Moon Landing Hoax - The Space Suit

reply to post by bokonon2010

One of the cornerstones of the Apollo hoaxers tales:
"Soviets were able to track and watch it" is demolished.
It is nothing but the conspiracy tale spinning;
so "до свидания, пропагадисты" as Jarrah said.

Just because Soviet space telemetry was transmitted at a different range of frequencies, does not mean that the radiotelescopes could not receive American frequencies. What does this have to do with the spacesuits?

The Apollo space suits were born out of industrial espionage, breaking & entering and stolen property. The Apollo cheerleaders want everyone to look at the pretty NASA pictures without understanding the history of who, what, why when and where. In this way, the Apollo cheerleaders are doing a disservice to the thread and actively promote ignorance of the topic.

But rather then let ILC go it alone, NASA shackled the company to the military-industrial complex, forcing it to work as a subcontractor of aerospace conglomerate Hamilton Standard. Suspicious of Playtex’s freewheeling fashion-industry ways, Hamilton started on its own prototype, the Tiger, which is what got submitted to NASA. The suit was a flop, and Hamilton blamed ILC, which lost its subcontractor status.

But Apollo still needed a spacesuit, so NASA set up its own version of Fashion Week, inviting two manufacturers to submit prototypes. So three years after winning (and then losing) the contract, a dozen ILC staffers picked the locks of their old offices at Hamilton and , Sterling Cooper-style, stole back their designs. Source Wired

I don't own this book but one of the Amazon reviewers quoted from it thusly:

As de Monchaux writes, "From the perspective of Kennedy's knowledge of the media's power in the cold war, the entire effort to go to the moon should be rightly understood as an elaborate apparatus for the production of a single television image. Kennedy approved plans to go to the moon because he - and perhaps particularly and peculiarly he - knew that the single image, however arduously achieved, could be magnified and extended globally, and, in an instant, change the world." Source is Amazon dot com book reviews www.amazon.com...

One of the blurbs on this books is from the National Air & Space Museum,

de Monchaux offers in this remarkable book a far-reaching and broad-based analysis of the spacesuit, interpreting it as far more than a functional garment protecting astronauts but also as an artifact at the nexus of society, science, and spacefaring...
– ROGER LAUNIUS, Senior Curator, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by Illustronic
(Their rip off version of the Russian Space Shuttle the Buran, had only one unmanned flight with most of the internal electronics yet to be installed).

It's not fair to call it a rip-off, despite the obvious similarities of the airframe.

List of key differences

As you can see, the Buran was more advanced in a couple of areas.

I heard from people who designed the thermal shield for Buran (my father knew some of them) that the composition of the tiles (or strips) was different from one used on the Shuttle. I actually used to have a piece of Buran's thermal shield, I lost it when moving. Which I'm unhappy about

But it is a rip off. The entire construction concept and design does not look the same by coincidence. The SU-27 looks like the F-15 because it was not original, why then didn't it resemble more like the F-22? Rip offs. If you are going to build something over a decade after an existing prototype and you have advances in material technology why not use it? NASA also advanced the material tech of the tiles but they aren't going to strip the Shuttles to replace them all, they only used the improved tiles to replace the ones that fell off, this can be seen particularly in the black tiles, they reduced the carbon so the new black tiles aren't as black as the originals. Other differences like the payload is directly attributed by the fact the Buran has Jet engines and not rocket engines, with the massive fuel and fuel turbo pumps, as well as the OMSes. Entire mass is virtually the same its just the Buran has more for payload. Not sure if it would ever be a serious orbital, having only the OMS for reentry burn would make a higher orbit precarious. They wanted a truck, an SUV, and a car in one design, which means any one is compromised.

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
The Apollo space suits were born out of industrial espionage, breaking & entering and stolen property.

So. Private industry. That is topical why?

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter

The Apollo space suits were born out of industrial espionage, breaking & entering and stolen property.

No, they were born out of hard work. When someone stole their property, the designers stole it back. Why design a spacesuit that works if the whole thing was shot in a studio?

Originally posted by Illustronic
The entire construction concept and design does not look the same by coincidence. The SU-27 looks like the F-15 because it was not original, why then didn't it resemble more like the F-22? Rip offs. If you are going to build something over a decade after an existing prototype and you have advances in material technology why not use it? NASA also advanced the material tech of the tiles but they aren't going to strip the Shuttles to replace them all, they only used the improved tiles to replace the ones that fell off, this can be seen particularly in the black tiles, they reduced the carbon so the new black tiles aren't as black as the originals. Other differences like the payload is directly attributed by the fact the Buran has Jet engines and not rocket engines, with the massive fuel and fuel turbo pumps, as well as the OMSes. Entire mass is virtually the same its just the Buran has more for payload. Not sure if it would ever be a serious orbital, having only the OMS for reentry burn would make a higher orbit precarious. They wanted a truck, an SUV, and a car in one design, which means any one is compromised.

a) you really pointed out some key differences in the Buran and Shuttle design philosophies. I would agree that Buran's airframe general shape is very similar to the Shuttle, then again many airplanes in the same class look stunningly similar, examples are many.

b) SU-27 vs F-15 has been discussed on ATS and elsewhere and indications are that the SU-27 design diverged far enough from F-15 (by which it was indeed partially inspired) to become an original and not a rip-off. More here

Apart from being twin-engine, I can't say there are even too similar:

reply to post by buddhasystem


You're image didn't show but I don't need military jet brushing up. The Saab Gripen has no resemblance to the F-15 interdiction class jets. Neither does the French Mirage. See there are varies of basic design and the whole late 70's and early 80's class Russian military jets remarkably resemble the late 60's and early 70's American designs when the designs finally proved superior to the existing Russian air force. Russia even created a bomber that looks nearly exactly like the B-1, the TU-160.




Any casual viewer would swear that is a B-1.

It's proof that NASA contracted space suit designers at ILC Dover were criminally minded in 1965/1966... Breaking and entering, stealing intellectual property and then a few years later 90% of the ILC business was from NASA space suit contracts? In other words, ILC Dover made profits on government contracts using the stolen designs.

ILC Dover owners Stanley Warner and Greg Alden (theatre owners) went public with ILC Dover in January 1969. Coincidentally, that was Richard Nixon's first month of his first term in office as president.

They used the profits from the sale of ILC shares to purchase "Bio Medical Electronics Inc", a company that, hmmm, went out of business in 1972. This happens to coincide with Nixon's first term. Again, the plot thickens.



Source history.nasa.gov...

U. S. Spacesuits
By Kenneth S. Thomas, Harold J. McMann


Kenneth Thomas and Harold McMann are both NASA insiders. They readily admit that a lot of information about space suits has been lost over time. So what they did was "attempted to assemble" a history of the NASA space suits with whatever information they had laying around that was easy to find.. That sounds like historical revisionism to me.

They admit that some space suit information remains Classified to this very day but that "the process of declassification" would be "expensive and difficult."

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter


It proves innovative industrialization of a product in demand. Some people step up to the challenge, brown-nosers baulk. What your intent on this is still unambiguous to the goal. The goal is to land the contract. The weak fold.

Do you think the corporate world is all nicey nice out there? Your distractions are noted, and ignored, as footnotes to the obscure, tangents. Inane excerpts to interject, I have no idea...

You know Penicillin was an accident? Post-it was a failure to create a permanent adhesive. Columbus wanted to go to India. I can go all day with this...

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter

It's proof that NASA contracted space suit designers at ILC Dover were criminally minded in 1965/1966... Breaking and entering, stealing intellectual property and then a few years later 90% of the ILC business was from NASA space suit contracts? In other words, ILC Dover made profits on government contracts using the stolen designs.

It's proof that you'll stretch the truth like latex to score a ridiculous point. It was the military contractor that stole the intellectual property. ILC Dover took it back. Incidentally, do you have any additional documentation for the "breaking in"story? It may just be a story that ILC people tell in bars as a joke.

ILC Dover owners Stanley Warner and Greg Alden (theatre owners) went public with ILC Dover in January 1969. Coincidentally, that was Richard Nixon's first month of his first term in office as president.

They used the profits from the sale of ILC shares to purchase "Bio Medical Electronics Inc", a company that, hmmm, went out of business in 1972. This happens to coincide with Nixon's first term. Again, the plot thickens.

The word "coincidence"means nothing to you, does it? What would two guys who used to run theater chains know about biomedical electronics?

reply to post by Illustronic


a) I have hard time telling apart many of Boeing and Airbus aircraft. Does this mean that these are ripoffs?

comparison

b) there is plenty of discussion on the Internet whether Tu-160 is a copy of B-1, there is no consensus on that and the spec sheets are very, very different, with Tu-160 having much larger engines, power and even height.

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
They admit that some space suit information remains Classified to this very day but that "the process of declassification" would be "expensive and difficult."

When was that written? This stuff ought to be free pickin's right about now.

EO13526 should force an automatic declassification at the 25 year mark unless the material reveals people's names or nuclear technology. That ought to cover the entire space project series including all the suits up to the mid '80s.

Who owned ILC Dover during the Apollo moon landings era, which was indeed, the Nixonian first term?

Was it Stanley Warner Corp, the conglomerate? Who later merged with Glen Alden Corp, the conglomerate, later bought out by Rapid American, yet another conglomerate? Who had the biggest piece of all these companies and who really owned ILC Dover?

Meshulam Riklis (born December 23, 1923, Istanbul, Turkey) is an Israeli-American businessman.
en.wikipedia.org...

Riklis is credited with inventing complicated paper schemes like junk bonds and leveraged buyouts to take over control of major companies, then doing paper switches of the assets into companies he owns. His first significant foray was the creation of the Rapid-American Corporation

NASA space suit designer and maker ILC Dover was owned by sleazy corporate raider Meshulam Riklis during the Nixon years.

It seems that Meshulam Riklis still has money connections with the space community through his endowed chair at Brandeis. www.brandeis.edu...

"Experiments done in the 1960s seemed to show that people did not adapt well to rotation," says Lackner, the Meshulam and Judith Riklis Professor of Physiology at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. "But in those experiments, the subjects didn't have well-defined goals for their movements. We've found that when a specific goal is given for the motion, people adapt rather quickly." Source science.nasa.gov...

That's what researchers James Lackner and Paul DiZio are trying to figure out. With support from NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research, these two scientists are performing a series of experiments with people in rotating chambers to learn how well astronauts might adjust to life onboard spinning spaceships.

More forgotten history of the American space suit.

The B.F. Goodrich Co. v. Wohlgemuth
It appears from the record that Donald W. Wohlgemuth graduated from the University of Michigan in the year of 1954 as a bachelor of science in chemistry; soon thereafter be obtained [*495] employment with The B. F. Goodrich Company; following a short period of service in the United States Army, he returned to the Goodrich Company in the year 1956, and was assigned to work in the pressure-space suit department; as his technical knowledge increased, he was appointed successively in this highly specialized department to the positions of materials engineer, product engineer, sales engineer, technical manager, and finally manager of the department.

In November, 1962, Wohlgemuth was offered a position of employment by the International Latex Corporation, of Dover, Delaware, which corporation operates in the pressure-space equipment field, and is a competitor in this field of operation with The B. F. Goodrich Company; the offer of employment by Latex to Wohlgemuth resulted in his resignation from Goodrich and his employment soon thereafter by Latex. Source gozips.uakron.edu...

Originally posted by Bedlam

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
They admit that some space suit information remains Classified to this very day but that "the process of declassification" would be "expensive and difficult."

When was that written? This stuff ought to be free pickin's right about now.

EO13526 should force an automatic declassification at the 25 year mark unless the material reveals people's names or nuclear technology. That ought to cover the entire space project series including all the suits up to the mid '80s.

This book was updated this year 2012.

This is from the title:
U. S. Spacesuits
By Kenneth S. Thomas, Harold J. McMann
Publication Date: November 2, 2011 | ISBN-10: 144199565X | ISBN-13: 978-1441995650 | Edition: 2nd ed. 2012

www.amazon.com...

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter

All of that has what to do with the performance of the space suit?

Who really owned Rocketdyne during the development of the Saturn V F-1 rocket engines? Rocketdyne was formed by North American Aviation (NAA) in the immediate post-WW II era to study the German V-2 missile and adapt its engine to SAE measurements and US construction details.

The F-1 was originally developed by Rocketdyne to meet a 1955 US Air Force requirement for a very large rocket engine. In 1967, NAA and Rocketdyne merged with the Rockwell Corporation to form North American Rockwell, later part of Rockwell International, which was then bought by Boeing in December, 1996. In February, 2005, Boeing sold the company to Pratt & Whitney, who merged it with Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion to form Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR).

All of this matters how?

A mistress of a previous VP for NAA had promiscuous history of circulating through the ranks of Rockwell management and was a cousin of a friend who project managed at Boeing and later jumped ship to Pratt & Whitney known to still secretly meet in dark nightclubs that very same mistress? Means nothing, unless she was a double Soviet agent and ex-German rocket scientist but still the German rocket tech was already out of the bag anyway.

reply to post by buddhasystem

While I understand and respect the details you point out and obvious airframe aerodynamic limits, I will conclude this little discussion by pointing out in laymen terms that if it looks like a snake, and moves like a snake, it is a snake. My point being is that if the TU-160 is a completely original design then why does it look so much like the B-1 and not the B-2? Because it was influenced by the B-1 and not the B-2 would be the obvious answer.

So I now tip my hat to you with index finger up as I proceed to another discussion, maybe about spacesuits.

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter

Kenneth Thomas and Harold McMann are both NASA insiders. They readily admit that a lot of information about space suits has been lost over time. So what they did was "attempted to assemble" a history of the NASA space suits with whatever information they had laying around that was easy to find.. That sounds like historical revisionism to me.

And you should know all about historical revisionism. Thomas and McCann do an excellent job of detailing the history of a subject they are familiar with. De Monchaux is an architect, who covered the subject from the perspective of fashion. His book contains anecdotes designed to appeal to a popular audience. These anecdotes may or may not objective recollections of the events. Thomas and McCann's work is extensively documented, as you can see here:

www.scribd.com...

(Scroll down to page 105 for Apollo)

Although they make no reference to any "breaking and entering," they do mention contractual difficulties and reconciliation attempts between ILC and Hamilton. Much as I like to picture two ILC executives sneaking into a defense contractor's factory and carrying out a spacesuit, telling the guard at the gate that it was a drunk friend, it is more likely that Hamilton was forced to surrender it by lawyers. Good story, though.

They admit that some space suit information remains Classified to this very day but that "the process of declassification" would be "expensive and difficult."

Classified? Or a trade secret? You can never declassify a trade secret.

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
This book was updated this year 2012.

Do they mention the thing(s) they weren't able to get? It might be fun to ask why or if they're still classified from some inside guys. Find it tough to believe there are 'born secret' 75 year term secrets in there.