| | | Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 | APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!??
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 3:47 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
The problem with your soliloque is that I was at the top of my class all through my academic career,to the disdain of many just like yourself, achieving a 3.9 gpa in my major . I also occupy the top tenth of the 99th percentile, intelligence wise.
The fact is I am more educated in the sciences than anyone here who represents your cause. Because I atribute most of my knowledge to self edcuation is irrelevant. The most susccesful and innovative people in history discarded conventional thinking as well.
And what do you do with this vaunted super intellect but go pointlessly debate on a Conspiracy webboard rather than actually challenge yourself in any REAL arena.
That's the pathetic loser that you are, IDW. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 262563
This was simply a place I could bait them out into the open and get them to hang themselves with thier own words. I tryed that on thier own board and was banned. My latest visit there, I was banned at my own request when Jay the Weasel refused to debate me one on one.
Remember?
The correlation between what was being posted on this board and the posts concerning myself on the phil plait government board prove a conspiracy exists to cover up the truth about apollo, and that an organized campaign of disinformation and shit slinging is being funded by the federal government. Thats a smoking gun. |
| IFINDUOFENSVE
User ID: 313164
10/23/2007 3:55 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
What it's really like to to walk on the moon
Four decades on, Nasa's missions to the Moon remain the pinnacle of human endeavour. For the men who made that incredible journey, the experience was profound, thrilling, and often terrifying. As a spectacular new film tells the inside story of the lunar landings, Apollo astronauts recall the trip of a lifetime
Major-General Michael Collins
Collins, now 76, was born in Rome. He was recruited by Nasa in 1963, reaching space for the second and final time aboard the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. As pilot of the command module, he orbited the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their giant leap.
I think there was probably more pressure on Apollo 11 than some of the other flights. There's so many things you can do wrong. [With] Apollo 11, I had the feeling the whole world was watching us. I had the feeling that the consequences if I do [things] wrong are gonna be immediately obvious to three billion people and that's a worrisome thought. We were working very hard in the months before the flight. I got little tics in my eyelids, which I think is a classic exemplar of internal pressure.
I always liked Neil, I think he's a fine choice to be the first guy on the Moon. He's a very thoughtful guy, he is not a self-promoter. Buzz seemed to be disturbed at various times, he seemed to be down in the dumps and I'm not to this day sure exactly what his problem was. Today, it seems that Buzz enjoys the limelight in the best sense.
Our interactions were all about "Did you do this?" and "What do you think about the pressure on gauge number 19?" It was not a lot of camaraderie, of sitting around over a beer talking about life in general.
On launch day, it's kind of strange. You go out in a van to the launch pad. When you get out to the base of this gigantic gantry, it's empty and there's nobody there. You're accustomed to scores of workers swarming like ants all up and down and around it. Then suddenly you think maybe they know something I don't know. But anyway, you get in this little elevator and you go up 365ft in the air. Still you have the sense of being deserted and it's a strange environment. And it hasn't really seized you until the last minute or two at least it didn't me. You feel in the seat of your pants that the launch tower is just a few feet off to one side; [you think] "I hope this sucker isn't gonna [tip] over."
As you get higher, the blue gets darker and darker. Then, when the first stage runs out of fuel, the motors shut down and for an instant you're thrown against your straps and you're weightless for a very short period until the second-stage engines kick in and then, whoosh, you're off again. The trip to the Moon is more of an anticipatory thing; you're looking forward, you're looking at the Earth but your emotions are headed the other way.
The Moon was pretty much as I expected [it] to be up close, because we'd seen a million photographs. It was a little rougher than I thought it would be. I did not sense any great invitation on the part of the Moon for us to come into its domain. I sensed more almost a hostile place, a scary place.
I discovered later that I was described as the loneliest man ever in the universe [because Collins did not land on the Moon with the others] or something, which really is a lot of baloney. I mean, I had mission control yacking in my ear half the time. I mean, had I been some poor soul in a rowboat out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I'd be a lot more lonely than I was in orbit around the Moon by myself. I felt it as almost a feeling of exultation, I liked it, everything was going well with the command module, I had my happy little home and had the bright lights on and everything, I enjoyed that time.
I was more concerned about getting Armstrong and Aldrin up off the surface. A lot of things could have gone wrong some problem with their engine where either it wouldn't ignite and they were stuck, or it would ignite but they got up into some kind of a strange lopsided orbit and would crash back into the Moon and I wouldn't be able to get them.
You see the lunar module, [a] little golden bug down there among the craters, and it gets slowly bigger and bigger and then it got right up next to me. It was my job to make the connection between the two vehicles.
I don't remember what I said to them. I can remember I grabbed Buzz by both ears and I was gonna kiss him on the forehead. We immediately started yacking about the technical minutiae, what they saw on the Moon, how big the rocks were, what the colours were. And then you don't have time to sit around and reminisce because you've got to come home.
I think the first time you become aware of your speed is very late in the game when you've turned around and you're coming into the atmosphere. You see pieces of the heat shield and it starts with a very tenuous wispy trail, maybe with some violets and some greens and then as the atmosphere gets denser and your heat shield gets hotter you start getting an incandescent feeling of yellows, and you are literally on fire.
On Apollo you needed at least two good [parachutes] or you're gonna hit the ground or the water at a fatal rate. But we got all three good ones, so that you can see those out the window. And the splat is just kind of luck of the draw, it depends on whether the ocean's calm that day or if you hit the top of the wave or the bottom of a trough. We hit pretty hard and tipped over. It's sort of undignified to come that far and make a nice landing and then topple upside down. I lost a case of beer betting with Buzz 'cos I said that wasn't gonna happen and it did.
I knew my life had changed because of Apollo 11, but I did not know in what way. I guess there was sort of a feeling of "What next?" what do I do for a job, what's my life gonna be like. And I had a feeling of great optimism but also a feeling of the unknown.
We were meeting people like the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan. The thing I think that surprised me the most was that wherever we went people, instead of saying "Well, you Americans did it," they said " We did it" we humankind, we the human race, we people did it. I thought that was a wonderful thing, ephemeral but wonderful.
I kind of have two Moons up there. I look at the Moon just like everybody else who's never been there. But every once in a while I do think of the second Moon, the one that I recall from up close and, yeah, it is kind of hard to believe that I was actually up there.
Now, did I have the best seat on Apollo 11? I'd be a liar, a fool, if I said I had the best seat [not being aboard the landing module], but I can say, with complete equanimity, I never had any complaints before, during or after. I'm perfectly happy with the part that I did play in it.
Colonel Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin Jnr
Born in 1930, Aldrin got his nickname as a child, when his sister mispronounced brother as "buzzer". The former fighter pilot flew two Nasa missions, earning a coveted spot alongside Neil Armstrong inside Apollo 11's lunar module.
After 1961, the President had accelerated our course in space. Instead of just our Mercury astronauts competing with the Soviets in Earth's orbit, we set an even further objective, which was going to the Moon and back before the end of the Sixties. In October 1963, I got a call asking me to join the astronaut programme. There were 14 of us selected in that group.
The Apollo 8 mission was going to be a big Earth orbit. But we thought that during the summer of '68 the Russians had flown two unmanned missions around the Moon. They had an opportunity to send a mission with a human crew on board. So during the summer, unknown to all but a very few people, the mission of Apollo 8 was changed step by step. Eventually, it was decided to put it into orbit around the Moon.
When that mission was over, Neil [Armstrong] got in touch with both Mike [Collins] and I, and let us know that we would be on Apollo 11. I forget exactly when it was that I casually mentioned it to my wife: "Today, we found out we're going to the Moon."
I knew that anyone who was on the first lunar landing was going to be propelled into the public view in an enormous way. Given a choice, I'd just as soon not have to put up with that.
I gave up smoking the pipe maybe three weeks before launch. Having a drink, three days before. I don't think anybody really slept too well the night before. We had what we call a faecal containment garment, which you wear underneath your underwear to contain any bowel movement throughout a prolonged flight, so, early in the morning, I greased the lower portion of my body with diaper-rash stuff. I had decided that I was gonna wear my West Point ring and a Masonic ring of my grandfather's.
People who've not been on rockets continue to ask, "You weren't scared?" No, we were not scared. At the moment of lift-off, there were numbers changing on the dash board, there were sounds indicating in the voice loop that we'd had lift-off, but what did we feel? I think we felt, in those early moments, that we were not attached to the ground anymore, but in flight, drifting.
If I wanted to go to the Moon again, it would be to look out the window during the descent and not be looking at the computer and the abort guidance system and all the other things I was supposed to be looking at.
In retrospect, it would have been unacceptable to the public for the commander [Armstrong] to have stayed inside the module while the junior person [Aldrin] went and got all the credit for being the first step on the Moon. But big deal who is it a big deal for? Well, for history, for the media, for the public, that's who it's a big deal for. Technically, it could have gone either way, except that they put the hinge on the side of the hatch that would open up and allow the commander to go out first. But I really didn't think that the hinge being on a certain side should be the deciding factor. But the correct decision was made and I'm happy with it have been from the moment it was made, because I'm a military guy and I do what I'm told to do and I don't feel bitter about it in any way. There are no sour grapes.
Mike was always the easy-going guy who brought levity to things, and I felt kind of bad that he wasn't gonna have the opportunity of being in a lunar lander, but somebody had to do each and every task.
We told Charlie Duke [the astronaut who spoke to the crew from mission control in Houston] that we were gonna call ourselves Tranquillity Base as soon as we touched down. We wanted him to know that, so that it wouldn't be some garbled word that would come back, but he would understand it. I was a little caught unawares when Neil said: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed." We didn't have a tight timeline as to when we were supposed to open the hatch and go out. We took our time and it caused a lot of people in different parts of the world to stay up pretty late that night, I'm sure.
Fortunately, most of us were more compact then than we are now, but you had to go out feet first and you can't really see with that big backpack on your back. The checklist said that as I went out, I should "partially close the hatch". So I said, as I was going out, "I'm gonna reach back and partially close the hatch, making sure not to lock it on my way out..." I just thought that was funny. But then I began to think, what would happen if that door had slammed shut for some reason?
We had no idea how easy it was gonna be to walk around on the Moon. It was just like Earth except much, much easier, because there's less force to deal with. However, we had it in our flight plan that we take the first 10, 15 seconds at the bottom of the ladder to hold on to the edge of the landing gear, and just check our stability and so forth. I soon realised that you don't really have to do that, because it's very easy to move around. So that's when I decided to take care of a bodily function and slightly fill up the urine bag so that I wouldn't be troubled with that later on. Everybody had their firsts on the Moon. And that one hasn't been disputed by anybody.
We got the flag out and put it in the ground and we'd never really practised that one before, so we were professionals but we were also kind of amateurs up there. Of course, there's not much gravity, so we did get it to stand reasonably upright.
Here we were on the surface, and I knew more people were watching us than had ever watched two human beings before in history, and yet we're further away, not just in distance, but in things we gotta do to get back home. We gotta do some difficult things to get out of this desolate place and get back home again. We got a phone call from the President and that was a surprise to me. So I was tongue-tied and didn't know what to say. I got kinda tired of hearing people say as they looked down on the Earth from space how they couldn't see any boundaries between countries and how peaceful this was and, you know, after the fifth time you've heard that, it gets kind of sickening.
After we got clearance to leave, I said, "Houston, Roger, we're number one on the runway." I'm real proud of that one because that's two zingers in one sentence: there wasn't anybody else up there, and there sure wasn't a runway.
Brigadier-General Charles Duke
Born in North Carolina in 1935, Duke flew for the US Air Force before being selected by Nasa in 1966. As capcom the spacecraft communicator at mission control for the Apollo 11 mission, his southern drawl became familiar to millions. He took his own steps on the Moon on Apollo 16 in 1972.
I was watching a football game and reading the Los Angeles Times and there was an article saying Nasa's looking for more astronauts. The criteria were to be a US citizen, with a thousand hours' flying, bachelor's degree, less than six feet tall very general requirements. Next day, I went to Colonel Yeager [the US legendary test pilot, Chuck Yeager] and said, "Sir, I'd like to apply."
We got selected through a six months' process. I didn't know you could be poked and prodded as many times in as many places as we were. It was a very exhausting physical. There was an inkblot test, and I mean the big deal for us was, don't see anything sexual or unusual or weirdo, just pick something you know. I said, "Well, it looks like a butterfly to me." We didn't want to be perverts, you know.
We had some strange ECGs. They'd put your head in a bucket of ice water to see what happened to your heart. I remember they squirted ice water in your ear to see how your heart would respond. They strapped you to this big board like a roulette wheel and you were hung upside down and they'd spin you sideways. It was crazy.
On Apollo 11, my involvement was at mission control. It was probably the second best thing that happened to me at Nasa. Flying was the best, but being in mission control and on the ground side of the missions was really exciting and really challenging.
As capcom, you were really the astronaut representative at mission control. As Neil and Buzz were in the lunar module, the guidance system was carrying them into a big boulder field. They were big rocks and it wasn't a suitable place to land. We noticed their trajectory level off and he [Neil Armstrong] just started flying almost horizontally above the Moon at high speed. This takes fuel, extra fuel. We were getting really fuel-critical. And we had two calls that we were to give from mission control. The first was, "Eagle, 60 seconds." That meant he had 60 more seconds to land. And at the end of that 60 seconds, by mission rule, I would call, "Abort". Now whether he would actually abort or not was their decision but mission control would call an abort.
I called, "30 seconds. Eagle, you got 30 seconds." I can remember looking at my stopwatch as it was counting down and, 13 seconds later, we landed we had contact.
Buzz said, "Contact. Engine stop." When you hear "Engine stop" , you know they're gonna be on the ground, hopefully right side up.
Neil came on the radio: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed." Everybody in mission control was really excited. I couldn't even get out the word "Tranquillity". I said "Twang-quillity" or something like that. Finally I got out: "Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you down. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again."
There was a lot of stress in our families, in my family particularly because we lived in Houston but all the training was in Florida, or it was a geology trip to Hawaii or California or Arizona. Dotty and I had two young children, a big yard, a new house, a dog those responsibilities of keeping all that going and managing the children.
So they sort of fitted into a routine, and then I'd come in on the weekends, and, now, I'm in charge here, and I had a terrible attitude with my kids. I had an explosive temper, sort of a military drill instructor dad.
Dotty and I began to have problems. The astronaut office was presented as the all-American boys and their all-American families. But that facade began to crumble in 1966. Several years later we had the first divorce and that sort of opened the floodgate.
Before the Apollo 16 mission, I had the flu. It was during that first night of fever that I had this strange dream. I was on the Moon, and John and I were driving the lunar rover and there was this set of tracks. We were stunned. "There's a set of tracks up here, Houston could we follow them?" And they said, "Yeah, follow the tracks." So we followed them and there's this rover on the lunar surface, with two astronauts just sitting there. I pulled up the visor of one of the astronauts, and the guy in the car was me and he was dead.
I didn't want to tell [Dottie] about it. I never mentioned it to her until after the mission. In fact, I didn't tell anybody until after the mission was over. I found out from the flight surgeon later on that my heartbeat was 144 at lift-off. John's was 70, so he was very cool and I was very I can't say fearful but I was certainly anxious. When those engines ignite the vibration down there is transmitted up this 363ft rocket to the spacecraft and it's sitting there shaking from side to side.
During the flight, we had a tape recorder. I took country music put together by a friend who was a disc jockey in Houston. He'd called some of the very famous country music stars, and we had a special half hour by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and then Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and it was all personalised. You know "Charlie, we don't know where you are but we know you're on the way to the Moon and we hope you like this music. This song is especially for you." We had a lot of serious work to do and we did it but with a good humour.
My little boys, who were almost five and seven at the time, and my wife had they'd put these little greetings and drawings of rockets into the flight plan [the manual the crew took with them]. So you'd turn to the flight plan and there's this little message: "We love you Dad. Have a good trip." And: "Dear Daddy, have a safe trip home. Love Tom."
You can look great on the outside, but be dying on the inside. I guess Dottie was the one that was really dying on the inside. In April of 1978, our marriage was getting better because Dotty had become a Christian and I watched her change from sadness to joy as a result of that.
A friend of ours got us to go to a Bible study at the tennis club and I realised that what my wife was experiencing I could experience. I said to Jesus, "I give you my life and if you're real come into my life," and I believe he did. I had this sense of peace that was hard to describe. This explosive temper went away. Now we're enjoying seven grandchildren that our boys have given us and we've seen some bumps in the road, and some potholes, but not one promise of God has failed us in 28 years.
Colonel David Scott
Scott, now 75, made his first trip to space with Neil Armstrong on the 1966 Gemini 8 mission. In 1971, he was spacecraft commander of Apollo 15, the fourth manned lunar landing mission, during which he spent more than 18 hours exploring the Moon's surface.
I slept very well the night before. You're ready or you're not and if you're not, you don't want to go. But we were able to build up and train such that we peaked when it was time to go. So it was, like, finally! After the training and all the simulations, it's actually pretty relaxing to know that: OK, tomorrow you get to go.
On all previous days going to the [launch] pad, there were people everywhere, busy, busy, busy. You go out on launch morning, and there's nobody there, it's a ghost town. It's fascinating, to see this 365ft-high rocket standing there, ready to go, and the three of us will get in it and it'll move.
I'm not sure exactly how much time there was [before the launch] a couple of hours, 90 minutes but you're busy all the time, setting switches, checking systems, making sure everything works. As an example, I can actually fly the whole booster from the spacecraft using the hand controller. So you go through the tests to make sure that the engines of the launch vehicle respond to a hand controller. And [fellow-crew members] Jim Irwin is busy with the systems and Al Worden is busy with the computer, so there are quiet periods, but in general you're making the final checks and final tests.
Ignition occurs long before lift-off well, in terms of seconds. You can start to feel the vibration once it occurs, and you can see from the instruments on the panel that the engines have ignited, and then you get lift-off and you can feel the thrust and you can feel the motion slowly and the vibration building up. And it's a pretty comforting feeling to know that you're actually on the way.
You have to pay attention to what's happening because if there's a problem and you have to abort, there are certain things you have to do during certain periods. A lot of people think you're just lying on your back, waiting for it to happen, but not really because every second is something of significance. And during Apollo, we could abort anytime, unlike the Shuttle, which you can't in the early phases. But Apollo had something that you could do in case of a big problem at any time. So you stay on top of it.
Once you leave the darkness of space and you're in lunar orbit, you're right there, you're right on top of it and it's absolutely spectacular. In fact, you know, we set it up the other crews had chores to do, clean up, housekeeping chores, after getting in lunar orbit. They'd always get behind because there's so much to do, but we set it up so that for the first two hours, we didn't have to do anything except look out the window and take pictures. And it's just marvellous. We'd seen the photos, and studied it, and seen the films from previous crews, but you don't... it's just like anything else.
It's like, you know, if you have only looked at photographs of mountains, then you finally go and actually see them. The magnitude of it, and the variety of the lunar surface. Having studied what you'd expect to see, it's just magnified when you get there and see familiar features because you've studied them. It's a great experience.
The descent is always the critical phase, and the co-ordination and the lunar module have to work exactly right, and the targeting has to be right, and the computer all these things have to be 100 per cent, and we have to be 100 per cent, too, flying it. It's a very unforgiving situation so you have to be on your best game and the adrenalin is flowing. It all happens very, very quickly.
Our timeline was such that, after we landed, we either had to get out and do a full day's EVA [extra-vehicular activity], or we had to go to sleep. You're not going to go to sleep right after you land on the Moon, but at the same time, we couldn't do a full EVA, we'd already had a full day. So I'd suggested that we do what we call a "stand-up EVA" in which I would stick my head out the top hatch of the LEM [Lunar Excursion Module], pretty high, and survey the local area.
You take it for granted because you have so much to do, but after a while you realise that there's nobody else here on this whole planet. You're the only living things, and it's nice to have the comfort of the pristine environment and no obstructions or interruptions, other than the occasional call from the Cap-Com [mission control in Houston]. You get up the next morning, you turn the light on, and everybody's a little slow, waking up, and you open up one of the shades and look out. I said, "Jim, we're on the Moon". And we were.
One of the problems on the Moon is that there's nothing of familiar size no trees, houses, roads so it's very difficult to tell a large rock at a great distance from a smaller boulder nearby. You realise that you're standing next to rocks that have been there for 500 million years. You have three intense days, you don't have enough time to do all the things you'd like to do, and then, all of a sudden, you realise that it's over, you know. Your holiday is over. It's time to go home.
It was difficult when we got back because we needed a period of rest, and previous crews had been put in quarantine, which gave them a chance to recover. I tried to get us a quarantine period but the doctors and management said, no, we've done that and there aren't any bugs to worry about, so immediately, when we got back, we got thrown into society again. It was a tough your neighbour wants to have a party the night you get home and, well, you can't say no.
People always ask, what was it like? It's hard to describe because you can't take them there, and that's why I think, in the future, you need an artist or poet or writer to go and express it for people in terms they can understand better. I think we should think about the Apollo programme as an advance of mankind into the universe, an adventure. It stretched us as far as we could stretch, figuratively and literally, and the technology at the time was barely good enough to make it out there and back safely. I think humans will go back to the Moon and on to Mars. I mean, Star Trek may not be too far fetched, who knows? But it'll be exciting to find out.
'In the Shadow of the Moon' opens in cinemas on 2 November. For more information, see www.intheshadowofthemoon.co.uk. Interview extracts courtesy of DOX Productions
[link to news.independent.co.uk] |
| IFINDUOFENSVE
User ID: 313164
10/23/2007 3:58 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
[link to news.independent.co.uk]
What it's really like to to walk on the moon
Four decades on, Nasa's missions to the Moon remain the pinnacle of human endeavour. For the men who made that incredible journey, the experience was profound, thrilling, and often terrifying. As a spectacular new film tells the inside story of the lunar landings, Apollo astronauts recall the trip of a lifetime
Major-General Michael Collins
Collins, now 76, was born in Rome. He was recruited by Nasa in 1963, reaching space for the second and final time aboard the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. As pilot of the command module, he orbited the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their giant leap.
I think there was probably more pressure on Apollo 11 than some of the other flights. There's so many things you can do wrong. [With] Apollo 11, I had the feeling the whole world was watching us. I had the feeling that the consequences if I do [things] wrong are gonna be immediately obvious to three billion people and that's a worrisome thought. We were working very hard in the months before the flight. I got little tics in my eyelids, which I think is a classic exemplar of internal pressure.
I always liked Neil, I think he's a fine choice to be the first guy on the Moon. He's a very thoughtful guy, he is not a self-promoter. Buzz seemed to be disturbed at various times, he seemed to be down in the dumps and I'm not to this day sure exactly what his problem was. Today, it seems that Buzz enjoys the limelight in the best sense.
Our interactions were all about "Did you do this?" and "What do you think about the pressure on gauge number 19?" It was not a lot of camaraderie, of sitting around over a beer talking about life in general.
On launch day, it's kind of strange. You go out in a van to the launch pad. When you get out to the base of this gigantic gantry, it's empty and there's nobody there. You're accustomed to scores of workers swarming like ants all up and down and around it. Then suddenly you think maybe they know something I don't know. But anyway, you get in this little elevator and you go up 365ft in the air. Still you have the sense of being deserted and it's a strange environment. And it hasn't really seized you until the last minute or two at least it didn't me. You feel in the seat of your pants that the launch tower is just a few feet off to one side; [you think] "I hope this sucker isn't gonna [tip] over."
As you get higher, the blue gets darker and darker. Then, when the first stage runs out of fuel, the motors shut down and for an instant you're thrown against your straps and you're weightless for a very short period until the second-stage engines kick in and then, whoosh, you're off again. The trip to the Moon is more of an anticipatory thing; you're looking forward, you're looking at the Earth but your emotions are headed the other way.
The Moon was pretty much as I expected [it] to be up close, because we'd seen a million photographs. It was a little rougher than I thought it would be. I did not sense any great invitation on the part of the Moon for us to come into its domain. I sensed more almost a hostile place, a scary place.
I discovered later that I was described as the loneliest man ever in the universe [because Collins did not land on the Moon with the others] or something, which really is a lot of baloney. I mean, I had mission control yacking in my ear half the time. I mean, had I been some poor soul in a rowboat out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I'd be a lot more lonely than I was in orbit around the Moon by myself. I felt it as almost a feeling of exultation, I liked it, everything was going well with the command module, I had my happy little home and had the bright lights on and everything, I enjoyed that time.
I was more concerned about getting Armstrong and Aldrin up off the surface. A lot of things could have gone wrong some problem with their engine where either it wouldn't ignite and they were stuck, or it would ignite but they got up into some kind of a strange lopsided orbit and would crash back into the Moon and I wouldn't be able to get them.
You see the lunar module, [a] little golden bug down there among the craters, and it gets slowly bigger and bigger and then it got right up next to me. It was my job to make the connection between the two vehicles.
I don't remember what I said to them. I can remember I grabbed Buzz by both ears and I was gonna kiss him on the forehead. We immediately started yacking about the technical minutiae, what they saw on the Moon, how big the rocks were, what the colours were. And then you don't have time to sit around and reminisce because you've got to come home.
I think the first time you become aware of your speed is very late in the game when you've turned around and you're coming into the atmosphere. You see pieces of the heat shield and it starts with a very tenuous wispy trail, maybe with some violets and some greens and then as the atmosphere gets denser and your heat shield gets hotter you start getting an incandescent feeling of yellows, and you are literally on fire.
On Apollo you needed at least two good [parachutes] or you're gonna hit the ground or the water at a fatal rate. But we got all three good ones, so that you can see those out the window. And the splat is just kind of luck of the draw, it depends on whether the ocean's calm that day or if you hit the top of the wave or the bottom of a trough. We hit pretty hard and tipped over. It's sort of undignified to come that far and make a nice landing and then topple upside down. I lost a case of beer betting with Buzz 'cos I said that wasn't gonna happen and it did.
I knew my life had changed because of Apollo 11, but I did not know in what way. I guess there was sort of a feeling of "What next?" what do I do for a job, what's my life gonna be like. And I had a feeling of great optimism but also a feeling of the unknown.
We were meeting people like the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan. The thing I think that surprised me the most was that wherever we went people, instead of saying "Well, you Americans did it," they said " We did it" we humankind, we the human race, we people did it. I thought that was a wonderful thing, ephemeral but wonderful.
I kind of have two Moons up there. I look at the Moon just like everybody else who's never been there. But every once in a while I do think of the second Moon, the one that I recall from up close and, yeah, it is kind of hard to believe that I was actually up there.
Now, did I have the best seat on Apollo 11? I'd be a liar, a fool, if I said I had the best seat [not being aboard the landing module], but I can say, with complete equanimity, I never had any complaints before, during or after. I'm perfectly happy with the part that I did play in it.
Colonel Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin Jnr
Born in 1930, Aldrin got his nickname as a child, when his sister mispronounced brother as "buzzer". The former fighter pilot flew two Nasa missions, earning a coveted spot alongside Neil Armstrong inside Apollo 11's lunar module.
After 1961, the President had accelerated our course in space. Instead of just our Mercury astronauts competing with the Soviets in Earth's orbit, we set an even further objective, which was going to the Moon and back before the end of the Sixties. In October 1963, I got a call asking me to join the astronaut programme. There were 14 of us selected in that group.
The Apollo 8 mission was going to be a big Earth orbit. But we thought that during the summer of '68 the Russians had flown two unmanned missions around the Moon. They had an opportunity to send a mission with a human crew on board. So during the summer, unknown to all but a very few people, the mission of Apollo 8 was changed step by step. Eventually, it was decided to put it into orbit around the Moon.
When that mission was over, Neil [Armstrong] got in touch with both Mike [Collins] and I, and let us know that we would be on Apollo 11. I forget exactly when it was that I casually mentioned it to my wife: "Today, we found out we're going to the Moon."
I knew that anyone who was on the first lunar landing was going to be propelled into the public view in an enormous way. Given a choice, I'd just as soon not have to put up with that.
I gave up smoking the pipe maybe three weeks before launch. Having a drink, three days before. I don't think anybody really slept too well the night before. We had what we call a faecal containment garment, which you wear underneath your underwear to contain any bowel movement throughout a prolonged flight, so, early in the morning, I greased the lower portion of my body with diaper-rash stuff. I had decided that I was gonna wear my West Point ring and a Masonic ring of my grandfather's.
People who've not been on rockets continue to ask, "You weren't scared?" No, we were not scared. At the moment of lift-off, there were numbers changing on the dash board, there were sounds indicating in the voice loop that we'd had lift-off, but what did we feel? I think we felt, in those early moments, that we were not attached to the ground anymore, but in flight, drifting.
If I wanted to go to the Moon again, it would be to look out the window during the descent and not be looking at the computer and the abort guidance system and all the other things I was supposed to be looking at.
In retrospect, it would have been unacceptable to the public for the commander [Armstrong] to have stayed inside the module while the junior person [Aldrin] went and got all the credit for being the first step on the Moon. But big deal who is it a big deal for? Well, for history, for the media, for the public, that's who it's a big deal for. Technically, it could have gone either way, except that they put the hinge on the side of the hatch that would open up and allow the commander to go out first. But I really didn't think that the hinge being on a certain side should be the deciding factor. But the correct decision was made and I'm happy with it have been from the moment it was made, because I'm a military guy and I do what I'm told to do and I don't feel bitter about it in any way. There are no sour grapes.
Mike was always the easy-going guy who brought levity to things, and I felt kind of bad that he wasn't gonna have the opportunity of being in a lunar lander, but somebody had to do each and every task.
We told Charlie Duke [the astronaut who spoke to the crew from mission control in Houston] that we were gonna call ourselves Tranquillity Base as soon as we touched down. We wanted him to know that, so that it wouldn't be some garbled word that would come back, but he would understand it. I was a little caught unawares when Neil said: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed." We didn't have a tight timeline as to when we were supposed to open the hatch and go out. We took our time and it caused a lot of people in different parts of the world to stay up pretty late that night, I'm sure.
Fortunately, most of us were more compact then than we are now, but you had to go out feet first and you can't really see with that big backpack on your back. The checklist said that as I went out, I should "partially close the hatch". So I said, as I was going out, "I'm gonna reach back and partially close the hatch, making sure not to lock it on my way out..." I just thought that was funny. But then I began to think, what would happen if that door had slammed shut for some reason?
We had no idea how easy it was gonna be to walk around on the Moon. It was just like Earth except much, much easier, because there's less force to deal with. However, we had it in our flight plan that we take the first 10, 15 seconds at the bottom of the ladder to hold on to the edge of the landing gear, and just check our stability and so forth. I soon realised that you don't really have to do that, because it's very easy to move around. So that's when I decided to take care of a bodily function and slightly fill up the urine bag so that I wouldn't be troubled with that later on. Everybody had their firsts on the Moon. And that one hasn't been disputed by anybody.
We got the flag out and put it in the ground and we'd never really practised that one before, so we were professionals but we were also kind of amateurs up there. Of course, there's not much gravity, so we did get it to stand reasonably upright.
Here we were on the surface, and I knew more people were watching us than had ever watched two human beings before in history, and yet we're further away, not just in distance, but in things we gotta do to get back home. We gotta do some difficult things to get out of this desolate place and get back home again. We got a phone call from the President and that was a surprise to me. So I was tongue-tied and didn't know what to say. I got kinda tired of hearing people say as they looked down on the Earth from space how they couldn't see any boundaries between countries and how peaceful this was and, you know, after the fifth time you've heard that, it gets kind of sickening.
After we got clearance to leave, I said, "Houston, Roger, we're number one on the runway." I'm real proud of that one because that's two zingers in one sentence: there wasn't anybody else up there, and there sure wasn't a runway.
Brigadier-General Charles Duke
Born in North Carolina in 1935, Duke flew for the US Air Force before being selected by Nasa in 1966. As capcom the spacecraft communicator at mission control for the Apollo 11 mission, his southern drawl became familiar to millions. He took his own steps on the Moon on Apollo 16 in 1972.
I was watching a football game and reading the Los Angeles Times and there was an article saying Nasa's looking for more astronauts. The criteria were to be a US citizen, with a thousand hours' flying, bachelor's degree, less than six feet tall very general requirements. Next day, I went to Colonel Yeager [the US legendary test pilot, Chuck Yeager] and said, "Sir, I'd like to apply."
We got selected through a six months' process. I didn't know you could be poked and prodded as many times in as many places as we were. It was a very exhausting physical. There was an inkblot test, and I mean the big deal for us was, don't see anything sexual or unusual or weirdo, just pick something you know. I said, "Well, it looks like a butterfly to me." We didn't want to be perverts, you know.
We had some strange ECGs. They'd put your head in a bucket of ice water to see what happened to your heart. I remember they squirted ice water in your ear to see how your heart would respond. They strapped you to this big board like a roulette wheel and you were hung upside down and they'd spin you sideways. It was crazy.
On Apollo 11, my involvement was at mission control. It was probably the second best thing that happened to me at Nasa. Flying was the best, but being in mission control and on the ground side of the missions was really exciting and really challenging.
As capcom, you were really the astronaut representative at mission control. As Neil and Buzz were in the lunar module, the guidance system was carrying them into a big boulder field. They were big rocks and it wasn't a suitable place to land. We noticed their trajectory level off and he [Neil Armstrong] just started flying almost horizontally above the Moon at high speed. This takes fuel, extra fuel. We were getting really fuel-critical. And we had two calls that we were to give from mission control. The first was, "Eagle, 60 seconds." That meant he had 60 more seconds to land. And at the end of that 60 seconds, by mission rule, I would call, "Abort". Now whether he would actually abort or not was their decision but mission control would call an abort.
I called, "30 seconds. Eagle, you got 30 seconds." I can remember looking at my stopwatch as it was counting down and, 13 seconds later, we landed we had contact.
Buzz said, "Contact. Engine stop." When you hear "Engine stop" , you know they're gonna be on the ground, hopefully right side up.
Neil came on the radio: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed." Everybody in mission control was really excited. I couldn't even get out the word "Tranquillity". I said "Twang-quillity" or something like that. Finally I got out: "Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you down. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again."
There was a lot of stress in our families, in my family particularly because we lived in Houston but all the training was in Florida, or it was a geology trip to Hawaii or California or Arizona. Dotty and I had two young children, a big yard, a new house, a dog those responsibilities of keeping all that going and managing the children.
So they sort of fitted into a routine, and then I'd come in on the weekends, and, now, I'm in charge here, and I had a terrible attitude with my kids. I had an explosive temper, sort of a military drill instructor dad.
Dotty and I began to have problems. The astronaut office was presented as the all-American boys and their all-American families. But that facade began to crumble in 1966. Several years later we had the first divorce and that sort of opened the floodgate.
Before the Apollo 16 mission, I had the flu. It was during that first night of fever that I had this strange dream. I was on the Moon, and John and I were driving the lunar rover and there was this set of tracks. We were stunned. "There's a set of tracks up here, Houston could we follow them?" And they said, "Yeah, follow the tracks." So we followed them and there's this rover on the lunar surface, with two astronauts just sitting there. I pulled up the visor of one of the astronauts, and the guy in the car was me and he was dead.
I didn't want to tell [Dottie] about it. I never mentioned it to her until after the mission. In fact, I didn't tell anybody until after the mission was over. I found out from the flight surgeon later on that my heartbeat was 144 at lift-off. John's was 70, so he was very cool and I was very I can't say fearful but I was certainly anxious. When those engines ignite the vibration down there is transmitted up this 363ft rocket to the spacecraft and it's sitting there shaking from side to side.
During the flight, we had a tape recorder. I took country music put together by a friend who was a disc jockey in Houston. He'd called some of the very famous country music stars, and we had a special half hour by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and then Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and it was all personalised. You know "Charlie, we don't know where you are but we know you're on the way to the Moon and we hope you like this music. This song is especially for you." We had a lot of serious work to do and we did it but with a good humour.
My little boys, who were almost five and seven at the time, and my wife had they'd put these little greetings and drawings of rockets into the flight plan [the manual the crew took with them]. So you'd turn to the flight plan and there's this little message: "We love you Dad. Have a good trip." And: "Dear Daddy, have a safe trip home. Love Tom."
You can look great on the outside, but be dying on the inside. I guess Dottie was the one that was really dying on the inside. In April of 1978, our marriage was getting better because Dotty had become a Christian and I watched her change from sadness to joy as a result of that.
A friend of ours got us to go to a Bible study at the tennis club and I realised that what my wife was experiencing I could experience. I said to Jesus, "I give you my life and if you're real come into my life," and I believe he did. I had this sense of peace that was hard to describe. This explosive temper went away. Now we're enjoying seven grandchildren that our boys have given us and we've seen some bumps in the road, and some potholes, but not one promise of God has failed us in 28 years.
Colonel David Scott
Scott, now 75, made his first trip to space with Neil Armstrong on the 1966 Gemini 8 mission. In 1971, he was spacecraft commander of Apollo 15, the fourth manned lunar landing mission, during which he spent more than 18 hours exploring the Moon's surface.
I slept very well the night before. You're ready or you're not and if you're not, you don't want to go. But we were able to build up and train such that we peaked when it was time to go. So it was, like, finally! After the training and all the simulations, it's actually pretty relaxing to know that: OK, tomorrow you get to go.
On all previous days going to the [launch] pad, there were people everywhere, busy, busy, busy. You go out on launch morning, and there's nobody there, it's a ghost town. It's fascinating, to see this 365ft-high rocket standing there, ready to go, and the three of us will get in it and it'll move.
I'm not sure exactly how much time there was [before the launch] a couple of hours, 90 minutes but you're busy all the time, setting switches, checking systems, making sure everything works. As an example, I can actually fly the whole booster from the spacecraft using the hand controller. So you go through the tests to make sure that the engines of the launch vehicle respond to a hand controller. And [fellow-crew members] Jim Irwin is busy with the systems and Al Worden is busy with the computer, so there are quiet periods, but in general you're making the final checks and final tests.
Ignition occurs long before lift-off well, in terms of seconds. You can start to feel the vibration once it occurs, and you can see from the instruments on the panel that the engines have ignited, and then you get lift-off and you can feel the thrust and you can feel the motion slowly and the vibration building up. And it's a pretty comforting feeling to know that you're actually on the way.
You have to pay attention to what's happening because if there's a problem and you have to abort, there are certain things you have to do during certain periods. A lot of people think you're just lying on your back, waiting for it to happen, but not really because every second is something of significance. And during Apollo, we could abort anytime, unlike the Shuttle, which you can't in the early phases. But Apollo had something that you could do in case of a big problem at any time. So you stay on top of it.
Once you leave the darkness of space and you're in lunar orbit, you're right there, you're right on top of it and it's absolutely spectacular. In fact, you know, we set it up the other crews had chores to do, clean up, housekeeping chores, after getting in lunar orbit. They'd always get behind because there's so much to do, but we set it up so that for the first two hours, we didn't have to do anything except look out the window and take pictures. And it's just marvellous. We'd seen the photos, and studied it, and seen the films from previous crews, but you don't... it's just like anything else.
It's like, you know, if you have only looked at photographs of mountains, then you finally go and actually see them. The magnitude of it, and the variety of the lunar surface. Having studied what you'd expect to see, it's just magnified when you get there and see familiar features because you've studied them. It's a great experience.
The descent is always the critical phase, and the co-ordination and the lunar module have to work exactly right, and the targeting has to be right, and the computer all these things have to be 100 per cent, and we have to be 100 per cent, too, flying it. It's a very unforgiving situation so you have to be on your best game and the adrenalin is flowing. It all happens very, very quickly.
Our timeline was such that, after we landed, we either had to get out and do a full day's EVA [extra-vehicular activity], or we had to go to sleep. You're not going to go to sleep right after you land on the Moon, but at the same time, we couldn't do a full EVA, we'd already had a full day. So I'd suggested that we do what we call a "stand-up EVA" in which I would stick my head out the top hatch of the LEM [Lunar Excursion Module], pretty high, and survey the local area.
You take it for granted because you have so much to do, but after a while you realise that there's nobody else here on this whole planet. You're the only living things, and it's nice to have the comfort of the pristine environment and no obstructions or interruptions, other than the occasional call from the Cap-Com [mission control in Houston]. You get up the next morning, you turn the light on, and everybody's a little slow, waking up, and you open up one of the shades and look out. I said, "Jim, we're on the Moon". And we were.
One of the problems on the Moon is that there's nothing of familiar size no trees, houses, roads so it's very difficult to tell a large rock at a great distance from a smaller boulder nearby. You realise that you're standing next to rocks that have been there for 500 million years. You have three intense days, you don't have enough time to do all the things you'd like to do, and then, all of a sudden, you realise that it's over, you know. Your holiday is over. It's time to go home.
It was difficult when we got back because we needed a period of rest, and previous crews had been put in quarantine, which gave them a chance to recover. I tried to get us a quarantine period but the doctors and management said, no, we've done that and there aren't any bugs to worry about, so immediately, when we got back, we got thrown into society again. It was a tough your neighbour wants to have a party the night you get home and, well, you can't say no.
People always ask, what was it like? It's hard to describe because you can't take them there, and that's why I think, in the future, you need an artist or poet or writer to go and express it for people in terms they can understand better. I think we should think about the Apollo programme as an advance of mankind into the universe, an adventure. It stretched us as far as we could stretch, figuratively and literally, and the technology at the time was barely good enough to make it out there and back safely. I think humans will go back to the Moon and on to Mars. I mean, Star Trek may not be too far fetched, who knows? But it'll be exciting to find out.
'In the Shadow of the Moon' opens in cinemas on 2 November. For more information, see www.intheshadowofthemoon.co.uk. Interview extracts courtesy of DOX Productions |
| IFINDUOFENSVE
User ID: 313164
10/23/2007 3:59 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
What it's really like to to walk on the moon
Four decades on, Nasa's missions to the Moon remain the pinnacle of human endeavour. For the men who made that incredible journey, the experience was profound, thrilling, and often terrifying. As a spectacular new film tells the inside story of the lunar landings, Apollo astronauts recall the trip of a lifetime
Major-General Michael Collins
Collins, now 76, was born in Rome. He was recruited by Nasa in 1963, reaching space for the second and final time aboard the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. As pilot of the command module, he orbited the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their giant leap.
I think there was probably more pressure on Apollo 11 than some of the other flights. There's so many things you can do wrong. [With] Apollo 11, I had the feeling the whole world was watching us. I had the feeling that the consequences if I do [things] wrong are gonna be immediately obvious to three billion people and that's a worrisome thought. We were working very hard in the months before the flight. I got little tics in my eyelids, which I think is a classic exemplar of internal pressure.
I always liked Neil, I think he's a fine choice to be the first guy on the Moon. He's a very thoughtful guy, he is not a self-promoter. Buzz seemed to be disturbed at various times, he seemed to be down in the dumps and I'm not to this day sure exactly what his problem was. Today, it seems that Buzz enjoys the limelight in the best sense.
Our interactions were all about "Did you do this?" and "What do you think about the pressure on gauge number 19?" It was not a lot of camaraderie, of sitting around over a beer talking about life in general.
On launch day, it's kind of strange. You go out in a van to the launch pad. When you get out to the base of this gigantic gantry, it's empty and there's nobody there. You're accustomed to scores of workers swarming like ants all up and down and around it. Then suddenly you think maybe they know something I don't know. But anyway, you get in this little elevator and you go up 365ft in the air. Still you have the sense of being deserted and it's a strange environment. And it hasn't really seized you until the last minute or two at least it didn't me. You feel in the seat of your pants that the launch tower is just a few feet off to one side; [you think] "I hope this sucker isn't gonna [tip] over."
As you get higher, the blue gets darker and darker. Then, when the first stage runs out of fuel, the motors shut down and for an instant you're thrown against your straps and you're weightless for a very short period until the second-stage engines kick in and then, whoosh, you're off again. The trip to the Moon is more of an anticipatory thing; you're looking forward, you're looking at the Earth but your emotions are headed the other way.
The Moon was pretty much as I expected [it] to be up close, because we'd seen a million photographs. It was a little rougher than I thought it would be. I did not sense any great invitation on the part of the Moon for us to come into its domain. I sensed more almost a hostile place, a scary place.
I discovered later that I was described as the loneliest man ever in the universe [because Collins did not land on the Moon with the others] or something, which really is a lot of baloney. I mean, I had mission control yacking in my ear half the time. I mean, had I been some poor soul in a rowboat out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I'd be a lot more lonely than I was in orbit around the Moon by myself. I felt it as almost a feeling of exultation, I liked it, everything was going well with the command module, I had my happy little home and had the bright lights on and everything, I enjoyed that time.
I was more concerned about getting Armstrong and Aldrin up off the surface. A lot of things could have gone wrong some problem with their engine where either it wouldn't ignite and they were stuck, or it would ignite but they got up into some kind of a strange lopsided orbit and would crash back into the Moon and I wouldn't be able to get them.
You see the lunar module, [a] little golden bug down there among the craters, and it gets slowly bigger and bigger and then it got right up next to me. It was my job to make the connection between the two vehicles.
I don't remember what I said to them. I can remember I grabbed Buzz by both ears and I was gonna kiss him on the forehead. We immediately started yacking about the technical minutiae, what they saw on the Moon, how big the rocks were, what the colours were. And then you don't have time to sit around and reminisce because you've got to come home.
I think the first time you become aware of your speed is very late in the game when you've turned around and you're coming into the atmosphere. You see pieces of the heat shield and it starts with a very tenuous wispy trail, maybe with some violets and some greens and then as the atmosphere gets denser and your heat shield gets hotter you start getting an incandescent feeling of yellows, and you are literally on fire.
On Apollo you needed at least two good [parachutes] or you're gonna hit the ground or the water at a fatal rate. But we got all three good ones, so that you can see those out the window. And the splat is just kind of luck of the draw, it depends on whether the ocean's calm that day or if you hit the top of the wave or the bottom of a trough. We hit pretty hard and tipped over. It's sort of undignified to come that far and make a nice landing and then topple upside down. I lost a case of beer betting with Buzz 'cos I said that wasn't gonna happen and it did.
I knew my life had changed because of Apollo 11, but I did not know in what way. I guess there was sort of a feeling of "What next?" what do I do for a job, what's my life gonna be like. And I had a feeling of great optimism but also a feeling of the unknown.
We were meeting people like the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan. The thing I think that surprised me the most was that wherever we went people, instead of saying "Well, you Americans did it," they said " We did it" we humankind, we the human race, we people did it. I thought that was a wonderful thing, ephemeral but wonderful.
I kind of have two Moons up there. I look at the Moon just like everybody else who's never been there. But every once in a while I do think of the second Moon, the one that I recall from up close and, yeah, it is kind of hard to believe that I was actually up there.
Now, did I have the best seat on Apollo 11? I'd be a liar, a fool, if I said I had the best seat [not being aboard the landing module], but I can say, with complete equanimity, I never had any complaints before, during or after. I'm perfectly happy with the part that I did play in it.
Colonel Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin Jnr
Born in 1930, Aldrin got his nickname as a child, when his sister mispronounced brother as "buzzer". The former fighter pilot flew two Nasa missions, earning a coveted spot alongside Neil Armstrong inside Apollo 11's lunar module.
After 1961, the President had accelerated our course in space. Instead of just our Mercury astronauts competing with the Soviets in Earth's orbit, we set an even further objective, which was going to the Moon and back before the end of the Sixties. In October 1963, I got a call asking me to join the astronaut programme. There were 14 of us selected in that group.
The Apollo 8 mission was going to be a big Earth orbit. But we thought that during the summer of '68 the Russians had flown two unmanned missions around the Moon. They had an opportunity to send a mission with a human crew on board. So during the summer, unknown to all but a very few people, the mission of Apollo 8 was changed step by step. Eventually, it was decided to put it into orbit around the Moon.
When that mission was over, Neil [Armstrong] got in touch with both Mike [Collins] and I, and let us know that we would be on Apollo 11. I forget exactly when it was that I casually mentioned it to my wife: "Today, we found out we're going to the Moon."
I knew that anyone who was on the first lunar landing was going to be propelled into the public view in an enormous way. Given a choice, I'd just as soon not have to put up with that.
I gave up smoking the pipe maybe three weeks before launch. Having a drink, three days before. I don't think anybody really slept too well the night before. We had what we call a faecal containment garment, which you wear underneath your underwear to contain any bowel movement throughout a prolonged flight, so, early in the morning, I greased the lower portion of my body with diaper-rash stuff. I had decided that I was gonna wear my West Point ring and a Masonic ring of my grandfather's.
People who've not been on rockets continue to ask, "You weren't scared?" No, we were not scared. At the moment of lift-off, there were numbers changing on the dash board, there were sounds indicating in the voice loop that we'd had lift-off, but what did we feel? I think we felt, in those early moments, that we were not attached to the ground anymore, but in flight, drifting.
If I wanted to go to the Moon again, it would be to look out the window during the descent and not be looking at the computer and the abort guidance system and all the other things I was supposed to be looking at.
In retrospect, it would have been unacceptable to the public for the commander [Armstrong] to have stayed inside the module while the junior person [Aldrin] went and got all the credit for being the first step on the Moon. But big deal who is it a big deal for? Well, for history, for the media, for the public, that's who it's a big deal for. Technically, it could have gone either way, except that they put the hinge on the side of the hatch that would open up and allow the commander to go out first. But I really didn't think that the hinge being on a certain side should be the deciding factor. But the correct decision was made and I'm happy with it have been from the moment it was made, because I'm a military guy and I do what I'm told to do and I don't feel bitter about it in any way. There are no sour grapes.
Mike was always the easy-going guy who brought levity to things, and I felt kind of bad that he wasn't gonna have the opportunity of being in a lunar lander, but somebody had to do each and every task.
We told Charlie Duke [the astronaut who spoke to the crew from mission control in Houston] that we were gonna call ourselves Tranquillity Base as soon as we touched down. We wanted him to know that, so that it wouldn't be some garbled word that would come back, but he would understand it. I was a little caught unawares when Neil said: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed." We didn't have a tight timeline as to when we were supposed to open the hatch and go out. We took our time and it caused a lot of people in different parts of the world to stay up pretty late that night, I'm sure.
Fortunately, most of us were more compact then than we are now, but you had to go out feet first and you can't really see with that big backpack on your back. The checklist said that as I went out, I should "partially close the hatch". So I said, as I was going out, "I'm gonna reach back and partially close the hatch, making sure not to lock it on my way out..." I just thought that was funny. But then I began to think, what would happen if that door had slammed shut for some reason?
We had no idea how easy it was gonna be to walk around on the Moon. It was just like Earth except much, much easier, because there's less force to deal with. However, we had it in our flight plan that we take the first 10, 15 seconds at the bottom of the ladder to hold on to the edge of the landing gear, and just check our stability and so forth. I soon realised that you don't really have to do that, because it's very easy to move around. So that's when I decided to take care of a bodily function and slightly fill up the urine bag so that I wouldn't be troubled with that later on. Everybody had their firsts on the Moon. And that one hasn't been disputed by anybody.
We got the flag out and put it in the ground and we'd never really practised that one before, so we were professionals but we were also kind of amateurs up there. Of course, there's not much gravity, so we did get it to stand reasonably upright.
Here we were on the surface, and I knew more people were watching us than had ever watched two human beings before in history, and yet we're further away, not just in distance, but in things we gotta do to get back home. We gotta do some difficult things to get out of this desolate place and get back home again. We got a phone call from the President and that was a surprise to me. So I was tongue-tied and didn't know what to say. I got kinda tired of hearing people say as they looked down on the Earth from space how they couldn't see any boundaries between countries and how peaceful this was and, you know, after the fifth time you've heard that, it gets kind of sickening.
After we got clearance to leave, I said, "Houston, Roger, we're number one on the runway." I'm real proud of that one because that's two zingers in one sentence: there wasn't anybody else up there, and there sure wasn't a runway.
Brigadier-General Charles Duke
Born in North Carolina in 1935, Duke flew for the US Air Force before being selected by Nasa in 1966. As capcom the spacecraft communicator at mission control for the Apollo 11 mission, his southern drawl became familiar to millions. He took his own steps on the Moon on Apollo 16 in 1972.
I was watching a football game and reading the Los Angeles Times and there was an article saying Nasa's looking for more astronauts. The criteria were to be a US citizen, with a thousand hours' flying, bachelor's degree, less than six feet tall very general requirements. Next day, I went to Colonel Yeager [the US legendary test pilot, Chuck Yeager] and said, "Sir, I'd like to apply."
We got selected through a six months' process. I didn't know you could be poked and prodded as many times in as many places as we were. It was a very exhausting physical. There was an inkblot test, and I mean the big deal for us was, don't see anything sexual or unusual or weirdo, just pick something you know. I said, "Well, it looks like a butterfly to me." We didn't want to be perverts, you know.
We had some strange ECGs. They'd put your head in a bucket of ice water to see what happened to your heart. I remember they squirted ice water in your ear to see how your heart would respond. They strapped you to this big board like a roulette wheel and you were hung upside down and they'd spin you sideways. It was crazy.
On Apollo 11, my involvement was at mission control. It was probably the second best thing that happened to me at Nasa. Flying was the best, but being in mission control and on the ground side of the missions was really exciting and really challenging.
As capcom, you were really the astronaut representative at mission control. As Neil and Buzz were in the lunar module, the guidance system was carrying them into a big boulder field. They were big rocks and it wasn't a suitable place to land. We noticed their trajectory level off and he [Neil Armstrong] just started flying almost horizontally above the Moon at high speed. This takes fuel, extra fuel. We were getting really fuel-critical. And we had two calls that we were to give from mission control. The first was, "Eagle, 60 seconds." That meant he had 60 more seconds to land. And at the end of that 60 seconds, by mission rule, I would call, "Abort". Now whether he would actually abort or not was their decision but mission control would call an abort.
I called, "30 seconds. Eagle, you got 30 seconds." I can remember looking at my stopwatch as it was counting down and, 13 seconds later, we landed we had contact.
Buzz said, "Contact. Engine stop." When you hear "Engine stop" , you know they're gonna be on the ground, hopefully right side up.
Neil came on the radio: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed." Everybody in mission control was really excited. I couldn't even get out the word "Tranquillity". I said "Twang-quillity" or something like that. Finally I got out: "Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you down. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again."
There was a lot of stress in our families, in my family particularly because we lived in Houston but all the training was in Florida, or it was a geology trip to Hawaii or California or Arizona. Dotty and I had two young children, a big yard, a new house, a dog those responsibilities of keeping all that going and managing the children.
So they sort of fitted into a routine, and then I'd come in on the weekends, and, now, I'm in charge here, and I had a terrible attitude with my kids. I had an explosive temper, sort of a military drill instructor dad.
Dotty and I began to have problems. The astronaut office was presented as the all-American boys and their all-American families. But that facade began to crumble in 1966. Several years later we had the first divorce and that sort of opened the floodgate.
Before the Apollo 16 mission, I had the flu. It was during that first night of fever that I had this strange dream. I was on the Moon, and John and I were driving the lunar rover and there was this set of tracks. We were stunned. "There's a set of tracks up here, Houston could we follow them?" And they said, "Yeah, follow the tracks." So we followed them and there's this rover on the lunar surface, with two astronauts just sitting there. I pulled up the visor of one of the astronauts, and the guy in the car was me and he was dead.
I didn't want to tell [Dottie] about it. I never mentioned it to her until after the mission. In fact, I didn't tell anybody until after the mission was over. I found out from the flight surgeon later on that my heartbeat was 144 at lift-off. John's was 70, so he was very cool and I was very I can't say fearful but I was certainly anxious. When those engines ignite the vibration down there is transmitted up this 363ft rocket to the spacecraft and it's sitting there shaking from side to side.
During the flight, we had a tape recorder. I took country music put together by a friend who was a disc jockey in Houston. He'd called some of the very famous country music stars, and we had a special half hour by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and then Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and it was all personalised. You know "Charlie, we don't know where you are but we know you're on the way to the Moon and we hope you like this music. This song is especially for you." We had a lot of serious work to do and we did it but with a good humour.
My little boys, who were almost five and seven at the time, and my wife had they'd put these little greetings and drawings of rockets into the flight plan [the manual the crew took with them]. So you'd turn to the flight plan and there's this little message: "We love you Dad. Have a good trip." And: "Dear Daddy, have a safe trip home. Love Tom."
You can look great on the outside, but be dying on the inside. I guess Dottie was the one that was really dying on the inside. In April of 1978, our marriage was getting better because Dotty had become a Christian and I watched her change from sadness to joy as a result of that.
A friend of ours got us to go to a Bible study at the tennis club and I realised that what my wife was experiencing I could experience. I said to Jesus, "I give you my life and if you're real come into my life," and I believe he did. I had this sense of peace that was hard to describe. This explosive temper went away. Now we're enjoying seven grandchildren that our boys have given us and we've seen some bumps in the road, and some potholes, but not one promise of God has failed us in 28 years.
Colonel David Scott
Scott, now 75, made his first trip to space with Neil Armstrong on the 1966 Gemini 8 mission. In 1971, he was spacecraft commander of Apollo 15, the fourth manned lunar landing mission, during which he spent more than 18 hours exploring the Moon's surface.
I slept very well the night before. You're ready or you're not and if you're not, you don't want to go. But we were able to build up and train such that we peaked when it was time to go. So it was, like, finally! After the training and all the simulations, it's actually pretty relaxing to know that: OK, tomorrow you get to go.
On all previous days going to the [launch] pad, there were people everywhere, busy, busy, busy. You go out on launch morning, and there's nobody there, it's a ghost town. It's fascinating, to see this 365ft-high rocket standing there, ready to go, and the three of us will get in it and it'll move.
I'm not sure exactly how much time there was [before the launch] a couple of hours, 90 minutes but you're busy all the time, setting switches, checking systems, making sure everything works. As an example, I can actually fly the whole booster from the spacecraft using the hand controller. So you go through the tests to make sure that the engines of the launch vehicle respond to a hand controller. And [fellow-crew members] Jim Irwin is busy with the systems and Al Worden is busy with the computer, so there are quiet periods, but in general you're making the final checks and final tests.
Ignition occurs long before lift-off well, in terms of seconds. You can start to feel the vibration once it occurs, and you can see from the instruments on the panel that the engines have ignited, and then you get lift-off and you can feel the thrust and you can feel the motion slowly and the vibration building up. And it's a pretty comforting feeling to know that you're actually on the way.
You have to pay attention to what's happening because if there's a problem and you have to abort, there are certain things you have to do during certain periods. A lot of people think you're just lying on your back, waiting for it to happen, but not really because every second is something of significance. And during Apollo, we could abort anytime, unlike the Shuttle, which you can't in the early phases. But Apollo had something that you could do in case of a big problem at any time. So you stay on top of it.
Once you leave the darkness of space and you're in lunar orbit, you're right there, you're right on top of it and it's absolutely spectacular. In fact, you know, we set it up the other crews had chores to do, clean up, housekeeping chores, after getting in lunar orbit. They'd always get behind because there's so much to do, but we set it up so that for the first two hours, we didn't have to do anything except look out the window and take pictures. And it's just marvellous. We'd seen the photos, and studied it, and seen the films from previous crews, but you don't... it's just like anything else.
It's like, you know, if you have only looked at photographs of mountains, then you finally go and actually see them. The magnitude of it, and the variety of the lunar surface. Having studied what you'd expect to see, it's just magnified when you get there and see familiar features because you've studied them. It's a great experience.
The descent is always the critical phase, and the co-ordination and the lunar module have to work exactly right, and the targeting has to be right, and the computer all these things have to be 100 per cent, and we have to be 100 per cent, too, flying it. It's a very unforgiving situation so you have to be on your best game and the adrenalin is flowing. It all happens very, very quickly.
Our timeline was such that, after we landed, we either had to get out and do a full day's EVA [extra-vehicular activity], or we had to go to sleep. You're not going to go to sleep right after you land on the Moon, but at the same time, we couldn't do a full EVA, we'd already had a full day. So I'd suggested that we do what we call a "stand-up EVA" in which I would stick my head out the top hatch of the LEM [Lunar Excursion Module], pretty high, and survey the local area.
You take it for granted because you have so much to do, but after a while you realise that there's nobody else here on this whole planet. You're the only living things, and it's nice to have the comfort of the pristine environment and no obstructions or interruptions, other than the occasional call from the Cap-Com [mission control in Houston]. You get up the next morning, you turn the light on, and everybody's a little slow, waking up, and you open up one of the shades and look out. I said, "Jim, we're on the Moon". And we were.
One of the problems on the Moon is that there's nothing of familiar size no trees, houses, roads so it's very difficult to tell a large rock at a great distance from a smaller boulder nearby. You realise that you're standing next to rocks that have been there for 500 million years. You have three intense days, you don't have enough time to do all the things you'd like to do, and then, all of a sudden, you realise that it's over, you know. Your holiday is over. It's time to go home.
It was difficult when we got back because we needed a period of rest, and previous crews had been put in quarantine, which gave them a chance to recover. I tried to get us a quarantine period but the doctors and management said, no, we've done that and there aren't any bugs to worry about, so immediately, when we got back, we got thrown into society again. It was a tough your neighbour wants to have a party the night you get home and, well, you can't say no.
People always ask, what was it like? It's hard to describe because you can't take them there, and that's why I think, in the future, you need an artist or poet or writer to go and express it for people in terms they can understand better. I think we should think about the Apollo programme as an advance of mankind into the universe, an adventure. It stretched us as far as we could stretch, figuratively and literally, and the technology at the time was barely good enough to make it out there and back safely. I think humans will go back to the Moon and on to Mars. I mean, Star Trek may not be too far fetched, who knows? But it'll be exciting to find out.
'In the Shadow of the Moon' opens in cinemas on 2 November. For more information, see www.intheshadowofthemoon.co.uk. Interview extracts courtesy of DOX Productions |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 3:59 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Forum glitched. My computer is fine. I've worked on computers before and know enough not to be stupid. Quoting: nomuse 316345
Whatever, fuckhead. Right after I told you to test it you went offline. Seems pretty obvious what happened! And youre pretty lame for falling for such a transparent trick. The mulitmeter uses a metered output to measure resistance, and motherboards are voltage sensitive. If you placed a multimeter probe to ground with the power cord still connected, and the other probe to any point on your motherboard, odds are you damaged it. While I may not be an expert on computer software, I am quite competent in hardware management.
Heck, I even got a handful of posts to this thread after doing it -- enough for IDW to act in character and simply accuse me of lying about it (yeah; big surprise there.)
Since the point was to look for a back-up battery in a piece of electronic equipment that was connected to ground, I cracked the case on a four-hundred-dollar module. And took a photograph of the results.
[ link to img88.imageshack.us]
Imagine my annoyance when Godlike Productions took that moment to temporarily ban my IP from responding!
I imagine IDW will impeach this as well. Since the contacts on the button battery are on the back side of the board I could not frame a single photograph that showed battery and the location of the probes. I also can't prove I didn't photoshop the display or the whole image. I can't even prove I took the picture!
But if IDW had a shred of decency or self-respect he'd admit that I had done the test as described -- and stop calling everyone he meets a (expletive) liar.
I have no doubt you did the test, youre a moron. I cant seem to get the photograph you posted to load, but at any rate such a photograph is not proof. By simply running a lead from the chassis to the the same circuit as the negative of the cmos backup battery, a resistance of zero would be regeistered, but the computer would also be damaged, especially if you were dumb enough to leave the power cord connected. I learned these things through actual experience, some of it not that pleasant to remember.Using an ohm meter or continuity checker on a computer motherboard is a NO NO>Voltage and amperage are safe to measure, but the impedance setting runs power from the batteries of the meter though the measured resistance to determine value. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 316211
10/23/2007 4:09 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Whose responsibility is it to prove that the moon landings were real?
There is a widely-held belief that it is NASAs responsibility to prove the conspiracy theorists wrong in order to prove the moon landings were real. Quoting: HAZZARD 308422
Whoever makes a claim of such an accomplishment, has the responsibility of proving it.
They cannot prove they landed any human on the moon.
They cannot reproduce the alleged accomplishment, almost 40 years later. (Saying "well they could, but they dont want" to doesnt cut it. Same with saying "sorry , no money guys. But we sure could if we wanted to"...uhn uh.)
No dice.
You have been soundly owned here.
Calling people "woo-woos" is not proof.
Reproduce the alleged accomplishment, or it is all BS.
 |
| nomuse
User ID: 316345
10/23/2007 4:24 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Got the timeline wrong, eh IDW?
I have a keyboard that has kept it's internal memory on a tiny button battery for five years. Would you accept if I measured the resistance between the ground lug on the nearest outlet and that battery's negative pole? Quoting: nomuse (NLI) 315941
---> My post suggesting checking button batteries for connection to ground.
Go ahead, but it will prove nothing. I know your too stupid to understand why, that is already well established. Resistance would be almost infinite between the two because they are not connected to each other except by the multimeter measuring the resistance. Quoting: IDW
--> Your post accepting the challenge.
Do it. Try it. Resistance will be infinite. The button battery in your computer to the grounded chassis would be even easier. Quoting: IDW
--> A second post where you suggest checking the back-up battery in, specifically, a computer.
Sorry about that. Took a few minutes to shut down my desktop, pull it out to where I could open it up, check for continuity and put it back in working order again.
Continuity established, battery negative pin to chassis ground, also chassis ground to electrical ground. Quoting: nomuse (NLI) 316058
--> My post of 9:31, relating my findings. Notice my IP has changed, as my modem was also powered down during the experiment.
Youre a fucking liar as well as an idiot. Quoting: IDW
--> Your response of 9:36
I posted again at 9:43, 9:50, and 9:58, interspaced with posts by IDW and others.
Following my post of 10:02 I paused to make the same test on a second piece of equipment, photographing the results. Date stamp is turned off on my Oly but the files were transferred at 11:00 PM to my desktop. After uploading the photograph I attempted to post a reply and was blocked by forum software. After trying a couple of times I gave up for the night. However, there is an email sent to forum administrator during that time; the date stamp on that email will also confirm my activities. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 4:33 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Got the timeline wrong, eh IDW?
I have a keyboard that has kept it's internal memory on a tiny button battery for five years. Would you accept if I measured the resistance between the ground lug on the nearest outlet and that battery's negative pole?
---> My post suggesting checking button batteries for connection to ground.
Go ahead, but it will prove nothing. I know your too stupid to understand why, that is already well established. Resistance would be almost infinite between the two because they are not connected to each other except by the multimeter measuring the resistance.
--> Your post accepting the challenge.
Do it. Try it. Resistance will be infinite. The button battery in your computer to the grounded chassis would be even easier.
--> A second post where you suggest checking the back-up battery in, specifically, a computer.
Sorry about that. Took a few minutes to shut down my desktop, pull it out to where I could open it up, check for continuity and put it back in working order again.
Continuity established, battery negative pin to chassis ground, also chassis ground to electrical ground.
--> My post of 9:31, relating my findings. Notice my IP has changed, as my modem was also powered down during the experiment.
Youre a fucking liar as well as an idiot.
--> Your response of 9:36
I posted again at 9:43, 9:50, and 9:58, interspaced with posts by IDW and others.
Following my post of 10:02 I paused to make the same test on a second piece of equipment, photographing the results. Date stamp is turned off on my Oly but the files were transferred at 11:00 PM to my desktop. After uploading the photograph I attempted to post a reply and was blocked by forum software. After trying a couple of times I gave up for the night. However, there is an email sent to forum administrator during that time; the date stamp on that email will also confirm my activities. Quoting: nomuse 316345
Nomuse, if you made a false claim I had fried my computer after you suggested that I do something stupid to prove a flawed idea, I would have simply told you youre full of shit and been done with it.
The evidence indicates that you attempted the test and damaged your computer, It is circumstancial evidence, but it is nevertheless compelling. I know you well, and if you couldve called me a liar you wouldve. Youre on another computer now than you were last night. |
| nomuse
User ID: 316345
10/23/2007 4:47 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
I could suggest lots of ways you might verify my veracity in this matter. But I KNOW you. You'd let me spend the time and the effort, then you'd reverse yourself and find some excuse or other to ignore what I provided.
So why don't we try it the other way around?
Come on, your the super-brain. Surely you can think of some evidence I could provide that you would accept?
Please, suggest something!
In the meantime I will continue to believe you did not perform your tests -- I have the same basis that you have for disbelief, to wit, that the results don't meet with my understanding of the subject. But I also have in favor of my opinion that you didn't spend the time necessary, that you've never shown a familiarity with electronics test tools or computers, that you having multiple computers and test devices within easy reach is simply not in character with how you have portrayed yourself in the past.
Me, on the other hand; the other readers can vouch I've often talked about the electronics projects on my desktop.
By the by, and in case anyone was wondering, I've known for at least twenty years that circuit board ground planes were often bonded to chassis ground in well-designed electronics. I have personally experienced exceptions through the years, and I have great confidence in my understanding of common practice.
However, a true scientist will test their assumptions. I physically cracked the case of my desktop computer and verified my assumption.
I sincerely doubt IDW will dare to do the same. Instead, all he seems up to is calling other people liars. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 4:48 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
After uploading the photograph I attempted to post a reply and was blocked by forum software. Quoting: NoUse!
After trying a couple of times I gave up for the night. However, there is an email sent to forum administrator during that time; the date stamp on that email will also confirm my activities. Quoting: NoUse
And I am sure they will cooperate and post it here. But then what would that prove even if they did, ultimately? LMAO!
Get it in your head you cant use this type of subterfuge on a person of superior intelligence to you own and expect it to go unchallenged. You fried your computer because youre a fcuking arrogant fool with an education but no understanding of what you learned. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 4:54 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
I could suggest lots of ways you might verify my veracity in this matter. But I KNOW you. You'd let me spend the time and the effort, then you'd reverse yourself and find some excuse or other to ignore what I provided.
So why don't we try it the other way around?
Come on, your the super-brain. Surely you can think of some evidence I could provide that you would accept?
Please, suggest something!
In the meantime I will continue to believe you did not perform your tests -- I have the same basis that you have for disbelief, to wit, that the results don't meet with my understanding of the subject. But I also have in favor of my opinion that you didn't spend the time necessary, that you've never shown a familiarity with electronics test tools or computers, that you having multiple computers and test devices within easy reach is simply not in character with how you have portrayed yourself in the past.
Me, on the other hand; the other readers can vouch I've often talked about the electronics projects on my desktop.
By the by, and in case anyone was wondering, I've known for at least twenty years that circuit board ground planes were often bonded to chassis ground in well-designed electronics. I have personally experienced exceptions through the years, and I have great confidence in my understanding of common practice.
However, a true scientist will test their assumptions. I physically cracked the case of my desktop computer and verified my assumption.
I sincerely doubt IDW will dare to do the same. Instead, all he seems up to is calling other people liars. Quoting: nomuse 316345
The instructions for installing a motherboard should suffice to prove why you are wrong. With the brands I have worked with, all state emphatically that care must be taken to totally isolate the motherboard from the computer frame, and that any contact or grounding will result in certain damage.
Placing a multimeter on impedance and touching one probe to the computer frame and one to the negative of the cmos battery results in damage to the motherboard, period. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 5:04 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Instructions
Difficulty: Moderately challenging
Steps
1Step OneMake sure to read the manual that came with the motherboard - instructions differ for each one.
2Step TwoGround yourself with any professional grounding equipment you have. Otherwise, ground yourself by touching the computer power supply.
3Step ThreePlace motherboard on its anti-static bag.
4Step FourConfigure motherboard: Set jumpers or DIP switches for CPU, voltage(s), and bus speed, if necessary. If your motherboard is configured by software, you will need to configure it after you complete the physical installation.
5Step FivePosition motherboard in case. Line up holes in board with holes in case.
6Step SixInsert spacers, PLASTIC STANDOFFS, washers and screws, as necessary. Tighten screws carefully, but securely.
7Step SevenMAKE SURE MOTHERBOARD IS NOT TOUCHING METAL ANYWHERE
8Step EightMake sure slots and connectors fit into openings on back of case.
9Step NineConnect motherboard to power supply.
10Step TenConnect CPU fan, if you have one, to power supply.
11Step Eleven Connect reset and power switches to power supply.
12Step Twelve Connect LED indicators to power supply.
13Step Thirteen Connect case speaker to motherboard.
14Step Fourteen Check all connections.
15Step Fifteen Test motherboard (and configure in CMOS if necessary) before installing other components of computer system.
Tips & Warnings
If possible, do installation in an uncarpeted area.
Be careful not to touch any chips. Handle board by its edges. Static damage (and even oil damage) may cause a failure months after the incident.
If you do not understand these instructions or you lack good manual dexterity, have a qualified technician install the motherboard for you. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 5:09 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
However, a true scientist will test their assumptions. I physically cracked the case of my desktop computer and verified my assumption.
I sincerely doubt IDW will dare to do the same. Instead, all he seems up to is calling other people liars. Quoting: nomuse 316345
I am not going to ruin a computer because you are a moron. A true scientist does not do something incredibly stupid to prove a point. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 316386
10/23/2007 5:14 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
I did.
Why wouldn't the background be the same?
I mean, I can stroll all over my home town, and I can still see the same hills in the background.
And there are obvious 3d changes in that gif animation. Features move on the right ridge. The shape of the left ridge changes. You could make a stereogram from these two images.
So if there was a fake background, it wasn't a painted canvas. It had to have depth. In fact, it almost certainly would need to be a sculpted model. Quoting: nomuse (NLI) 315941
But the pictures are supposed to be from different missions, from what I recall.
Even if they are from the same mission, where is the LEM in the 2nd picture? it should be visible.
And the background could be a sculpted model. It does not need to be of the same size as the real terrain. It's a 3d sculpted painting, so as that they can take pictures from different sides. It's an often used effect in movies. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 5:22 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
did.
Why wouldn't the background be the same?
I mean, I can stroll all over my home town, and I can still see the same hills in the background.
And there are obvious 3d changes in that gif animation. Features move on the right ridge. The shape of the left ridge changes. You could make a stereogram from these two images.
So if there was a fake background, it wasn't a painted canvas. It had to have depth. In fact, it almost certainly would need to be a sculpted model.
Quoting: nomuse (NLI) 315941
And is that your area of expertise, faking photographic effects? How the hell do you qaulify to make such a judgement? A "sterogram" is taken generally with a camera that takes two photographs simultaneously, usually the spacing between the lenses creates depth perception by mimicing the eye spacing that allows three dimensional vision |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 5:28 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
How many times does one idiot need to be proved as such before he is ashemed to show his face? If I were NoUse, I would use sock puppets too.
NoUse is consistently worng about everything. He never makes real sense. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 264194
10/23/2007 6:39 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Hazzard, no one listens to your rambling BS.
Your reputation precedes you on every subject.
Hazzard, like his asslick Nomuse both ramble on about what they think are relevant arguements, but a review of this thread will show they are both consistenly wrong about everything. You could completely ignore everything they said and nothing would be lost.
In a debate like this, quality is more important that quantity. Sometimes I think they must get paid pro bono.
Those of us that realise that charlatans are making money from conning people into believing that Apollo was fake care that these lies and dis-information do not spread to more gullible people, if there are such people more gullible then IDW.
Those who believe (totally wrongly) that Apollo was faked care because they think that most of the World is being lied to. They believe that it is symptomatic of corrupt government.
Your point of view is based upon no facts.
Youre sitting there arguing against emprical evidence of well understood phenomenon, thats a weak position to take.
If you have something to contribute then please do so, if not, just keep doing what you have done so far, the ad hominem nonsense, its doing wonders for your case.
If you dont like the discussion, theres no reason for you to be here interjecting silliness into the thread.
You know, switch the channel...youre responsibility...youre like people who moan and wail about the quality of TV, and who do so while holding the remote control in their hand.
Why all this crying, shit throwing and moaning!
Finding out the real truth doesnt require such measures. Its simply a matter of education and knowledge.
Give it a try, go to school, learning is fun.... Quoting: HAZZARD 308422
good post hazz,i agree 100%.
IDW? who gives a fuck what hes rambling about,he hasnt been right so far,about anything in this thread. he was the guy that sued everyone for not believing in chemtrails...lol. hes as fucked up as the woo woos come. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 6:59 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
good post hazz,i agree 100%. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 264194
As seems to be the pattern with the Apollo proponents. Thanks for confirmation 1346.Thats one of the things that makes it so obvious the effort is organized behind the scenes. Arguements between you are never settled in open forum, ever.
IDW? who gives a fuck what hes rambling about,he hasnt been right so far,about anything in this thread. Quoting: Idiot shill
And yet you can find no such instance of my having been PROVED wrong. Claiming something is just that, proving it is another.
he was the guy that sued everyone for not believing in chemtrails...lol. hes as fucked up as the woo woos come. Quoting: Lying shill
I sued someone for not believing arial obscuration is being implemented as per Tellers idea to moderate solar caused global warming ? When? Who in particular did I sue? Why dont I know about it? It seems like I would! |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:19 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
NoUse:
The only reason a desktop computer is grounded at all is because the input to the power supply is 120vac. The computer will operate ust fine with the ground prong removed,
The ground prevents electric shock in the case of a short circuit in the power suplly, or some mishap like water being poured onto the computer. Laptops work without grounds of any kind because thier AC converters reduce voltage BEFORE it reaches the computer itself. WHen they are operating on batteries, there is no electrical connection at all that could possibly ground the device. The power supply for a laptop DOES NOT have a ground prong in most cases, because it is self contained in a plastic enclosure .
The voltages in the computer components themselves other than the ac side of the power supply are not a shock hazard, nor is there an intent for them to be grounded. Now you demand I admit Ive been wrong this would be a time for you to do the same. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:28 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
I had an HP pavilion that worked fine for 6 years without a ground. In fact it still works. Its actually more likely the computer will be damaged with it than without it. The ONLY reason a computer is grounded at all is for safety reasons, and really unless youre really stupid there is no shock hazard from an ungrounded computer.On the rare occasion that ac might be leaking to the frame, all you would feel was a tingle if you wernt standing barefoot wet on a good ground. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 314242
10/23/2007 7:35 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Whose responsibility is it to prove that the moon landings were real?
...
There is a principle which states. The person proposing a theory has the burden of proof. Quoting: HAZZARD 308422
You have clearly never studied either science, accounting, or law. Or did you flunk all three?
SCIENCE: Any scientist claiming a breakthrough must prove his claim. "A scientist who cannot prove what he has accomplished has accomplished nothing." NASA bears the full burden of proving its alleged accomplishment.
ACCOUNTING: Any employee who has spent his employer's money on a project must prove to the employer that the money was spent properly toward the stated goal, and that the results justified the expense. NASA bears the full burden of proving to taxpayers that the billions spent on the Apollo program actually produced the alleged moon landing.
LAW: An attorney whose client wants the courts to recognize an invention or discovery must prove it via sworn testimony under cross-examination. Any alleged evidence is worthless and inadmissible unless those who collected and preserved it swear to its authenticity under cross-examination. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 314242
10/23/2007 7:41 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
The problem with your soliloque is that I was at the top of my class all through my academic career,to the disdain of many just like yourself, achieving a 3.9 gpa in my major . I also occupy the top tenth of the 99th percentile, intelligence wise. Quoting: IDW 316305
I can top that. I got absolute straight A's throughout my entire Bachelor's and Master's programs in engineering--the first at my university ever to do so.
But of course, I consider NASA's claim of an alleged moon landing unproven at best. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:45 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
Whose responsibility is it to prove that the moon landings were real?
...
There is a principle which states. The person proposing a theory has the burden of proof.
You have clearly never studied either science, accounting, or law. Or did you flunk all three?
SCIENCE: Any scientist claiming a breakthrough must prove his claim. "A scientist who cannot prove what he has accomplished has accomplished nothing." NASA bears the full burden of proving its alleged accomplishment.
ACCOUNTING: Any employee who has spent his employer's money on a project must prove to the employer that the money was spent properly toward the stated goal, and that the results justified the expense. NASA bears the full burden of proving to taxpayers that the billions spent on the Apollo program actually produced the alleged moon landing.
LAW: An attorney whose client wants the courts to recognize an invention or discovery must prove it via sworn testimony under cross-examination. Any alleged evidence is worthless and inadmissible unless those who collected and preserved it swear to its authenticity under cross-examination. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 314242
I dont know who you are, but I'm glad youre on my side anyway!
Anyway, whether you agree with my science or not I agree with your logic, and its not often I agree with anyone totally..To put it in a nutsehll, these jokers just dont get it, it isnt my job to prove one way or another whether Apollo was a reality. Incredible claims require the highest degree of proof. It is not up to me to prove it couldnt be done, it is up to THEM to prove it could! I gave them the disqualification points, and they havent answered to them adequately at all. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 314242
10/23/2007 7:47 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
My father would have never allowed himself to be taped or filmed saying this, he was afraid of the reprocussions. Quoting: IDW 316305
That is sad. Engineering, even more than most professions, depends on the ability and need to speak the truth without fear of retaliation. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:48 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
The problem with your soliloque is that I was at the top of my class all through my academic career,to the disdain of many just like yourself, achieving a 3.9 gpa in my major . I also occupy the top tenth of the 99th percentile, intelligence wise.
I can top that. I got absolute straight A's throughout my entire Bachelor's and Master's programs in engineering--the first at my university ever to do so.
But of course, I consider NASA's claim of an alleged moon landing unproven at best. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 314242
Thats absolutely incredible. You realize a 3.9 is an "A" of course! But then I did carry a 2gpa out of my major.
It seems to me the truely gifted people who have examined the apollo hoax all have suspicion. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:51 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
My father would have never allowed himself to be taped or filmed saying this, he was afraid of the reprocussions.
That is sad. Engineering, even more than most professions, depends on the ability and need to speak the truth without fear of retaliation. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 314242
I dont think he feared so much for himself, but for his family and his job. Lets face it, corporate bigwigs have political motivations. He didnt say anything about it until he was retired. |
| IDW
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:52 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
how the hell are you italicizing words?
hey there
test |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 316305
10/23/2007 7:54 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
My father would have never allowed himself to be taped or filmed saying this, he was afraid of the reprocussions.
That is sad. Engineering, even more than most professions, depends on the ability and need to speak the truth without fear of retaliation. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 314242
oh, i get it now
boyeah! |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 264194
10/23/2007 8:43 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
This was simply a place I could bait them out into the open and get them to hang themselves with thier own words. I tryed that on thier own board and was banned. My latest visit there, I was banned at my own request when Jay the Weasel refused to debate me one on one.
Remember? Quoting: IDW 316305
noone gets banned over on jays or phils sites,all you have to do is follow the forum rules.
its not like glp over there,if you claim something,like the apollos was faked by nasa,you will be responsible to back that claim. and no,calling the other posters,idiots and lying government shills is not the way to go over at BAUT or Clavius,or in the real world for that matter.
here at the fringe forum,you feel at home,you are the king,the king of loonies. congratulations IDW you are the main man at the nuttiest of nuthouses.
hazzard and barls,well,they are what counts in the real world.
The correlation between what was being posted on this board and the posts concerning myself on the phil plait government board prove a conspiracy exists to cover up the truth about apollo, and that an organized campaign of disinformation and shit slinging is being funded by the federal government. Thats a smoking gun. Quoting: IDW 316305
lol. what are you talking about!?
phil plait explaining the way that uneducated hoaxbelievers are wrong...and you see a smoking gun!!
read the last two posts by hazzard,and then seek help,you are clearly not well. |
| Anonymous Coward
User ID: 264194
10/23/2007 8:48 PM | | Re: APOLLO MOON LANDINGS ------- FAKED OR REAL !!?? | Quote |
It seems to me the truely gifted people who have examined the apollo hoax all have suspicion. Quoting: IDW 316305
yea,you and richard c hoagland!! less talk and more evidence, that it was a hoax....so far i havent seen any,any at all.
all i hear from you is panic,clear paranoia and ignorance. |
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