Author Topic: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?  (Read 558875 times)

Offline Tedward

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #975 on: February 07, 2013, 03:03:25 PM »
That'll learn me....

Offline BazBear

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #976 on: February 07, 2013, 03:11:35 PM »
Someone else on here posted this up some time ago.

http://www.ehartwell.com/LM/SCATPictures.htm

Edit. too slow, this was for Noldi400 question above. Not a complete answer but very interesting.

Thanks, interesting site. Maybe I need to dig up that Moon Machines episode and watch it again.
Here's a YouTube playlist with the full series
"It's true you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl." - Mark Watney, protagonist of The Martian by Andy Weir

Offline Valis

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #977 on: February 07, 2013, 03:27:25 PM »
I didn't realize there were varying degrees of "impossible".  Is there such a thing as a little impossible? ;)
Actually, there are, though I wouldn't use the term "little impossible". I'll give an example: Direct sensing of atoms. The building of the first scanning tunneling microscope overcame two seeming "impossibles". First, it was thought that making an atomically sharp tip was impossible. It turned out that you don't need that sharp of a tip, as the tunneling current you want to observe is so tightly dependent on the distance between the tip's atoms and the atom's you are imaging, so in practice, one slightly "protruding" atom on the tip is good enough. The second problem was to eliminate vibrations, which was also thought to be impossible. However, the physicists solved this by using strings, dampers, and heavy masses. The result was awarded the Nobel prize in 1986.

This is an example of what was thought to be impossible. In fact, it would have been impossible before you could have built the electronics to drive the system. It would have also been impossible without the new engineering solutions in the vibration dampening. Nowadays, it's a standard technique for surface studies, along with several others derived from it (atomic force microscopy, magnetic force microscopy, and so on).

In short, there really are degrees in impossible.

Offline Noldi400

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #978 on: February 07, 2013, 03:33:33 PM »
Well, lots of things were impossible until somebody figured out a way to do them.

Would "impossibiloid" mean something that resembles the impossible but turns out to be not really?
"The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are... a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut." - Dean Koontz

Offline raven

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #979 on: February 07, 2013, 03:38:24 PM »
Well, lots of things were impossible until somebody figured out a way to do them.

Would "impossibiloid" mean something that resembles the impossible but turns out to be not really?
Sounds like a term for a vastly improbable alien species. Impossiblish, mayhap?

Offline Al Johnston

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #980 on: February 07, 2013, 03:59:54 PM »
Well, lots of things were impossible until somebody figured out a way to do them.

Would "impossibiloid" mean something that resembles the impossible but turns out to be not really?

According to Deep Thought the word for that is "Tricky" ;D
"Cheer up!" they said. "It could be worse!" they said.
So I did.
And it was.

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #981 on: February 07, 2013, 04:11:29 PM »
Would "impossibiloid" mean something that resembles the impossible but turns out to be not really?

impossibiloid: a mathematical surface representing the varying degrees of impossibility of a task over a given parameter space?

Offline Echnaton

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #982 on: February 07, 2013, 05:13:34 PM »
Before I became a skeptic, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett

Offline Tedward

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #983 on: February 07, 2013, 05:29:46 PM »
Ah! Douglas Adams, I am in good company then..... (clings to any slim hope of rescue from the faux pax of getting worms wrong)

On day u wil all tork proper like what I do.

Shameless youtube link to the late great Ronnie Barker (if this is not the done thing then let me know)


fork handles is all I have to say.....  ;) edit I know its another sketch.

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #984 on: February 07, 2013, 05:34:28 PM »
Ah! Douglas Adams, I am in good company then..... (clings to any slim hope of rescue from the faux pax of getting worms wrong)

Dodgson, actually.

Offline Tedward

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #985 on: February 08, 2013, 02:50:04 AM »
Oh eck.

Never read that.

Offline nomuse

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #986 on: February 08, 2013, 03:29:19 AM »
It's worth it.

Offline Tedward

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #987 on: February 08, 2013, 04:39:06 AM »
Might give it a go. I was more Three Musketeers, Treasure Island etc and H G Wells (for some reason no others until a teen) when I was a nipper.

Offline dwight

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #988 on: February 08, 2013, 09:35:50 AM »
Sorry to weigh in late here - an addendum to the slowed down footage garbage:

One thing each and every lying HB never ever addresses, nor even has the skills to comprehend is this - the TV camera on all post A11 missions operated at the rate of 30 frames per second or 60 fields per second, which correlates to the NTSC standard (actually 29.97 frames but for ease of discussion its 30 here). In front of the pickup tube was a spinning red-blue-green color filter which which embedded sequential RGB information into each field.

This was then matrixed via a disc recorder on earth into a full-color NTSC signal made by delaying each color by 2 fields and then  combining that into the TV signal. This then created artifacts in scenes with fast movement which appear as the "confetti" style red blue or green outline of whichever image is moving. For each frame of the NTSC signal there will always be these artifacts for preciely two fields for each color.

The HB crowd claims slow-mo, but then we still have the 2 field delay on each color. If it was slowed down this would no longer be the case. The Sternwarte Bochum in Germany idependantly intercepted the sequential color TV signal and converted it on site to black and white. thereby proving it was indeed 30fps. On all of the mission footage, you have always got 2 fields of delayed colors. No more and no less. Therefore no speed up/slow down of footage. HOWEVER in order to properly verify this you need raw videotape, as MPEG 2 encoding can introduce its own set of artifacts.

QED
Dwight Steven-Boniecki
author of "Live TV From the Moon" - which basically means I have researched the topic and definitely know what I'm talking about.
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Offline gillianren

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Re: why was the usa the only one to go to the moon?
« Reply #989 on: February 08, 2013, 12:57:26 PM »
Might give it a go. I was more Three Musketeers, Treasure Island etc and H G Wells (for some reason no others until a teen) when I was a nipper.

My mom had two beautifully illustrated editions of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.  They're among the books I rather wish I'd stolen when I went to college.
"This sounds like a job for Bipolar Bear . . . but I just can't seem to get out of bed!"

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