That now helps explain why you and others are so suspicious and paranoid.
Having failed to bluff your way through the technical argument, it appears you're now resorting to poisoning the well.
It does take a lot of patience dealing with people like myself.
Answering the technical questions doesn't take much patience. What takes patience is dealing with all the social engineering nonsense that "people like yourself" can't seem to avoid injecting into the debate. I can deal with people who simply don't know the material. Early in my career I also taught college. I have the skills to lay out difficult concepts in a way that helps people understand them. It's harder to deal with the bluff, bluster, and outright dishonesty. That's why I tell people up front simply to be honest, and that this will net them a better experience even if no one ends up convincing anyone else. You did not take our advice. You insisted on playing rhetorical games, hence you were treated appropriately.
...it is very hard defending something with facts that has a dearth of supporting evidence.
Apollo has a
mountain of supporting evidence.
Sounds reasonable enough but you offer no supporting evidence.
Yeah, you tried shifting the burden of proof like this before.
You offered
zero argument, evidence, documentation, or analysis that the SM RCS jets were seriously endangered during the ascent. You just plopped your assumption down on the table and demanded we take it at face value as evidence of a suspicious situation. Before one tries to argue that the lack of the expected solution to some problem is suspicious, you have to demonstrated that there was even a problem to be solved. You didn't do that. You just begged that question. I even prodded you to look at your argument a little more closely by asking you whether you had done any computations
etc. to inform your suspicion. I was met with stony silence.
I get that you want everyone else to play by the same Internet Warrior rules, frantically Googling for every detail and footnoting every assertion with links. That's not how actual expertise works in most cases, so you won't undermine anyone's credibility by suggesting they aren't following your playbook.
You based your SM RCS argument principally on two premises, both of which were assumptions you made. First, you assumed there would be a powerful slipstream. That is a reasonable layman's assumption, so my argument on that point was not that you were stupid or nefarious. I simply pointed out a well-known property of aerodynamics that may not be immediately apparent to the layman. "Boundary layer separation" is not a super-secret property of fluid flow held in some CIA vault, nor is it something that applies only to Apollo or to rockets. In fact, one can't get very far into the study of fluid flow without encountering the topic of flow separation. You could simply have done a basic Google search on the words I used in the post, whereupon it would have been quite apparent that this is a common property I'm referring to, one that someone discussing fluid flow should already know and bring to the table. Not only did you fail to investigate it when it was brought to your attention, you doubled down on your misinformation. The conscientious student would have recognized that there was something he was expected to have known before issuing his challenge. So no, you don't get to parlay your incompetence on the subject of fluid flow into something I'm obliged to produce for you as "supporting evidence." And in any case, I told you that this phenomenon is easily seen by looking at photographs of objects flying at transonic speeds, including the Saturn V. You were given plenty of information that you could have used to revisit your erroneous assumption using any means at your disposal.
The other principal premise was that the jets themselves were delicate enough to be damaged by substantial laminar flow. Again,
you provided zero detail or evidence or argument to substantiate this suspicion. You were smart enough to note the altitude of max Q. Did it occur to you to look up the dimensions of the RCS jets, compute the aspect area, find the mass density of air at that altitude, reckon the velocity of the Saturn V at that point in the flight, and compute the drag? With the drag force in hand, did it occur to you to compare that to the mechanical structure that fastened the jets to the SM frame? Or, if your concern was damage to internal components, did you research the
pitot effect, which is the guiding principal for flow into a constricted channel? Did you do
any of this before concluding your assumptions were reasonable? No, you did none of that. And once again, when you were told about the topics you had ignored in order to form your assumptions, you just doubled down again on your "feelings."
Certainly I know how to do all that. I can rattle off the equations and models off the top of my head because this is what I do for a living. Sure, if pressed I can probably point you to various textbooks on aerodynamics and go look up the formulas for you so that you'll have the page number, but I don't habitually do that because I don't have to in order to practice the field. That's the kind of answer you get when you ask a practicing engineer. Do you demand that your dentist show you all the elementary dentistry textbooks and all the clinical and research papers for every procedure he's going to perform on you? Or do you just have the experience that you expect when you consult an expert?
Where are all the supporting documents for the aerodynamics of the SM RCS under laminar flow? Do they exist? Can I produce them, point to them, or reference them? No, because the right answer is that the SM jets were never in the laminar flow. Your second assumption is rendered moot by your first. Certainly I can find scale drawings of the precise model of Marquardt motor that was fitted to the SM. I did, just the other day. And I know what materials it's made of. I can certainly do a mechanical design analysis, but why? It would be an academic exercise. Why would we develop or look for "supporting evidence" for a condition that didn't arise?
And why would I be obliged do that to provide answers to idle, ill-conceived assumptions? It's been said that arguments made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You provided no evidence whatsoever that your concern for the SM RCS was anything more than idle. You were given a fully-reasoned, if not fully-documented, answer, which you simply discarded. You received more than you earned, and now you're whining about it.
But that is problem with Apollo supporters, there is little supporting evidence to back their assertions. Yes there are many generalized docs but little technical info on the actual workings of many things.
That's not my experience, nor is it the experience of the hundreds -- if not thousands -- of interested amateurs who manage to find just about any technical detail on Apollo they want. On YouTube there's a guy covering the efforts of a bunch of amateurs to actually rebuild the Apollo guidance computer. A private collector bought a bunch of Apollo junk at auction and later realized that an AGC was part of it. There's a team of old-duffer electrical engineers and young whipper-snappers who are (last I checked) within a hair's breadth of powering it up and using it. And as part of their efforts, they're looking at the original circuit diagrams and mechanical drawings, and comparing it against the as-built hardware. The only thing they don't have documentation for is the core-rope simulator, which was used for ground testing. It was a cobbled-up thing that never needed to be documented.
Then there's also Scott Sullivan, a professional engineer who has managed to assemble enough of the mechanical drawings of the spacecraft to produce CAD models of the LM and CSM right down to the nut-and-bolt level.
No, I'm rejecting this claim on its face. The amount and degree of detail in Apollo technical documentation that is available to the conscientious researcher boggles the mind. You may be unaware of it, or unable to place it in the correct context. But you don't get to convert those shortcomings on your part to suspicious behavior in the thing you (refuse to) study. The world isn't suspicious just because you don't want to delve into it.
The Lunar Module is perhaps the greatest flying machine humanity has ever witnessed, never seen before, never seen since.
Is that your person opinion, or do you know for a fact that this is how the aerospace industry views it? See, we're very familiar with the line of reasoning where someone sets an arbitrary (and ridiculously high) standard simply to show that it somehow wasn't met. That's a "straw man" argument.
"Greatest flying machine" is a broad, non-specific claim. It was certainly unlike any previous flying machine in many respects. But that doesn't make it great. It was never seen before because the steps leading to the only problem such a machine could solve had never been taken. There's no incentive to build a machine that can land a man on the Moon until you can get someone close enough to the Moon to try. It was never seen after because it has no general applicability, and the one task it was designed to accomplish was something no one want to shell out the money to do anymore.
...my very own child has asked, why are we not using that drone to go to Hawaii for Spring break now? Given it is 50 years later, it is an obvious and very simple question that I have seen no Apollo supporter adequately answer.
No, it's a stupid question.
Why, in part, because there is no supporting technical documentation for this technical marvel.
Your claim that there is "no supporting technical documentation" is simply not true. Hobbyists have been able to recreate virtually every aspect of it, based on the publicly available information. I've even assisted in the actual restoration of an actual flight-qualified lunar module, and there was no problem obtaining information.
...by suggesting they lost the technology and it takes a long time to get it back.
No, "lost the technology" is again too vague. The technology that is
embodied in the lunar module didn't spring out of nowhere and go nowhere. The technology to
build them is another matter. Building
specific vehicles requires specific tools built by the manufacturer and specific skills possessed by the manufacturer's employees. After about four years of not building those vehicles, the people who were once involved with it will have forgotten how to build it. Usually within a shorter period, the manufacturer will have torn down and reclaimed the tooling. The ability to
build an aerospace artifact is not the same thing as knowing how it was designed and operated, and being able to adapt components of it from and for other uses. If you stop building something and need to start building it again some number of years later, the startup cost is very close to the original tooling and startup cost. This is why we have keepalive projects in aerospace. If you knew anything about the field, this wouldn't surprise you.
As to whether your source is more qualified than anyone in this forum, I'll posit that Dr. Ed Mitchell, the Apollo 14 CMP, considered me an expert on his missions and referred other people to me to have their technical questions answered. I do not accept your evaluation of the skills or knowledge of anyone else in this forum.
Uh? What? It took 6-7 years with 60's technology to go from scratch to have a manned drone winging around the moon at 5000 feet per second.
They didn't go "from scratch." There's no such thing as a "manned drone." A drone by definition is unmanned. And if you're flying in a vacuum, it doesn't matter whether you're flying at 5 fps or 50,000. You're putting lots of lipstick on your straw man, but that doesn't make your impressions or interpretations have any more evidentiary value than before.
The structure of the lunar module, for example, was designed and fabricated according to the methods commonly used for ordinary airframes. The innovation was a special approach to fabricating skin-and-stringer modules as integral parts, saving weight. The environmental system wasn't anything they didn't already know how to make, but getting it down to the right mass and size took a lot of ingenuity. The value to Grumman in building the lunar module wasn't tied up in the fact that they now had a lunar module. The value was in the techniques and tricks they developed along the way. Every project forces you to develop new, competitive, and innovative technology. Some of it is particular to that project. Others may transfer.
And now, 50 years later?
Has there been, at any time in the past 50 years, the need to have a manned lunar landing vehicle? I look around and see the remarkable things being done in aerospace, both in the private and public sector. These all have roots in Apollo. You're trying to tell us that because we don't fly descendants of Apollo lunar modules to and from work, nothing of it survived and that this is suspicious. That's incredibly naive.
This should give pause to everyone.
No, because everyone here can see all the silly hidden assumptions you're piling into this travesty of a line of reasoning. They've heard them all before. You want to claim as victory the notion that no one has answered these questions. We take it as victory that no one has been able to defend any of the ignorant assumptions behind them. You ask, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" and now you're trying to make something out of the fact that people aren't dumb enough to actually answer you.
This supposed technology was not only in the hands of NASA but many commercial contractors.
None of whom has any use for a manned lunar module. However, some of the techniques that Grumman developed for manufacturing the LM, such as chemical milling for skin-and-stringer panels, were used for a while in their other projects such as the F-14 Tomcat. Even that, however, has been supplanted by even newer techniques. To make an Apollo-era LM today would require rebuilding decades-old chem-milling machines and learning again how to operate them. That's not any easier than designing and building a new one from scratch using today's knowledge, materials, and techniques. When we say "the technology was lost," in some cases we are saying there was no longer any use for it.
One would think our world would look a whole lot different today.
I contend our world
does look different today because of Apollo. Tell us how it would have looked without Apollo, and how you know that. And name one other customer besides NASA for an Apollo lunar module, for the past 50 years. Just one.
It is a crying shame that this technology has not been implemented in this world.
There is no market for an Apollo manned lunar lander, and no real market for anything much like it. However, I think the F-14 Tomcat would have looked different (or at least built differently) without the lessons its design team learned while building the Apollo lunar module. Your argument is a straw man.
It is just to point out that many here demand supporting proofs from others yet show little supporting evidence for their own suppositions.
When you can demonstrate your competence, as I have mine, you will have earned the benefit of the doubt. When your arguments are instead demonstrated to be merely ignorant supposition, you must supplement them with something before demanding they be taken seriously. You provided no supporting documentation for anything you claimed. The memo you have belatedly produced does not say what you claimed it said. Why is it someone else's duty to document answers to undocumented questions? You were asked first for documents because you made your claims first. If your claims fail for lack of substance, there is no need for anyone else to produce anything.
Further, it's one thing to point to the kind of documentation that exists and note that it's complete and consistent with the efforts to design and build something. That's not to say there's a list of supporting evidence somewhere explicitly refuting the naive claims everyone's going to come up with. Expecting your ignorance to be directly, specifically rebutted by some external document is yet another straw man. That's why we have experts, people who can apply the knowledge of the field to specific new questions.
