Deconstructing Apollo 20

[Abaddon]

See, there is a common trope that HB types are living in Mom's basement. This is supportive evidence that this may be true. The sheer racket that such a launch would generate would be sufficient but the HB crew would propose "silent" launches without ever specifying how such silence was achieved.

. . . And sound doesn't travel in basements?  I'm not following you, here.  I have a friend who lives in his in-laws' basement, and he would still, if I asked, be well aware that rockets are loud.

By which I mean that often HB types seem to never have set foot outside the basement and are innocent of the real world.

[Luckmeister]

See, there is a common trope that HB types are living in Mom's basement. This is supportive evidence that this may be true. The sheer racket that such a launch would generate would be sufficient but the HB crew would propose "silent" launches without ever specifying how such silence was achieved.

. . . And sound doesn't travel in basements?  I'm not following you, here.  I have a friend who lives in his in-laws' basement, and he would still, if I asked, be well aware that rockets are loud.

By which I mean that often HB types seem to never have set foot outside the basement and are innocent of the real world.

I have a friend who recently fell on hard times and is now living in his parents' basement. I unthinkingly made a comment to him that AWE130 probably lives in his mother's basement and spent the next half hour apologizing. I don't use that put-down any more.

[Zakalwe]

I have heard it said that Saturn V launches were visible from hundreds of miles away. Plus the launches were recorded on seismograph some 360 miles from the launchpad. Of course, the average HB will just  handwoven all that away.

[raven]

I have heard it said that Saturn V launches were visible from hundreds of miles away. Plus the launches were recorded on seismograph some 360 miles from the launchpad. Of course, the average HB will just  handwoven all that away.

You could stick them in a rocket and boot their ass out of the hatch onto the lunar surface, and their dying words would be "It's a faaake!"

[gillianren]

See, there is a common trope that HB types are living in Mom's basement. This is supportive evidence that this may be true. The sheer racket that such a launch would generate would be sufficient but the HB crew would propose "silent" launches without ever specifying how such silence was achieved.

. . . And sound doesn't travel in basements?  I'm not following you, here.  I have a friend who lives in his in-laws' basement, and he would still, if I asked, be well aware that rockets are loud.

By which I mean that often HB types seem to never have set foot outside the basement and are innocent of the real world.

I have a friend who recently fell on hard times and is now living in his parents' basement. I unthinkingly made a comment to him that AWE130 probably lives in his mother's basement and spent the next half hour apologizing. I don't use that put-down any more.

I have a lot of friends who live with parents for one reason or another, usually because either the friend can't find a job that will pay for a place of their own or because the parent is in poor health.  Sometimes both.

[Peter B]

I'm not an engineer, but we know how far down range the Saturn V stages impacted when launched from Cape Canaveral, and we know these numbers are accurate since parts have been recovered from those locations. So . . . just plot from Vandenberg over the continental United States to see where, generally, they'd land. Or am I missing something?

Yep, that's what I was thinking too. What locations are in the 340-370 mile range from Vandenberg?

[ka9q]

San Diego (where I live) is about 230 miles straight line from VAFB. The site is used only for high inclination orbits (e.g., polar sun synchronous) and westbound suborbital ICBM tests so all launches are over water to the west or southwest. Polar launches take them right past Santa Barbara, the Greater Disneyland Basin (i.e., Los Angeles and Orange County) and San Diego. Staging of a Delta II typically occurs right as it passes my latitude.

Medium prograde inclinations higher than those reachable from KSC involve flying "doglegs" to keep them away from land. Some polar launches still have to fly doglegs or delay SRB jettison to protect oil platforms.

Evening launches invariably generate huge numbers of UFO reports. Night launches are less obvious, but the SRBs make them easy to spot if the skies are clear. A morning launch might be visible from sunlight glinting off metallic surfaces. Day launches are the hardest to see from here, but I suspect they're much more visible from Los Angeles and especially Santa Barbara.

[Ishkabibble]

Whoa... wait just a damn minute.... I am not some hoax nut who can be brushed off with an arrogant response. I never said I believed any of this. I know better.  You've gone out of your way to be insulting, in my opinion, and I am angry as a result.

This response seems unmerited by the post to which it is directed. Mebbe have a cup of tea and then reread it to see if it could be interpreted in a way that was not arrogant or insulting? I didn't pick up either from Abaddon's post.

Nope... A couple of days later and I'm still angry about it. It seems to me that there's an undertone here of "let's attack a hoax nut" first, before anything else. I asked to be given information I could learn from. Instead, I got a rather smug lecture on not "falling for claims in spite of what's posted here." So far, to be honest, all that was posted was just statements. There was no initial effort to provide any source material, no suggestions for places to find further information, and no "well, here's how to calculate what you're looking for"

As I've indicated, I am not a mathematical person. I am not a science-educated person. I am an historian, and professor of history. I don't know how to do advanced math, beyond basic algebra. So when I asked for additional information, I felt it reasonable to expect something other than "because we said so".

[Ishkabibble]

Double post Ishkabibble?

Yeah, and I don't know why either.

[Ishkabibble]

I'm not an engineer, but we know how far down range the Saturn V stages impacted when launched from Cape Canaveral, and we know these numbers are accurate since parts have been recovered from those locations. So . . . just plot from Vandenberg over the continental United States to see where, generally, they'd land. Or am I missing something?

Yes, from my perspective, you're missing how you know "how far downrange the Saturn V stages impacted" You might know it, but I don't. And I don't have a clue where to begin going through the massive NASA webpages to find first-source material.

We all know they did, but I have absolutely no idea where to begin combing through the massive number of NASA webpages to find first-source information. My initial search led me to the Technical Documents server, and two hours later I gave up because nothing germane to what I was looking for came up.

A second-level or third-level citation is okay for personal purposes, but in the academic world, first-level only. There's too much information coming up, and none of it is specific. And even if it did come up, I don't have the trigonometry or calculus skills or education to figure out what the heck to do with it.

[Ishkabibble]

Whoa... wait just a damn minute.... I am not some hoax nut who can be brushed off with an arrogant response. I never said I believed any of this. I know better.  You've gone out of your way to be insulting, in my opinion, and I am angry as a result.

I did not accuse you of any such thing. I was not insulting. I simply stuck to the facts of the matter at hand. What I did state is that you, like many of us get sucked in to the HB contentions very easily. Happens to me, you and all of us from time to time. That is the HB game. I can personally attest that the red mist has fallen over my eyes from time to time. I try to avoid it as best I can, but sometimes a HB will post something so egregious that one cannot help oneself.

By the same token, when one sees a fellow doing the same thing, one is obliged to say "Whoa, step back from the abyss, brother".

You might take a moment to read what I actually wrote when you cool down.

As for the rest of your post? I have no issue. Except for this.

Now, can you provide the information I asked about? If not, kindly stay out of it then. There are others here who can, and who won't be so derisive about it.

This is a discussion forum. You cannot lay down rules for who may or may not participate in said discussion. That is not your remit, responsibility or right. It is LO and LO alone who sets the standard, and a high standard it is.

The bottom line here is that you have somehow purloined my post into a personal insult. I have no idea how you did that, but you have. Since I wrote it, you can take it from me that it was not so intended.

This response is even more condescending than the first.

I don't know where you get off treating me like I'm a hoax nut, but you need to just stop. I asked for specific information. So far, you haven't done anything but lecture me, rather condescendingly, about how I should or should not post.

Please don't talk *at* me that way. I'm not some pimply-faced dropout who doesn't know his rear from a hole in the ground.

[Ishkabibble]

I have heard it said that Saturn V launches were visible from hundreds of miles away. Plus the launches were recorded on seismograph some 360 miles from the launchpad. Of course, the average HB will just  handwoven all that away.

Can you show me where you've seen the seismographic evidence for this? I'm hoping I can learn something about this, rather than just have to accept some people's word that it exists. This is almost what I was hoping for in the beginning. Things that lead me to actual citations.

Thanks!

[Ishkabibble]

Saturn V rocket lifting off with its five F1 engines chucking several million pounds of thrust out the back, generates a sound level of about 90 db at that distance. That is VERY loud.. as loud as a fighter jet running at take-off power 500 metres away..... No-one in Santa Maria could have missed it.

I witnessed the night launch of Apollo 17.  It isn't just the noise, the exhaust lit up the whole area, anyone awake within a large surrounding area would have noticed.

Since I started looking into this, I've found someone who lived in Charleston, SC in December 1972, who stated that they saw "light in the sky" from the launch. Charleston is easily a couple hundred miles (as the crow flies) from KSC, and that means that at the very least, a radius of 150 miles would not be an unreasonable distance to ignore any night launch. Cut that by two thirds, and you have a 50 mile radius, for day launches. By my rough math, I find that according to the US census bureau that almost 600,000 people lived within a 50-mile radius of Vandenberg in 1972. So this gives me a number based in documented facts that can be used. I'm interested in finding out more information about the seismic effects of a Saturn V launch, given that California is a very active seismic activity state, and they have hundreds of seismometers littered about the landscape there. Auditory evidence would be just as good. How loud was the thing? I know that people who witnessed launches from KSC have all said that the sound was so great that you could actually feel it in your guts, but are there any sources for decibel levels at known distances from the pads? That would make a nice bit of information.

Thanks!

[Ishkabibble]

I'm not an engineer, but we know how far down range the Saturn V stages impacted when launched from Cape Canaveral, and we know these numbers are accurate since parts have been recovered from those locations. So . . . just plot from Vandenberg over the continental United States to see where, generally, they'd land. Or am I missing something?

Yep, that's what I was thinking too. What locations are in the 340-370 mile range from Vandenberg?

Didn't launches for the Apollo missions have to be along certain lines of bearing? If so, wouldn't it narrow down the corridor of possible locations if you had say, a 15-degree wide swath of bearing, over a specific range of distance? That would encompass the total area of possible impacts, I think, if I am visualizing it correctly, but the mathematics involved in figuring it out are beyond me.

[Abaddon]

I'm not an engineer, but we know how far down range the Saturn V stages impacted when launched from Cape Canaveral, and we know these numbers are accurate since parts have been recovered from those locations. So . . . just plot from Vandenberg over the continental United States to see where, generally, they'd land. Or am I missing something?

Yep, that's what I was thinking too. What locations are in the 340-370 mile range from Vandenberg?

Didn't launches for the Apollo missions have to be along certain lines of bearing? If so, wouldn't it narrow down the corridor of possible locations if you had say, a 15-degree wide swath of bearing, over a specific range of distance? That would encompass the total area of possible impacts, I think, if I am visualizing it correctly, but the mathematics involved in figuring it out are beyond me.

Never let it be said...
http://history.nasa.gov/ap10fj/pdf/as-505-postflight-trajectory.pdf

Be warned. It is not light reading material.