Apollo 13

[Andromeda]

I think Jason's condition is reasonable.

You'll take back the name calling of others if you expect me to do anything for you.

[Mag40]

Yes, Jason, please refer me to where the belts avoidance is covered (by a contemporaneous account). As I say, this would shut me up. In fact, I'd apologize even to the jerk Halcyon if you do that. I promise.

http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/TLI-animation.htm

That vid shows the Earth orbital path as it translated to the ellipse to intersect the Moon. As you can see, the path takes Apollo missions past the outer edges of the belts. But even so, if they had gone straight through the middle of them, do you have any tangible evidence for what dose they would have received? I'm guessing you haven't.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

Your personal attacks don't do much for your credibility.

No personal attacks have been made. All that has happened is that doubts have expressed towards your claims of expertise, and that some of your questions and observations are simply rehashing the same tired old arguments that have been authoritatively debunked.

And some of your answers show that YOU are not critical thinkers: In the BBC interview with Armstrong, the whole question and answer equaled Armstrong saying that he could not see stars from cislunar space. 

It has been clearly pointed out to you that particular quote has been taken out of context. You have clearly not seen the entire interview.

Here is a link to the Patrick Moore / Neil Armstrong interview in question.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007x88t

Anyway, before you further insult my character, maybe read the 350 plus reader reviews for my books on Amazon, which average 4.7 stars. Try to find another author with that many reviews and that average. Let me know when you find one.

That has no bearing upon Apollo, space physics or the US space program in general. It is irrelevant.

Edit: pretty much every one has beaten me to it. Just back from the pub.

[JayUtah]

Is that enough?

No, because you can't tell which direction the light in a photograph is coming from.  As far as I'm concerned that pretty much disqualifies you from any relevant claim to expertise.

And some of your answers show that YOU are not critical thinkers: In the BBC interview with Armstrong, the whole question and answer equaled Armstrong saying that he could not see stars from cislunar space.  Period.

No, not "period."  In fact Armstrong went on to say that he knew that other crews were able to see stars while he himself could not.  He attributed that difference to varying observation conditions.

Anyway, before you further insult my character...

Oh, please, get over yourself.  You're claiming expertise while demonstrating pretty poor observational skills.  You're pretending to have expertise in our fields of professional practice while being demonstrably ignorant of the relevant scientific and physical principles.

Stop relying so much on ego and irrelevant fandom and realize that you're just quoting other conspiracy theorists and pretending that this gives you erudition.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

I've found some of Allan Weisbecker's comments on YouTube. It seems he likes his conspiracies.

[LunarOrbit]

Yes, Jason, please refer me to where the belts avoidance is covered (by a contemporaneous account). As I say, this would shut me up. In fact, I'd apologize even to the jerk Halcyon if you do that. I promise.

Stop the name calling now or you'll find yourself under moderation and your posts will require my approval before they appear in the forum.

[JayUtah]

Let's stick to the stars-seeing subject. Even according to your buddy Phil Plait, 'If you were standing on the moon you would indeed see stars, even in the day.'

Do you want the link to that page of Discover?

Actually the quote is from Bad Astronomy's web site, dating to February 2001.  And in that entry he goes on to explain relative photometry and camera exposure settings.

I subsequently spoke to Ed Mitchell, who actually tried to see stars.  He had to go into the LM shadow and crane his head upward for long enough for his eyes to adapt.  He reported then seeing stars, but says they were not visible during ordinary surface operations.

[ka9q]

Speaking of which, since you seem to believe that they somehow 'avoided' the belts, possibly you could come up with a contemporaneous account of how they planned the launch to avoid the worst of the radiation. That would go a long way to shutting me up about the matter.

For some reason I don't believe you, but here goes anyway.

The earth's magnetic field is not aligned with its rotational axis; the magnetic north pole is in Canada. The earth's magnetic field traps the particles in the belts, so the belts "wobble" with respect to the earth's rotation.

Apollo lunar missions were launched into earth parking orbits inclined at an angle to the equator. (The precise value depended on the mission and launch time and was always greater than 28.5 degrees, the latitude of Kennedy Space Center). Trans-lunar injection typically occurred over the Pacific Ocean so that the climb to high altitude took place mostly over North America, relatively close to the north magnetic pole (in Canada) so as to avoid the densest parts of the belts over the geomagnetic equator.

An excellent animation of all this can be found here:

[Noldi400]

I've found some of Allan Weisbecker's comments on YouTube. It seems he likes his conspiracies.

I also note that he posted a video of Patrick Moore's two-part question about stars at the well known post-flight press conference, in which Armstrong's answer to the second question is edited out - it jumps to Collins's "I don't remember seeing any" to make it sound as if Michael chimed in on the "none seen from the surface" answer.

Maybe we should add "Deceptive Video Editing" to the HB Bingo game.

[ka9q]

The stars are there, but they cannot be seen because, with sunlight flooding the spacecraft, the pupil of the eye involuntarily contracts, and the light from the stars is too dim to compete with the reflected sunlight, as both enter the eye through the tiny aperture formed by the contracted pupil.

I don't know if this has been brought up before, but while Collins is conceptually right (the sensitivity of the eye varies with light level) he has the wrong mechanism. The iris only covers a fairly small range of brightness, and it does so fairly quickly (a few seconds).

Most of the dynamic range between night and day comes from variations in the amount of photosensitive pigment in the rod cells in the retina. It's depleted by light and takes time to regenerate in the dark.

[Bob B.]

... since you seem to believe that they somehow 'avoided' the belts, possibly you could come up with a contemporaneous account of how they planned the launch to avoid the worst of the radiation. That would go a long way to shutting me up about the matter.

This should tell you all you need to know:

http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/apollo11-TLI.htm

All the trajectory data was available at the time of the missions.

[Luckmeister]

Please go back and read smartcooky's Reply #15 to your sunlight angle observation in this thread. Your next post after that said:

I certainly hit the motherlode when it comes to experts! This is great. I actually am a respected (if not rich) writer doing a project on subjects like conspiracy theorists; other things as well. You can look up my books at amazon -- Allan Weisbecker is my name.

Will you guys continue to 'set me straight'?

If so: One question I have is why they used approx 16 psi of pure O2 in the capsule during a communications test -- when Grissom & Co burned to death. Even I know not to do that.

Am I wrong in seeing that as a sarcastic reply? Instead of guessing your intent, I'd rather see you respond to that and other good rebuttals to your accusations by either withdrawing that particular claim or directly arguing the points that were made. That's what objective "critical thinkers" do, not just move the goalposts by changing the subject when shown to be wrong.

[nomuse]

By the way, that Bean was unfamiliar with the Van Allen belt IS incredible, whether he could 'feel' it (the radiation) or not. That I get insulted for pointing that out also goes to motives here. Speaking of which, since you seem to believe that they somehow 'avoided' the belts, possibly you could come up with a contemporaneous account of how they planned the launch to avoid the worst of the radiation. That would go a long way to shutting me up about the matter.

Argument by naive expectation.

You've been told (by conspiracy mongers) to think of the VARB as some Mysterious Deadly Antimatter Space Wedgie.  So to you, getting close to this Charybdis of Space should be foremost on everyone's mind.

The reality is that it is a danger as well understood (and probably ranked rather below) that of sunlight, or vacuum.  The man is riding on top of megatons of energetic chemistry, dependent every instant on complex and fragile systems just to keep breathing, further away from any possible rescue than Floyd Collins....and bending every bit of his considerable intellect and skills towards the task of "Don't F*** Up, there's a lot of money and prestige riding on this."

He's got other things to think about.  And specifically, things he actually has some control over. 

 

[Luckmeister]

allancw, here's what Wikipedia says regarding astronauts and VAB radiation:

The Apollo missions marked the first event where humans traveled through the Van Allen belts, which was one of several radiation hazards known by mission planners. The astronauts had low exposure in the Van Allen belts due to the short period of time spent flying through them. The command module's inner structure was an aluminum "sandwich" consisting of a welded aluminium inner skin, a thermally bonded honeycomb core, and a thin aluminium "face sheet." The steel honeycomb core and outer face sheets were thermally bonded to the inner skin.

In fact, the astronauts' overall exposure was dominated by solar particles once outside the Earth's magnetic field. The total radiation received by the astronauts varied from mission to mission but was measured to be between 0.16 and 1.14 rads (1.6 and 11.4 mGy), much less than the standard of 5 rem (50 mSv) per year set by the United States Atomic Energy Commission for people who work with radioactivity.

Please comment on this, allancw.

[gillianren]

You've been told (by conspiracy mongers) to think of the VARB as some Mysterious Deadly Antimatter Space Wedgie.

Actually, I believe the technical term is Searing Radiation Hell.  Which would be an excellent name for a heavy metal band.