Why I suspect Apollo was a hoax.

[Bob B.]

If it's all as suspicious as you say, why didn't the Soviets say anything at the time? Or were they in on the hoax?

Of course they had to be in on the hoax.  Their spacesuits use porous plate sublimators too.

Russian Spacesuits, Isaak P. Abramov and A. Ingemar Skoog, 2003

From page 242 (with photo on page 243):

The design of the sublimator/CHX for heat and humidity removal was proven in the spacesuit programmes of the USA and USSR and was also selected for breadboarding the ESSS project.  The design consisted of a stainless steel heat exchanger core with nickel fins and a sublimator porous plate built up of several layers of wire meshes rolled together (Figure 11.2.18).  The breadboard model of an all-European-manufactured sublimator/CHX proved the design worked, but heat removal capacity was lower than predicted.  Detailed analyses of the test results revealed the likely cause of reduced heat removal, and the unit was modified to give improved performance.

[mako88sb]

He'll probably quit posting soon. 2 or 3 weeks from now he'll be back starting a new thread about all the absurdities and how the only way to prove the landings were real is with the demo and act like none of the past few days has even happened. Standard procedure for him over at his usual hang-out, the Michio Kaku video.

[Apollo 957]

He'll probably quit posting soon. 2 or 3 weeks from now he'll be back starting a new thread about all the absurdities and how the only way to prove the landings were real is with the demo and act like none of the past few days has even happened. Standard procedure for him over at his usual hang-out, the Michio Kaku video.

If schadenfreude is truly the (made-up?) German word for taking pleasure at others' misfortunes, I may have to coin 'bakerwhippenassenkickenfreude' for the drubbing he's been receiving here.....

[Andromeda]

Why this obsession with video?  CT-ers seem to expect everything to be on the internet in the form of a video.  I don't think any lab work I have ever done has ever been videoed - the recording took the form of my lab books & write-ups.  Okay, so my specialism isn't engineering, but is video really a "scientifically honest" method of "proof" (proofs are only for mathematicians, Neil!) as Neil insists?  I don't think so.

Furthermore, what would Neil expect to see when watching the equipment working in a vacuum chamber, on video or in real life?  How would he know it was working?  My guess is it would be handwaved away...

[onebigmonkey]

Why this obsession with video?  CT-ers seem to expect everything to be on the internet in the form of a video.  I don't think any lab work I have ever done has ever been videoed - the recording took the form of my lab books & write-ups.  Okay, so my specialism isn't engineering, but is video really a "scientifically honest" method of "proof" (proofs are only for mathematicians, Neil!) as Neil insists?  I don't think so.

Furthermore, what would Neil expect to see when watching the equipment working in a vacuum chamber, on video or in real life?  How would he know it was working?  My guess is it would be handwaved away...

Because they don't have to think as hard.

There is a similar discussion over at ATS involving turbonium, well known to many here, who is demanding video footage of the testing of Apollo suit gloves to prove they were capable of being pressurised and then function properly. It's mostly a diversion from having his ass handed to him for posting one of archangel4mike's stupid videos about John Young not wearing gloves.

It's exactly the same premise as the tactic being employed here: find a topic for which the HB believes there is no evidence and keep gnawing at it in the hope that your detractors will go away. He can't prove that the gloves don't work, but he can prove that there is no video of them being tested (or believes he can). It's a scam to try and accumulate a series of small 'victories' and "A-ha! So you admit..." moments that they hope will add up to some sort of aggregate proof.

Another poster there had a similar thing over photos of crew members in the CSM in Apollo 12. He found that there were none, and decided that was all the proof he needed. The fact that 16mm footage of the crew in the CSM in zero G was available, as well as reflections of crew members in the window while filming the moon, was not of interest to him: there were no tourist "Hey ma look at me" images, ergo proof.

They don't want an answer, they want there not to be an answer. As with our OP here, they don't necessarily believe the argument, they believe that the other person can't provide a counter.

[Luke Pemberton]

My educated guess is that this is one reason why thermal vacuum chambers have plates cooled by liquid nitrogen. Several volatiles (water, carbon dioxide) would freeze out on such plates, making the job easier for the vacuum pumps.

I certainly didn't work with systems the size of chamber A, but ultra-high vacuums are not achieved using mechanical pumps alone. Once in the ultra-high range mechanical pumps are not really that helpful. High vacuum is normally achieved using a rotary pump. We then switched on an oil diffusion pump once high vacuum was achieved (you need to obtain high vacuum first otherwise the diffusion pump would stall). The entire rig was then wrapped like a turkey and heated to out gas the walls for 24 - 36 hours (mainly of water). The last procedure was carried for such a long time because we were quite a poor research group and no one wanted to purchase getter or cryo pumps. Heating the chamber with a turbo pump running was found to reduce the vacuum by another 2 orders of magnitude

But yes, once you reach ultra-high vacuum adsorption techniques are employed. Titanium cryopumps are used as they remove helium really well, no one would buy one of these for us

It was quite a feat to achieve 10^-9 Torr, but we managed it. We once got 10^-10 and pretty much everyone came in and looked at the ion gauge to witness our achievement, although most people thought the ion gauge was faulty at this point.

[12oh2alarm]

If schadenfreude is truly the (made-up?) German word for taking pleasure at others' misfortunes, I may have to coin 'bakerwhippenassenkickenfreude' for the drubbing he's been receiving here.....

Schadenfreude is not made-up. It's not even specific to German as many other languages have a word meaning exactly the same. Would you believe it, the ancient Greeks called it ἐπιχαιρεκακία (epichairekakía), and, I'm told, epicaricacy is an English word.
If I may, a suggestion for the newly coined word: since in German, -en indicates the infinitive of a verb, I'd remove it from the "assen" part, leaving (note capitalization) Bakerwhippenasskickenfreude.

On the other hand, maybe such word-coining is like beating a man already on the ground ("poking a donkey with a stick" as I read elsewhere). We don't make fun of handicapped people, why would me make fun of otherwise ill people who ruined most of their life with an Idée fixe?

[Kiwi]

 

...Bakerwhippenasskickenfreude...

Shouldn't the middle part be "arse" instead of "ass"? In that context "ass" is a distinctly North American (US and Canadian) euphemism which is not used by many Europeans and English-speaking people.

It's similar to the American euphemism "bathroom" that is used when the speaker actually means toilet, lavatory, dunny, thunderbox etcetera. If anyone ever comes to my place and asks for directions to the bathroom, they will be given them, and if they return and explain that they actually wanted that "other room", they might be loudly asked why they didn't have the good sense say so in the first place.

Oh, we Kiwis can be a pretty blunt lot, just the same as Australians. 

[dwight]

How about Bäckerarschtrittenschadenfreude? That uses correct terminology.

[gwiz]

Of course they had to be in on the hoax.  Their spacesuits use porous plate sublimators too.

Russian Spacesuits, Isaak P. Abramov and A. Ingemar Skoog, 2003

That book includes numerous other mentions of sublimation coolers, used from the early space station missions in the 1970s and still in use for EVAs from the Russian segment of the International Space Station.  It also includes several photos of test subjects wearing the suits inside thermal vacuum chambers.

[Luke Pemberton]

...why would me make fun of otherwise ill people who ruined most of their life with an Idée fixe?

I have never seen that term before although the link is broken for me. I've fixed it for you in this post, hope you don't mind?

[gwiz]

Okay, so my specialism isn't engineering, but is video really a "scientifically honest" method of "proof" (proofs are only for mathematicians, Neil!) as Neil insists?  I don't think so.

As an aerospace engineer occasionally involved with analysing flight tests, I can say that moving pictures are not normally a part of the process.  There are some types of test, such as the release of what are generally known as "stores" from military aircraft, where you want to see where the store goes after release to make sure it doesn't come too close to the aircraft, but in general the data comes from the normal flight instruments and extra sensors where needed.

[Andromeda]

Okay, so my specialism isn't engineering, but is video really a "scientifically honest" method of "proof" (proofs are only for mathematicians, Neil!) as Neil insists?  I don't think so.

As an aerospace engineer occasionally involved with analysing flight tests, I can say that moving pictures are not normally a part of the process.  There are some types of test, such as the release of what are generally known as "stores" from military aircraft, where you want to see where the store goes after release to make sure it doesn't come too close to the aircraft, but in general the data comes from the normal flight instruments and extra sensors where needed.

That's the thing - a video might show that something happens, but that's it.  For science, you need to have numbers attached to that - which won't be shown on a video without further analysis anyway.  A video will, to give a simple example, show that a ball thrown up will eventually fall back down.  But what good is that?  To gain anything useful & scientific, you need to know how long it took to fall down/how high it went/where it landed etc etc.  The exact stuff which Neil is dismissing...

[12oh2alarm]

...why would me make fun of otherwise ill people who ruined most of their life with an Idée fixe?

I have never seen that term before although the link is broken is broken for me. I've fixed it for you in this post, hope you don't mind?

Thanks, mate. I've corrected it in the original as well.

[Apollo 957]

If schadenfreude is truly the (made-up?) German word for taking pleasure at others' misfortunes, I may have to coin 'bakerwhippenassenkickenfreude' for the drubbing he's been receiving here.....

If I may, a suggestion for the newly coined word: since in German, -en indicates the infinitive of a verb, I'd remove it from the "assen" part, leaving (note capitalization) Bakerwhippenasskickenfreude.

I don't speak the language, but I approve.