Why I suspect Apollo was a hoax.

[Trebor]

So what is the problem exactly?

When I went to find more information about them in 2007, I couldn't find a photograph, or a video or a citation in any academic-level book.

And from what we have seen, that is just down to you not being very good at searching for information.

.. it's far less than what I expected considering that spacesuit ice sublimators are one of the most exotic heat transfer devices ever developed.

Exotic? Really? It is an extremely basic principle.
Neatly demonstrated in this video :

I can't understand why they aren't more appreciated.

Probably because there is nothing 'exotic' about them, it is a basic behaviour of water in a vacuum.

Which leads back into my original question; What is the problem with this system? Is there any particular reason you think it would not work?

[Peter B]

I found this book published in 1993 that mentions spacesuit ice sublimators.
https://books.google.com/books?id=fb4QAQAAMAAJ&q=spacesuit+ice+sublimator&dq=spacesuit+ice+sublimator&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBDgKahUKEwjty7GimNLHAhXVKYgKHZUTC2k

I searched hard for a second Internet photo of a spacesuit ice sublimator with no success but in 2007 Harold McCann, coauthor of U.S. Spacesuits

http://www.amazon.com/Spacesuits-Springer-Praxis-Books-Exploration/dp/144199565X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1440988637&sr=8-1&keywords=u.S.+spacesuits

sent me two additional photos of ice sublimators from his private collection so I know they exist even though they weren't on the Internet.

And except for that one 1966 video of a spacesuit without sublimator failing with a near-fatality, I can't find any others.

What about this page: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/plss.html

I've read the comments and I agree that there would be little to see  if a vacuum chamber were filmed and little could be proven by it...

Fair enough.

...but considering the crucial nature of those tests and the unique nature of the heat transfer device, I'm surprised more public attention wasn't focused on the sublimators.

Aaaargh!

You just accepted that there'd be "little to see" if the test was done the way you want. Why do you think the "public" would show any interest in a white box sitting in a chamber where there was "little to see"? What sort of insight do you think you have into where "public attention" should be focused?

Reading many of the links provided, it was surprising to learn that none of the test reports indicated that an astronaut was in the vacuum chamber at the same time the sublimator was being tested. They would place the sublimator in a vacuum chamber with a suited astronaut outside on a treadmill. The Rice University tests used an electric heater to supply the heat load for the sublimator in a vacuum chamber. I didn't understand the units he used to describe vacuum chamber pressure.

Why the surprise? If the purpose of the test is to ensure the sublimator works in a vacuum, why put anything else in the vacuum chamber? Why risk the astronaut's life from having something unexpected happen to some other piece of hardware? You can save all-up tests until you've confirmed the sublimator works according to specs.

To provide an alternative example, when the RAF first tested Barnes Wallis's dam-buster bomb during World War Two, they didn't put live explosives inside the casings. They simply substituted it with another material of the same weight, because all they were testing was whether the casings were strong enough.

Anyway, although I now know much more about the sublimators, I still have doubts that astronauts have performed EVAs in the vacuum of space. Testimony of Independent witnesses observing a spacesuit with sublimator operating in a high vacuum chamber on Earth duplicating environmental conditions of orbit is not, in my opinion, an unreasonable request.

Do you realise how tight NASA's budget is? You may think your request is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that there's any number of people with similar "perfectly reasonable" requests, and if NASA was to meet your request they'd have to meet everyone else's too. NASA would be left with no money to actually do what the US Congress wants it to.

If NASA is using those spacesuit for EVAs as they allege then they've been regularly testing them for more than 50 years as they also allege. It should cost nothing extra and pose little inconvenience to allow independent observers. Plus it would add validation to NASA's Citizen supported activity.

The Soviets/Russians have been using similar techniques for years. Why don't you ask them? Or do you think they've been faking their space record too? Please answer this question as I've now asked it three times.

[JayUtah]

bknight--would you go into space to perform an EVA without having donned that suit and sublimator and tested them in a high vacuum chamber on Earth first?

The sublimators were tested.  You've been given copious amount of documentation on that, which you have predictably swept aside in favor of your new goalposts.  Now you say an astronaut has to be in the suit for the tests, as if the sublimator cares where its heat load comes from.

Honestly, you have an engineering degree.  How frankly inept are you going to be in order to pursue your obsession?

Is my perspective really that narrow?

Yes.

It is very puzzling to me why it's only me, especially among this very smart crowd, that is asking for the test.

Yeah, you should continue to ponder that.  When it's you on one side and every other smart, qualified, experienced person on the other side, that should give you pause.

I have learned what is presented and it's not clear at all that they work as advertised.

Bare denial.

[JayUtah]

The problem is that there's any number of people with similar "perfectly reasonable" requests, and if NASA was to meet your request they'd have to meet everyone else's too. NASA would be left with no money to actually do what the US Congress wants it to.

Well, what Congress wants it to do is another whole debate.

But yes, you've hit the nail on the head.  Neil Baker is convinced he's the special snowflake, so important in the grand scheme of things that the government had to "trump up" charges against him to silence him.  Nothing is so dangerous as a crackpot on a mission.  And for the present time, that mission is to show that some singular component in a $23 billion civil engineering project is so worth verifying to him personally that NASA has to allow him and his "witnesses" unfettered access.

Neil, please get this into your head very firmly:

You're not important and you don't know what you're taking about.

[Peter B]

If I had a freshman thermo class, the question I'd ask them in the course is, how would you cool a spacesuit in the vacuum of space if you had nothing to conduct to, nothing to convect to and no radiator?

No radiator? Isn't that what a sublimator is? A device to radiate heat?

How can you say a spacesuit with a sublimator has no radiator?

[Neil Baker]

What about this page: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/plss.html

That's the same photo. Absurdly, the only photo on the Internet. (I possess two others not on the Internet)

Do you realise how tight NASA's budget is? You may think your request is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that there's any number of people with similar "perfectly reasonable" requests, and if NASA was to meet your request they'd have to meet everyone else's too. NASA would be left with no money to actually do what the US Congress wants it to.

I suspect I'm the only person that has called NASA asking to witness a spacesuit in a vacuum chamber test. And it wouldn't cost them anything extra.

The Soviets/Russians have been using similar techniques for years. Why don't you ask them? Or do you think they've been faking their space record too? Please answer this question as I've now asked it three times.

I don't speak or read Russian, I don't know who to contact. I don't know if they're faking it just like I don't know if we're faking it. I have my doubts because I don't have scientific validation. Neither do you but that hasn't kept you from saying you know something that there's no way for you to know. The best we can do is believe and that's unacceptable.

[JayUtah]

If I had a freshman thermo class, the question I'd ask them in the course is, how would you cool a spacesuit in the vacuum of space if you had nothing to conduct to, nothing to convect to and no radiator?

No radiator? Isn't that what a sublimator is? A device to radiate heat?

How can you say a spacesuit with a sublimator has no radiator?

Well, a radiator is something that rejects heat via radiative heat transfer.  Car "radiators" are really convective heat exchangers.  The notion that there's "no radiator" in space is absolutely ludicrous.  We don't typically use water-operator porous plate sublimators on long-term missions because they require a consumable supply of water.  The most typical phase-change heat sink in space engineering uses paraffin as the phase-susceptible material.  There are closed-cycle paraffin exchangers and open-cycle ones, typically reserved for emergencies.  Radiation is the most common method of rejecting heat aboard a spacecraft.

For spacesuits, the radiator assembly would be cumbersome.  And since EVAs are time-bounded for other reasons (e.g., astronaut fatigue), it's perfectly acceptable to use a highly efficient heat reject method that nevertheless requires a replenishable consumable -- cooling water.

Thermodynamics is not the same as heat transfer.  If I were teaching a freshman thermodynamics course and some freshman said in class that porous plate sublimators couldn't work, he'd be going home that night with a very hefty homework assignment.  Note that Baker, for all his bluster, has evaded every single request to show from a thermodynamics or heat transfer standpoint, complete with equations etc., that his claim has merit in the physical sciences.

That's because he can't, and he knows he can't.  He just needs to stir up enough doubt by handwaving at test protocols to plausibly (to laymen) accuse NASA of lying.  Then he can, as he as stated is his aim, try to say that the government also lied about 9/11.

[Abaddon]

That's the same photo. Absurdly, the only photo on the Internet. (I possess two others not on the Internet)

I suspect I'm the only person that has called NASA asking to witness a spacesuit in a vacuum chamber test. And it wouldn't cost them anything extra.

I don't speak or read Russian, I don't know who to contact. I don't know if they're faking it just like I don't know if we're faking it. I have my doubts because I don't have scientific validation. Neither do you but that hasn't kept you from saying you know something that there's no way for you to know. The best we can do is believe and that's unacceptable.

here:

http://www.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Apollo_portable_life_support_system.jpg&imgrefurl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Life_Support_System&h=3727&w=4711&tbnid=sd6LaOuIDyffGM:&docid=h01wvtICf35bjM&ei=mt3jVfewJ8ud7gbGnJfoBg&tbm=isch&ved=0CCcQMygGMAZqFQoTCPflo6HD0scCFcuO2wodRs4FbQ

And here:
http://www.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/A7L_plss.jpg&imgrefurl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Life_Support_System&h=1958&w=1234&tbnid=8UrDKoYXdGTBEM:&docid=h01wvtICf35bjM&ei=mt3jVfewJ8ud7gbGnJfoBg&tbm=isch&ved=0CEIQMygXMBdqFQoTCPflo6HD0scCFcuO2wodRs4FbQ

And so forth. Hell, the sublimators are so old hat alternatives are being actively worked on, like here:
http://www.tda.com/Library/docs/2008-01-2111.pdf
with pictures for your viewing pleasure.

[Neil Baker]

PeterB--one of the things I learned in heat transfer class was that there are only three modes of heat transfer--conduction, convection and radiation. I haven't been able decide which mode is represented by an ice sublimator.

A radiator is not a sublimator nor vice versa.
A radiator radiates heat.
A sublimator liberates heat by facilitating the phase change of ice directly to steam.

[JayUtah]

I suspect I'm the only person that has called NASA asking to witness a spacesuit in a vacuum chamber test.

Try to work out why.

And it wouldn't cost them anything extra.

Hogwash.  You said you wanted your witnesses to be able to integrate their own monitoring equipment into the test.  Why do you think that wouldn't cost NASA extra?  NASA doesn't test every individual sublimator in an all-up test in a full-scale, high-vacuum test with a human subject.  Why?  Because it's not necessary, and to do so would be unnecessary, immoral, and inefficient.  Hence the next vacuum-chamber test of a sublimator is likely to be well into the future, when new sublimator designs require it.

You are not at all conversant in engineering test protocols.  Your assessment of what is required and what it would additionally cost is pure fantasy.

I don't speak or read Russian,

Your ongoing incompetence at the relevant research is not a valid excuse.

...I don't have scientific validation. Neither do you...

False.  You don't get to dictate what, for everyone, is "scientific validation."  In fact, what you've proposed is eminently non-scientific.  You may assiduously wish to believe otherwise for personal reasons, but not everyone is as ignorantly in the dark as you are.

[Trebor]

PeterB--one of the things I learned in heat transfer class was that there are only three modes of heat transfer--conduction, convection and radiation. I haven't been able decide which mode is represented by an ice sublimator.

Then maybe you should go back to school and learn that energy is required to turn a solid to a gas...
Why exactly would the sublimation of ice in a vacuum not work very effectively to remove heat?

[JayUtah]

I haven't been able decide which mode is represented by an ice sublimator.

Then I would have failed you if I were teaching that class.  Phase-change cooling predates rational engineering.  It was discovered via practical application.  It was covered at length, including its history, in several of the references provided to you, which you obviously have taken little if any time to read.

Astronaut to LGC:  conductive.
LGC to sublimator:  convective.
Sublimator secondary to primary:  conductive
Sublimator primary to working substance:  conductive

If it's a mystery to you that the phase change in the working substance has a heat component to its computation, then I would petition your university to withdraw your engineering degree.  Heat of sublimation is a very elementary concept.  If you don't understand that phase changes in a substance, not involving a temperature change, results in heat changes then you are not competent to practice engineering.

[Neil Baker]

Jay--I'd enjoy a discussion with you but if you're going to hurl hard names and insults at me, I'll just ignore you. Please behave. You're very bright. You don't have to be ugly.

Trebor--Sublimation should work but that's not the issue. The issue is the validation that it works.

Abaddon--I'm sorry but I'm looking for a second photo of a sublimator.

[Trebor]

Trebor--Sublimation should work but that's not the issue. The issue is the validation that it works.

Validation? Of what?
It is really basic physics here. It is known exactly how much energy is needed to turn ice to a gas.
What is the actual mystery?

[JayUtah]

Jay--I'd enjoy a discussion with you but if you're going to hurl hard names and insults at me, I'll just ignore you.

Why would this be any different than what you've done for the past eight years?  You can't get traction among the engineering community because you are demonstrably incompetent, criminally sociopathic, and you ignore every attempt to educate you.  No, you don't enjoy a discussion with me because you've disingenuously ignored already nearly everything I've said.

I am not the only professional engineer here, and frankly you are an embarrassment to the profession.  The codes of ethics promulgated by ASME, NSPE, AIAA and other professional organizations encourage us to crack down on the incompetent and unqualified practice of the profession.  You have demonstrated that and more.  If you feel you have been unfairly insulted, you're free to report me to the moderator.

I know you want nothing more than an excuse to ignore your critics.  You desperately need to believe that you're a great American hero on a mission.  But you are not.  You are a failed engineer and a criminal vandal.  You have no credibility, and you deserve none for your inexcusable misuse of the engineering profession.  If ignoring me is how you continue to believe you're somehow the only human on earth who can find truth, so be it.  But it will not make the facts go away, and the more you rage against them, the more likely you are to find yourself ostracized from civil society.

The issue is the validation that it works.

They have been validated to work by hundreds of bench tests and fifty years of practical application.  Your unwillingness to accept that is your own problem.