A FAIR DEBATE

[gillianren]

In fact, here's what I say--there is no debate possible.  A debate is weighing two matters of opinion.  What we are weighing here is fact and the ignorant opinion that it's wrong.  Ignorance always loses.  You can couch it in the language of Christian Fundamentalism.  You can couch it in the language of New Age hippies.  You can couch it in any language you want, but the ignorant person does not have a reasonable expectation of convincing an educated person that their education was completely wrong, because the ignorant person doesn't have the knowledge to counter it.

[Bob B.]

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.

I've done all that and I'm happy to report the Apollo trajectories were neither crazy nor inaccurate.  The trajectories were a beautiful solution to the Apollo problem.

[scooter]

I have started many replies already and will answer your rebuttals quickly


LETS DEBATE

It's been 24 hours since you posted this, with three pages of comments/replies.
Are you planning on some follow-up here?

How can you say they didn't go to the Moon when you can't even comprehend the basics of how they claim they accomplished it? You can't determine the volume of a cone to determine how much it could hold. You call a trajectory to the Moon a "crazy eight" without understanding the orbital mechanics that went into it. You talk of astronauts freezing on the surface without acknowledging the vast amount of information available that discusses the challenges involved and the technical solutions.

You need to get on the stick and start defending your claims with hard data, something you've failed at quite miserably thus far.

[Chew]

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

This is cheesy basic lunar landing program I wrote years and years ago one night when I was bored on duty. It's only 2d (altitude and horizontal distance) and only had controls for pitch and throttle. I originally wrote it in GW-basic on a Zenith computer with a green screen CRT monitor. The other guys in my division played it so much when they had duty it fried black spots into the screen. The goal was to land as close as possible to zero horizontal distance. At first it gave you a score based on your distance from the target but after a little practice we all could land within .1 foot of the target, so I had to change the scoring system to include the amount of fuel remaining.

DAKDAK, copy and paste it into Notepad, save it, then look at the size. This is the bare bones version without a lot of the original error checking lines but you get the idea. There is a lot of extraneous characters, remarks, print commands (which, as you accidentally discovered through your improper reference to image size, was not applicable to Apollo), and long variable names so it could radically be reduced in size.

CLS
scale = .0003
q = 180 / 3.14159265#
massmt = 7567
fuel = 8873
'specific impulse 311 s
alt = 50000
hv = 5591.08
g0 = 5.53
pitch = 90
PRINT g, cf, cf - g

vv = 0
thr = 0
pitch = 90

100 a$ = INKEY$
IF a$ = "x" THEN END
IF a$ = "+" THEN thr = thr + .01
IF a$ = "-" THEN thr = thr - .01
IF thr <= .099 AND a$ = "+" THEN thr = .1
IF a$ = "/" THEN thr = 0
IF a$ = "*" THEN thr = 1
IF thr < .099 THEN thr = 0
IF thr > 1 THEN thr = 1
IF a$ = "8" THEN pitch = pitch - 1
IF a$ = "2" THEN pitch = pitch + 1
IF pitch > 180 THEN pitch = pitch - 360
IF pitch < -180 THEN pitch = 360 + pitch

dr = dr + hv * scale
haccel = SIN(pitch / q) * thr * 4477 * 32.2 / (massmt + fuel)
vaccel = -COS(pitch / q) * thr * 4477 * 32.2 / (massmt + fuel)
fuel = fuel - thr * 4477 / 311 * scale
hv = hv - haccel * scale
vv = vv - vaccel * scale + (cf - g) * scale
g = 5.53 * (5702400 / (5702400 + alt)) ^ 2
cf = hv ^ 2 / (5702400 + alt)

alt = alt + vv * scale
LOCATE 10, 10: PRINT USING "  ########   #######, ####.#  ####.#  ####   "; dr / 5280; alt; hv; vv; pitch; thr * 100

LOCATE 15, 40: PRINT USING "fuel ### "; fuel / 8873 * 100

GOTO 100

[cjameshuff]

The AGC was actually more sophisticated in many ways than many embedded systems used today. It actually had a tasking operating system, for example, rather than a simple executive loop performing a fixed sequence of operations. 4 kB RAM (2k 16-bit words, actually, with one bit set aside for parity) and 72 kB RAM (36k words) or program memory is pretty typical for small embedded processors now.

For another example...
http://dmitry.co/index.php?p=./04.Thoughts/08.%20uM0

An ARM emulator (specifically a Cortex-M0, a small 32-bit embedded processor) written for the AVR (an even smaller 8-bit embedded processor). Built to 3464 bytes total program memory on my system, and only 61 bytes of RAM required by the VM. Built for a modern 8-bit microcontroller with 8 KB program space and 256 bytes of RAM.

The AGC didn't even have a text interface...user interaction was via numeric commands and readouts, toggle switches, etc. It's not at all unbelievable that it did what was claimed...particularly since, as mentioned, there's enough information available about it to build replicas and simulators.

[peter eldergill]

I honestly don't understand why someone who only has 9th grade education could possibly begin to state why *any* proposed orbit around the moon could be wrong. I have a Master's degree in math and I have no idea why an orbit to the moon and back should be the way it is.

I've been to Bob's website to try to figure some of it out but I'm at a total loss. I would probably need hmmm.... to STUDY orbital mechanics to understand it.

BTW Bob your website is really cool. I showed it to my physics class a couple of years ago

Pete

[Glom]

It defies common sense apparently. To be honest I'm not sure why. I don't know what a common sense transfer orbit would look like.

[raven]

I didn't know people had built replica AGC, so thanks for inspiring me to Google that people; that's some fascinating stuff.

[Zakalwe]

I didn't know people had built replica AGC, so thanks for inspiring me to Google that people; that's some fascinating stuff.

What a fascinating project, and one heck of an achievement! http://agcreplica.outel.org/

@DAKDAK: Can you please have a look at the above link and let us know where the builder went wrong? His version does run the Colossus software, yet you maintain that the original AGC could not run software of this type.

And by the way, your failure to respond makes you look increasingly like a seagull poster....remember you were adamant that you were not one???

[ka9q]

Yes, several people have replicated the Apollo Guidance Computer and are running the actual software that ran on the real Apollo missions.

Yet there's at least one Apollo denier -- Youtube user 'hunchbacked' -- who continues to maintain that the AGC design was unworkable.

Most people agree that when reality conflicts with their expectations, then their expectations have to change. Hunchbacked actually seems to think that his expectations trump reality.

[Zakalwe]

Most people agree that when reality conflicts with their expectations, then their expectations have to change. Hunchbacked actually seems to think that his expectations trump reality.

The old "I've said it, so therefore it must be true" routine...
Or, increasingly, "I believe it, therefore it must be true" or "It's my faith, therefore it must be true"...the use of the words "belief" and "faith" makes them feel that that the view cannot be challenged or proven incorrect.

[Tanalia]

It defies common sense apparently. To be honest I'm not sure why. I don't know what a common sense transfer orbit would look like.

"Common sense" would just say go in a straight line -- none of these time-wasting crazy curves 

[Echnaton]

It defies common sense apparently. To be honest I'm not sure why. I don't know what a common sense transfer orbit would look like.

"Common sense" would just say go in a straight line -- none of these time-wasting crazy curves 

There is something to that which leaves me wondering, what is the fundamentalist doctrine of a theologically "correct" way to the moon?  In other words a path that does not violate the religious conceptions of how the universe is constructed.   While I prefer not to speculate on the state of mind of debaters on this forum, DakDak is not debating.  My knowledge of theologically based constructs of the universe is minimal, but I wonder if he is a biblical flat earther. 

[mako88sb]

Yes, several people have replicated the Apollo Guidance Computer and are running the actual software that ran on the real Apollo missions.

Yet there's at least one Apollo denier -- Youtube user 'hunchbacked' -- who continues to maintain that the AGC design was unworkable.

Most people agree that when reality conflicts with their expectations, then their expectations have to change. Hunchbacked actually seems to think that his expectations trump reality.

Yes, I made the mistake of looking at some of his videos a couple months ago. What a nutcase. "Intentional incoherence's" left by the Apollo engineers as clues to show how fake the program was. He's supposed to be a computer engineer on top of it all. Funny how the CIA was able to coerce hundreds of thousands of people into silence yet they let him post away without any consequences. 

[Zakalwe]

There is something to that which leaves me wondering, what is the fundamentalist doctrine of a theologically "correct" way to the moon?  In other words a path that does not violate the religious conceptions of how the universe is constructed.   While I prefer not to speculate on the state of mind of debaters on this forum, DakDak is not debating.  My knowledge of theologically based constructs of the universe is minimal, but I wonder if he is a biblical flat earther.

I reckon that they'd just jump in a rocket, point it straight up and pray that god gets them there.

If they were strictly going by the bible, then they'd be in trouble:
Psalm 104:5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Psalm 93:1 You put the world in place, and it will never be moved
I think that they'd struggle with orbital mechanics if the Earth is fixed...