Bill Kaysing & Ralph Rene books

[Jason Thompson]

And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.

The temperature of what? That's not a trivial question, that's a key part of the situation. When we say it is 90 degrees here on Earth we mean the ambient atmospheric temperature. When you're bathed in air at that temperature you need a way to keep cool. If you're at the poles and in air of -50 degrees you need to keep warm. In both cases that's because the air in contact with you will transfer heat to or from you depending on the temperature it is at.

On the Moon there is no atmosphere, no ambient temperature. The extremes of temperature refer to the unar soil on the surface, and the highest temperatures are reached after up to two weeks in lunar day, and the lowest after two weeks to total darkness. Neither the LM nor the spacesuited astronaut had to contend with such temperatures. How hot or cold they get depends entirely on their own properties. The spacesuit was not white because it looked cool, but because it actually reflected solar heating. The LM is not covered in reflective material to look nice but for the same reason.

Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries

Nothing on Apollo used car batteries.

with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible.

Why would they need to recharge the batteries?

[Allan F]

Actually, a standard procedure during the translunar coast, was to "top op" the charge in the LM's batteries, with electrical power from the SM's fuel cells.

[Obviousman]

Actually, a standard procedure during the translunar coast, was to "top op" the charge in the LM's batteries, with electrical power from the SM's fuel cells.

That's right, and a modified reverse procedure was used to charge the CM batteries from the LM on Apollo 13.

[Count Zero]

Howdy Spanky.  Welcome to the board!

Let's talk about the "temperature on the moon".  That phrase has led to a lot of confusion.  As you quote, the temperature on the Moon varies from -250F up to 250F.  I live in Texas, and in the summertime, the temperature gets up over 100F, so standing on the Moon must be like standing in an oven, right?

No.

If, on a hot summer day here in Texas, I walk out on the sidewalk barefoot, it's hot enough to cause pain.  If I step onto the asphalt street, I will blister my feet.  Why?  100F is less than two degrees above normal body temperature.  The solid pavement is hotter than the transparent air because it absorbs more radiant energy from the sunlight.  The light-colored concrete sidewalk may heat-up to 120-140F.  The darker asphalt may get up to 180F or more.

When we ask, "what is the temperature outside?" we are asking about the ambient temperature of the air.  On the Moon, there is no air, so when we ask about the temperature there, we are asking about the temperature of a specific object on the surface; a patch of dirt, a rock, a camera or an astronaut's spacesuit (and specifying whether it is the side facing towards or away from the Sun).  Note that this varies:   In my above example, the sidewalk was ~130F, but the asphalt was 180+ F.  When a textbook says that it gets up to 250F on the Moon, it is referring to the surface of a black, solid object with its face perpendicular to the Sun at local noon. 

The actual lunar surface is not black:  It's about the same shade as asphalt (not the fresh-laid black stuff, but rather the dark/medium grey color it fades to after a few years).  It heats up to roughly 200F.  Mind you, the Moon is the same average distance from the Sun as the Earth.  All things being equal, lunar regolith and asphalt should reach the same temperature.  However, the asphalt is cooled somewhat because the air in contact with the pavement conducts away some of the heat (we can see it doing this:  it causes the shimmering effect when we look across a hot parking lot).  Also, daylight only last ~12 hours on Earth, but it's 14 days from sunrise to sunset on the Moon.

I said before that the pavement here in Texas can get up to ~180F.  However, on a summer day I can go outside and walk on it barefoot with no discomfort.  How?  It's simple:  I do it at 8:00am, before it gets anywhere near that hot.  The Apollo astronauts did the same thing:  They landed when the rising sun was only ~10 degrees above the horizon and the surface temperature was ~30F.  When they left three days later (on the longest missions), the sun was still only half-way up the sky, and the surface temperature was a bit over 100F (yes, NASA did have the technology to make insulated shoes in the 1960s  .

(Allow me to state the blindingly obvious:  The surface starts out cold because it has spent all night radiating its heat into space.  As someone else already pointed out, when a surface is in the sun, it absorbs light based on its reflectivity (more reflective absorbs less energy) and its angle to the sun (a perpendicular angle to the light absorbs more than an oblique angle).  When the same surface is shaded from the sun, it radiates heat as efficiently as it absorbs it - a black surface radiates faster than a light one.)

For astronauts, heat management is a crucial issue that requires careful engineering, whether they are on the Moon or in Earth orbit - Remember, they are at the same average distance from the Sun.  In fact, the Earth is more reflective than the Moon, so astronauts & spacecraft in Earth orbit get more reflected energy than those on the Moon (even though the surface is much further away, there's a lot more area doing the reflecting).  For spacecraft & spacesuits (which can be thought of as mini-spacecraft), the engineering solution is basically the same:  Keep as much of the outside heat out and control the heat that's being generated on the inside to maintain comfortable levels.

Outside heat from direct & reflected sunlight is kept out by using a reflective outer layer, backed up by layers of insulation.  When you look at the flimsy-looking outer covers of the Lunar Module, you're only seeing the reflective skin that covers the actual structural members and pressure vessels beneath.  Interestingly, Middle Eastern nomads developed the same principle centuries ago:  Those volumous white robes they wear serve the same function, and work better than shorts and a t-shirt to keep them cool in the desert.

Inside, heat is generated by electronics and by the astronauts themselves.  On full-size spacecraft, most of the heat comes from electronics, and any excess goes to shielded radiators on the hull (on Apollo 13, when they lost power, they shut down the electronics and therefore their main heat source, which is why it got so cold).  Men doing geology on the Moon, and building the International Space Station in orbit are basically doing heavy work for hours in an airtight rubber suit.  Beneath the rubber, they wear something like long underwear that has a whole network of tubes.  They pump water through the tubes to something called a porous-plate sublimator, which carries the heat away to space. 

The smaller pieces of equipment on the Moon, such as cameras and experiment packages mainly relied on reflective outer casings.  In these cases, keeping the dark lunar dust off of them was a major concern.  On the EVA videos, you can hear some exasperation from the astronauts after the umpteenth request from Houston to dust-off the TV camera because it's overheating.  Of course, the astronauts and the still cameras they carried were almost constantly turning this way and that, so individual surfaces spent as much time facing away from the Sun as towards it.

Hopefully this helps clear things up.

[Abaddon]

OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.

The temperature of what, exactly. What, very precisely please, reaches a temperature 0f 250 by day on the moon and -250 at night. No fudging, thank you. Identify what object and/or objects go through those extremes. You can follow up by explaining exactly which astronauts were on the moon at lunar midday or midnight. Good luck with that.

[Abaddon]

It is not in the book but my golf shot that I pointed out in my second post, is a valid point if you care to elaborate.

Dean

Welcome to Apollohoax. I hope you enjoy it here.

Now, in what sense is yur golf shot point valid? In that it is impossible to 'slice' a golf ball in a vacuum? Well that may well be true. However, to use it as a piece of evidence for a hoax is stretching a point hugely. OK, so the capcom said Shepard's shot looked like a slice. So what? It was a bit of good-natured banter on a little piece of fun on the mission. It wasn't a professional golfing analysis of the shot. It is also impossible to hit the ball 'miles and miles and miles,' even in the reduced lunar gravity, but again, no-one was literally claiming it went that far.

This is a valid point. HB types have this unrealistic expectation that everything on the transcript is factual. At face value, then, Santa is real. The astronauts claimed to have seen him after all.

If, on the other hand, one cares enough to become familiar with the whole record, one discovers that there is a whole bucket of offhand humour going on almost continuously. The three blokes on any mission knew full well that they might pop their clogs at any moment. That gives rise to a certain gallows humour common in the test pilot brigade of well, frankly optimists.

Although it is hard to understand, I understand it. As likely do most here. I have had both my parents placed in a box in the ground and while the process was not a happy one, the black humour in ER was not to be missed. Sure it was arguably inappropriate. Didn't stop me and my siblings. I can recount tales of woe that would have them rolling in the aisles. So what? Everyone can do that. It is common human experience. Except for the young. They have never had to confront mortality. Yet.

Somehow, they seem to think they will have a different answer. But can't say what it might be. Personally, I am inclined not to care much. I have legally arranged matters so that my kids will never have want of a home. Thus my role is fulfilled. And they are not my kids anymore, they are almost adults.Have I made mistakes on that journey? Sure, Doesn't matter. I have equipped them to venture forth into the world. I will rest easy in the grave. Or possibly pot on the mantle. I care not.

[Zakalwe]

OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night. And from my experience even to this day there is no system available out there that could compensate for such an astronomical swing in temperature 500 Deg. Let alone one that is powered by a bank of car batteries the current draw would be to taxing, and to add to that even if they could and I highly doubt it with no way or source to recharge those batteries it is just not feasible. Then to add even more to this incredible feat of engineering to have a portable version that they can actually wear and prance around on the moon. If such a system was available after 50 years it would have made it's way into the market already, that is just the way things work.

Dean

Remember when I said this?

99 times out of a hundred their "valid points" are based on nothing more than ignorance. The one time that it isn't it's because they are trying to flog a book/seminar/TV show.

You're one of the 99 then. Why do you think that your industrial experience in HVAC translates into a low gravity vacuum environment? The very first question that you pose illustrates that your understanding of thermodynamics in a vacuum is woefully inadequate.
The second question shows that you haven't bothered to do any basic research...the LM or the suits did not use "car batteries". A 30 second search on Wikipedia would have told you that.
The third question is equally as ignorant. A descendant of the A7L spacesuit is used on the ISS for EVAs and was used in the Spacelab program. As for making it onto the market, please explain how big a market there is for self-contained suits to work in a vacuum.

Enjoy your Kaysing and Rene books. It seems to me that you are the perfect target for their nonsense in that you are wilfully ignorant, can't be bothered to do even a tiny modicum of basic research and at the same time gullible enough to read and believe their tripe.

[ineluki]

And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.

Stop right there...

If you have any honest interest in the subject please do yourself a favor and try to get at least some knowledge about basic physics (we are not even talking about rocket science this is more like "how can you survive 90° C in a Sauna when the same water temperature would  kill you") before you parrot any more of the long debunked lies of Kaysing, Rene, Sibrel and the other Frauds.

Since you started with the misleading temperature:
http://www.clavius.org/envheat.html

Even Wikipedia would be a good start to learn more...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories

[gillianren]

The simple fact is, I'd much rather have one solid reprinted book full of facts than any number of original, signed manuscripts full of lies and errors.

[bknight]

OK here is something with a little more "Meat" to it, I worked in they HVAC industry. And from what they have said the temp on the moon is 250 deg during the day, and drops to minus 250 Deg at night.

The temperature of what, exactly. What, very precisely please, reaches a temperature 0f 250 by day on the moon and -250 at night. No fudging, thank you. Identify what object and/or objects go through those extremes. You can follow up by explaining exactly which astronauts were on the moon at lunar midday or midnight. Good luck with that.

As you and ineluki have pointed out the fallacy of this misconception.  This seems like starting out JAQ and is evolving to toward non-belief IMO.  My suggestion to Spanky is to do a little bit of research and he will debunk the failures of these two gentlemen.  BTW Spanky does Ren indicate he is a self-taught engineer?  Too bad he doesn't have the training to mke observations in the real world, not just what he believed.

[Kiwi]

Hi again, Spanky.

I hope you can find this post among the multiplicity of same questions and same answers. For some reason I don't understand, some folks here don't read all the posts before replying to an early one. Wouldn't it be lovely if they had the good sense to do so, and only added some important point that others hadn't mentioned, or clarified something that's unclear?

Anyway, do pay attention to anything old-time regular Jason Thompson says, because (1) he's a walking encyclopedia and (2) he lives in the UK so is much more polite than some members on the other side of the Atlantic. You might have already noticed that he hasn't insulted you in either of his posts.

Ditto for JayUtah whenever he turns up, except he's from Utah. He's also polite but is about four or five walking encyclopedias, and two of us have already given you links to his Clavius web pages. Gillianren (reply 23) -- great value too. She has an excellent brain but sometimes insists it's not too good, but mine isn't either. She's brief and to the point, and equally polite. Obviousman, Count Zero – old-timers and good blokes too.

You didn't say whether or not you wanted to see the letters I wrote to Nexus and Rene all those years ago, but they might help you get a better understanding of Rene's book, so here goes (I've deleted some personal information and you'll see that regarding shadows, I failed to mention all-important vanishing points, which many artists understand):--


LETTER TO NEXUS MAGAZINE

[Kiwi]
XX XXXXXXX Street, XXXXXXXXXX, Manawatu 5450, New Zealand
Tel 0-6-324 XXXX

7 September 1995

Mr Duncan Roads
Nexus
PO Box 30
Mapleton
Qld 4560
Australia

Dear Duncan

A few comments about Rene's article about NASA's "fake" moon shots (NEXUS August-September 1995):

The reason there are no stars in most photographs taken on the moon is that the exposures for sunlit objects and stars are highly incompatible.  On earth the exposure to clearly show stars, eight seconds or more at f4 with 100 ISO film, is over 16,000 times the 1/125th at f16 required for sunlit objects.  The ratio would be about the same on the moon.

The landing modules DID leave blast marks in the dust, although rather small ones, partly because they came in at an angle rather than straight down, and also because the rockets were not particularly powerful due to the moon having 1/6th the earth's gravity.  When Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, while over seventy feet from the surface their lander engine was only on 5 per cent thrust, and it kicked up dust before it was within 30 feet of the surface ("The Invasion of the Moon 1969" by Peter Ryan, page 112).  Shortly after stepping onto the moon Armstrong said, "The descent engine did not leave a crater of any size... I can see some evidence of rays emanating from the descent engine, but [a] very insignificant amount."  (Ryan, P120).  Later when Armstrong and Aldrin discussed the dent in the surface under the engine which was made by the landing probe, Armstrong said, "Yes, I think that is a good representation of our sideward velocity at touchdown there."  (P125).

I can't comment on Rene's "Spacey Twin" photos, but printers don't always get it right.  There are a few photos around of Cindy Crawford with her beauty spot on the OTHER side.

Regarding "The Shadow Shows", Rene asks, "How can an 8.5 foot diameter object cast a shadow that size nearly 80 miles away?"  Put simply, it can't.  The object in the photo is neither an 8.5 foot engine nozzle, and nor is it casting a shadow.  It is one of the lunar module's small attitude control thrusters just outside the window, and happens to be on the shaded side of the LM.  These thrusters show up in many other photos.  The sun is almost directly behind the camera and lunar module, as can be seen from the shadow in the crater Maskelyne, below right.

Rene is wrong in saying Pete Conrad is carrying no camera in his photo of Al Bean.  He is.  It's strapped to his chest and casting a shadow towards his right arm.  His right hand is operating the trigger on the handgrip.  The astronauts didn't hold little 35mm cameras up to their eyes to take photos, because they wouldn't have seen the viewfinders through their visors.  They used big, viewfinderless, 200-shot, motor driven Hasselblad cameras which had wide angle lenses and took 6x6 cm colour slides.  Bean has one of them strapped to his chest in the photo.  It is pointing a little downward as they usually did when not in use, and the handgrip with its trigger is visible underneath the camera.  Rene claims this camera is being viewed from at least eight feet above the ground.  That's not possible, because Bean's right hand is below his shoulder, and Conrad's camera is very close to it. 

Rene's "spotlight" could be one of many protruding parts on the lunar module catching the sunlight, which is coming from left and forward of the camera, and the lighting on the ground is far more consistent with sunlight, or at least floodlights, than studio spotlights.  The tube Bean is holding DOES have a shadow side, facing Conrad's camera, but the shadow is considerably lightened by reflections off Bean's and Conrad's white spacesuits.
 
The shadow which Rene says is being cast forward by Conrad is actually being cast backward by a piece of apparatus on the ground.  It can be seen just beyond Bean's hand in the reflection in his visor.  Also the shadow is much wider than Conrad's leg, so could not be his shadow.

I think it's Rene who has mooned Americans, and possibly thinks Antipodeans are gullible too!

Yours sincerely
[Kiwi]

[Comment added 10 August 2019 4:22 am NZST: I was also wrong about Rene's "spotlight" above, because in all my years in photography since 1968 I never saw anything like it until I got on the internet and examined many more lunar surface photos. It proved to be a particular lens flare that occurred in the wide-angle Zeiss lenses used on the moon. I've not even seen that same lens flare in other Hasselblad photos, but maybe it's in some photos I haven't seen. The baffling part of the flare looks like the end of slats in a venetian blind.]

**************************************************************************


LETTER TO RALPH RENE

[Kiwi]
XX XXXXXXX Street, XXXXXXXXXX, Manawatu 5450, New Zealand
Tel 0-6-324 XXXX

7 September 1995

Rene
31 Burgess Place
Passaic
NJ 07055
USA

Dear Rene

I enclose a copy of a letter to Nexus magazine.  I am intrigued at your apparent lack of knowledge and research, and would be interested in your reply to my comments.

Having listened to the first moon landing live on the radio and studied space travel since then, been interested in astronomy for over ten years, and been a professional photographer for 20 years, I can see many flaws in your arguments and an obvious lack of understanding of what actually did go on out in space. The flaws are so obvious that I'd be surprised if any genuine scientists would bother contacting you.

I'm pretty open minded about many things, such as UFOs, religion, science, Hoagland's Mars, etc., but do like to see decent arguments.  Have seen similarly weak arguments in a video tape and book by David Hatcher Childress, and in a rather idiotic book called Moongate.

For instance, Childress points at mountains over 7,000 feet high and wonders whether they are "pyramids".  Twice he says "No-one has a good explanation for it," regarding the Straight Wall on the moon, and speculates that it may be a hangar.  Oh really?  It is one of the best-known moonquake faults.  It is neither a wall, nor is it straight, but is a 60 mile long fault, up to 1,000 feet high, with a slope of about 40 degrees (Guide to the Moon, Patrick Moore, P107, and other books).

In Moongate the author goes to great lengths to "prove" that the moon has much more than one-sixth of the earth's gravity, and bases his arguments on the fact that Apollo 11 crossed the neutral point between the earth's and the moon's gravity systems much further from the moon than the text books said it would.  Unfortunately, the author obviously didn't sit down with a pen and paper and figure out the trajectory of a craft on its way to the moon, or where it would be in relation to the moon when it crossed the neutral point.

The conventional neutral point is stated to be about 23,900 miles from the moon, but that's on the earth-moon axis.  A spacecraft would never fly along that axis, but would aim for a point much further along the moon's orbit where it would eventually meet the moon a few days later.  The enclosed diagram is largely self-explanatory and is based on figures in any good astronomy book.  Although not dead accurate and just an educated guess on my part, it shows why Apollo 11 crossed a different neutral point 43,495 miles, instead of 23,900 miles, from the moon.  The distance from the moon to the neutral point would vary considerably, depending on how far you were from the earth-moon axis.

Further comments about the Nexus article:  I often remark on how dark our sky is.  The darker it is, the brighter the stars seem, and the better the "seeing" in astronomers' language, so the astronauts' comments about dark skies certainly don't imply confusion about whether or not stars are visible.  However, while travelling between the earth and moon they often had to contend with both moonshine and earthshine which dazzled their eyes and rendered the stars invisible to them, although the sky still would have appeared dark.  The full moon casts only quarter of a lux of light on Earth, whereas the full Earth casts 16 lux on the moon.

On page 90-91 of Ryan's book, it says: GET 71:50  Collins: "Houston, Apollo Eleven.  The earthshine coming through the window is so bright you can read a book by it."  Two days before, Collins reported trouble trying to sight stars because of the brightness of the earth...  GET 71:58  "Now we're able to see stars again and recognise constellations for the first time on the trip.  The sky is full of stars just like the night sky of the earth, but all the way here we've only been able to see stars occasionally."

The camera which took the photo of Bean could not be eight feet above Bean's camera AND show both the natural horizon and reflected horizon at almost the same level.  There is no camera stand showing between Conrad and Bean because the camera is strapped to Conrad's chest, the same as Bean's camera.

You mentioned non-parallel shadows on the moon.  Only parallel objects will have parallel shadows, but furthermore, there is considerable perspective distortion in the moon photos which was produced by the wide-angle lenses used.  This causes parallel lines to seemingly converge, just as putting a camera on railway sleepers between the rails will make the rails appear to converge.  The cameras didn't have viewfinders, so had wide-angle lenses to compensate.  The lack of viewfinders also explains why the horizon is often tilted in the pictures.  Incidentally, you can see the astronauts handling the same Hasselblad cameras in the movie "Apollo 13".  One gets tossed into the command module to act as ballast to compensate for the lack of moon rocks.

You can prove much of what I say for yourself:

1.  On a perfectly clear, starry night with no moon, and well away from city lights, sit in a brightly-lit room for ten minutes with one eye completely covered with something opaque.  Go outside, look at the stars and remove the eye cover.  The difference between what the two eyes can see is astounding, and a good example of dark-adaption.

2.  On a similar clear night with no moon, take a photo of the stars for 20 seconds at f4 with 200 ISO film.

3.  Another time, photograph the full moon at 1/500th of a second at f11.  It's just a piece of rock lit by bright sun, so requires the same exposure as a sunlit piece of rock on Earth.  Don't use an automatic-exposure camera, it won't get the exposure right.  Note how you can see far fewer stars than on the moonless night.  If you can see any stars close to the moon, they probably won't come out in your photograph.

4.  On the same full-moon night, turn your camera away so the moon is behind you and again photograph the stars for 20 seconds at f4.  If you include some earthbound scenery in this photo (again, no lights), you'll be able to surprise people with what looks like stars showing in broad daylight.  I have a photo of Orion, Sirius and other stars in a blue sky above a snow-capped mountain which looks as if it's sunlit.  It really fools people, and even the colour lab tried to kid me the stars were "dust on my lens."  There's a hint of the pink glow from the Orion Nebula in my photo, which I took with a 24mm lens on a 35mm camera which sat on a cloth bag half-full of rice on the bonnet of my car.

The hardest part is finding a lab which will print the photos properly so that the moon is detailed and the sky black, but if you do get a detailed shot of the moon, it's unlikely to show any stars.  Mercury, Venus and Jupiter CAN show, but few stars are bright enough.  I see that you're closer to New York than I am to my nearest city, so you'll probably have to travel a fair distance to find dark skies.

Anyway, they say there is one born every minute, and in the States there are probably enough of them to get rich by writing flawed books, so good luck to you.  I actually came across one of them when Halley's Comet was here in 1986.  One night I went up to a lookout in Wellington, our second-largest city, where there were lots of people looking at the comet.  From off in the distance I heard, in a long Texan drawl, "Do you mean ah came twenty thousand miles just to see a smudge?"  I laughed and thought, "Jeez, mate, if you travelled 20,000 miles to see the comet, why don't you have the brains to simply travel another 30 or 40, so you're well out of the city in a dark-sky area where you'll see tail and all, just as I have, many times."

Here's a challenge to test your knowledge of the moon.  See if you can tell me the names of the ten major craters in photo AS11-37-5437.  Until last night I didn't know which ones were showing, but soon worked it out from maps 35, 36, 46 and 47, photos 15 and 38, and the explanatory note on page 26 of Antonin Rukl's "Atlas of the Moon" (Kalmbach Publishing).

Will look forward to the future articles in Nexus, but haven't yet seen anything that would encourage me to buy your book.  I hope your remarks about strange features on the moon aren't based on fuzzy photos.  Sharp photos tell a very different story.

Yours sincerely
[Kiwi]

[Allan F]

5 percent thrust on the descent stage isn't right. It was more like 40%, due to the descent stage having a mass around 6500 kg at landing - which is about 14.500 pounds. In lunar gravity, that is a weight of around 2400 pounds, and the descent engine had a max thrust of 6.000 pounds in the flown configuration.

[bknight]

Kiwi, very nice and informative letters.  I'd be interested in any response that you received, but reality probably indicates you probably didn't receive any.

[raven]

I'm not someone who has nearly the technical knowledge of many of the fine people of this forum, but I've yet to get a good answer for this counterquestion: If there was supposed to be a 'blast crater' and it was a hoax, why didn't the set dressers and props people . . . create one?

[Allan F]

The hoaxbelievers will answer that with the "whistleblower"-argument - that some of the people working the hoax put clues to the nature of the hoax into the set and pictures.