Neil Armstrong not first on the moon?

[Trillian]

<O.T.>
The Europa mission sounds pretty intersting. It will be neat at what all we find there. It would also be pretty interesting as to what all is in jupitor- there is alot of solid mater that it abosrbs in just the course of the from metorites and such. All of it has to go somewhere, why not a solid core. Plus, gases tend to go to a soild form when enough pressur is put on them, and there is alot of pressure twoards the center.
</O.T.>

 

[symphonix]

At least it explains who was actually filming those memorable images of Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the moon's surface. ;-)

 

[Randman]

At least the good consipracy theorists have the audacity to say that the Apollo landing was filmed by Stanley Kubrick.

 

[Arden]

This thread could easily be merged with the controversial science thread.

I don't know why people have such a problem with the fact (yes, it's quite a fact) that we landed men on the moon—several times. Do they really have nothing better to do than to say nay?

I don't think we've done anything to follow up because public interest isn't there. What are they going to do, found a college on the moon? Nobody could afford tuition, much less transportation. A museum? An entertainment hall? Nobody would go. Start a colony? We're not at that stage right now. People don't really care about stuff (in general) unless they can take a hand (and even then, they often don't care: look at all the nonvoters).

The only problem I see is this, if Bush wants us to push back out into space... then why has he been cutting NASA's budget in his proposals since 2001?

And if he promised no children left behind, why has he cut funding for education? And if he wants to revive the economy, why has he left a million people jobless? And if he... etc. Why? Because he's a bad president. But that's a discussion for another thread.

 

[pds]

Simply amazing... no one made it to the moon...
It is simply amazing that anyone could think that.

The reason we stopped going there is a complicated mix of perceptions and a shift in priorities. People thought too much money was being spent without tangible returns. The astronauts going to the moon were flyboys, not scientists and not poets. They weren't getting the best science and they didn't win the hearts and minds of the mob.

Also the country was going through a transition from reason to emotionalism and mob mentality. The same summer as Apollo 11, Woodstock took place. Both events drew around a half million people, but look at the difference between them.

Cape Canaveral, they came with ice chests and tents
Woodstock, they came with clothes and drugs
Cape Canaveral, after they left, you wouldn't know they were there
Woodstock, they left the place a shambles
At CC, they marvelled at the ability of man to achieve
At Woodstock, they mocked the marvel of man's acheivement

Does anyone think Woodstock was a fiction?
Are we more like the Woodstock crowd today or more like the Cape Canaveral crowd?

 

[Satcomer]

The big problem with space travel by NASA is IT HAS NO GOAL!!! What was the space station originally slated for? Can you say launch and refuel pad for a man mission to Mars. What research are the doing their now? The long term effects of weightlessness? I though the Russians already have the data. So do the Americans. Anyone remember Sky Lab before it's fiery death toward earth (quick run ... the sky is falling )

Technological things DID happen before a lot of you guys were born! Think about it, you are using a product of American nuclear paranoia of the Russians. Does the word ARPANET mean anything? You using the evolution of it right now!

 

[cfleck]

>>>What I don't get is: if we did indeed land on the moon, then why have we not done anything about it yet? If we have the technology to get up there and look around and stuff why are we not trying to see what can be done up there? Maybe we could build a lab up there and test animals or whatnot. Why not do anything about the fact WE CAN go to the moon? Or was the whole purpose just to say we can.

maybe you need to ask yourself what we can do up there? from my knowledge (which is minimal) the moon is essentially a big rock and it is extremely expensive to get there. i get the feeling you were just throwing out ideas, but what good may come of testing animals on the moon? the nasa peeps go to great lengths to come up with valid and useful experiments and perhaps it is entirely possible that the value of "doing stuff on the moon" is minimal, but the research that goes into figuring that out has yeilded many new products and technologies.

and for the record, i have to agree with the bulk of the group here. to thing the moon landing was a farce based on a web site is rather ignorant. come up with hard facts, not picture analysis.

 

[Zammy-Sam]

and for the record, i have to agree with the bulk of the group here. to thing the moon landing was a farce based on a web site is rather ignorant. come up with hard facts, not picture analysis.

There are not just pic analysis. I didn't really pay much attention to it but as much as I got, there were many details on the space ship that proved experts it would be impossible to land on the surface (don't ask me for details). There was no big whole around the space craft after landing and launching. The way the space craft launched from the surface was not realistic at all (as those experts said). In those days the knowledge about such things was not high so noone got the "fake".
There are also rumors about NASA employees who tried to publish this whole stuff but died on mystical way...
We got enough material for a movie, huh?
Anyway, to me it looks like it was all fake. But who am I? I have no clue about all this. Am just an info-junky from my dealer: the tv

 

[brianleahy]

It should be remembered that many of the most valuable scientific discoveries were made unexpectedly. It's easy for anyone to appreciate the value of, for instance, AIDS research - there is a clear goal in mind: how can we kill the virus in an infected person, without also killing the patient? Or scouting the desert for oil - a clear and obvious monetary benefits. Many VERY important and valuable scientific and technological breakthroughs were made while pursuing something totally unrelated. In the same way space science has yielded unforeseen breakthroughs, and may reasonably be expected to continue to do so.

One of the most compelling reasons to study other planets is to teach us more about our own. If you were an alien given just one human being to study, there would be many things about the human race you could never learn, especially if you were given a very unusual human, like a one armed, diabetic, albino dwarf. (So far, it appears the earth is at least unusual for a planet as this dwarf would be among humans).

 

[brianleahy]

Zammy: those issues and many others are addressed at the URL I provided in my first msg (#5 in this thread.)

Edit:
Here's the link again: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/News/2001/News-MoonLanding.asp

And if you follow some of the links along the side, you can get still more good solid information, especially these:

http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/FOX.html
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/

Which offer a point-for-point rebuttal of Fox TV's very irresponsible television program "Conspiracy Theory: DID WE LAND ON THE MOON?" -- the #1 science-dilletante's source for hoax theories.

 

[bookem]

But then, if the Russians crashed Cosmonauts on the Moon, why would they have kept it secret? Surely, even getting that far is worth bragging about, nationally anyway.

.

After the USSR collapsed it was revealed from KGB files that the Russians launched another manned spacecraft before Uri Gagarin, but the Cosmonaut died on re-entry, or something like that.

USSR and secret seem to go together.

 

[brianleahy]

After the USSR collapsed it was revealed from KGB files that the Russians launched another manned spacecraft before Uri Gagarin, but the Cosmonaut died on re-entry, or something like that.

USSR and secret seem to go together.

The Soviets were secretive, it's true enough - they never went public with their launches until the missions were over. But arguably, Gagarin's successful flight eliminated any motive to reveal the failed flight, even afterward. And after NASA had landed successfully and the Soviets abandoned their lunar program, they might yet have decided to try to 'steal our thunder' by showing that they had landed, but failed to return.

Declassified documents (published in the magazines I mentioned earlier) reveal that the Soviet mission was to include 2 cosmonauts, 1 of whom would land while the other remained in orbit, similar to Apollo. If they tried this, and the lander crashed, the other cosmonaut could still have returned safely. They could at least have bragged they'd sent the first man into lunar orbit - which they never have claimed.

 

[hdmac]

Well just get on your nice new mac G5 and rewind the MATRIX and see if it did ot did not occure!

 

[brianleahy]

Wouldn't that be nice.

While I'm at it, I'll also check on OJ, see who killed JFK, see where Amelia Earhart ended up...

Oh, and Roswell. Got to visit Roswell, NM - was it 1949?

 

[chemistry_geek]

Wouldn't that be nice.

While I'm at it, I'll also check on OJ, see who killed JFK, see where Amelia Earhart ended up...

Oh, and Roswell. Got to visit Roswell, NM - was it 1949?

You forgot one important thing to check:

Where JIMMY HOFFA was burried.

 

[brianleahy]

How about JonBenet Ramsey, or Robert Blake?
I could find out who Jack the Ripper was. Or DB Cooper.

I could see how the pyramids were built... lotsa fun.

 

[chemistry_geek]

What I don't get is: if we did indeed land on the moon, then why have we not done anything about it yet? If we have the technology to get up there and look around and stuff why are we not trying to see what can be done up there? Maybe we could build a lab up there and test animals or whatnot. Why not do anything about the fact WE CAN go to the moon? Or was the whole purpose just to say we can.

Oh and: if this doesn't make any sense you'll have to excuse me...I just woke up from a nap.

You have to consider some things about designing and building a permanent moon base with 1960s technology. It simply wouldn't be feasible. Once you get up there, where are you going to get energy to start building and putting things together? How are people (construction workers) going to work in big clunky space suits? How are the people going to get back? It takes enormous energy to cool and KEEP cool liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Where is the water on the moon that is needed to make the liquid rocket propellents? Have you ever looked at the moon through a decent telescope? It looks pretty scarred. Look up into the sky at night and watch how fast a meteor goes streaking through the upper atmosphere. Now imagine that same little stone slamming into any portion of the moon base. The moon has very little atmosphere (yes, it actually has an atmosphere, probably somewhere in the parts per billion range of concentration) to stop these projectiles. A meteor shield would need to be erected over the base, or the base built well underground - even more expensive. And you aren't going to get catepillar bulldozers up there and actually use them - NO AIR, diesel fuel doesn't burn without air, and even if they compressed the air, the fuel would have to heated to prevent it from gelling up or freezing. There are so many things to consider when making a habitable environment inside a very life-hostile environment. We never went back to the moon because the engineering still doesn't exist yet for us to have a permanent base on the moon. Watch the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", then try to catch some old re-runs of "Space 1999". Until we can travel in the vicinity of the moon like driving a car, much of space travel is going to be dangerous and expensive. The current space shuttle fleet is only designed for low Earth orbit - 300 miles MAX above the surface of the Earth. The Internation Space Station is about 250 miles above the surface of the Earth. The Earth's atmosphere extends 600 MILES above the surface, this is why the ISS must get a boost into orbit every so often (it loses about 250 feet or 600 feet PER DAY - sorry for the lack of detail, I just read it, and I READ A LOT of material everyday). A real space station would be located at a distance that would put it in geosyncronous orbit, or at one of the Lagrange points between the Earth and Moon. 250 miles above the surface of the Earth is not true orbit in my opinion, the ISS will eventually sink and burn up; we're still in pre-school as far as human space exploration is concerned. And of a lot of the problem with human space travel is coming up with the energy to get things done. The only purpose right now for NASA and its contractors is to develop the engineering that's going to get us to the next level. The results of NASA's successes and failures are not always immediately beneficial to the public. There's another thing to consider: research is VERY expensive. You don't always get a lot of bang for the buck.