NASA’s official record of the mission, the Apollo 12 Lunar Surface Journal,1 describes how the surface activities got off to a bad start.
One of NASA’s officially recognised records. Your terminology presents it as the one and only, which it is not.
Just minutes into the first extra-vehicular activity (EVA)
About 40 minutes in.
Al Bean “accidentally” pointed the television camera into the Sun (despite the fact that the training manual said that should not be done)
Actually the instructions for the TV panorama said ‘omit up-sun’. There is little indication, as far as I know, that astronauts were told specifically that pointing the camera at the Sun would actually cause permanent damage.
Due to this mishap there were no live TV images of the Apollo 12 astronauts on the Moon.
This is a mischaracterisation. There was 40 minutes or so of live TV before the camera was wrecked.
The three-legged probe, with an open aluminium frame, stood 3 metres tall and weighed 280 kilograms.
Had a mass of 280kg. Weight would be different on the Moon.
A few moths later
Small typo there.
• Mission Control seemed to know beforehand that the probe was covered in dust and that the distribution wasn’t the same on each side.
They suspected it might be because a whacking great rocket powered vehicle had just landed very close to it and they thought it might have blown some dust over it, and that would naturally lead to asymmetrical coating since the dust would be coming from one place. Why is that odd?
• The astronauts were certain Surveyor 3 couldn’t be covered in dust because it was partway down Surveyor Crater, below the level of the LM.
That was their initial assumption based on quite possibly incomplete understanding of the fluid dynamics and ballistics of lunar dust entrained in rocket exhaust. Once again, as I said before, Conrad and Bean are not the last word on how stuff behaves on the Moon just because they were there. They had to be expert in flying their spacecraft, and that’s all. If they make errors in judgement regarding the likelihood of dust being blown onto Surveyor by the LM that is not in any way suspicious. It’s just normal human behaviour.
• The astronauts were certain the tan colouring of Surveyor 3 had been caused by the probe baking in the Sun, rather than by being covered in dust.
Since they were (incorrectly) sure the LM didn’t blow any dust over the Surveyor they went with another explanation for the difference in colour, and paint changing colour in sunlight is a well-known thing so seemed a logical explanation for what they were seeing. Also worth noting at the point they made these comments they were still some tens of metres away from Surveyor so were not examining it closely.
• Despite what Mission Control had said about the dust, the astronauts didn’t make any attempt to see if the discolouring was caused by dust.
Why should they? They were asked one question, believed it had been answered satisfactorily, and got on with the rest of their work.
The answers to these questions add credence to claims that the Apollo missions were faked
Your answers, not
the answers. All you have done is pull out some things that look odd to you, speculated as to some answers and then tried to claim they are evidence of faking the missions.
When researchers first began questioning the reality of the Apollo Space Project, one of the anomalies discussed was why there is no dust on the footpads of the LMs. Even in an environment of 1/6g it would be reasonable to conclude that the dust blown up by the LM’s descent engine would have settled back down, coating the footpads and other structures such as struts and equipment housings.
If, as you go on later to say, you know this to be erroneous, you need to present it differently. Of course it is not reasonable to conclude anything would ‘settle’ on the Moon given it has no atmosphere.
By commissioning research to investigate why Surveyor 3 was covered in dust, NASA is reinforcing its claim that the Apollo 12 astronauts really examined the probe, and is deflecting attention away from the anomalies within the official record of the mission.
When something previously unseen and possibly unexpected is observed, research tends to get commissioned on it. So NASA is in fact behaving entirely normally. If you’re going to start claiming that doing normal things is deliberate obfuscation you have some very shaky ground for argument.
That being the case, during the two and a half years Surveyor 3 was on the Moon before Apollo 12 arrived, the dust on the probe would be no more than 0.0025 (one fortieth) of a millimetre thick. Such a thin layer would have been barely visible to the astronauts, and couldn’t have accounted for the discolouring they saw on the surfaces of Surveyor 3.
Your assertion fails for lack of evidence. It does not take a thick layer to noticeably change the colour of anything, especially if it started as white. Human eyes are very good at distinguishing not white from white.
It is believed the vast majority of particles rise no more than 15 centimetres, though a few may rise to tens or even hundreds of metres. A lunar fountain can’t explain how Surveyor 3 was coated in dust. Particles rising only 15 cm could not have covered the entire probe, which is almost 3 metres tall. The amount of dust rising higher is too insignificant to have deposited the layer shown on the Apollo 12 photographs.
If you’re going to request a quantitative analysis from us, as you have in earlier posts, you need to have such analyses in your own work. Can you justify your assertion that the amount of dust rising higher than 15cm is insufficient?
It is apparent the astronauts didn’t see any dust until the LM was well below 180 feet (54 metres). In fact, an examination of the video made from the film footage of the landing shows there is no dust created until just after Bean says, “120 feet” (36 metres).
There is a big difference between what can be seen and captured on film and what is actually present. Just becdause they didn’t see any doesn’t mean there was no dust.
Pete Conrad twice said he had first seen dust from an altitude of 300 feet (90 metres). This, however, was redrafted by Thomas Schwagmeier ─ one of the compilers of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal ─ to 220 feet. 220 feet is exactly 67 metres ─ the very same altitude the LM flew past the Surveyor 3 probe! This seems beyond a coincidence.
The redrafting seems to be part of an ongoing attempt to hide an inconsistency within NASA’s official record.
You have read far too much into the word ‘redrafted’ there. Did you go back and look at the Apollo 12 mission report? That chart that is described as ‘redrafted’ is present there, with exactly the same scale as presented in the ALSJ. All they mean by ‘redrafted’ is that the chart was recreated from the report for the website rather than just scanned in as a low quality PDF.
The entirety of this bizarre situation can only be explained if the Apollo 12 mission was faked.
Not even slightly true. Many explanations exist, but you have already decided that inconsistency = fakery.
The consequence of this change is that the conversation between the astronauts and Mission Control is totally nonsensical.
Nonsensical to you is not the same as totally nonsensical.
It is perhaps understandable the astronauts couldn’t remember specifically what they had said over twenty years earlier, but not remembering having discovered the discolouring was caused by dust seems very odd.
Why do people always want astronauts to remember every little detail decades after the event? The examination of Surveyor 3 was a small part of the landing phase of one mission. What the source of discolouration of Surveyor 3 was is hardly the standout moment of that mission, never mind their careers or lives in general. Both of them were into their 60s by the time the ALSJ was compiled.
However, it appears this incident, which could have been fatal if the spacesuits were breached, was completely forgotten by both astronauts.
That would be odd, if it was anything like you describe. However, it was not. The concern over corrosive materials had nothing to do with damage to the spacesuit. That’s entirely your interpretation. Stuff inside a battery isn’t corrosive like the blood of the alien in
Alien It could never have eaten away all the layers of the spacesuit down to the pressure garment to cause any kind of fatal damage (do you even know how many layers there were in the spacesuit and what they were made of?). The concern is more likely to be along the lines that if there is corrosive material on the suit, when they come to take it off it might get on their hands and cause some nasty chemical burns.
Of course, there was no need to produce live TV for Apollo 12 because of the accidentally damaged camera.
Once again, there
is live TV, just not a lot of it.
All the Apollo 12 lunar surface photographs would have been taken in the studio long before the mission began, possibly even using stand-ins for the astronauts.
Why? Which studio? Why use stand-ins if the astronauts are available?
During the live audio transmission, the technicians at Mission Control would have been looking at images of the Surveyor 3 covered in dust. Pete Conrad and Al Bean would have been responding in a studio location looking at a Surveyor probe. This would have enabled them to go through the motions of inspecting the Surveyor and acting out the procedures asked of them by Mission Control.
This doesn’t even make sense as a scenario. If there was a studio with astronauts in it looking at a Surveyor, why not just have a closed circuit TV in Mission Control so they could see exactly what the astronauts were doing and avoid this mess entirely? You have simply created a scenario that has to be absurdly complicated to fit your explanation for what you perceive as inconsistencies.
The view of many people who are convinced that Apollo was faked is that at the outset of each mission the astronauts were launched into low-Earth orbit, and remained there until the mission was over.
A view that fails because an Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit is naked-eye visible, and the lengthy live TV transmissions from the spacecraft could only be made at translunar distance because that’s the only way the spacecraft could stay in continuous contact for so long.
During the live Apollo 12 audio transmission “from the Moon” Pete Conrad and Al Bean were supposed to be examining a Surveyor covered in dust. Photographs in the Lunar Surface Journal show the granular nature of the dust on the lander that NASA claims is Surveyor 3. Conrad and Bean couldn’t have failed to see this dust.
Why not? I see in that photo little mound that could be dust, could be something else, but certainly don’t appear to be covering the whole surface.
Most likely, Mission Control wanted to move on because NASA’s carefully faked scene had turned into a disaster.
Or because they had a timeline that was constrained by oxygen levels and had to keep on going anyway.
There is an interesting epilogue to the mystery of Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3. In 2010 the author of one of the papers used in my research visited Alan Bean, who after retiring from NASA became an artist. Philip T. Metzger, author of Further Analysis on the Mystery of the Surveyor III Dust Deposits, wanted to hear Bean’s account of what he had seen and done on the Moon. At the end of the discussion Bean said: “I can’t allow myself to get dragged back … I have to focus on art. So Don’t … Ever ... Call … Me … Again.” Alan Bean seemed to be emphasising his desire not to speak about what had really happened.
What is the source for this claim? Without a source, this is just an unsupported assertion that Bean said something strange to someone and you somehow heard about it. Back up your statements.
Although Hughes Aircraft had manufactured the Surveyor probes, it seems odd that the Surveyor 3 components were handed back to the company for inspection.
Why is it odd to return the parts to the original manufacturer?
The Hughes Aircraft Company was a very secretive aerospace manufacturing business
Please back up your characterisation of thema as ‘very secretive’.
JPL was no doubt better suited to carrying out a forensic analysis than were Hughes Aircraft.
Why?
The Surveyor 3 components supposedly brought back from the Moon were re-investigated in 2010 by Philip Metzger and colleagues.3 The researchers concluded particles the size of small grains of sand ─ i.e. with diameters of 0.1 mm ─ impacted every part of the probe’s surface in line-of-sight of the place where the LM landed.
Your cited reference does not actually appear to say anything about the particle size. In fact if I’ve interpreted the graphs correctly about 0.1mm is the
largest particle size that could be displaced that distance. Please explain where you draw the conclusion it was hit by particles about 0.1mm in diameter.
If the surfaces of the components were entirely covered in pits, it is reasonable to conclude the particles striking Surveyor 3 collectively amounted to a layer 0.1 mm thick, perhaps more. In order to have impacted Surveyor 3, this layer must have covered the entire surface of a disc extending out from the LM’s landing site and reaching to at least as far as the Surveyor 3 probe. What is the volume of this layer? It is reasonable to assume the layer would be thicker on the regions closer to the LM. However, for simplicity a layer of dust 0.1 mm thick and extending only to Surveyor 3 will be used in the calculations. The volume of a disc with a radius of 155 metres and a depth 0.1 of a millimetre is approximately 7.5 cubic metres.
The researchers claimed the material that sandblasted Surveyor 3 can be triangulated to precisely the location of the LM. This means the material must have come from immediately below the LM. If 7.5 cubic metres of material had been displaced from beneath the LM, then some sort of blast crater would have been formed. The size of this crater can be calculated. The diagonal distance between the LM’s footpads is 9 metres. Therefore it is reasonable to assume the blast-crater had a diameter of no more than 8 metres. If the blast crater is assumed to be a shallow cone or a saucer shape, the depth at the centre would have been about 0.5 of a metre.
There are a couple of assumptions there. I take particular issue with the assumption that the ‘blast crater’ should be about 8m in diameter just because the LM legs were 9m apart diagonally. What do the legs have to do with the ability of the engine to displace a volume of dust from the surface?
For instance, the photographs of Apollo 11 LM (fig 3) not only show there is no blast crater, there are no signs of the surface having been disturbed in any way whatsoever.
Actually there are indications of disturbance, and Armstrong in fact commented on the state of the ground under the LM.
Nor are there any indications of the Mylar gold foil covering the landing legs having been damaged. If particles ejected from beneath an LM are supposedly able to pit metal components at a distance of 155 metres, then the Mylar at the base of the legs and on the footpads would have been torn away.
Why? The LM engine was shut down before the pads hit the ground, as per the fight plan. As soon as that happened, no more flying dust in the area of the LM.
Without a blast crater beneath the Apollo 12 LM, there couldn’t have been enough material displaced to sandblast Surveyor 3.
Only because you have placed some arbitrary assumptions on the amount of material needed and the area over which it has to have been displaced.
The logical conclusion drawn from these findings is that the Apollo 12 mission was itself entirely fabricated.
That’s not logical at all.
Derek K. Willis, who was born in 1960, has a Certificate in Astronomy from the University of Central Lancashire UK.
An irrelevant qualification for the ‘analysis’ undertaken. Just because the Moon is involved doesn’t make astronomy the right expertise.
He began his career as a Research Associate at Northumbria University
What kind of research?
NASA scientists will have known how lunar dust would behave when disturbed by a rocket plume. Consequently they will have been able to fake this behaviour when producing the film supposedly shot from inside the LMs as they descended onto the surface of the Moon.
Non sequitur. Knowing about something isn’t the same as being able to recreate it. And since you can’t offer an explanation for how they could recreate it, we’ll disregard this statement as unsupported.
In summary, a lot of assumptions and speculation with not a lot of evidence, all based on something that seems a bit odd to you.
