why were missions to moon stopped?

reply to post by Blue Shift


I appreciate the information. Yeah I don't claim to know the science behind the Hubble, but that was a question I would always ask. I consider myself on the fence concerning the Moon landings, leaning more towards the side that it really did happen. Always fun to discuss though. ~$heopleNation

Originally posted by SheopleNation
reply to post by FinalCountdown

 

Surely they could point the Hubble at it and see the flag, or at the very least the Lander that was left behind? I have asked that question many times. ~$heopleNation

And it has been answered many times. The Hubble has nowhere near enough angular resolution to see the Apollo landers or rovers. An object on the Moon would have to be about the size of a football stadium to occupy a single pixel in Hubble images. hubblesite.org...

On the other hand, there's the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which provides hi-rez views of the Moon, and has captured the landing stages, rovers, other stuff left there by the astronauts, and even their foot tracks. You can even see the shadow from the flag on some images. www.nasa.gov...

Back in Jan 1986, my cousin whom is a nuclear Physics went to Washington to get the funding needed to go back to the moon to mine Helium 3, which could be used to power a fusion reactor, (new technology), the funding was approved but a week later the funding was pulled due to the Challenger disaster on 28 Jan 1986.

From what I understand they still want to attempt to go back to the moon, Bush II approved a bill to go back but Obama pulled the space money away for his personal use, what ever the reason was for it went to another one of his vacation I bet.

Originally posted by wildespace
And it has been answered many times. The Hubble has nowhere near enough angular resolution to see the Apollo landers or rovers. An object on the Moon would have to be about the size of a football stadium to occupy a single pixel in Hubble images. hubblesite.org...

Yeah, I believe another poster made that clear prior to your entrance into this thread. I guess that was answered one more time than you knew about eh?

On the other hand, there's the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which provides hi-rez views of the Moon, and has captured the landing stages, rovers, other stuff left there by the astronauts, and even their foot tracks. You can even see the shadow from the flag on some images. www.nasa.gov...

Thank you for the link. Yeah, I have seen them already. Nope, not buying yet that we do not have the ability to see the actual lander, if not the flag. Look what they can do with Google Earth wildespace? I am not saying that we never landed on the moon, never have claimed that. However, Don't tell me that we can't at least view the lander, cause that is complete bull# and is a lie.

We should be able to zoom in on it with some of our satellites, or even view it through a scope on the ISS? You can try as hard as you like to convince me otherwise, but nothing other than an actual image of one of them will change my position. So don't get your Red Coat feathers all ruffled up about it my friend, cause I know you're an intelligent guy, so it's nothing personal. Just a good discussion. ~$heopleNation

Originally posted by sparky31

Originally posted by FinalCountdown
We are not allowed to go to the moon.
They won't let us.

We were never supposed to gain the technology to leave this planet.
Things have started to escalate since the 40's when the plans were first laid down for leaving the atmosphere .

yeah and to me this massive jump in technology has to make you question where has it come from all of a sudden.

in less than a hundred years we have leapt to things that just seem impossible but for thousands if not millions of years we just don,t know..... we were stagnant............did we all of a sudden start using our brain?

edit on 2013 by sparky31 because: (no reason given)

That has always puzzled me also, we went from horses and buggies, and gas lights to space travel and lasers in less than 100 years?For the 2,000 years prior to that our advancements were practically nil. It took almost 2,000 years to advance from horses and chariots to horses and buggies,then in less than 100 years we go from horses and buggies to space ships, something just doesn`t add up.

I guess when NASA kept coming back from the moon with rocks the politicians decided that going to the moon was too expensive and risky to just go on rock finding expeditions.

Originally posted by kykweer

 

I do not know how anyone could guilt free condone spending Billions when there are people starving, on going to a different planet.
Look I know it is really cool, but nothing can justify it, finding water is cool, but it wont really change peoples lives for the better.
The advances we got from military, dwarves anything we have done in space.

How about you, yourself? We are all part of the system. You are not above it. We are just as bad as the next one. What have you done other than 'condoning'? NOTHING, I bet. Walk in an OWS march? And afterwards go buy a Big Mac? Look up Norman Mayer, he single-handedly changed US nuclear politics by devoting his life to it. Most of us, we are 'sheep' as the Bible puts it. Sad but that's the truth.

No, rocket science is very different from designing airplanes. Breakthrough vs. incremental improvement. Today's communication satellites would not have been possible without the initial space program that developed the launching capability. Notice, despite Rovers etc, rocket science has not advanced one bit ever since. We don't even have the capacity to launch astronauts any more. Our focus has shifted away from space.

How is our species going to survive? This planet will become so overpopulated that shortages in food, water, energy and other resources will cause wars, and civil wars. Unless we will have other planets to migrate to.

Originally posted by ionwind
The challenge was to land a man on the moon before the USSR. Once they beat the Russians, the general public got quickly bored. It's amazing how jaded we get. Our cell phones are more powerful than supercomputers 20 years ago, and we are like meh, when's the next one coming out?

The US is scaling back on the International Space Station and is quickly cancelling the manned space projects related to Constellation program.

The US doesn't even have the technology to go back to the moon, and it doesn't even have heavy lift vehicles. The new James Webb telescope will be launched on a French Ariane rocket around 2018.

My guess would be that the US sticks to robotic explorers for maybe decades. The military will still be launching satellites for it's own uses. Any surplus US dollars will go the stock markets and banksters.

Manned space flight may continue with the European Space Agency/Russia/ISS, and the Chinese may surprise us.

That`s an interesting point, I also read that we don`t have the technology to return to the moon, but somehow we had the technology 50 years ago?

reply to post by SheopleNation


Angular Resolution of a telescope determines the size of the smallest object it can see. This is dependent on several things, including the size of the object, the distance of the object and the size of the opening (which will be the size of the lens or mirror depending on the type of telescope, and in Hubble's case, it's mirrors).

Many people here on ATS have asked this question many times, basically comparing the detailed images that Hubble gives us of far away nebulas or galaxies, and say that it should also be able to pick up that type of detail on the moon.

What they fail to realize is that the nebulas and galaxies are very, very far away, but they are also very, very big in size. Measured in lightyears in size.

Asking the Hubble telescope, which has a angular resolution of 0.03 arcseconds to take an image of any Apollo lander is impossible with it and here is why:

The full moon covers about 2,037 arcseconds in the sky. It's diameter measured in kilometers is 3,474 km.
That means that one arcsecond while looking at the moon is about 1.7 km.
0.03 arcseconds when looking at the moon is 0.05 km or 50 meters.

So the smallest thing that Hubble can see on the moon is no smaller than 50 meters, or half a soccer filed wide. The lunar landers and flags were much smaller than that.

You brought up Google Earth, and this has been explained before too. In many places (not all) we can see details as small as cars and even smaller in some cases in Google Earth.

Those are not satellite pictures, but are pictures taken from flying aircraft. The LROC flew over the Apollo landing sites at about 50km in altitude. It has to stay high enough or eventually the moon's gravity will bring it down. As for it's resolution, 0.5 meters per pixel or 1.6 feet per pixel is pretty darn good, and it again is based upon angular resolution of it's telescopic imaging devices.

So anyways, that again is why Hubble can't take detailed pictures of the moon's surface (it wasn't designed for that in any case, but for deep space imaging), and why the LROC is also limited.

Originally posted by LABTECH767

 

Remember the speech in which Reagan said "What if we were facing a threat from outside our earth". And what if there was evidence we had already lost in the past on the moon.

You are asking an interesting question. What do you think is the answer?

reply to post by UnifiedSerenity


Sorry, but the video you posted is nonsense.

The footage that was 'never meant to be shown' was broadcast on TV. It shows the entire Earth, not just a portion of it, and is also featured in still images taken at the same time (eg AS11-36-5330

One of the features it shows is Hurricane Bernice, which is located west of Central America and only appeared in the configuration it shows on the day of the TV broadcast.

This montage shows a comparison of a weather satellite photograph of Bernice compared with the Apollo photograph and a still from the Apollo video.



The same view was also featured on the front pages of newspapers the next day, which would be a bit tricky if it was supposed to be top secret. One example is this one Coshocton Tribune

And here is a comparison of the video compared with that newspaper front page:



You can't see the entire Earth from low Earth orbit, it's physically impossible, and the photos and TV footage show the whole Earth.

I have spent a lot of time looking at this, and the evidence all supports the fact that we went.

Why did we stop going?

Politics. The landings were being cancelled and budgets cut even as they were on their way to the first one. It wasn't that the money wasn't there, they just decided they had better things to spend it on once they'd proved their point.

reply to post by sparky31


Been there, done that, nothing much to see, and it costs a lot to get there in the first place? Unless there is some plan to build there, something of a more permanent source, why would we go back? The moon was a goal because it is close, and no one had done it. We still have manned space missions, but they use space stations for that these days. If gigantic sums are to be spent again, they should be for some new goal. Maybe a certain Saturn moon.....

Originally posted by Tardacus

 

I guess when NASA kept coming back from the moon with rocks the politicians decided that going to the moon was too expensive and risky to just go on rock finding expeditions.

Politicians have a bottomless pit to drain resources from, the taxpayer.

I think it may have been something they did NOT want them to bring back.

reply to post by sparky31


the "Moon shadow makers affair" is the reason the US/NASA went to the moon the first time, made several more trips , then stopped. the "Moon shadow makers affair" occurred on the Moon in the late 1950"s. extra-terrestrial entities were on the moon with a light absorbing machine that cast a large dark area on the moon, and appeared to be a shadow from Earth. well, in short, those entites did voluntarily leave.
the us government needed to go to Moon to recover whatever physical evidence left behind by the "shadow makers". each moon trip was to gather that evidence and bring it back to Earth, to be hidden or destroyed. the Moon trips stopped when NASA and the all the us government agencies were satisfied they had gathered all the physical evidence.
amidst that evidence there may have been some information indicating the "shadow makers" had a base, perhaps only a temporary base on mars. therefore, the need to send three dune buggys to mars.
if you ask any department or agency of the US government and probably most foreign governments, they will state the "moon shadow makers affair" never occurred.

Originally posted by sparky31
ok watched a program last night on h2(history 2) in uk about the new released ufo files,its never really occurred to me before about why no ones been sent back to the moon....

Have you looked for any books on the subject, or are you demanding a one-on-one personal remedial tutorial?

I doubt you'er really that interested, or you'd be asking a question about one of the published explanations offered in print decades ago -- not starting from scratch.

Try it, you CAN do it yourself, and ask the tough questions here, as follow-up.

Originally posted by SheopleNation
Thank you for the link. Yeah, I have seen them already. Nope, not buying yet that we do not have the ability to see the actual lander, if not the flag. Look what they can do with Google Earth wildespace? ...

Aren't the closest GoogleEarth images from aircraft? And the satellite images seem to have about a metter, maybe half a meter resolution at best.

How sharp do you think satellites can see Earth's surface? There's a lot of folklore and Hollywoodizing going on about this subject, i'm curious what you've come to believe, and why.

Originally posted by Tardacus
I guess when NASA kept coming back from the moon with rocks the politicians decided that going to the moon was too expensive and risky to just go on rock finding expeditions.

edit on 18-7-2013 by Tardacus because: (no reason given)

No need to guess. Apollo had accomplished what the politcians had paid for -- demonstrating US technological mastery, versus anyone else in the world. This had profound diplomatic, commercial, cultural, and military consequences, including validating the threat from SDI that ultimately bankrupted and destroyeed the USSR. And oh yes, it did some cool science along the way.

Originally posted by SheopleNation
We should be able to zoom in on it with some of our satellites, or even view it through a scope on the ISS? You can try as hard as you like to convince me otherwise...

Nobody has to convince you of anything. You can *work it out for yourself*.

Thats the great thing with physics. Its the same for everyone.

Get a calculator, and find out exactly how big a telescope needs to be in order to see what you want it to see on the moon.
Its all public knowledge. You dont have to take anyone's word for it.
A few google searches to find the right formula and then you can take your own word for your own calculations.

You will end up with the same answer as everyone else: there is no telescope big enough.

reply to post by SheopleNation


Eriktheawful gave a very good and informative reply, I hope you will be satisfied with his answer. It's simple maths, and the simple fact that the hi-res Google Earth images are aerial photography. Also, talking about zooming in with telescopes is nonsense because a) telescopes don't have a zoom feature like cameras, and b) it won't help with angular resolution; the view will just get darker and blurrier.

So I take it you're not satisfied with the LRO images? LRO is basically a space telescope (smaller than the Hubble) placed in lunar orbit. Perhaps in the future there will be an even more powerful version of LRO, but even the images we have so far have great resolution (comparable to spy satellites orbiting earth), and many rocks and craters seen in Apollo EVA photos can be identified in LRO images.

Private space companies will one day put someone on the moon unless they are warned off going there for some obscure reason and with technology getting better day by day, it might not cost as much as we think.

The one issue is fuel costs and the weight of carrying fuel and the speed at which we can travel yet paint chips or flakes and other space debris can travel at 28 000km/h or 17500mph up there in space with no propellant at all to keep it going so why can't we do something similar? If a "puff" of pressure releasing from a satellite or space ship can alter its course then surely a "puff" of pressure being released can provide enough momentum for us to move about in space without the need of massive amounts fuel?

reply to post by SpaceSaviour


The reason those bits of paint and debris can move so quickly without any propellant is because there is no atmospheric drag to slow them down. Their initial momentum comes from the objects from which they were dislodged that were travelling at that speed in the first place, and that initial speed comes from the velocities required to escape Earth's gravity.

The vast majority of fuel use in space missions, Apollo or otherwise, comes from getting out of the gravitational pull of the body from which the spacecraft originated. Even bulky objects like the Apollo Command and Service Module could make minor course corrections with relatively small burns of fuel. The main fuel expense was in getting the Apollo missions first to Earth orbit, and then out of Earth orbit. Once on course they used relatively little fuel. Likewise once at the moon the fuel was first to reduce speed to allow them to enter lunar orbit, and then to escape it again.