Nvidia uses new global illumination tech to test hoax claims

[Chew]

"always falling" around the Earth. By the time you get to where you should hit the ground has curved away underneath you. It's the celestial mechanical equivalent of the Shepard Tone.

[ka9q]

There was a neat little experiment that shows how things in freefall are 'weightless'. Take a paper or Styrofoam cup poke a hole near the bottom and fill it with water. Then, drop it from some height. You will see that the water doesn't pour from the cup while it's falling.

There's a more fun way. Visit Six Flags Magic Mountain in California and ride the Superman: The Escape ride. (I think it was modified and renamed a few years ago.) It's about the best design for a zero-g ride I can think of short of an airplane ride.  It certainly beats all the alternatives on a dollars-per-0g-second basis. It's especially good at demonstrating that weightlessness doesn't depend on velocity; you're weightless going up as well as coming down.

[ka9q]

The space shuttle tires were filled with air.  That used to be one of my interview questions:  Why don't they pop in the vacuum?

On Columbia, they did.

[Dr_Orpheus]

I had an HB try to argue on GLP recently that the pressure difference would be too great in a vacuum for the fuel and air tanks on Apollo.  I tried to explain that one more ATM difference wouldn't be significant but he didn't get it because again, it was GLP. 

I guess you could ask this person why the fuel tanks on unmanned spacecraft don't explode in a vacuum.  Do they think some special technology prevents fuel tanks from exploding that can't be used on a manned spacecraft?

[Dr_Orpheus]

As were the MET 'Lunar rickshaw' tires. Well, nitrogen, but still pressurized, yet I have yet to hear a specific complaint regarding them from conspiracy theorists.

I imagine very few HBs have heard of the MET.  That would require research beyond Youtube and hoax web sites.

[ka9q]

People who haven't done a lot of research might be forgiven for thinking the Apollo LRV used rubber tires, since the 1g trainer did use them and it appeared in a lot of photos.

[frenat]

I had an HB try to argue on GLP recently that the pressure difference would be too great in a vacuum for the fuel and air tanks on Apollo.  I tried to explain that one more ATM difference wouldn't be significant but he didn't get it because again, it was GLP. 

I guess you could ask this person why the fuel tanks on unmanned spacecraft don't explode in a vacuum.  Do they think some special technology prevents fuel tanks from exploding that can't be used on a manned spacecraft?

They were one that also tries to argue that any space travel is impossible because the vacuum sucks away all the gas before it can do any work.  They weren't too worried about actual logic.

[Dr_Orpheus]

They were one that also tries to argue that any space travel is impossible because the vacuum sucks away all the gas before it can do any work.  They weren't too worried about actual logic.

One of those people who think DirectTV is transmitted by secret high altitude balloons, then?

[JayUtah]

I guess you could ask this person why the fuel tanks on unmanned spacecraft don't explode in a vacuum.  Do they think some special technology prevents fuel tanks from exploding that can't be used on a manned spacecraft?

The SM cryogenic oxygen tanks each massed more than 200 lbs empty.  As part of my in-depth research on Apollo 13, I discovered a description of how they were made.  Obviously they're not your garden variety propane tanks.

Heck, I've got a stick of ordinary Schedule 40 PVC pipe that I use for dusting the crown molding, and it's rated to 600 psi for temperatures below 73 F.  Not that I would use it in space, but if you didn't care about design margins or leakage or thermal embrittlement or any of the other reasons we choose different materials, you could use it as the fuel line for the lunar module APS.

[JayUtah]

They were one that also tries to argue that any space travel is impossible because the vacuum sucks away all the gas before it can do any work.  They weren't too worried about actual logic.

Or science, apparently.  The exhaust gas does so much more work in a vacuum without that pesky ambient atmosphere to impede its escape from the nozzle.

[JayUtah]

People who haven't done a lot of research might be forgiven for thinking the Apollo LRV used rubber tires, since the 1g trainer did use them and it appeared in a lot of photos.

Indeed Sam Colby reproduced a few of those photos to make exactly that point.  When it was pointed out that the 1-g trainer and the flight articles used different tires, Colby posted low-resolution photos of the LRV on the lunar surface such that the mesh was not terribly visible.

The MET indeed used rubber tires, and rubber tires could have been used on the LRV but for the requirement (not applicable to the MET) that it be a human-rated vehicle.  Mission success was enhanced by using tires that would not be susceptible to punctures that would render the LRV inoperative and invoke the walk-back contingency.

[JayUtah]

One of those people who think DirectTV is transmitted by secret high altitude balloons, then?

Or high-flying aircraft, or any number of improbable and impractical theories.  Billions of dollars a year is expended on commercial spacefaring worldwide, which has nothing to do with protecting these alleged ideological sacred cows.

[Tedward]

People who haven't done a lot of research might be forgiven for thinking the Apollo LRV used rubber tires, since the 1g trainer did use them and it appeared in a lot of photos.

That was basically my thought when I first started to wonder at the hoax and why. In my ignorance it was "sure, why the hell not if engineered correctly", not "it cannot be done". Of course you live and learn as the saying goes.

[Sus_pilot]

One of those people who think DirectTV is transmitted by secret high altitude balloons, then?

Or high-flying aircraft, or any number of improbable and impractical theories.  Billions of dollars a year is expended on commercial spacefaring worldwide, which has nothing to do with protecting these alleged ideological sacred cows.

NetFlix is sent via all those antennas hidden in plain sight - VOR's, dinjaknow? 

[frenat]

One of those people who think DirectTV is transmitted by secret high altitude balloons, then?

Or high-flying aircraft, or any number of improbable and impractical theories.  Billions of dollars a year is expended on commercial spacefaring worldwide, which has nothing to do with protecting these alleged ideological sacred cows.

My favorite is the guy on the David Icke forum that believes low altitude satellites are possible but not anything in or past the Van Allen belts.  His theory for geostationary satellites was a large constellation of low satellites that are networked and switch to active when they are in just the right position.  Nevermind the fact that different satellites would have to be active at the same time for different people around the world due to line of sight issues, or that there would have to be hundreds if not thousands of satellites to simulate a single geostationary bird that way.  And why he thought satellites couldn't get past the Van Allen belts?  Because he didn't think radio waves could penetrate the belts either.  IIRC, in his mind, radioactivity meant active in the radio frequencies and the signals would be lost in the noise.