I don’t know if man went to the moon in the sixties

[carpediem]

Where does this "snow" come from? Why can't we see the clouds that create it? Where does all this water go every month after the tank fills? (Please, no "retaining water" jokes.)

These are things I'd like to hear from DAKDAK.

I guess the clouds must form over the dark side of the moon because it's colder there.

[Echnaton]

I wonder if Bill Nye would have got a better reaction if he'd not framed the point by referencing the Bible. Still seems funny and stupid and depressing though.

Unfortunately I can't find an original article, so it is unclear to me what he may actually have said.  Any book calling something "a light" in the sense it is used in Genesis does not require debunking, it is perfectly good use of the word.  The moon does in fact light up the night even if it reflects rather than emits light.  It is actually more descriptive than the phrase, "the dark side of the moon," when referring to the far side of the moon.  OTOH, anyone that does think the moon emits light because of a reference in Genesis needs to have both their literary and scientific understanding examined.   And we know that there are plenty of people that could apply to. 

[Echnaton]

I was wrong to go with the short odds, and I'll happily payup.

[Glom]

And its not unknown for engineers to make cost cutting measures like that. God may have decided it was cheaper to make the Moon reflect sunlight than emit its own.

[raven]

And its not unknown for engineers to make cost cutting measures like that. God may have decided it was cheaper to make the Moon reflect sunlight than emit its own.

It is certainly more consistent with the other laws of physics, and everyone knows special cases within a system always cost more.

[twik]

Forget the emitting of light, how is the Moon emitting all that water it collects every month? Is that what causes rain on earth, in DAKDAK's view?

[raven]

Forget the emitting of light, how is the Moon emitting all that water it collects every month? Is that what causes rain on earth, in DAKDAK's view?

Magic space bees! They collect the snow and turn it into magic space bee honey, their hive which is actually Venus. All that evaporating water is why Venus is always cloudy.

[ka9q]

"2. (FIVE ) VERY LARGE PARACHUTES," "THREE FOR SPLASH DOWN AND TWO FOR LAUNCH ABORT"

Sigh. Where do people get this stuff?

A launch abort would still have been followed by a splashdown. There were no special parachutes for launch abort. There were two small drogue chutes that were deployed first to stabilize the capsule and to slow it down somewhat.  Then they were cut away and the three large main chutes were deployed, only two of which were necessary for a safe landing.

I'd have to check if the drogue chutes would have been used during every abort. It might have depended on exactly where the abort occurred and how fast it was moving.

[JayUtah]

IIRC, the drogues were not used in any of the low-altitude abort modes; the mains were simply reefed in.

[JayUtah]

IIRC, the drogues were not used in any [all] of the low-altitude abort modes; the mains were simply reefed in.

Strike that; my buddy from ATK got back to me immediately with the authoritative scoop from the original ELS/LES design documents.  The LES controller deploys the drogues in all Saturn V abort modes.

There is, however, a small parachute attached to the apex shield that pulls it free of the wake behind the CM.  This would be a sixth parachute aside from the three mains and two drogues, but its only job is to ensure clean separation of the apex heat shield.

[sts60]

So do you get your own T-shirt?

[JayUtah]

That's up to whoever's now in charge of handing out the T-shirts.

[Jason Thompson]

So I too would like to know by what method DAKDAK is "still coming up with 210 cubic feet."

By repeatedly reading the Wikipedia article, which describes the interior volume of the cabin as 210 cubic feet. In other words, despite the numerous diagrams and clear terminology, DAKDAK is incapable of grasping the difference between the total volume taken up by the entirety of the command module and the interior habitable volume of the cabin.

[ka9q]

Somebody should find him a good cutaway view of the CM showing the inner and outer hulls plus the rather thick heatshield that covered the entire spacecraft, not just the bottom. Unlike the outer hull, the inner hull wasn't even conical; it left quite a bit of unpressurized volume for the parachutes on top and for the RCS tanks and thrusters around the bottom edge.

[JayUtah]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27417638@N07/6160030585/lightbox/

from Scott Sullivan's Virtual Apollo.  This depicts the pressurized volume.  The habitable volume is the portion excluding the dark green equipment bays and their equipment.