Apollo 11 - I have a question

What gets me is all the high tech equipment,ground control planning,booster adjustments?etc,to get off Earth yet on the moon all they have is a tiny Lem with a couple of dodgy thrusters to get back?

Originally posted by Kilgour
What gets me is all the high tech equipment,ground control planning,booster adjustments?etc,to get off Earth yet on the moon all they have is a tiny Lem with a couple of dodgy thrusters to get back?

Actually all they had was one engine, but it was an extremely simple and reliable engine. The opening of two valves to mix the fuel and oxidizer was essentially all that was required. It was also unthrottleable...on/off only.

It was all about wieght my friend, all about the wieght.

Originally posted by Kilgour
What gets me is all the high tech equipment,ground control planning,booster adjustments?etc,to get off Earth yet on the moon all they have is a tiny Lem with a couple of dodgy thrusters to get back?

No, they had this guy:


The LEM only got them off the surface back to the command module.

Originally posted by disownedsky
You need a third body to get a gravity assist, and there isn't one in this case.

OK, but we did do 1.5 orbits around Earth before the Saturn V rockets were supposed to fire, so that might account for some of the time.

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Here's a detailed timeline of the events in the Apollo 11 mission:

history.nasa.gov...

I can see the 4 days 7 hours to get there. What I'm having trouble with is the time to get back seems just to short. I might be figuring this all wrong but to get home 56 hours faster then getting there seems like a bit much to me.

I'm probably barking up the wrong tree, I just thought something didn't seem quite right that's all.

I may have found the error between the 21st and 22nd. I will have to check it out but I gottsa eat now.

[edit on 28-6-2007 by observe50]

S-IVB maneuver to lunar slingshot attitude initiated. 004:41:07.6 16 July 1969 (depart earth)

Sighting of an illumination in the Aristarchus region. 1st time, a lunar transient event sighted by an observer in space.
077:13 19 Jul 1969 (arrive moon)

73 hours or so.

Transearth injection ignition (SPS). 135:23:42.28 04:55:42 22 Jul 1969 (depart moon)

Entry. 195:03:05.7 16:35:05 24 Jul 1969 (arrive earth)

60 hours or so

That doesn't seem too unreasonable. I don't know all that much about it though.

What I like though is the comment "Sighting of an illumination in the Aristarchus Region." What the astronauts really said was probably, "Holy smokes that look like a fission reactor down there."

Houston, "Go omni. Go omni."

Originally posted by observe50
I wrote this in a thread I had about Buzz Aldrin but the thread went down the tubes as they do.

I'll write this out first and ask my question at the end:

Okay, the Moon is 238,857 miles (284,403 kilometers) from the Earth.

Neil, Aldrin and Collins (first trip to the Moon)

Apollo11

Launched July 16, 1969 at 1332 GMT --- 09:32 a.m. EDT

Safely lands on the Moon July 20th at 2017 GMT ---0417 p.m. EDT

Neil steps on Moon at 0256 GMT ---10:56:15 p.m. EDT

Location --- Sea of Tranquility

They were there 21.6 hours and on the surface for a total of two and a half hours.

Left Moon's Orbit July 22 at 1750 GMT ---1:54 p.m. EDT

Landed back on Earth July 24th at 12:50 p.m. EDT

Duration: 8 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds.

When I add this timing together it seems to work as a whole BUT my question is ---- why would it take four days 7 hours to get there and a nitch less then two days to get back? Am I missing something here?





[edit on 28-6-2007 by observe50]

It was down hill on the way back.

Thanks John,

I have a lot of respect for you and the knowledge within you. I must have been doing something wrong no doubt you saved me from lots of checking.

You guys made your point and I think John drove the nail in.

"I guess case closed."

p.s. What you said John at the end there was interesting now don't get me started, hmmmmmm

Thanks guys

Originally posted by johnlear
60 hours or so

That doesn't seem too unreasonable. I don't know all that much about it though.

So were gonna stop discussing.

Does anybody have the tech info on the motor used to launch from the moon back to earth ?

And does anybody have the teh info on how they knew this motor with the so called on/off, no throttle was gonna be good enough ?

And how did they calculate the correct amount of fuel to carry ?

or did they just know/hope before that they could launch from the moon.

Thanks Darkbluesky for the explanation,
yes I probably had confused mass with weight, but you've cleared that up nicely for me.

Good analogies

In my defense The only thing I know about physics in space is what's written in sci-fi books, which is not a lot

This is equivalent to asking why it took an hour to climb to the top of the mountain but only 10 seconds to hit the floor of the valley when you jumped.

To get to the moon the entire trip relied on a man-made propulsion system. They could have gotten there in the same amount of time it took to get back if they sized the propulsion system large enough to give that much power. But then it would have taken a lot more rocket power and size to get that larger spacecraft off the launch pad, and so the vicious cycle begins. So just like you only have so much power in your legs to climb the mountain and you can't humanly go faster than those muscles will allow you, they had to decide just how big they could make the rockets of the spacecraft and then plan around the power they had available.

On the way back the only man-made work was getting off the moon's surface and the rest was dedicated to slowing down. So like the mountain analogy - they were just trying to slow down the trip to the valley below.

I can't edit my posts so I have to follow up. I said the "only man-made power" was getting off the moon and that's going to be taken wrong. MOST of the man-made power required on the return was getting off the moon - the rest was a few retro-grade burns to allow big phat Earth to do the rest ... and then trying not to let gravity do TOO much.

I think it's great you want to discuss this.

I wasn't going to keep at the thread because I thought no one would be interested.

I trust in what John has to say because of his knowledge of flying, and if the time seems good to him then to me the trip was doable.

If it wasn't doable as the way they have it timed then that would have helped answer the question did the USA go to the Moon in July of 69.

I tried to check the timing on the dry run of Apollo 10 but stopped when John posted.

Originally posted by observe50

I trust in what John has to say because of his knowledge of flying, and if the time seems good to him then to me the trip was doable.

Thanks observe50. What was hoaxed about the Apollo Mission is the method of propulsion they used to get the Lunar Lander from 60 mile Lunar orbit down to the moon and then back again. They say they used a rocket engine and used about 22,000 pounds of fuel.

If I am correct about the moons gravity being 64% that of earths there is no way they performed that feat with 22,000 pounds of fuel. They would have needed much more than that.

There are videos on the internet of test firings of that rocket. The power demonstrated is awesome. But that is not the rocket or the power that was used for landing. During the landing there is a video where you can see the ground and there is no huge cloud of dust like there should have been. There should have been dust as far as the eye could see. Plus there was no dust on the landing pods. That would have been impossible.

Also the video of the takeoff with a little bit of debris flying outward is unrealistic. Whether or not there was no air on the moon there should have been a massive display of thrust.

No. If the lunar lander landed on the moon and I am pretty sure it did in all Apollo missions except 11 and 13 then I believe it used an anti-gravity propulsion system.

In the case of 13, of course they looped around the moon and came back to earth because of other difficulties,

In the case of Apollo 11 I am not totally sure they landed. For one reason, the S-Band communication which allowed Michael Collins who was in the CSM to listen to Armstrong and Aldrin in the lunar lander was intentionally disabled. Collins heard very few, if any, transmissions from the time the Lunar Lander began its alleged landing on the moon until its approach back to the CSM.

In the Apollo 11 debriefing, NASA Mission Reports Volume 2 page 97 (11.10 Monitoring Lunar Activity) Collins had this to say, "There was some difficulty with the ground S-band relay. The preflight agreement was that all my transmissions would be relayed to the LM, and all the LM transmissions would be relayed to me unless that mode of operation, because of systems failure or other problems became too cluttered. At this time, the ground was free to amputate that relay mode. In flight, it didn’t work out that way. The relay was rarely enabled. I gather that this was because there was a ground switching problem. I would have preferred to be receiving continuous S-band (communications to and from) the LM and I felt somewhat cut out of the loop, although it was not a safety problem. I felt out of the loop during the extended periods of time when the relay was not in effect.”

So whatever did or did not happen on the moon; whether the Lunar Lander ever did really land or whether or not a different propulsion system was used, Michael Collins in the CSM was not privy to that information. Nor was Michael Collins privy to Neil Armstrong’s comments about the boulder field he saw from 500 feet that caused him to overfly the primary landing area by several miles. In fact, according to those who have had private conversations with Armstrong, he overflew the primary landing site not because of a ‘boulder field’, but because there were 2 huge saucers parked there.

There was little or no information ever exchanged between all of the Apollo crews. As a matter of fact in his book, “Two Sides of the Moon”, (Copyright 2004 by David Scott and Alexei Leonov Thomas Browne Books) David Scott (Apollo 15) says, “There never has been a reunion of all 12 men who walked on the moon, so we have not had a chance to sit around and discuss such matters as how our experiences on the lunar surface affected us differently.” Not to mention what the heck happened up there and what everybody saw.

You can be darn sure that NASA didn’t want the Apollo crews exchanging information.

There was a reason for that 21 days ‘isolation’ period and it didn’t have anything to do with possible infectious germs. It was to be sure that the Apollo crews knew what they saw and when they saw it. It was to be sure that the Apollo crews knew that the daytime sky was black and that the gravity on the moon was 1/6th that of earth. And it was to be sure that the Apollo crews knew that they didn’t see any cities, structures, constructs, towers, lights or anything else on the moon except gray dirt.

And it was to make darn sure that if any of them made the slightest little slip that the consequences would be severe.

I must say John that everything you just wrote makes total sense to me.

Back in the 60ies "everyday" people believed everything they were told and I don't think it occurred to them to question anything. At that time they (NASA and the government) could do just about anything as I see it, we were a proud nation of what we just accomplished.

It seems since computers came out and all the neat techniques became available people are seeing what has been covered up.

I remember seeing the tape on youtube somewhere about Cheney and Rumsfeld having smiles on there faces about the tape with what was supposed to be Armstrong taking his first step on the Moon and the lighting fixture falling down.

The sneaks were doing one thing up there and showing us what they wanted us to see (which much had been done on a set.)

I wonder why the 12 Astronauts didn't get together without knowledge of NASA and the government and talk. Buzz is trying to tell us without coming right out and telling us.

As you know through my crazy writings, I know about the other life out there. I think I do this (as you and others do this) because people want to know and people have the right to know that things aren't exactly as we have been shown and told.

Thank you

[edit on 29-6-2007 by observe50]

Houston we lost all pictures ? :

Via history.nasa.gov...

or direct :

history.nasa.gov...

But hé, here it is :



Maybe it's too embarrassing ?

If you don't want to believe the official story, the only logical explanation to me is that it didn't take 103 hours to get there. So they were there longer.

There's reason to believe that this was just for show anyway. That we did go to the moon, and even Mars, routinely and that the Apollo program was a way to keep the American people, all the way up to the President (JFK) busy looking at the pretty birdie, so they could take a historical photo... ya know?

Things aren't so clear-cut after I read the below articles.

Seems our 'known' laws of physics may need a little amending. Especially orbital physics which is oh-so relevant to this discussion.

Take time to read these, gets a bit heavy, but...wow

Part 1
www.enterprisemission.com...

Part 2
www.enterprisemission.com...

What if they went, but the moon isn't really what they tell you it is, and it is right in the sky where you see it and you come to realize that everything you know is not from experience, but from someone telling you what is and not you being involved with what is.