A close look at the Apollo 14 Lunar module on the Moon

kookoos
So, what was changed to make it flyable without killing the astronauts?

That's funny, why did you pick THAT film instead of THIS one...



...or films of any of the other 100+ incident-free flights of the LLRV & LLTV?

You wouldn't, by any chance, be cherry-picking the one crash-film to create the totally false impression that this was a common occurrence with these craft, would you? Would you?

reply to post by Saint Exupery

Nice explanation. Lots of people look at photos and claim that the LMs were made out of tinfoil. Possibly getting confused with their own headgear

They were built by-hand by skilled engineers and technicians who knew that the hopes of their nation and the lives of astronauts were riding on them. Imagine the pride they felt when they saw the things they built with their own hands sitting on the surface of the Moon...

I have some first hand experience of those kind of feelings. A close relative of mine was part of an ESA team that built a small satellite that was launched on an Ariane rocket. Knowing that she had built something that went into space is pretty amazing, and that was just a small unmanned craft into earth orbit. Seeing your creation safely carrying humans to the moon and back would be just amazing


You wouldn't, by any chance, be cherry-picking the one crash-film to create the totally false impression that this was a common occurrence with these craft, would you? Would you?

Not to mention that of course the training craft was not really anything like the actual LM. It couldn't be, because it had to fly in an atmosphere. It was a completely different type of craft that was designed to simulate flying in the lunar environment. It had to have a whacking great jet engine firing downwards to counteract 5/6ths of earth gravity, for a start!

tomounitismanassas

The area under, and slightly behind the engine bell shows evidence of disturbed soil resulting from the Descent Engine exhaust - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I see no evidence of any kind regarding the soil.Do you know the power a thruster has?It would make a mess under it if it truely landed there.Regarding the other pic doesnt tell me much it seems like it but i cant take this for evidence

A few years back, someone did a mathematical analysis to figure out how much lunar dust would have been displaced by the LM descent engine during landing.

Here is his work.

"...the conclusion is inescapable: no pronounced crater is formed. No more soil can be removed than there is energy available to detach, entrain, and transport it away. The energy of the exhaust gas has been determined to a reasonably high degree of confidence, and the energy require to produce a large crater is simply not present." -- Robert A. Braunig

How did they escape Moon's gravitational field ? The gravity is 1/6 that of earth, you would need a rocket that has 1/6 power of the Saturn V rocket

reply to post by Ove38


100% false, they would not need a rocket that powerful. Can you spot your silly error?

Ove38
How did they escape Moon's gravitational field ? The gravity is 1/6 that of earth, you would need a rocket that has 1/6 power of the Saturn V rocket

Oh really? Was the LM trying to lift an entire Saturn V rocket off the surface of the moon? I can't see it in the photos. Couple of quick quiz questions for you:

1) What was the launch mass (from Earth) of a Saturn V as used for Apollo?

2) What was the launch mass (from the moon) of the lunar module ascent stage?

3) Why do you think the Apollo designers quickly discarded the idea of having a one-piece craft that would descend to the moon and ascend as a whole?

4) Related to number 3: why do you think they left the descent stage behind on the moon, along with as much rubbish as they could leave behind, and even the Hasselblad cameras?

5) Did the LM need to attain escape velocity from the moon by itself?

Hoax theorists love asking questions but they hate thinking about answers! I'm glad none of them were in charge of designing the spacecraft...

Rob48

Ove38
How did they escape Moon's gravitational field ? The gravity is 1/6 that of earth, you would need a rocket that has 1/6 power of the Saturn V rocket

Oh really? Was the LM trying to lift an entire Saturn V rocket off the surface of the moon? I can't see it in the photos. Couple of quick quiz questions for you:

1) What was the launch mass (from Earth) of a Saturn V as used for Apollo?

2) What was the launch mass (from the moon) of the lunar module?

3) Why do you think the Apollo designers quickly discarded the idea of having a one-piece craft that would descend to the moon and ascend as a whole?

4) Related to number 3: why do you think they left the descent stage behind on the moon, along with as much rubbish as they could leave behind, and even the Hasselblad cameras?

5) Did the LM need to attain escape velocity from the moon by itself?

Hoax theorists love asking questions but they hate thinking about answers!

edit on 12-4-2014 by Rob48 because: (no reason given)

You just ruined the fun of me telling him to figure out his mistake. This is why hoaxers always look like fools.

Ove38
How did they escape Moon's gravitational field ? The gravity is 1/6 that of earth, you would need a rocket that has 1/6 power of the Saturn V rocket

The Saturn rocket had to lift the LM ascent stage + LM descent stage + Command and Service Module + lots of equipment that was to be left on the Moon + the fuel to get from Earth to Moon + all the Saturn rocket hardware and structure: all through the Earth's thick atmosphere that offers a lot of resistance. And they had to achieve the espace velocity, too.

The LM ascent stage only had to lift itself into the lunar orbit, to catch up with the Command and Service module.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04

Well I figured he might need a helping hand. Naive as it might be, I live in hope that if you can make people THINK about what they are asking then perhaps just a few of them might learn something. Hence my directed questioning...

Rob48
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Well I figured he might need a helping hand. Naive as it might be, I live in hope that if you can make people THINK about what they are asking then perhaps just a few of them might learn something. Hence my directed questioning...

Maybe you are right. I have always found with hoaxers telling them the truth never works, you have to lead them to it and hope they drink.

Who's to say which method is better though "shrug". Hopefully he starts thinking and using the wonderful mind God gave him more often.

Rob48
Is that also the shadow of the S-band antenna just to the right of the crater? Looks like it's on the right spot from the panorama. Pretty neat if you can pick that out too

Indeed, I think so. Here's the LRO image labelled by me. You can see the light spot of the S-band dish and its shadow, as well as the short thick shadow from the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET).



P.S. the consensus is that, when blowing images up, pixel resizing seems more faithful than bicubic resampling.

wildespace

P.S. the consensus is that, when blowing images up, pixel resizing seems more faithful than bicubic resampling.

I totally agree. I have to admit that I am replying to this thread on my phone at the moment and that image was just done by taking a screenshot and zooming in on the resulting photo, hence the lousy quality! Just meant as a quick illustration — thanks for the clearer one.

OccamsRazor04
Maybe you are right. I have always found with hoaxers telling them the truth never works, you have to lead them to it and hope they drink.

That's what I was trying to do. Not provide the answers but provide the questions that he needs to be asking himself. Hopefully if he came up with the answers to those 5 questions he would see where he went wrong.

OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Ove38

 

100% false, they would not need a rocket that powerful. Can you spot your silly error?

But they would need a powerful rocket, right ? or do you think they could escape Moon's gravitational field without a rocket ?

zilebeliveunknown

tomounitismanassas

The area under, and slightly behind the engine bell shows evidence of disturbed soil resulting from the Descent Engine exhaust - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I see no evidence of any kind regarding the soil.Do you know the power a thruster has?It would make a mess under it if it truely landed there.Regarding the other pic doesnt tell me much it seems like it but i cant take this for evidence

I read somewhere that it was a 6 meters? free fall before touch down. That could explain why no to little dusturbance has been left on the soil.

the flaw in that explanation is that the LM did not descend straight up-down... it coasted (slightly) to a landing, (which should have left a 'furrow' or a 'rut' in the lunar dust from the descent engines' blast & not just a singular crater)
Ergo.... the blast crater you see is not from the landing, but from the blast off to get off the moon

that's my viewpoint & i'm sticking to it

Ove38

OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Ove38

 

100% false, they would not need a rocket that powerful. Can you spot your silly error?

But they would need a powerful rocket, right ? or do you think they could escape Moon's gravitational field without a rocket ?

Gravitational acceleration on the surface of the moon is only 1.6249 m/s^2. Where as on the Earth it is 9.82 m/s^2. So it is only about 16.5% of Earth's gravity.
Couple that with virtually no atmosphere for drag, and it does not take very much thrust to get something to orbit the moon.

The Apollo Lunar Module ascent stage used a Ascent Propulsion System who's engine had 3500 pounds of thrust, which was able to give the ascent stage a velocity of up to 2000 m/s

The moon's escape velocity is about 2.4 km/s. An object with a velocity of 2 km/s (the lunar ascent module) won't achieve a stable orbit, but it will put it high enough, and long enough sub orbital path to meet up with the command module.

So no, they didn't need a powerful rocket. Just one with enough thrust to carry them high enough to dock, which, with the moon's gravity being so low, does not take much.

St Udio

zilebeliveunknown

tomounitismanassas

The area under, and slightly behind the engine bell shows evidence of disturbed soil resulting from the Descent Engine exhaust - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I see no evidence of any kind regarding the soil.Do you know the power a thruster has?It would make a mess under it if it truely landed there.Regarding the other pic doesnt tell me much it seems like it but i cant take this for evidence

I read somewhere that it was a 6 meters? free fall before touch down. That could explain why no to little dusturbance has been left on the soil.

the flaw in that explanation is that the LM did not descend straight up-down... it coasted (slightly) to a landing, (which should have left a 'furrow' or a 'rut' in the lunar dust from the descent engines' blast & not just a singular crater)
Ergo.... the blast crater you see is not from the landing, but from the blast off to get off the moon

that's my viewpoint & i'm sticking to it

edit on th30139730504512172014 by St Udio because: more

What blast crater? We are saying there is no blast crater, just slight disturbance in the lunar soil as you would expect. The OP highlighted the furrow left behind by the contact probe as the LM came in sideways, and the way the footpad had dug in due to the sideways motion.

The small crater in front of the LM is just a common-or-garden lunar crater. Nothing to do with the LM thruster.

St Udio

zilebeliveunknown

tomounitismanassas

The area under, and slightly behind the engine bell shows evidence of disturbed soil resulting from the Descent Engine exhaust - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I see no evidence of any kind regarding the soil.Do you know the power a thruster has?It would make a mess under it if it truely landed there.Regarding the other pic doesnt tell me much it seems like it but i cant take this for evidence

I read somewhere that it was a 6 meters? free fall before touch down. That could explain why no to little dusturbance has been left on the soil.

the flaw in that explanation is that the LM did not descend straight up-down... it coasted (slightly) to a landing, (which should have left a 'furrow' or a 'rut' in the lunar dust from the descent engines' blast & not just a singular crater)
Ergo.... the blast crater you see is not from the landing, but from the blast off to get off the moon

that's my viewpoint & i'm sticking to it

edit on th30139730504512172014 by St Udio because: more

The thrust of the ascent engine would have been deflected by the descent stage. There is no reason to believe that the ascent stage would leave a blast crater.

Besides, as Rob48 said in the post above, that crater to the side of the LM is simply a pre-existing crater.

eriktheawful
The Apollo Lunar Module ascent stage used a Ascent Propulsion System who's engine had 3500 pounds of thrust, which was able to give the ascent stage a velocity of up to 2000 m/s

The moon's escape velocity is about 2.4 km/s. An object with a velocity of 2 km/s (the lunar ascent module) won't achieve a stable orbit, but it will put it high enough, and long enough sub orbital path to meet up with the command module.

Erik,
Lunar escape velocity is ~2.4 km/s, but lunar orbital velocity is ~1.7 km/sec.
The Ascent Stage had enough delta-v to climb ~16 km and make orbit.

Ove38
How did they escape Moon's gravitational field ? The gravity is 1/6 that of earth, you would need a rocket that has 1/6 power of the Saturn V rocket

That made me laugh talk about hitting the keyboard before engaging brain!!!

Ove38

OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Ove38

 

100% false, they would not need a rocket that powerful. Can you spot your silly error?

But they would need a powerful rocket, right ? or do you think they could escape Moon's gravitational field without a rocket ?

The LM only needed to be powerful enough (and have enough fuel) to get into the same orbit as the CM in order to dock with it. The CM itself was already moving at an orbital speed around the moon, and that pre-existing orbital momentum of the CM was a component in the eventual total momentum that was required to break the Moon's gravitational well.



By the way -- and sort of (but not directly) related to the topic -- the idea of "escape velocity" is sometimes misunderstood. Escape velocity is NOT specifically the velocity a spacecraft needs in order to break free of the earth's gravitational well, but rather is is the velocity required of a coasting spacecraft (i.e., I craft not creating any thrust) to do so.

A traditional rocket leaving Earth's gravitational well only trusts its engines for a relatively short time (maybe 20 minutes, tops) in order to get up to a velocity that, once the engine shuts down, will be enough of a velocity to coast free of the Earth, and not cause the Earth to pull that craft back.

However, it does not take "escape velocity" speeds of 40,000 km/h (25,000 mph) to leave the Earth behind; I could theoretically achieve an escape of Earth's gravity well by only moving at 100 km per hour. If I was on a craft that could provide a constant thrust against gravity that allows me to achieve 100 km per hour against that gravity for an indefinite amount of time (years of continuous uninterrupted thrust), then I would eventually make it too the Moon while only moving at 100 km per hour. It would take a while (several years), but I would not need to achieve the 40,000 km/h (25,000 mph) escape velocity to do so.

Heck, you could even theoretically escape the Earth's gravity well while only moving at 1 km/h, as long as you were constantly under powered thrust (and you had a lot of time on your hands).