How would conspiracy theorists design the Apollo Program?

[raven]

Heh.

In my experience Hoax Proponents will do anything to avoid creating any sort of narrative around how the hoax was perpetrated. Because almost as soon as they do their narrative contradicts itself or in some other ways runs into absurdity.

Our old mate Turbonium, for example, simply admitted to having absolutely no idea how the hoax was perpetrated. It soon turned into a game of "NASA can do anything to perpetrate the hoax; but actually landing astronauts on the Moon and safely returning them to Earth is just impossible".

And there's the rub. It would simply be many times more difficult and many, many times more expensive to hoax the Apollo program; its rather like Titantic.

In 1912, RMS Titanic cost US$7.5 million to build; in 1997 adjusted dollars, that is US$120 million, but James Cameron's 1997 film which essentially "faked" the sinking of the Titanic, cost US$200 million to make.... so its cheaper to build a Titanic, sail it out of Southampton and run it into a iceberg to sink it than it than it is to fake doing so with movie FX.

But most importantly, James Cameron doesn't have to keep up the pretence. Not only would it cost an enormous amount of money to fake the Apollo Landings, those costs would be ongoing, as there would be close to half a million people you need to keep paying off to stay quiet for 40 plus years.

And James Cameron only had to build half a ship! (they just flipped the shots, using  mirrored costumes when needed, for shots meant to be on the other side of the ship)

[PUshift]

Didn't von Braun originally start out with an enormous single stage rocket as a concept?

He did and this was well described in "How Apollo flew to the moon"
The guy responsible for the solution of this disastrous concept was John Houbolt. The Story is also mentioned in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Houbolt

[gillianren]

Re: the narrative, Gillian has a standard question about that which she asks newly-arrived HBs.  I don't recall the wording, but it is simple and brilliant.

Oh, er, thank you!  The only one that comes to mind is "What would it take to convince you the Apollo missions were real?"  If they can't answer that question, the answer is probably "I can't be convinced."

[Kiwi]

...So what would the Apollo program look like if designed conspiracy theorist?

The Saturn-v would be a giant single stage rocket as tall as the Empire State building. The LM and CM shielding needs to be made out of meter thick sheets of lead. Of course they will shoot right for the moon, through the most intense part of the Van Allen radiation belt. The LM is actually also a giant rocket, because you need to lift off the moon right back to earth!

Hasselblad camera's have to be put in a lead box, because Ekatchrome film was clearly sensitive to ultraviolet light and high energy particles. (Also I can't wait to shoot Ektachrome 35mm film when it becomes available again in 2017).

The rover has inflated tires made out of several inches of thick rubber to protect from the -200 +200 Celsius degrees temperature changes.

The rover TV camera has a massive antenna that always has to be pointed to the Earth, otherwise the universe will explode.

The suits don't recycle oxygen, and thus have to carry large amounts of gaseous oxygen.

There couldn't be any video taken near ground level of the first step on the moon, because someone other than the astronaut has to get out onto the moon first to operate the video camera. 

The Apollo Guidance Computer has to be replaced with a far bigger and heavier computer because a modern lunar-landing simulation program requires many more megabytes of memory than the AGC ever had.

The lunar module must be sheathed in thick sheets of stainless steel, because all that building paper, foil and sticky tape just didn't look right.

The rocket in the LM's descent stage must be designed to blast some lunar dust onto the footpads so that they look authentic.

The fuel in the ascent stage must burn with a very bright flame and produce clouds of billowing smoke so that it looks real in the video.

[Allan F]

And they had to know exactly where they landed, so they could shoot up blind and hit the CSM without even looking for it.

[smartcooky]

The Apollo Guidance Computer has to be replaced with a far bigger and heavier computer because a modern lunar-landing simulation program requires many more megabytes of memory than the AGC ever had.

To the uninitiated, that almost sounds plausible, except for that fact that the computer and software for controlling a flight simulator is far more sophisticated and complex than that of the aircraft it is simulating.

[Kiwi]

To the uninitiated, that almost sounds plausible, except for that fact that the computer and software for controlling a flight simulator is far more sophisticated and complex than that of the aircraft it is simulating.

I've been searching through my old documents with no luck to see if I could find the original post about simulating a lunar landing, but from one later post I think it may have been on New Zealand's Trade Me Message Board about 2004 to 2007.

A computer "expert" came into a thread about the moon-landings and said that the AGC couldn't have possibly landed the lunar module because it had only kilobytes of memory, whereas it took many megabytes of memory for a lunar-landing simulation program to work.

This blew me away and made me laugh out loud, so posted something like, "Jeez, mate, they were actually at the moon, so all they needed to do was look out the window to see it, and the computer didn't have to simulate a bloody thing!

"All it had to do was take information from the landing radar and other instruments and display them in meaningful terms so the Lunar Module Pilot could read them out to the Commander, who had to keep his eyes on the lunar surface and not the computer. The information included things like altitude, rate of descent, horizontal velocity, a few other less important items, and now-and-then, how much fuel was left in the tanks."

Here are some other posts of mine around that time at Trade Me, where I'm dbb:

33. Twincam1 -- No 25. What's your point? Do you think the Apollo computers were not capable of the tasks required of them? Do you know how much computing power was required? IIRC, the lunar module computer had about 75kb of memory. Here's some info about it:

The guidance computer is a general-purpose digital machine with a basic word length, in parallel operations, of 15 bits with an added bit for parity checks. The instruction code includes subroutines for double and triple operations. Memory cycle time is 11.7 microseconds with a single addition time of 23.4 microseconds. The 'core rope', used for the fixed memory, has a capacity of about 36,864 words with an erasable memory (of ferrite core planes) of 2,048 words. The processor is formed from integrated circuits (ICs). The total computer weight is 29.5 kg.

dbb (5) 12:13 am, 25 Jul 2004


34. Continued... The fixed memory contains programmes, routines, constants, star and landmark co-ordinates and other pertinent data. The erasable memory acts as an intermediate store for results of computations, auxiliary programme information, and variable data supplied by the G&N and other systems of the spacecraft.

You can find out more at
http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/compessay.htm

dbb (5) 12:14 am, 25 Jul 2004

The poster I was answering, Twincam1, was one of the very intelligent, open-minded kind of hoax-believers:

35. If you wanna believe the yanks drivel, cool.

twincam1 (2) 12:21 am, 25 Jul 2004


36. Your racial prejudice helps us debate rationally whether or not the lunar landings occurred?

dbb (5) 12:33 am, 25 Jul 2004

33. The Apollo Onboard Computers -- Here's a very good article about them: http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

People who REALLY know computers and study the article don't doubt that the computers could have done the job we're told they could. On the other hand, dopes tell us how much RAM etc. it takes to operate a flight simulator, while forgetting that the real computer didn't simulate ANYTHING. It just measured the environment and controlled a few things. It wasn't even completely necessary -- the astronauts could have operated the spacecraft without it -- it just made life easier for them.

dbb (15) 3:59 am, 29 Aug 2007

[smartcooky]

Back in the mid-1970's, I had an HP25 programmable calculator. It had only 49 available program steps (with no ability to use subroutines) and only sixteen 56 bit registers; that is less than 1K bits of RAM so a far less powerful machine than the AGC, yet it used to run a program for a lunar landing simulator. which IIRC, used most of those 49 program steps.

[Glom]

To the uninitiated, that almost sounds plausible, except for that fact that the computer and software for controlling a flight simulator is far more sophisticated and complex than that of the aircraft it is simulating.

I've been searching through my old documents with no luck to see if I could find the original post about simulating a lunar landing, but from one later post I think it may have been on New Zealand's Trade Me Message Board about 2004 to 2007.

A computer "expert" came into a thread about the moon-landings and said that the AGC couldn't have possibly landed the lunar module because it had only kilobytes of memory, whereas it took many megabytes of memory for a lunar-landing simulation program to work.

This blew me away and made me laugh out loud, so posted something like, "Jeez, mate, they were actually at the moon, so all they needed to do was look out the window to see it, and the computer didn't have to simulate a bloody thing!

"All it had to do was take information from the landing radar and other instruments and display them in meaningful terms so the Lunar Module Pilot could read them out to the Commander, who had to keep his eyes on the lunar surface and not the computer. The information included things like altitude, rate of descent, horizontal velocity, a few other less important items, and now-and-then, how much fuel was left in the tanks."

Here are some other posts of mine around that time at Trade Me, where I'm dbb:

33. Twincam1 -- No 25. What's your point? Do you think the Apollo computers were not capable of the tasks required of them? Do you know how much computing power was required? IIRC, the lunar module computer had about 75kb of memory. Here's some info about it:

The guidance computer is a general-purpose digital machine with a basic word length, in parallel operations, of 15 bits with an added bit for parity checks. The instruction code includes subroutines for double and triple operations. Memory cycle time is 11.7 microseconds with a single addition time of 23.4 microseconds. The 'core rope', used for the fixed memory, has a capacity of about 36,864 words with an erasable memory (of ferrite core planes) of 2,048 words. The processor is formed from integrated circuits (ICs). The total computer weight is 29.5 kg.

dbb (5) 12:13 am, 25 Jul 2004


34. Continued... The fixed memory contains programmes, routines, constants, star and landmark co-ordinates and other pertinent data. The erasable memory acts as an intermediate store for results of computations, auxiliary programme information, and variable data supplied by the G&N and other systems of the spacecraft.

You can find out more at
http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/compessay.htm

dbb (5) 12:14 am, 25 Jul 2004

The poster I was answering, Twincam1, was one of the very intelligent, open-minded kind of hoax-believers:

35. If you wanna believe the yanks drivel, cool.

twincam1 (2) 12:21 am, 25 Jul 2004


36. Your racial prejudice helps us debate rationally whether or not the lunar landings occurred?

dbb (5) 12:33 am, 25 Jul 2004

33. The Apollo Onboard Computers -- Here's a very good article about them: http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

People who REALLY know computers and study the article don't doubt that the computers could have done the job we're told they could. On the other hand, dopes tell us how much RAM etc. it takes to operate a flight simulator, while forgetting that the real computer didn't simulate ANYTHING. It just measured the environment and controlled a few things. It wasn't even completely necessary -- the astronauts could have operated the spacecraft without it -- it just made life easier for them.

dbb (15) 3:59 am, 29 Aug 2007

Was that guy Nasascam? Is he still around?

[Count Zero]

I recall someone trying the requirements-to-run-a-sim vs. AGC argument on me a while ago.  I pointed to the popular flight sim (at the time) Red Baron II and asked him how much computing power an actual Fokker Triplane used.  For some reason he neither answered the question nor pursued the argument.

[bknight]

Back in the mid-1970's, I had an HP25 programmable calculator. It had only 49 available program steps (with no ability to use subroutines) and only sixteen 56 bit registers; that is less than 1K bits of RAM so a far less powerful machine than the AGC, yet it used to run a program for a lunar landing simulator. which IIRC, used most of those 49 program steps.

I have a model at home(I can't remember the model number) but it used those magnetic strips to read/write programs and IIRC it was a maximum of 64 or 128 steps.  Similar to your HP25.

[smartcooky]

I recall someone trying the requirements-to-run-a-sim vs. AGC argument on me a while ago.  I pointed to the popular flight sim (at the time) Red Baron II and asked him how much computing power an actual Fokker Triplane used.  For some reason he neither answered the question nor pursued the argument.

Hah! That's funny!

Back in the mid-1970's, I had an HP25 programmable calculator. It had only 49 available program steps (with no ability to use subroutines) and only sixteen 56 bit registers; that is less than 1K bits of RAM so a far less powerful machine than the AGC, yet it used to run a program for a lunar landing simulator. which IIRC, used most of those 49 program steps.

I have a model at home(I can't remember the model number) but it used those magnetic strips to read/write programs and IIRC it was a maximum of 64 or 128 steps.  Similar to your HP25.

That will probably be an HP65. The HP25 was marketed as a cheaper alternative to the HP65, and not including the magnetic reader was one of the cost saving measures.

I think mine must have been an HP25C because it had continuous memory , i.e. it didn't lose the program when switched off. 

[ka9q]

Don't forget that the AGC and especially the AGS had utterly primitive user interfaces. Aldrin's call "413 is in" just after landing referred to his manually poking the value "1" into memory location 413 of the AGS to tell it that it had landed, so don't fire any RCS thrusters should it get control.

User interfaces are by far the dominant and most complex part of most modern computer programs.

[Glom]

You mean not having translucent menu bars and windows reduces memory needed?

[apollo16uvc]

Don't forget that the AGC and especially the AGS had utterly primitive user interfaces. Aldrin's call "413 is in" just after landing referred to his manually poking the value "1" into memory location 413 of the AGS to tell it that it had landed, so don't fire any RCS thrusters should it get control.

User interfaces are by far the dominant and most complex part of most modern computer programs.

Didn't it use radar and four switches on the landing pads to know when It has landed?