Why I suspect Apollo was a hoax.

[Allan F]

I've been reading about you, Neil Baker, and it appears from newspaper articles and other sources, that you have serious issues with the real world. Your actions aren't those one would expect from a learned individual. You have scientific background, but don't use it at all. You can't seem to grasp the concept that thousands and thousands of engineers and scientists routinely USE the very technology you claim don't work. Why is it that YOU can see though the "veil of lies" and the other scientists and engineers can't?

Engineers have a very goal-oriented way of doing things. Ask an engineer to design a piece of hardware which does a specific thing, using known scientific principles, he goes right along and does it. If it wasn't possible - or HE didn't think it was possible - he'd tell you why and how it did not work. Then he'd tell you to either hire a smarter engineer, wait for himself to catch up, or suggest an alternative which would work.

That is the way of ice sublimation. It is a very simple concept, well described in literature for many years, the energy needed to sublimate water can be looked up in chemistry textbooks. The engineering challenge wasn't that great - heat exchangers and water flow had been mastered many years ago. Even the first steam engines had them.

The only anomaly is your inability to grasp that there are people much smarter than you who do the work and has done the education. It spills over into your other conspiracist claims.


EDITED TO ADD: Please describe with your own words WHAT sublimation is. Can you do that?

[JayUtah]

I can't think of another anomaly that can be investigated on Earth to the level of PROOF.

That doesn't mean it's not just your McGuffin.

It's a great opportunity.

Asked and answered.  You are the only one who is demanding such a test.  You may not beg the question that your demands are reasonable, nor that others' lack of interest in or endorsement of your claims constitutes "derelict[ion] and complicit[y]" on their part.

Further, you have been asked several times why you didn't test your claim in the more straightforward way suggested.  Instead you seem to demand that NASA do your homework for you, give special deference to you, and that their reasonable reluctance to engage a violent felon in a fool's errand can only be explained by their fear of discovery.

NASA slipped up. Accountability is due.

No.  Speculation on your part does not oblige others to extraordinary production.  Your accusations, however, do oblige you to be accountable for them.

[smartcooky]

It's a simple thing.   A validation.

Put yourself in the position of any space-flight organisation.

Why would they want to validate the veracity of spacesuits in a  vacuum chamber test when they have been routinely used in space for over 50 years and thousands of hours in space-walks and zero atmosphere environments?

Why would they want to even bother wasting their time and money dealing with some crackpot conspiracy theorist like you? What do they have to gain from running a test for a tiny minority of the world's loons when the vast majority of people know that the truth is plain and right in front of of them?

It would be rather like asking the Ford Motor Company to demonstrate that a Crown Vic can be driven on a road when millions of them have been routinely driven on roads for over 20 years!
 

[Zakalwe]

Baker's similarities to Heiwa are remarkable, aren't they?


Both ex-engineers.
Both gone completely off the rails.
Both incapable of controlling their obsessions to the point where they get themselves in real-world trouble.  (Bjorkman thrown out of conferences, Baker committed and jailed).
Both suffering from 9/11 obsessions.
Both suffering from crank magnetism.
Both incapable of acknowledging the very evidence that they maintain is unavailable even when said evidence is shoved right under their noses.
Both demonstrate superiority complexes.
Both maintain that the ISS is a fake.

[JayUtah]

Your actions aren't those one would expect from a learned individual.

Or even an especially stable one.  Baker begs that the explanation of the "stonewalling" against him -- accepting for the sake of argument that it has a factual basis -- is the result of others' dereliction of duty and complicity in some presumably nefarious scheme.  He ignores the possibility that it may instead be the expected and prudent reaction to his demonstrated irrational and violent behavior, and that this would be defensible even were his argument to have any factual merit.

You can't seem to grasp the concept that thousands and thousands of engineers and scientists routinely USE the very technology you claim don't work.

He has already said he suspects "the space program" to be a hoax.  From that it would follow that he simply believes all who claim to use the suspect technology are simply lying as part of the hoax.

heat exchangers and water flow had been mastered many years ago. Even the first steam engines had them.

Phase-change thermal controls were already very well established prior to the middle of the 20th century.  That the porous plate sublimator is an innovative implementation of the principle cannot be denied.  But to pose it as some device unheard of in physics or engineering is simply ludicrous.

[bknight]

...
I defend Apollo to stop a great achievement being denigrated by morons and idiots. I defend it because I know it is a genuine historical event, and I know it because I have put the hours in doing my own research and validating evidence, and because I can see that every piece of information about the programme presents a coherent and consistent narrative supported by scientific fact.

What have you done apart from bluster and sneer?

Where is your empirically proven scientifically validated evidence that a sublimator will not cool a space suit?

That is one of the best description of the services provided by the collective group that belong to this forum.

[bknight]

A rubber duck is better at searching the internet than you. You couldn't even find a reference that has been in the very same place on the internet since 1997, for pete's sake. To which one might add your bizarre expectation that ALL data must be on the internet else it does not exist. Whence you derive such a notion is anyone's guess, but derive it you have. This begs the question: How do you suppose any research occurred before the internet?

What do you mean, "Go to the library and thumb through index cards to find several references?"

Heaven forefend! Surely not a Dewey Decimal System? Surely you cannot expect one to interact with treeware? Surely you cannot expect one to open an actual "book"? (Do such things still exist? Did they ever exist?)

Admit it. The entire universe did not exist before there was an internet and therefore, anything which does not exist on the intertubes or webernets does not really exist at all.

Or so the various Crank McBullplops would have you believe.

Off topic, but one of the highlights of reading through these pages and learning a new word!!

[Abaddon]

A rubber duck is better at searching the internet than you. You couldn't even find a reference that has been in the very same place on the internet since 1997, for pete's sake. To which one might add your bizarre expectation that ALL data must be on the internet else it does not exist. Whence you derive such a notion is anyone's guess, but derive it you have. This begs the question: How do you suppose any research occurred before the internet?

What do you mean, "Go to the library and thumb through index cards to find several references?"

Heaven forefend! Surely not a Dewey Decimal System? Surely you cannot expect one to interact with treeware? Surely you cannot expect one to open an actual "book"? (Do such things still exist? Did they ever exist?)

Admit it. The entire universe did not exist before there was an internet and therefore, anything which does not exist on the intertubes or webernets does not really exist at all.

Or so the various Crank McBullplops would have you believe.

Off topic, but one of the highlights of reading through these pages and learning a new word!!

It is not of my coining, more is the pity. Nevertheless, it is a term that is sufficiently descriptive that I like it.

[sts60]

Neil, as I pointed out here and here, and many others have repeatedly shown as well, your characterization of an "anomaly" is founded upon nothing more than your personal say-so.  You are manifestly unfamiliar with the record, you keep denying the existence of items showed to you, you keep trying to say that everyone else is as much in the dark as you, and you fountain out wild claims of coverups spanning half a century of international space operations with no basis whatsoever.  Yet you insist that a special demonstration be arranged for you on the basis of your ignorant and frankly irrational opinions.  You are just one of many hoax believers who attempt this silly and self-important charade. 

Not that you've answered, or even addressed, my previous questions, but - You accuse others here of being blind followers, but they've been busily digging up information and supplying context for you, and your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and shut your eyes to avoid having to reconsider your position.  You've assiduously avoided learning anything at all.  Why are you going to such lengths to remain clueless in the service of clinging to your "hoax" belief?  Is it a religious thing?  Are you just angry that the U.S. accomplished such a feat?   Or what? 

You don't have to wrap yourself in a shell of paranoia and ignorance.  There's a lot to learn and enjoy the understanding of.   It's up to you.

[Cat Not Included]

Repeating your claims anew does not unwind the previous 15 pages of discussion.

But it does emphasize that nobody has answered the challenge.
Even if you believe the spacesuits and sublimators work as claimed, you should want the demonstration I describe so that you can KNOW they work as claimed.
I'm puzzled by everyone's reluctance to demand a demo.
Is believing you're right so much better than knowing the truth?

Neil, as I've tried to discuss earlier, even if, for some reason, I didn't think spacesuits worked, I wouldn't find the demo you described remotely convincing, and I'm baffled* as to why you would.

"In a single test, three independent viewers agreed this worked!" is NOT convincing proof. It is, in fact, a ridiculously minimal amount of evidence. It is laughable. Just imagine that for a moment in any other situation:
"Buy our product! THREE people say it works!"

Indeed, I would actually suspect that a claim of "three people claim it works" is almost certainly trying to conceal something. If it really worked, they wouldn't have to settle for three measly people.

On the other hand, I am rather convinced, in fact, by "thousands of experts and people who's jobs and lives depend on this all agree that it works". Especially when there's continued agreement across multiple countries and multiple generations. Especially when there's clear and direct evidence that could only be produced by having it work.

Further, as I alluded to earlier, if an organization was corrupt and carrying out a massive fraud, it would be utterly insane to request a demonstration from that organization to prove they were not a fraud. Of course they would fake it.

* OK, honestly, no, I'm not really baffled. I've got a pretty good idea why you've chosen this approach. But if I were to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'd be baffled.

[Allan F]

Stonewalling - has he (I suspect not) even made it reasonable likely that he has actually contacted somebody who has had any connection to the technology he claims doesn't work? If he contacted somebody doing rocket nozzles about the sublimator-(non)issue, it's more than likely his request would be discarded. And even if he got somewhere near the right people, how was it worded? If he rambled on about it being fake and didn't work, he probably would not get a lengthy answer, if any. Or if he required access to papers about current models, would they not be protected by company policy against industrial espionage?

[JayUtah]

"In a single test, three independent viewers agreed this worked!" is NOT convincing proof.

For reasons that need not be belabored, Baker himself will never be allowed to participate in a test that takes place at a NASA vacuum testing facility.  Since he sidesteps every single bit of contrary evidence with speculation, there is no reason to suppose that in the event his independent witnesses report a successful sublimator test he won't simply dismiss it speculatively as, "NASA must have gotten to them."

If Baker's intent were truly to test the sublimator, he could have purchased one himself and tested it under his own supervision, in the presence of as many witnesses as he wished.  And without the potential interference from NASA.  The fact that he hasn't done this, or even acknowledged the proposal, evinces a more likely explanation:  he simply wants to continued demanding something unreasonable so that he can continue to read all manner of malice into its absence.

[Luke Pemberton]

Or if he required access to papers about current models, would they not be protected by company policy against industrial espionage?

Quite. I'm going to phone BAe tomorrow and ask for information about a military system. If I get stonewalled I'll assume that the system is fake. I cannot get my head around the idea that he thinks that the sublimator does not work, or needs some proof of it working. Phase change heat exchangers are quite common technology, and the PLSS sublimator uses the condition of vacuum to do what it says on the tin. He only needs to look at the phase diagram for water.

To me it's another one of these examples where the CT has seen the use of the word anomaly, and has invented something to concoct a theory, when in reality it is lazy research and poor understanding on his part. He's floated his idea thinking he has a clincher, and has fallen flat on his face and trying to find a way out.

[bknight]

I found a newspaper article concerning A11:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19690716&id=D4pjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EnoNAAAAIBAJ&pg=5510,1683661&hl=en
In the article

The PLSS, however, has undergone more than 148 hours of simulated us in NASA and Hamilton-Standard test facilities.
Now I believe I read somewhere that the PLSS would only work in a vacuum.  If this were accurate then these tests had to be conducted in a vacuum chamber.  Now whether or not there is a video(s) of the tests only NASA and Hamilton-Standard would know.  But it seems pretty clear that it was tested before ever flown by Apollo crews.

[smartcooky]

I found a newspaper article concerning A11:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19690716&id=D4pjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EnoNAAAAIBAJ&pg=5510,1683661&hl=en
In the article

The PLSS, however, has undergone more than 148 hours of simulated us in NASA and Hamilton-Standard test facilities.
Now I believe I read somewhere that the PLSS would only work in a vacuum.  If this were accurate then these tests had to be conducted in a vacuum chamber.  Now whether or not there is a video(s) of the tests only NASA and Hamilton-Standard would know.  But it seems pretty clear that it was tested before ever flown by Apollo crews.

A good find that pretty much dumps Baker's crank theories in the trash can where they belong.