...and a degreed Mechanical Engineer.
Nope.
I've been a practicing engineer for 30 years, and taught it for a few. There are other practicing engineers who participate in this forum, and who will no doubt arrive shortly. Your post below reveals common layman's mistakes.
I reject entirely the claim that you have any formal engineering education or experience, so if your plan is to bluster your way past whom you think are unsuspecting folk, you are in for a surprise.
Why does the earth look so small in the background of photographs on the moon.
Basic optics. You should have learned that as an engineer, in first-year engineering physics.
The earth should be much larger.
Exactly how large? You say you're an engineer. So am I. Thus I require quantitative arguments to be supported with computations or detailed estimates. You provide neither. Given the easily-discovered optics parameters of the Apollo cameras, lenses, and films, there is no excuse for your not having done this.
How did the astronauts keep cooled and heated in extreme temperatures (+/- 200F).
What object or substance exactly do you claim fluctuated between these temperatures? You display a layman's cartoonish understanding of the space environment.
Preventing heat transfer via convection and conduction is a matter of thermal insulation. Apollo space suits provide several dozen thicknesses of alternating materials resulting in practically zero thermal conduction across the boundary. The problem then becomes rejection of metabolic heat. Preventing heat transfer by radiation is a matter of controlling the optical properties , which you would have learned in first-year thermal design, had you really obtained an engineering degree. The outer layer of the Apollo space suit had a reflectivity in the appropriate wavelengths of around 0.8. Given a solar influx of approximately 1,300 W m
-2, you should be able to compute the absorption and put some actual numbers to your claims.
Could 1960's technology operated in this environment?
Why not? The designs are publicly available, as well as examples of them. We use the same technology today, by the way. It hasn't been improved upon much since the 1960s because it works well enough.
I've seen a picture of the heat transfer system supposedly used...
But, as a purported engineer, you didn't study the designs to determine how it was intended to work?
...but it still needed a power supply.
It had one, in the form of a battery that was changed between EVAs. It is a common layman's mistake to believe the thermal control system required considerable electrical power to operate. This is sometimes true in vapor-cycle systems that require compressors, but not for sublimation systems. The heat transfer takes space via normal sublimation. The only power required is that to pump the sublimant, and to circulate air.
3) How did the astronauts fit through a 22" docking hatch with their backpacks on when hooking back with the command module?
They didn't. You clearly have not researched the Apollo mission profile. Transfers between the LM and CM through the docking tunnel were when the entire stack was pressurized and they could move about it in suits. Contingency transfers between the LM and CM, should docking prove elusive, were via the 32-inch forward hatch on the LM. Operations in suits within each spacecraft were when the suits were connected to the environmental controls via hoses.
The only time the astronauts were expected to wear the PLSS/OPS assembly in a spacecraft was in the LM just prior to and after EVA.
[quote[How could NASA send a rocket to the moon given the variables (as told to us by science books) of the earth's rotation (1,000 mph), the earths rotation around the sun (65,000 mph), and the moon's rotation about the earth using technology no powerful than a pocket calculator.[/quote]
How much computing power is required? You make no quantitative argument or supply any numbers. You simply insinuate that space travel is an exercise requiring substantial onboard computing power, and suggest that because it wasn't provided, it can't be possible. What kind of an engineer are you? You can't make even the simplest case in an engineering context.
Why are you giving rotation rates in units of scalar velocity?
To answer your question, most of the math was done ahead of time using mainframe computers and the Dept. of Energy's CDC 6600 supercomputer (roughly equivalent to a 1990s Pentium). For support during the missions, these preliminary orbital computations were adjusted by IBM mainframes in NASA computing centers and transmitted by radio to the onboard computer.
But the real problem is that you have a comical layman's understanding of what is needed, on an ongoing basis, for flying in space.
How did all consumables including fuel (and a lunar rover) needed for a 7 day trip for 3 men fit in the lunar module?
The LRV folded up and was strapped to the forward left quadrant of the LM descent stage. There is extensive documentation for how this was done, and video of it being deployed.
According to NASA the LM was height was 22'-11" (with legs extended) and 31 ft diameter (across extended landing gear) so LM cargo/living area was smaller.
None of the consumables were kept inside the habitable volume. Descent fuel was in two of the quadrants of the LM descent stage. RCS and APS fuel was kept in the two bulbous projections on either side of the LM cabin. Also, you account only for the LM, which was designed only to keep two men alive for two days (H-type) or 3-4 days (J-type). You seem conspicuously unaware that consumables for the rest of the mission were provided by the service module -- again, storage kept outside the habitable volumes.
What kind of camera technology could withstand +/-200 F heat and develop film so perfectly clear (and film withstand radiation twice through the Van Allen belts)?
The Hasselblad cameras were very sturdy and substantial. Their heat conduction paths were carefully considered, especially in the 70mm longroll magazines. The film base was Kodak's ESTAR, made of polyester and developed specifically for high-altitude and space environments. Its melting point is around 400 C. It was extensively tested during Gemini.
You provide no radiation figures for the trip
around the Van Allen belts. In any case, the film magazines were kept inside spacecraft structure and the film was thus adequately shielded.
How did the astronauts poop and pee during their 7 day excursion to and from the moon? Were they able to get out of their suits at all?
Yes. The astronauts spent very little time in their space suits, as each spacecraft had a habitable environment. Further, all these details of life aboard the Apollo spacecraft are the subject of many books, many pre- and post-mission publications by NASA and their contractors, and frankly common knowledge among the engineering community.
You clearly don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.
