Wonderful Photographs from Mars

[Glom]

Who shot Armstrong?  Really?  You are actually saying that's an anomaly?  Really?  Did it not occur to you that the LM was designed to hold the television camera in a storage compartment on the outside that could be opened by an astronaut from the Z+ strut so that this historic moment could explicitly be recorded for posterity?  Really?

For information Top return for Googling LM MESA

Of course the photo quality argument is stock.  It is simply an untruth told by conspiracy theorists.  Thousands of photos were taken.  Judging by the level of knowledge you possess I doubt you are aware of any of them bar the usual some handful that appear in all the books simply because they are the minority that happened to turn out well or at the very least could be edited to look good. (And by edited I mean cropping, rotating and maybe removing an unsightly lens flare.)

As to the Mars image returns, how much bandwidth do you think it requires to return such images and what bandwidth do you think they had to work with?  We need you to answer these questions because simply asserting it was insufficient isn't going to get you anywhere.  You need to show your work to justify your implicit assertion that you know what you're talking about.

[sts60]

Welcome back, Jockndoris.  Please answer my rebuttals to your original claims.

Absolutely not    - NASA may have sent three craft to MARS

Wrong.  NASA has sent more than a dozen successful missions to Mars since Mariner IV first flew by in 1964.  In fact, NASA has successfully landed more rovers on Mars (4) than your claimed total.

At this point, since you cannot get even the most basic facts right, shouldn't you take a deep breath and reconsider your belief?

but I don't trust their photographs at all.
Wrong  They are far too good and far too quick.

On what basis, exactly, do you base your disbelief?  Can you point to a specific issue that would prevent said imagery from being returned?   If not, why should your uninformed opinion be given any weight at all?

They did exactly the same with the supposed landings on the Moon which were only acheived on the NASA Mission Control simulators.

No,  this is laughably wrong.

First, your statement is simply a bald assertion.  You have provided no evidence for it, and your demonstrable ignorance of the original topic lends no confidence to your personal opinion.

Second, the Apollo missions are amply supported by a mountain of evidence.  Your claim does not address that.

Finally, I have actually participated in simulations at the JSC MCC, as well as in other facilities at JSC.  The idea that they could fake the landings there is ludicrous.  The simulation facilities are for training the crews and flight controllers, and can't fake anything to anyone else.  And they couldn't fool the crews or controllers into thinking they had flown an actual mission.

Look, I have been there, and not as a tourist either.  You have no idea what you are talking about.

"Failure is not an option " and NASA control everything - orbiting craft and all the communications so they can send us anything they choose.

Wrong.  Again.

First, the lunar landings you claimed were faked were tracked by independent entities around the world - countries, organizations, even radio amateurs.

Second, the Mars data is looked at by scientists and engineers all over the place.  The idea that they are all going to be fooled is just silly.

They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!

And they trained with those cameras - a lot - and they also took lots of lousy pictures too.  Again, you have no idea what you are talking about: you clearly know as little about Apollo as you do about Mars missions. 

Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?"   Have you ever thought about that ?   If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him - it couldn't be Buzz Aldrin as he was still inside -  so it must have been CNN or SKY?

Thirty seconds of Googling would have told you that a camera mounted on the LM, activated by Armstrong by pulling a lanyard, did this automatically.

Clearly, you have not done the slightest amount of research into any of these subjects; you have no idea what you are talking about. 

I have to ask at this point, are you deliberately trolling?  Because it is hard to be so completely wrong, so consistently, by accident.

In fact the whole thing was set up in advance as a simulation and when we all swallowed the first one the next few Apollo missions were easy.
I am absolutely certain they couldn't do it then and I am far from convinced that they could do it now.

There is no way to put this delicately: why should anyone care what you think when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about?  This is not a rhetorical question; I'd like to know the answer.

Lets see what the spectroanalysis shows from this wondrerful gadget they have - if they don't produce something new then my case is proved.

First, you were wrong earlier about "nothing new" from lunar materials.

Second, you are not qualified to interpret spectroanalytical results, so your view of them is irrelevant.

Third, your claim pivots on a non sequitir - the second part does not follow from the first part.

Again, given your utter ignorance of the topics you have been discussing, don't you think it's time you stopped, reconsidered your convictions, and spent some time trying to learn something?  Or will you just dig in and stubbornly repeat your beliefs?

[Tedward]

They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!

I am going on a trip where I intend to try the manual method and not use the auto function on my camera. There is a wheel calculator I can down load from a person that has been kind enough to make it FOC on the web. I want to set the camera to a particular setting for the lens fitted and just shoot away safe in the knowledge that the subject will be in focus and the depth of field with the settings will give me a good shot.

This is something I think you can try.

[Jason Thompson]

I don't trust their photographs at all.   They are far too good and far too quick.

What exactly is 'too good' and 'too quick' about them? how good a camera can be put on a spacecraft, and how long should it take, by your estimates, to get a photo back? What is it that makes good quality images so hard to get? We await your explanation.

"Failure is not an option "

You're using a quote from a movie made in 1994 in an argument about a space program from thrity years before? Seriously?

and NASA control everything - orbiting craft and all the communications so they can send us anything they choose.

Utter rubbish. Do smoe research about ham radios, and check out the Soviet tracking of Apollo. Then explain that.

They had astronauts in cumbersome spacesuits taking perfect pictures from a simple camera set on their chests and we cheered!!

Exactly what about the spacesuit was cumbersome, and what about the camera made it so hard to operate in a space suit?

Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?"   Have you ever thought about that ?   If he was the first man to step foot on the Moon then who took the shot of him

Which shot of him? There are no photos of Amrstrong making his first steps. There is film, shot from a 16mm camera mounted inside the LM, and video, captured by a camera mounted outisde the LM for precisely the purpose of recording the historic first steps on the Moon. Are you seriously telling us that idea never actually occurred to you? Do you really think a TV camera needs a person standing behind it to work?

The only Apollo 11 still images of an astronaut descending the ladder are taken by Armstrong and are of Aldrin.

In fact the whole thing was set up in advance as a simulation and when we all swallowed the first one the next few Apollo missions were easy.

Again I ask for evidence. Do you have any, or is this all argument from incredulity: you can't see how it was done therefore it is impossible?

Lets see what the spectroanalysis shows from this wondrerful gadget they have - if they don't produce something new then my case is proved.

Why is your case proved? First of all you need to prove that your case actually has a reasonable basis.

Do you have anything in the way of evidence to bring to this discussion at all or is it all going to be 'it's too good' or 'it's too quick' or 'they definitely couldn't have done it'? One will provide a sensible discussion, the other will get old and tired very quickly.

[sts60]

Have you seen my post in 2009 headed "Who shot Neil Armstrong?"

Not only did we see it, we answered it as well.  You posted once, ignored the explanations, and never returned to acknowledge them.

Have you ever thought about that ?

Yes, we have thought about it.  When will you, since you clearly have not done so yet?

[gillianren]

If failure isn't an option, why did so many things sent to Mars fail?

[carpediem]

If failure isn't an option, why did so many things sent to Mars fail?

They just want you to THINK that they fail. In reality those missions are the only ones that succeed. 

[raven]

The Hasselblad camera on the astronauts chests could be unclipped if necessary for more unusual angles. It wasn't "set" on their chests.

[ka9q]

Absolutely not    - NASA may have sent three craft to MARS but I don't trust their photographs at all.   They are far too good and far too quick.

Inasmuch as several cameras on the new Curiosity rover are essentially identical to the millions of digital cameras on earth, and produce exactly what one would expect, why are they "far too good"?

What's so 'quick' about the images? Curiosity has been on Mars for several weeks and we're still receiving new pictures taken on landing day and shortly thereafter. The links from Mars are anything but 'quick'. Inasmuch as this is my field of expertise, I challenge you to work up a 'link budget' showing exactly what is and isn't possible from Mars. And I expect you to do it with at least as much precision as JPL itself.
 

[cjameshuff]

Also, the first images sent back were tiny thumbnails sent directly to Earth over a slow link (32 kbps max) with the protective dust covers still on (and covered with dust), leading to stupid comments by the hecklers in the crowd about how their cell phones took better pictures. It took them a while longer to get the high bandwidth link through MRO and Odyssey up and start getting high quality images from the rover.

[DataCable]

They did exactly the same with the supposed landings on the Moon...

Gish gallop from MSL hoax to Apollo hoax noted.  If you have any evidence for an MSL hoax, other than your own uninformed incredulity, please present it.  If you want to present evidence that Apollo was a hoax, there's another section for that discussion.

BTW, who is "they?"  Is anyone from the Apollo program currently working at JPL on the MSL program?

[ka9q]

Also, the first images sent back were tiny thumbnails sent directly to Earth over a slow link (32 kbps max) with the protective dust covers still on (and covered with dust)

I do wish those covers could have been removed more quickly. We'd have a much more impressive shot of the skycrane impact.

[cjameshuff]

I do wish those covers could have been removed more quickly. We'd have a much more impressive shot of the skycrane impact.

And dusty camera lenses for all the pictures afterward.

I'm just glad all the covers came off when they were supposed to. Look at the issues the Venera landers had...Venera 9 and 10 each lost the use of one camera due to a stuck lens cap, Venera 11 and 12 lost the use of both cameras for this reason. And then Venera 14 dropped a lens cap right into the path of the surface compressibility probe...

Or more recently, look at all the problems Phoenix had, particularly the oven doors that wouldn't open.

[ka9q]

I do wonder why things seem to be moving (literally) so slowly with the Curiosity rover since the landing. I understand the bottleneck imposed by the communication links and the new software load, but as with Spirit and Opportunity days go by when it seems very little happens. Curiosity has been on Mars almost 3 weeks now, and it only just moved for the first time a few days ago, and then only for a brief test.

I understand the desire to play it safe especially after such a harrowing EDL sequence, but the clock is nonetheless ticking. With its nuclear power source Curiosity certainly should have a very long life, but no one knows how long that life will really be. Infant mortalities do happen, and each day is one day closer to whatever will be its eventual failure.

[AtomicDog]

I'm glad that this is a forum where you can call someone a troll and not get dinged for it.

Jockndoris, you are such a troll.