Quote:
Originally Posted by IrishGrrl
ok, it's pick AJ's brain time for me! LOL
In reading your posts (and this is way off topic..I wish you would start a tread of your own so I could ask all this crazy shit) you mentioned us going to the moon. Laugh if you will people, but I did alot of reading about the conspiricytheory saying we DIDNT go to the moon. Many reasons why. Including that we apparently did not have the technology THEN , and still dont NOW? And what about those rocks AJ? And the flag ?
curious,
Irish
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Okay, I'll take these one at a time:
1) Didn't have the technology.
All of the technology to go to the Moon had to be invented but once it was proven that rockets were technologically feasible (and that was already demonstrated by the end of WW II) it just became an engineering problem. What do you need to be able to get to the moon?
a) you need a vehicle capable of overcoming Earth's gravity. Certainly doable. That's just a physics problem.
b) you need to be able to seal an environment and keep it pressurized. We do that everyday with jets.
c) you need a computer capable of monitoring such a complex vehicle. Daunting at the time but certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. (If you have a smartphone you have more computing power in the palm of your hand than the computers on the Apollo spaceship. If you have a laptop you have more computing power in your backpack than ALL of the computers used for the Apollo program put together!)
Were all of those things available in 1969? Yes, absolutely. The Saturn V had more than enough lifting power.
As far as not having the technology today, that's bad comedy. We *probably* have the technology today to do a Mars shot, we just lack the political will to pull it off but even a trip to the Red Planet, which would be a non-trivial undertaking, is possible and largely an engineering problem.
As far as the flag, simple explanation.
The flag had a wire stuck through it so that it would stand up (otherwise, it would have just drooped on the flag pole). To get the flag pole into the lunar soil, they had to rotate it back and forth (if you've ever stuck in a tent-pole you've done something similar) the angular momentum of the flag pole caused the flag to wave. No wind or air required, all you need is for physics to work on the Moon the same way they work on Earth--and they do.
As far as the moon rocks.
They are *significantly* different than terrestrial rocks. For one, moon rocks have no water trapped in their structure--Earth rocks do. On Earth, volcanic glass is dissolved by water, moon rocks still have high proportions of volcanic glass in them because there's no liquid water to dissolve it. Also, terrestrial rocks have clay in them, moon rocks don't
Last one (although you didn't mention it) the photographs don't have stars in them.
The reason for this is quite simple was well. Remember that there is NO atmosphere on the moon so no means of filtering light. Sunlight on the moon is VERY bright and the spacesuits were white so that it reflected some portion of the light. So the astronauts were *literally* very bright. Any camera set for an exposure that would capture the very bright astronauts would not be able to capture the relatively dim stars. (Remember, where the astronauts were it was ALWAYS daylight.)
We landed on the moon. The idea that it was mocked up in a film studio is, in fact, actually far LESS feasible in 1969. You could probably pull off a film hoax of a moon landing now, but I doubt you could do it in 1969 and make it plausible. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't look particularly realistic in its moon shots and at the time it was made (1969-1970) it was the technological state-of-the-art moviemaking.
Cheers
Aj