon-centric hyperbolic to Moon-centric elliptical.  However, if the engine wasn't fired, the spacecraft would continue on its hyperbolic trajectory and fly past the Moon, eventually to escape its gravity.  Had the spacecraft entered orbit, to leave orbit it would again fire its engine, but this time to speed up.  Adding velocity would cause the Moon-centric elliptical orbit to transition back to Moon-centric hyperbolic.  As the spacecraft flew away from the Moon, Earth gravity again began to dominate over lunar gravity.  As this occurred, the spacecraft trajectory transitioned from Moon-centric hyperbolic back to Earth-centric elliptical.  The spacecraft was now on the inbound part of its elliptical orbit heading back to Earth.

What you consider to be a "figure 8" trajectory is actually three different trajectories that are patched together.  The spacecraft simply transitions from one to the next.

[cjameshuff]

2. The APOLLO 11 on-board computer was not sufficient to preform the tasks that the record says it did.

Another guy with a CS degree here. Worse, not only have I been educated, I program embedded systems of similar capabilities to the Apollo computer professionally and for personal pleasure.

So, I would also be interested in knowing what specific tasks the record says the Apollo AGC performed that could not be done by the hardware. There's copious amounts of documentation available about the hardware, enough for various people to have built simulators and actual physical replicas of the machine, as well as source code listings for the software, so you should be able to point out exactly what parts of the system fail to work as advertised.

3. The APOLLO 11 trajectories are completely inaccurate(CRAZY EIGHT)

What specifically is inaccurate about it?

[ka9q]

3. The APOLLO 11 trajectories are completely inaccurate(CRAZY EIGHT)

What was 'crazy' or 'inaccurate' about it?

It is very easy to calculate the force of gravity. You just evaluate the formula GM₁M₂/r², where G is the gravitational constant, M₁ and M₂ are the masses of the planet and spacecraft, and r is the distance between their centers of mass. The force is always attractive along the line connecting their centers of mass.

When you have multiple masses you just compute this formula for each pair of masses to find the forces between them, and then find the vector sums of all those forces.

So all you have to do is to program a computer to repeatedly compute this formula for the forces of earth and lunar gravity on the spacecraft, and using Newton's basic laws of kinematics, show the trajectory the Apollo 11 spacecraft should have taken given the rockets that launched it. If that significantly differs from the reported trajectory, and your program checks out as correct, then you could make a claim that something was wrong with the NASA story.

Otherwise you're just waving your hands and spouting meaningless drivel about things you don't understand and don't want to understand.

[ApolloGnomon]

8. That the APOLLO 11  water cooled SpaceSuits were completly inadequate (THE ASTRONAUTS WOULD FREEZE)

Funny, I've been told just the opposite on another forum, that the astronauts would roast inside the suits.

I've done the heat flow calculations. There's actually a layer in the middle of the thermal/micrometeoroid garment that is totally unaffected by heat from the sun AND by the heat from the astronaut. Zero solar heat gets in, zero body heat gets out.

[ka9q]

I've done the heat flow calculations. There's actually a layer in the middle of the thermal/micrometeoroid garment that is totally unaffected by heat from the sun AND by the heat from the astronaut. Zero solar heat gets in, zero body heat gets out.

There was a small allowance for heat leakage through the suit; a few hundred BTU/hr (100 btu/hr = 29.3 watts) but the actual flow seems to have been well within that limit.

Insulating the suit solved the problem of getting too much heat from the sun or lunar surface or radiating too much heat into deep space, but it created another problem: getting rid of the astronaut's metabolic heat. Originally this was to be done by cooling the gas stream circulating through the suit, but at the higher workloads this would have required an unacceptably powerful blower. Hence the liquid cooling garmet, which could transfer more heat with less power and presumably less noise -- the same reasons that liquid coolers have become popular on high-end CPUs.

Getting rid of the heat thus removed from the suit isn't all that easy either. Apollo allowed water to evaporate into a gas that carried the heat away in water's heat of vaporization, but that was acceptable only because the lunar stay was so short. Even so, the cooling water tanks were the largest components in the PLSS. Although water has been discovered at the lunar poles, it will probably remain far too valuable a commodity to be used for something as simple as cooling so some other method will have to be found. A simple radiator won't work as it would have to be much too large to get rid of the heat load at below body temperature. One interesting scheme I saw in a NASA writeup used two different metal hydrides and shuttled hydrogen gas between them, essentially acting as a rechargeable heat pump. During an EVA, hydrogen flowing from one end of the device to the other would pull the heat out of the astronaut's suit and pump it to a high enough temperature for a radiator to be practical. You'd recharge the unit after each EVA by heating the radiator end to a very high temperature, e.g., with concentrated sunlight, driving the hydrogen back to the other compartment of the device.

[Luke Pemberton]

LETS DEBATE

OK. Let's take a line from your previous thread regarding the testing of Einstein's/Newton's theories. Specifically, what are your objections to those theories?

Let's debate...   

<edit: spelling mistake>

[Tedward]

I think someone is just using a giant wooden spoon.

[slang]

Having a fair debate on technical issues with someone who is completely uneducated, and refuses to learn, is like having a fair fight to the death between a Navy SEAL team and a newborn baby, still attached to the placenta.

[Jason Thompson]

I'd like to know what these people who demand a 'fair' debate actually think constitutes a fair debate. When they lack the technical knowledge necessary to examine the evidence properly, are they expecting us to avoid getting technical and essentially admit that yes, the world really does conform to their expectations and understanding?

[DataCable]

I'd like to know what these people who demand a 'fair' debate actually think constitutes a fair debate.

I'd like to know what he thinks constitutes a debate.  All he's doing is re-stating his initial assertions, with absolutely no supporting evidence, completely ignoring every response to those claims already given.  He seems to think if he just repeats himself enough times, we'll just give up and declare him right.

[Glom]

And so us is another thing he doesn't understand.

[JayUtah]

I'd like to know what these people who demand a 'fair' debate actually think constitutes a fair debate.

Having all the cards stacked in their favor, of course.  Hence the ground rules designed to limit their responsibility and the complete abrogation of any burden of proof.  Bart Sibrel even goes so far as to say that NASA has had 40 years to tell their story, so he doesn't need to spend any of his precious time addressing their rebuttals.

When they lack the technical knowledge necessary to examine the evidence properly, are they expecting us to avoid getting technical and essentially admit that yes, the world really does conform to their expectations and understanding?

In a word: yes.  Originally DAKDAK praised his critics for their credentials and understanding.  Now he's taken an entirely new position, claiming that we're so over-educated that we lack common sense and any practical grounding.  These, he says in contrast, are his strengths.  We, on the other hand, are so hopelessly "biased" by textbook education that we don't see the simple truth.  Therefore any attempt we make to introduce real science into the debate will be dismissed as "over-educated" sorcery.

Yes, I'm very well aware of how the Fundamentalist mind works when confronted with science.

[JayUtah]

I'd like to know what he thinks constitutes a debate.  All he's doing is re-stating his initial assertions, with absolutely no supporting evidence, completely ignoring every response to those claims already given.

Yes, most people with this background have absolutely no idea what it means to prove something, or what it takes to do it.  The Fundamentalist hears the clergy say "Thus saith the Lord," and so becomes accustomed to truth established solely by edict.  Therefore this type of person often really believes that just because the statement has been made, it has also been proven and is now suitable for belief.