Why I suspect Apollo was a hoax.

[Peter B]

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)

What do you mean "the same photo"? That page has about a dozen photos of the PLSS. You don't get to say there's only one photo when that page has more than one.

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.

How would it not cost extra? You want NASA to test its spacesuits according to your standards rather than theirs. Changing the test setup is going to cost money in equipment and in the salaries of the staff needed to make the changes - presumably all the while with you breathing down their necks to make sure it's all done to your standards.

At the moment my gig is payroll. If you were to tell me that you didn't trust the way I calculated your pay and you wanted to sit with me while I calculated your payroll individually (as opposed to the other few hundred people I'm responsible for), all the while questioning every calculation I did, I'd be getting my time for that job charged back to your work area. I wonder how long your boss would put up with that expense, along with your unproductive time watching me?

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.

Seriously, your personal validation is the only way you verify facts? Isn't there anyone you trust to give you reliable information about subjects you're personally unfamiliar with?

I trust the historians of the Soviet and Russian space programs, who've verified to their satisfaction what's real and not real about the programs.

In any case, if NASA faked Apollo because the sublimators didn't work, don't you think the Soviets would have been smart enough to work this out? Or do you think they were in on the fake too?

[onebigmonkey]

Apollo 11 report on the suit & PLSS, pre- and post-flight.

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11CSD.pdf

See how many times the words 'test' and 'testing' comes up.

[onebigmonkey]

If you were to tell me that you didn't trust the way I calculated your pay and you wanted to sit with me while I calculated your payroll individually (as opposed to the other few hundred people I'm responsible for), all the while questioning every calculation I did, I'd be getting my time for that job charged back to your work area. I wonder how long your boss would put up with that expense, along with your unproductive time watching me?

I think he might also get the Aldrin treatment...

[ka9q]

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

And "working substance to space" is arguably convection.

Convection is heat transfer by the physical movement of a heat-carrying substance. In this case, steam is physically moving from the sublimator to space, carrying heat with it. The pressure within the steam vent is quite low, but it is not a vacuum.

[onebigmonkey]

Apollo 12 PLSS location in LRO image, as one example:

Apollo 17 located at the foot of the ladder:

You can see that PLSS in the 16mm footage taken inside.

There is footage on youtube of the PLSS actually being discarded, and the full broadcast ended with a time and date specific shot of Earth.

There are also images of a discarded PLSS showing where it bounced.

Not only does Mr Baker need to disprove that the PLSS are not capable of use on the lunar surface, he also needs to prove that discarded PLSS units can't be seen on the lunar surface in probe images and in live TV and video that shows other verifiable lunar surface features.

[onebigmonkey]

Here's an astronaut wearing a PLSS on the front page of a newspaper:



It appeared in the newspaper on the day after it was broadcast to Earth.

There are features in that image that were not photographed by any pre-Apollo probes.

What exactly is keeping this astronaut cool then?

[Luke Pemberton]

f 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?

I'd conduct (excuse the pun) research and find that there are many documents on the internet dating back to the 1960s that explain how porous plate sublimators are used in the PLSS of spacesuits. Hardly a testing question Professor. Hell, there's even a PhD thesis on the topic that reports the vacuum parameters that are used. I would then write up my research as a paper and you could mark it. If you failed me I'd report you to the Dean and explain that I think you are wholly incompetent to teach. How do you like them apples?

A sublimator liberates heat by facilitating the phase change of ice directly to steam.

So finally, we have arrived at you describing the phase change associated with sublimators. So, what would expect to see from a video of a sublimator in a vacuum exactly? Do you expect it to look like a boiling kettle?

Also, why do we need a human to test a sublimator? Why can we not simulate the thermal load of a human and measure the effectiveness of a sublimator to remove heat from a coolant?

[Abaddon]

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

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTT1Fqkun-qpbbPxfR2dfG3OJ5h7NZbjER9eYLFrJ9iguU-mPyN

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSxGWG8dqlw4MBN-OvLl4kNVhC2aFD_SMDYL8fzbFjOsbcGAdy6

http://enu.kz/repository/2011/AIAA-2011-5187.pdf

And?

[Apollo 957]

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.

Neil, I've posted this so many times over on YouTube;

The whole world, including its scientific community, has watched these suits in use, in the environment for which they were intended, for 50 years or so. On film, video, stills, and in live broadcasts, as well as in the form of telemetry and other data sent by devices the astronauts have installed whilst wearing the suits.

This is good enough for the rest of the world, why isn't it good enough for you?

Simply sidestepping this with 'it could be an inflatable' (when referring to the ISS), or 'they might be doing it with green screen' is inadequate, against the volume of evidence that shows them for real.

[Apollo 957]

Jay--Well, the fact remains that the photo of the ice sublimator didn't appear in 2007 when I searched. Harold McCann looked also and couldn't find the photo. Also, I was able to make the claim that no photo existed on the Internet until only recently. I don't know exactly when it appeared. It may very well have been there buried deep and we didn't use the correct description to bring it up but it didn't come up when "spacesuit ice sublimator" was typed in the Google search engine.

... which leaves us with the impression that was the only search term you used, which, if it was, was a bit remiss of you....

None of the test reports indicate that any human in a spacesuit ever entered a vacuum chamber that was pumped down to high vacuum conditions. Something is very wrong with the picture and I'm wondering if your dedicated enthusiasm for Apollo has blinded you to the possibility that this area of the technology was not adequately documented to avoid suspicion.

There's nothing wrong with the myriad of pictures, videos and live broadcasts of these spacesuits in use, in a natural vacuum, watched by the whole wide world, for 50 years or so - unless you can prove otherwise?

[Apollo 957]

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? Is my perspective really that narrow? I think it should represent common sense of any reasonably responsible astronaut that the answer is no.

Does the 747 pilot insist on performing the flight-worthiness testing on every 747 he flies himself? No. He turns up at the airport and places his trust in Boeing, their test pilots, the airline's maintenance staff, and possibly his trust in Rolls-Royce, who likely made the engines.

Does the Naval Captain, or any of his crew, taking the submarine out of port for a mission of a few months, insist on running a test programme against his vessel? Again, no - they turn up and place their trust in others.

Both examples equally risky. Far more in terms of casualties if something goes wrong.

Given the scale of the Apollo project, there's other, far more significant aspects that the astronauts could have taken issue with, but remember they were experienced test pilots, and they were used to placing their trust in their designers and builders.   

[Apollo 957]

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.

But you gave no indication of how far you looked, nor which libraries you looked in.

Did you travel to libraries outside your current town or city of residence? Outwith your state of residence? Did you make any effort to consult any sources outwith the USA? Or did you just google a limited set of search terms?

Once we know the answers to these, we can place some context on you not finding stuff.

[Apollo 957]

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.

The best we can do is to look at the available evidence, and that shows a number of astronauts, from various nations, including Russia, using these suits, for real, in the environment for which they were intended, for 50 years or so.

You seem to be very skilled at sidestepping or ignoring this evidence. 

[Peter B]

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

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTT1Fqkun-qpbbPxfR2dfG3OJ5h7NZbjER9eYLFrJ9iguU-mPyN

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSxGWG8dqlw4MBN-OvLl4kNVhC2aFD_SMDYL8fzbFjOsbcGAdy6

http://enu.kz/repository/2011/AIAA-2011-5187.pdf

And?

Out of interest, I had a look at the article at the last link.

At the end of the article were three referenced articles. I Googled the last and got this:

http://papers.sae.org/1999-01-2004/

Only an abstract. But I'm sure that if Mr Baker is serious about getting to the bottom of this issue he shouldn't have a problem spending $25 to buy the full article which, I note, was published in 1999.

[Apollo 957]

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 get to ignore him, especially when he provides such a reasoned argument against you.