Why didn't the Soviet Union land a man on the moon?, page 4

posted on Jul, 30 2009 @ 12:37 PM

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Originally posted by orangetom1999
One more thing of importance here..it is OUR OWN government who has played us for a sucker here..not the Russians...or the Russian government.

The early space program required a very very fine precise working instrument called an accelerometer to accurately measure the velocity of a spacecraft in order to successfully control rocket burn.

To little control and one would not control rocket burn enough to prevent slamming onto the surface of the moon. To much control and the rocket motors would burn to long negating the ability to soft land until one ran out of fuel and crashed. This is the crux of the Russian design problem and why they could not successfully achieve a moon landing. They tried many times and kept slamming their unmanned spacecraft onto the surface of the moon because they could not get a successful working accelerometer to control rocket burn for a soft landing.

My understanding of the early accelerometers is that the initial batch of these precision measuring instruments were built by hand. In those days there were only about five machinists who could continually do precision work down into tolerances beyond 100,000 ths of an inch...by hand. All of them lived in the USA and all of them around Detroit Michigan.

Interestingly enough even our own WHORISH LYING government is loath to give us this information's and or tell us the truth about this question. Notice that this is a question avoided by NASA and all the supposed "EXPERTS."

Now if the Russians today have a working precision Accelerometer...I know from whence it came..not from Russia.

Hmmm...Are you aware that the initial moon landing was performed by Neil Armstrong under manual control? The automatic landing control was bypassed when it was observed that the lander was heading for a bolder strewn location. Seems that the need for a super precision accelerometer is a bit overstated.

willyclem

orangetom1999

posted on Jul, 30 2009 @ 01:08 PM

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reply to post by willyclem

No, I was not aware that the original moon landing was by manual control.

Still, a precision accelerometer is needed to get accurate velocity measurements...in X, Y , and Z axis of motion.

This is especially necessary for unmanned missions which would preceed the manned missions.

Precision velocity measurements would be needed by which to gauge manual control as well...and this would come from a precisioin inertial measurement unit. An inertial navigation set.

Pilots would be trained to go automatic or manual control..depending on the conditions at the time of operations. Manual control would be a contingency step or decision. Nonetheless one would still need a precision velocity measurement instrument.....for three axis motion...even in manual.

Notice here...You are stating in your post that the automatic pilot or automatic landing controls were not working or suspect...you are not stating that the Inertial measurement or Interial navigation set is not working. If this were so..how did they get back home?? I would suspect that in such a critical piece of equipment they would have a back up or a second set. The accelerometers are built into this equipment along at least three axis of measurement.

Thanks,
Orangetom

weedwhacker

posted on Jul, 30 2009 @ 01:30 PM

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reply to post by orangetom1999

You are stating in your post that the automatic pilot or automatic landing controls were not working or suspect.... If this were so..how did they get back home??

Well, 'willy' has signed off, so I'll help. A little bit of Apollo history is in order.

Firstly, as they descended, they found that they were going 'long', somewhat downrange of the intended touchdown point. This is likely because of some additonal forward velocity imparted to the spacecraft as air vented out of the connecting tunnel, used to move between the CM and the LM.

That was no big worry. But, as they got nearer the surface, Armstrong saw where the computer, and thus the A/P, was taking them, and it wasn't appropriate for the landing. They needed someplace smooth, and relatively level. SO, he flew manually, which was planned anyway, but he took over a bit sooner than planned.

The computer onboard also had some probs, too much data input, and it's discussed here, on a forum:

(The question):

The story of the the 1202 computer alarm going off at a very inconvenient time during Eagle's powered descent to Mare Tranquilitatis is well-known and often recounted in documentaries, as it ads a lot of drama to the story (as it did, undoubtedly, to the descent).

None of the documentaries I watched, however, offered a reason for the alarm (meaning data overload of the onboard computer, if I understand it correctly) - fair enough, I thought, computer glitches occured before the invention of Windows.

I was surprised, then, that in the beautiful documentary, "In the Shadow of the Moon", Buzz Aldrin offered a simple explanation: "Being Dr. Renezvous", and contrary to the flight manual, he had left the rendezvous radar on in case he needed it quickly, and the data flow resulting from both the landing and the rendezvous radar caused the overload (The film is on YouTube here, and the story begins at 6:45 into the segment).

My questions - Is this the accepted explanation for the alarm? Were there any consequences from it? I guess Aldrin's explanation for him leaving the rendezvous radar on is very reasonable. Was there a modification on subsequent flights to allow for the added data flow, or was the dual radar just avoided? I also got the impression Aldrin rolled his eyes a bit that nobody anticipated that he would do what he did. What came out of the debriefings regarding this error?

(And, the answer):

The story is told in considerable detail in Murray and Cox's "Apollo - The Race to the Moon". It suggests Aldrin's answer is correct, but incomplete. The key was that the rendezvous radar was taking up a large portion of the computer's time, all the while performing a useless task.

The task related to the radar's mode switch, which could be in one of four settings. For the descent to the Moon, the radar was originally to be in one mode. Not long before launch, it was decided to use a different mode, which required the development of new software and new procedures. The new software was loaded, but then the engineers decided the new procedures were too much to introduce at such a late stage. So they came up with a method of disabling the software which they thought was failsafe. Unfortunately, all they did was make the LM computer undertake an impossible task (described in the book as trying to calculate an angle with a sine and cosine of 0). Doing that apparently used nearly one-fifth of the computer's time, and contributed to the computer indicating that it was overloaded.

It sounds like it wouldn't have been that hard to remedy for later missions. What puzzles me is why it was never picked up in any of the simulations - Aldrin presumably didn't do anything in the landing that he hadn't already done in the sims.

Anyway, I'm sure I haven't given the story full justice, so if anyone can tell it better than me, go right ahead.

Source

edit: Forgot about the other half of your question. They had an entirely separate computer and navigation system on the CM, so all the LM computer had to do was guide them up to orbit and rendezvous. Could have done that manually, too.

Ya know, if you watch Ron Howard's Apollo 13 there's a scene where they had to fire a correction burn during their trip back to Earth --- manually.
________________

I also found this short read (found one that's 37 pages, stuff I find interesting, but not everyone does

Google DonEyles.com if you wanna see that!

Apollo Mission 1202 Alarm

[edit on 30 July 2009 by weedwhacker]

willyclem

posted on Jul, 30 2009 @ 02:07 PM

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Orangetom

The system was working, it just could not see the intended landing site. The landing system was composed of an inertial section(gyroscopic & accelerometer modules) and a ranging radar. The data control was bypassed; but, the data was available to Armstrong.

This link provides nice info about the system:

ed-thelen.org...

willyclem

ufoorbhunter

posted on Jul, 30 2009 @ 02:41 PM

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I know what you mean. The Russians won every other race in space, first dog, first man, first woman, first satellite, first space station and the Yanks have followed. The one thing the Yanks won, the race to the moon, was not copied by the russians which is a bit out of sync

JimOberg

posted on Jul, 30 2009 @ 09:39 PM

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Originally posted by orangetom1999

Still, a precision accelerometer is needed to get accurate velocity measurements...in X, Y , and Z axis of motion.

This is especially necessary for unmanned missions which would preceed the manned missions.

Uh, no. Only if you're flying blind -- 'open loop'. or 'dead reckoning' -- is the precision of the accelerometers paramount. With closed-loop control -- say, a good radar tracking the approaching surface, or target satellite -- you can calculate acceleration and -- more important -- required course corrections -- perfectly well without any accelerometer at all. What you do need is a 'good enough' IMU for attitude drift detection -- but even spring-loaded units are plenty good enough.

Seems to me you are imagining requirements for an operation you actually have personally never been involved in. Be cautious -- you don't understand it as well as you think you do.

The controlling factor on precision of a rocket thrust is not the accelerometer sensitivity, but the plumbing that opens and closes the propellant valves to start and stop the burn. There's always some 'slop' in that process so the attainable accuracy of a burn is far from perfect, and flight procedures are designed to detect 'residuals' from a planned burn and null them out.

orangetom1999

posted on Jul, 31 2009 @ 01:01 AM

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reply to post by JimOberg

say, a good radar tracking the approaching surface, or target satellite -- you can calculate acceleration and -- more important -- required course corrections -- perfectly well without any accelerometer at all.

Is this like a doppler radar set? Did they have enough space to put one on the lander?? How about the power requirements in addition to all the other power requirements they had to meet?? I dont know if radars in 1968/69 were all that compact or the power requirements that small.
I know that small sized radar altimeters were around..but not sure about doppler sets. Such a radar set also had to be interfaced into a computer or calculator to translate the radar data into velocities and directions.

Seems like this could all be combined into an accurate, reliable IMU to save vital space in the lander.

Thanks,
Orangetom

JimOberg

posted on Jul, 31 2009 @ 06:33 AM
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Originally posted by orangetom1999
Seems like this could all be combined into an accurate, reliable IMU to save vital space in the lander.

Dang! Why didn't those NASA morons think of that??

Seriously, you want multiply redundent capabilities, preferably from different engineering principles.

Doppler radar may be easier for transponder ('active') systems where the target has its own ping-activated echo. You can get usable range rate from just time-integrating sequential range marks. But those marks will have some 'scatter' and need to be smoothed by a computer using what's called 'Kalman filtering' -- an automated 'reasonableness test' that weighs -- and adjusts -- a raw radar mark based on past marks. It's not simple -- but it did get us to the moon and back.

[edit on 31-7-2009 by JimOberg]

orangetom1999

posted on Jul, 31 2009 @ 08:51 AM
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reply to post by JimOberg

I'll tell you what I was thinking about an IMU system for deep space travel.

Here on earth different factors like Earth Rate , Coriolis et al are factored in to the systems. I am not sure they are a factor or to the same degree on a body like the moon or other planets. Would these effects have to be recalibrated or eliminated for deep space travel??

For example..on some units there would be a switch recalibrating the set for when you approached the polar lattitudes. I would expect that a lot of this is done in the calculating computer ..not so much in the unit itself.

But would these factors apply or apply differently to a body like the moon or another planet. It would be an interesting job of recalibrating or factoring in...but I expect that someone has thought it through.

After reading your post, I had to sit back and think about it awhile but it seems to me that there were in some of the olde doppler sets used in attack bombers...a system for giving vertical velocities for bombing solutions as well as drift angles necessary for navigation. I expect that alot of this today has been replaced by IMUs.

Thanks,
Orangetom

bokonon2010

posted on Aug, 13 2010 @ 05:45 AM
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Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by magicmushroom
Orange, I think you will find that the Russian engines were and still are superior to the American ones. They developed a closed combustion cycle for their engines which the US never managed to do, the shuttle uses Russian engine technology to this day. Even at the height of the US rocket program Russian engines were far more powerful than the US counterparts.

Uh, no, totally and completely wrong.

You don't have to write this every time while you fall short of facts, and trying to offset this with fairy tales.

Originally posted by ngchunter
The F-1 engine from the Saturn V is still, to this day, the most powerful liquid rocket engine ever used.
At no time have the russians ever matched the superiority of the F-1 engine.

en.wikipedia.org...(rocket_engine)

[edit on 13.8.2010 by bokonon2010]

dereks

posted on Aug, 13 2010 @ 06:01 AM
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Originally posted by bokonon2010

en.wikipedia.org...(rocket_engine)

"The F-1 is still the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine developed[1]. The RD-170 has slightly more thrust, using a cluster of four smaller combustion chambers and nozzles. "
en.wikipedia.org...

Depends on your definition!

JimOberg

posted on Aug, 13 2010 @ 06:30 AM
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Originally posted by ufoorbhunter
I know what you mean. The Russians won every other race in space, first dog, first man, first woman, first satellite, first space station and the Yanks have followed. The one thing the Yanks won, the race to the moon, was not copied by the russians which is a bit out of sync

Many generous posters spent a lot of their time providing the OP with basic info he could easily have obtained from any number of good books, or even from easily-findable websites. Why he should even WANT to advertise both his ignorance of a question that's been addressed for decades, or his incompetence in exploiting a public library or an internet search engine, baffles me, but there seems to be a lot of that in some corners of this site: let somebody ELSE do the work to cure MY shortcomings.

We all help each other out, and that willingness is a strength of these threads, so kudos to the contributors here. But to others, don't abuse that spirit with an eagerness to demand one-on-one remedial tutorials when some practice in self-help would have been more constructive.

And I post this as one of the key historians who helped to initially unveil the secret Soviet man-to-the-moon race during the period after Apollo that the 'conventional wisdom' in the Western intelligentsia and news media was that Moscow had WISELY chosen NOT to 'waste their money' in an Apollo-type effort, because THEY were smarter than the crusading, arrogant, show-off Yanks.

Shows that what even the 'intelligentsia' knows it knows can be wrong, and that digging through and past it can be productive, and FUN.

Which is why, at its best, this site can be enormously positive in its contribution to better understanding. But that requires 'best efforts' and competent initiative all around.

pavil

posted on Aug, 13 2010 @ 06:58 AM
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reply to post by ZeroKnowledge

NM, I must need to brush up on my Soviet space program.

[edit on 13-8-2010 by pavil]

ngchunter

posted on Aug, 13 2010 @ 07:15 AM
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Originally posted by bokonon2010
You don't have to write this every time while you fail short of facts, and trying to offset this with fairy tales.

I'm not the one falling short of the facts.

en.wikipedia.org...(rocket_engine)

So you think a cluster of 4 engines with 4 separate combustion chambers, because they couldn't figure out how to make a single large one work, still counts as one? I don't. The clustered design of the N-1's engines contributed to a number of its failures.

[edit on 13-8-2010 by ngchunter]

Saint Exupery

posted on Aug, 13 2010 @ 06:45 PM
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Originally posted by pavil
reply to post by ZeroKnowledge

NM, I must need to brush up on my Soviet space program.

[edit on 13-8-2010 by pavil]

Encyclopedia Astronautica is an essential website for learning. I especially like this page.

sitchin

posted on Apr, 9 2011 @ 05:04 AM
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Originally posted by Rabmal
Every documentary you watch on the Apollo missions, they use the phrase "the race for the moon". When the USA started the mission to reach the moon we were well behind the Soviets in the "race for the moon". As history played out the USA was the first country to reach the moon, but this begs a question.

Why did the Soviets not land a man on the moon as well even if it would have been second? Not in the 60's, not in the 70's and not in the 80's. I know they landed a rover on the moon but not a man.

One would imagine that if the Soviets had been the first to place a man on the moon we would not have stopped trying to get there and certainly still would have put our own man on the moon.

You would think that the Soviets would want to know first hand what it is like there and also check out if we put anything there as well. (Especially, considering the paranoia we had for each other at the time.) I understand they may be able to do this remotely, but you would think they would want to put "boots on the ground" as well.

This would be akin to the Spanish coming to the New World and the English deciding to just stay home and listen to stories about it.

In the 30 years past you would have thought that some country would have wanted to land a man on the moon for themselves. I would be interested in hearing anyone's insight on this.

YUP i was watching a russian doc the other day and he said something strange that stuck in my mind ..he said they were winning the space race right up to the early 80's...thought comment was strange and thought of the moon landing's been fake

Illustronic

posted on Apr, 9 2011 @ 05:46 AM
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As stated early on the fist page, the Russians were more advanced in getting men off of the earth than they were at returning safely those men back to earth. Consequently, they lagged behind in a vehicular safe transport of men from orbit, to the surface, which was less of a concern when dealing with a one-way trip of a robot. Though the Russians won most of the 'first's in space', their rover program being decades ahead of the American's, became their source of national pride, and another celebrated Russian space first!

Just my opinion.

dereks

posted on Apr, 9 2011 @ 06:31 AM
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Originally posted by orangetom1999
Did they have enough space to put one on the lander?? How about the power requirements in addition to all the other power requirements they had to meet?? I dont know if radars in 1968/69 were all that compact or the power requirements that small.

They had radars that fitted inside the fuze of a 3" shell in WW2, so of course they had room for a radar on Apollo!

Saint Exupery

posted on Apr, 9 2011 @ 11:45 AM
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Originally posted by sitchin i was watching a russian doc the other day and he said something strange that stuck in my mind ..he said they were winning the space race right up to the early 80's...thought comment was strange and thought of the moon landing's been fake

I think most historians would strongly disagree with that statement. The Soviets scored a lot of early "firsts" because Khrushchev wanted their propaganda value, and didn't care about follow-ups. Case in point: "The first woman in space" - In the 48 years since Valentina Tereshkova flew on Vostok 6, the total number of women Soviet/Russian cosmonauts who have flown in space stands at three. In the 28 years since Sally Ride first rode the Shuttle (she flew twice), almost 50 women have followed her. List of Female Astronauts

The US tended to do things better and more frequently. By the end of 1965, the US had the lead in total satellites, total manned missions, total man-hours in space, longest endurance-missions, the most space-walks, plus the first rendezvous and first docking in space. While the early-Brezhnev space program wallowed in disarray, the US had 5 robot-Surveyor landings on the Moon, 5 Lunar Orbiters and the triumph of Apollo.

Then the American public lost interest. Viewers complained to TV networks when live color television from the Moon pre-empted golf tournements. In the 70's, the Soviets started their long series of bigger and more complex space stations. After the American Skylab program ended, the Soviets took the lead in long-endurance spaceflight and never looked back. The US got its Space Shuttle in the '80s, but it had no space station to fly to, and was too expensive to realize its goal of cheap access to space.

The US owned the Space Race from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s. The Soviets had a comfortable lead from the late '70s to the end of the Cold War.

marsend

posted on Apr, 9 2011 @ 12:04 PM
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Man on the moon,

I cannot truly say if this did or did not happen, but I do know that the bigger the lie the easier to believe.
What I have found odd is the following, perhaps someone could explain.

1) Why has no other country been there also, none what so ever, this is odd.
2) One would think man having a nature to colonize and destroy everything we get our hands, and there is still no MacMoon, where we can holiday and eat burgers, our nature is to colonize and destroy.
3) Why do so many not believe that it is real.
4) Did we really have the technologies for such, I heard the computing power was equivalent to a simple desktop calculator, and human error.
5) Has there ever been unequivocal proof provided.
6) Were the Astronauts sworn to secrecy.
7) Has any other country every verified that America actually did landed on the moon?.

Could it have been possible to commit a mass fraud at the time, Starwars was not to far around the corner and that was very convincing. Could it have been possible to shoot the moon landing on earth and then replay that back to earth while sitting out in space the whole time.