Starship Asterisk*

Mactavish wrote:The full panorama is even more spectacular!

Click to view full size image

Dreadmon wrote:Odd that you don't see the rover's tracks in the picture.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Ann wrote:One of the best arguments that I've ever heard against the claim that the Moon landings were a hoax is that this happened during the height of the Cold War. After all, the Moon landings were just as much about the United States beating the Soviet Union as it was about exploring the Moon...

I've always thought that was a good argument, as well, although hoaxers make a (very weak) case for mutual support of fake space programs.

There's a really good technical demonstration that the landings were real- one which is completely devastating to any suggestion that the imagery was faked. We can see in the movies that the astronauts are operating in a vacuum. How can we tell? By the way the dust flies when they walk, or when the rovers move. Dust in even thin air is very non-ballistic in its motion. With its very low mass, its behavior is dominated by aerodynamic effects, not gravity. Toss a little dust in the air, and you get a cloud that floats off. But the Apollo films show something very different (I love using them in the classroom, because everybody instantly recognizes that something looks "wrong", but it can take a while before anybody figures out what that is)- the dust moves in beautiful little parabolic arcs, purely ballistic. Certainly, no CGI capability existed back then to fake that, so it could only be done in a vacuum. The suggestion that everything was filmed in massive vacuum chambers just adds to the absurdity of hoaxers claims (especially since the same people often suggest the flags are blowing in the wind).

Mactavish wrote:The full panorama is even more spectacular!

Click to view full size image

Ann wrote:One of the best arguments that I've ever heard against the claim that the Moon landings were a hoax is that this happened during the height of the Cold War. After all, the Moon landings were just as much about the United States beating the Soviet Union as it was about exploring the Moon...

Chris Peterson wrote:
That said, the thrust of the lander motor was higher than it appears in images. Rockets don't normally produce much visible output, unless they are in the atmosphere. So the Saturn boosters appear more powerful than they actually are, and the lander boosters appear less so. (Not that the Saturn motors weren't vastly more powerful... after all, the fuel laden Saturn with its payload massed nearly 3 million kg, compared with the lunar module ascent stage mass of less than 5000 kg, and the latter with no atmospheric drag and 1/6 the surface gravity.)

7.91 km/s  :  Earth Orbital velocity 	
1.68 km/s  :  Lunar Orbital velocity 	
................................................
Exhaust gas velocity Ve for rocket engines:
2.9 to 4.5 km/s  :  liquid bipropellants
2.1 to 3.2 km/s  :  solid propellants
1.7 to 2.9 km/s  :  liquid monopropellants

Flase wrote:The only thing that doesn't look right to me is how small the Lunar lander was. With a little puff of flame, it was able to reach the Moon's escape velocity, whereas craft that takeoff from Earth require huge whopping booster rockets...

Chris Peterson wrote:

Ann wrote:
The lunar sky is always black, because the Moon has no atmosphere. But when the Sun is up, it shines more brilliantly than it does on the Earth. That is precisely because the Earth has an atmosphere, and some of the sunlight is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere, diluting the Sun's most intense glare. On the Moon the Sun is like an unbelievably white-hot spotlight in the black sky.

That's technically correct, but the actual increase in brightness of the Sun as seen from the Moon is less than a magnitude compared with Earth. Physiologically, the Sun appears no brighter when seen from the Moon or from space.

APOD Robot wrote: Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater

The image shows Schmitt on the left with the lunar rover at the edge of Shorty Crater,
near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil.

• The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
  erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
  an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
  and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
  where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

Ann wrote:Yes, the sky is black in today's APOD. The lunar sky is always black, because the Moon has no atmosphere. But when the Sun is up, it shines more brilliantly than it does on the Earth. That is precisely because the Earth has an atmosphere, and some of the sunlight is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere, diluting the Sun's most intense glare. On the Moon the Sun is like an unbelievably white-hot spotlight in the black sky.

The contrast between brightness and darkness becomes intolerable. Even if you look away from the Sun, the contrast between the brilliantly lit-up lunar landscape and the black sky is so great that the faint stars are completely drowned out.

no one wrote:What Magnitude star would have been necessary to have been visible in the photo??
You can estimate the f-stop and time for the exposure if the documentation is unavailable.

Giordano Bruno wrote:
I understand the shadow of anything standing on Moon's Taurus Valley between 12 and 14 december 1972 should cast a shadow at least as long as the height of the objet itself.

Which is not the case on the picture presented.

" There is a mystery or a lie " . ( quoted from Inspector Columbo )

Giordano Bruno wrote:I understand the shadow of anything standing on Moon's Taurus Valley between 12 and 14 december 1972 should cast a shadow at least as long as the height of the objet itself.

Which is not the case on the picture presented.

Giordano Bruno wrote:The picture shows overhead illumination .