Apollo 11 Lunar Lander Pre-Launch

[ka9q]

I would love to see, for instance, the technical workings/insights of how the PLSS/spacesuit functions, ie battery components, environment systems, breathing systems (a re-circulating CO-2 scrubber ?) and the how the suit remains a closed environment.

Ask and ye shall receive. Go to

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/main.html

and look for "suits and life support equipment". You might also ask an experienced diver what a "rebreather" is.

In many ways, a spacesuit life support system is actually much simpler than a diving rebreather. A spacesuit need operate only at one very low pressure where a pure O2 atmosphere is suitable. Diving rebreathers must operate over a wide pressure range; below about 9 meters, pure oxygen is highly toxic so a diluent gas (usually helium) is necessary. That means extra tanks, valves, control systems and gas concentration sensors. The diluent/O2 gas ratio must vary with depth to keep the partial pressure of oxygen within safe limits.

The Apollo PLSS removed CO2 just like a diving rebreather: with an alkali hydroxide. The only difference is that Apollo used lithium hydroxide to save weight; divers generally use sodalime, mainly calcium hydroxide with a little sodium hydroxide as catalyst.

All these aspects have huge applicable uses for us today. Just understanding how the materials/components worked to create that durable battery that was able to operate in 1969 would be invaluable.

Apollo/Saturn batteries used silver-zinc chemistry, which has long been an aerospace standard. Maybe, just maybe, you can speculate as to why they're not more widely used outside that industry. (Hint: look at the first word in the name.)

[Zakalwe]

Let's not follow the gish-gallop. Jr Knowing, please answer the simple maths question that's outstanding and let's go from there. The Moderator of this place is very forgiving but even he has limits.  Continued evasion and refusal to answer has in the past led others to being placed on moderation to prevent you forking the conversation off into multiple paths.

[Dalhousie]

Sooo...you are trying to tell us that space suits don't work?  The ISS astronauts would be interested to know that.

And cosmonauts, and Chinese astronauts, and the various universities and private companies building and testing space suit prototypes.

[JayUtah]

Let's not follow the gish-gallop.

I vote likewise.  Jr Knowing promised us he wouldn't do that again.  His sudden interest in space suits has more to do with his inability to reconcile any of his claims regarding the RCS, SM or LM, with the sources he himself has identified.

[Echnaton]

I would love to see....

Tell us please what you've done to realize this "love?" A whole bunch of Apollo related documentation is available today on the Internet for you to see. More than most of us could actually take the time to read in its entirety.  It doesn't appear that you have looked up, read and worked to comprehend all that much.

[Peter B]

Hi Jay,

Believe it or not, I just realized who you are and your background. That now helps explain why you and others are so suspicious and paranoid. Call me naïve, I did not know I was walking into a hornets nest. I didn't walk in here to stir things up. Literally, one of my buddies who is really into space travel (I mentioned before), suggested I checkout this website to bounce some of my ideas off. Believe me I am not here to get a rise out of jerking you guys around. I have to respect your dogged persistence over the years defending your position. It does take a lot of patience dealing with people like myself...

G'day JR Knowing

The funny thing about calling us suspicious and paranoid is that we aren't actually unthinking fan boys and cheer girls of NASA. We probably know more about the actual scandals that are part of the history of Apollo than you do (as well as the stunning achievements) such as:

- The decision to locate Mission Control in Houston;

- The process which determined that Mission Control would use IBM computers; and

- The process by which North American won the contract for the construction of the Apollo CSM.

I've had some experience with procurement in the Australian Public Service, and I know for a fact that if anyone today tried to run a procurement process the way those three processes were run, they'd cause political scandals of the first order.

Seriously, you could write a How-NOT-To Guide To Management which could be littered with examples of the bad decisions of NASA managers/management (some of which cost lives, obviously not all from Apollo).

But does this interest you? No! You're more disturbed by the idea of an astronaut walking over the wheel tracks of his rover, or puzzled that we don't use LM technology to fly to Hawaii. So please pardon us for being a little underwhelmed by your insights.

However, given the number of non-show-stoppers you've raised in the course of this thread, I think the time has come to ask the big question: Seeing as you've obviously decided that Apollo was faked, what do you think it was that made it necessary to fake it?

[AtomicDog]

We probably know more about the actual scandals that are part of the history of Apollo than you do (as well as the stunning achievements) such as:

- The decision to locate Mission Control in Houston;

- The process which determined that Mission Control would use IBM computers; and

- The process by which North American won the contract for the construction of the Apollo CSM.

Now I'm curious. Care to spin those real NASA scandals off into their separate thread? I'd like to learn more.

[Echnaton]

If that wasn't enough, here is only documented astronaut attempting to use a space suit in a vacuum chamber prior to the Apollo missions. He does a face plant within 10 seconds because of just one loose tube.

Please tell us how a failure in a testing procedure means that something couldn't be done?  Most would look at this and say, maybe they learned something from this.  Something like how to make better attachments for hoses so it doesn't happen in space? 

BTW, are you contending that there have been no astronaut space walks.  Neither the Soviets or NASA could do that in the sixties?  What about high altitude test pilots in the sixties? 

[raven]

If that wasn't enough, here is only documented astronaut attempting to use a space suit in a vacuum chamber prior to the Apollo missions. He does a face plant within 10 seconds because of just one loose tube.

Please tell us how a failure in a testing procedure means that something couldn't be done?  Most would look at this and say, maybe they learned something from this.  Something like how to make better attachments for hoses so it doesn't happen in space? 

BTW, are you contending that there have been no astronaut space walks.  Neither the Soviets or NASA could do that in the sixties?  What about high altitude test pilots in the sixties?

Heck, pressure suits (the ancestors of modern space suits) date  back to the mid 30's, thanks to a one-eyed aviation pioneer by the name of Wiley Post.

[onebigmonkey]

This is getting tedious now.

We've moved on to another variant on the "gee it kinda looks funny" theme, that of "I would be really scared on the moon, these guys aren't so it must be fake".

So far you have claimed that no documentation a particular subject exists only to reveal that actually you were aware of and claimed to have been through several sources of documentation. Now you're doing the same for the suits. You clearly know very little about their construction or the testing involved.

Here's a little thought experiment for you: you acknowledge the problems of maintaining a vacuum for testing. How do you reconcile that with the very obvious and large vacuum in which the astronauts were operating?

I'm not even going to dignify it with supplying you with links, you already have sources that give you the information you claim is absent. Go read a book.

[Jason Thompson]

This is getting tedious now.

We've moved on to another variant on the "gee it kinda looks funny" theme, that of "I would be really scared on the moon, these guys aren't so it must be fake".

Yes, it's the standard 'they're always one tiny ittle mishap from grisly death' argument. It's an absurd exaggeration of reaity. Yes, they were in an inherently hositle environment that would kill them in seconds, but for heavens' sake, the engineers designing and building the hardware knew that and designed and built the hardware appropriately to make these 'tiny mishaps' very unlikely and to mitigate their effects as far as possible. Hell, it was ust that kind of engineering that actually led to the death of the Apollo 1 crew, because a spacecraft hatch designed to fail safe in space sealed them in on the ground as the fire spread.

And that, in itself, supplies a clue as to how any pressure vessel, including a spacesuit, can remain sealed as long as it is pressurised by using the internal pressure to do it....

[molesworth]

This is getting tedious now.

We've moved on to another variant on the "gee it kinda looks funny" theme, that of "I would be really scared on the moon, these guys aren't so it must be fake".

Yes, it's the standard 'they're always one tiny ittle mishap from grisly death' argument. It's an absurd exaggeration of reaity. Yes, they were in an inherently hositle environment that would kill them in seconds, but for heavens' sake, the engineers designing and building the hardware knew that and designed and built the hardware appropriately to make these 'tiny mishaps' very unlikely and to mitigate their effects as far as possible.

There are quite a few other occupations where people involved are operating close to the boundaries, and where equipment failure or mis-operation could be fatal.  Things like saturation diving, mining, forestry, fishing etc. all have high rates of injury and death, but we don't see anyone claiming they're "fake jobs - nobody would ever take those risks".

The Apollo astronauts were brave men, no doubt about that, but they understood the likely risks, and importantly, they understood the equipment they were using, how it was designed and built, and what it could or couldn't do.  Trying to dismiss Apollo, or by inference the whole manned space programme, because it was "risky" is nonsensical.

[mako88sb]

Hi Everyone,

I would love to see, for instance, the technical workings/insights of how the PLSS/spacesuit functions, ie battery components, environment systems, breathing systems (a re-circulating CO-2 scrubber ?) and the how the suit remains a closed environment.

Along with what ka9q posted here's a link to a thread started by Dan Schaiewitz who was heavily involved with the PLSS and training of the astronauts in its use. Take the time to read it all.
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum38/HTML/001957.html

[JayUtah]

Do you actually know what "reverse engineering" means?

Clearly he doesn't.

From Goddard to me there is an unbroken line of design and development in aerospace engineering.  We're not "reverse engineering" RCS systems or manned spacecraft or space suits from the Apollo era in order to determine how they worked or how to make similar items work today.  The F-1B program is not about tearing apart a legacy artifact to discover how it works.  It's not about lacking the skill to build a similar thing from scratch.  It's about starting with a classic design to save time, money, and effort.  Very few designs these days are clean-sheet designs, often for defensible reasons.

You certainly aren't giving the impression that you've understood anything said to you.

Clearly he doesn't.  Not a single thing.

As soon as the discussion becomes even remotely technical, he falls back to his layman's positions:  the situation is still "somehow" way too dangerous, there still "somehow" isn't enough available knowledge to dispute him, his critics aren't take his ignorant fears seriously enough, and he's still somehow justified in keeping his fretful beliefs.

Sadly, evidence suggests this is deliberate.  He knows what parts to leave out of quotes to make them say what he needs.  He knows when his critics have put him in a corner, so that he knows when to try to change subjects.

[gillianren]

The two things never clarified in these discussions is any kind of scientific reason why they were faked and any kind of scientific explanation of how it was possible to fake them.  Simply put, they don't know.  Funnily enough, they'll claim they don't have to know how it was faked, because it clearly was, but that kind of trust in people's abilities never extends to their ability to actually successfully carry out a Moon landing.