NationStates

Petrasylvania wrote:First racists, then sexists, now flat earthers. Man, Trump's election was like the signal flare for the Revolt of the Village Idiots.

What's your thoughts NSG? Why has this movement been growing and how could someone honestly believe the Earth is flat when its been known for over 2,000 years that its not?

Yatzatz wrote:12.5 million Americans believe that the government is controlled by shapeshifting reptilian aliens. People will believe anything.

Crockerland wrote:

Yatzatz wrote:12.5 million Americans believe that the government is controlled by shapeshifting reptilian aliens. People will believe anything.

I looked this up and apparently 22 million people believe the moon landing was fake and 40.8 million believe Obama is the antichrist.

Medwedian Democratic Federation wrote:IT IS A LIE! EVERYTHING IS A LIE! THE EARTH IS NOT ROUND AND NOT FLAT, AS THE GOVERNMENT IS TELLING YOU! NASA (NOT A SINGLE ANSWER) IS CONDUCTING FAKE "ROCKET LAUNCHES"! EVERY SANE MAN KNOWS THAT THE EARTH IS SQUARE AND THAT ROCKETS DON'T WORK IN SPACE! IT IS A CONSPIRACY OF THE MASONIC REPTILIAN ILLUMINATI CABAL ZIONIST CONSPIRACY THAT WILL PREPARE THE COMING OF THE NEPHILIM ON NIBIRU! SAVE YOURSELF FROM THE MIND CONTROL THE REPTILIANS AND GRAYS ARE PERFORMING BY MAKING A THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET NOW! READ THIS BEFORE THE CIA SHUTS THE WEBSITE DOWN!

Crockerland wrote:

Yatzatz wrote:12.5 million Americans believe that the government is controlled by shapeshifting reptilian aliens. People will believe anything.

I looked this up and apparently 22 million people believe the moon landing was fake and 40.8 million believe Obama is the antichrist.

Aillyria wrote:

Crockerland wrote:I looked this up and apparently 22 million people believe the moon landing was fake and 40.8 million believe Obama is the antichrist.

Eh, the Faking of the Moon Landing is quite possible and there are interesting points that are made about that. I believe the moon landing happened, but not how we're told it happened....I'm a skeptic about the nature of and details surrounding the landing.

Aillyria wrote:

Crockerland wrote:I looked this up and apparently 22 million people believe the moon landing was fake and 40.8 million believe Obama is the antichrist.

Eh, the Faking of the Moon Landing is quite possible and there are interesting points that are made about that. I believe the moon landing happened, but not how we're told it happened....I'm a skeptic about the nature of and details surrounding the landing.

Earthchan wrote:(Image)

Aillyria wrote:

Crockerland wrote:I looked this up and apparently 22 million people believe the moon landing was fake and 40.8 million believe Obama is the antichrist.

Eh, the Faking of the Moon Landing is quite possible and there are interesting points that are made about that. I believe the moon landing happened, but not how we're told it happened....I'm a skeptic about the nature of and details surrounding the landing.

Sovaal wrote:

Aillyria wrote:Eh, the Faking of the Moon Landing is quite possible and there are interesting points that are made about that. I believe the moon landing happened, but not how we're told it happened....I'm a skeptic about the nature of and details surrounding the landing.

How?

Aillyria wrote:

Sovaal wrote:How?

Alot of the footage from the moon is questionable, the astronauts do many unnatural movements and how come the thrust from the boosters didn't leave any indentation on the lunar surface?

Aillyria wrote:

Sovaal wrote:How?

Alot of the footage from the moon is questionable, the astronauts do many unnatural movements and how come the thrust from the boosters didn't leave any indentation on the lunar surface?

Aillyria wrote:

Sovaal wrote:How?

Alot of the footage from the moon is questionable, the astronauts do many unnatural movements and how come the thrust from the boosters didn't leave any indentation on the lunar surface?

Aillyria wrote:

Crockerland wrote:I looked this up and apparently 22 million people believe the moon landing was fake and 40.8 million believe Obama is the antichrist.

Eh, the Faking of the Moon Landing is quite possible and there are interesting points that are made about that. I believe the moon landing happened, but not how we're told it happened....I'm a skeptic about the nature of and details surrounding the landing.

San Lumen wrote:Another Greek mathematician Eratosthenes realized the earth was round because during the solstice in Alexandria, Eqypt there was a shadow cast by a stick in the ground but in the city of Syene (now Aswan) which was further south there was no shadow as the sun was at a different angle.

Risottia wrote:

San Lumen wrote:Another Greek mathematician Eratosthenes realized the earth was round because during the solstice in Alexandria, Eqypt there was a shadow cast by a stick in the ground but in the city of Syene (now Aswan) which was further south there was no shadow as the sun was at a different angle.

Not accurate. Eratosthenes already KNEW the Earth was more or less spherical. What he did was MEASURE its radius within a fairly decent approximation, by measuring the length of the shadows at Alexandria and applying some trigonometry.

Alvecia wrote:

Risottia wrote:
Not accurate. Eratosthenes already KNEW the Earth was more or less spherical. What he did was MEASURE its radius within a fairly decent approximation, by measuring the length of the shadows at Alexandria and applying some trigonometry.

Fucking smart people, man. How do they do it?

Deads Heads wrote:

Aillyria wrote:Alot of the footage from the moon is questionable, the astronauts do many unnatural movements and how come the thrust from the boosters didn't leave any indentation on the lunar surface?

Probably the same reason there's no plane wreckage in the 9-11 tower photos. We don't know and prefer not to substitute facts with religion and conspiracy theories until we know better.

Alvecia wrote:

Aillyria wrote:Alot of the footage from the moon is questionable, the astronauts do many unnatural movements and how come the thrust from the boosters didn't leave any indentation on the lunar surface?

The first part of that is extremely vague. I could counter by merely saying they do no unnatrual movements.

As to the thrust question, I literally copy and pasted your question into google and found this as the first result

The Claim

The basic claim goes as follows: Before the Apollo landings, real NASA scientists and real artists (as opposed to fake ones) thought that the engine firing may create a blast crater underneath the lunar module. Pictures of the real site, however, showed no such crater, not even a big depression in the surface, as though the module was just “placed there.”

Obviously, the NASA people who didn’t create the crater on the soundstage/set/Area51/whatever were trying to tell future generations that this was a faked event, leaking this information out so no NASA higher-ups would realize.

Let’s Talk About Pressure

In physics, I think almost everyone knows that much discussion is given to studying “forces.” What is a force? A force has units of mass * length / time2. In other words, a force can be thought of as “what it takes” to accelerate a certain mass over a certain distance in a given amount of time. Gravity is a force. A human stepping exerts a force. A rocket engine exerts a force.

Moving one step further in complexity, we get pressure. Pressure is force / area (mass / (length * time2) ). So while a human stepping exerts a force, when you divide that force into the area of a human footstep, you get a pressure exerted.

The concept of force is actually shown in a neat magic trick that my parents would never let me do as a child: Take a coin, such as a dime. Take a nail and a hammer. Try to hammer the nail into the dime. You probably won’t be able to. Now take a pin and try to hammer the pin into the dime. It will likely go in. Why? Because while you are exerting the same force through the hammer, it is concentrated over a much smaller area with the pin, and hence you are exerting a greater pressure.

Another way to think about that is to take your finger and push on your forehead. All you may get is a white mark for a bit before the blood returns. Now, think (don’t do!!) about what would happen if you took a pin and tried the same thing. You would puncture the skin because while you exert the same force, you are exerting a much greater pressure through the pin.

How Is Pressure Relevant? — The Crux of Debunking This Claim

First, some numbers: The lunar module (LM) descent stage engine had a maximum thrust of 9870 ft-lb, but this was throttleable back to a minimum of 1050 ft-lb. Sounds like a lot. But, the diameter of the nozzle was 63 inches, which is an area of about 3120 in2. Dividing this into the force (thrust) and you have a pressure range of 0.4-3.2 ft-lb/in2, otherwise known as psi. This is equivalent to the metric 2760-22,100 N/m2. But let’s stick with psi.

Anyone who owns a car probably knows that this is already significantly less than your tire pressure … by a factor of 10-100. When Apollo 11 landed, the thrust was down to about 1/3 of max, so down to around 1 psi.

Now let’s look at the average adult footstep: The average non-American weighs around 150 lbs. The average human footprint is around 50 in2 (don’t believe me? do the math yourself!). Divide the first into the second and you have the average human footstep exerting a simple 3 psi.

This is 3x larger than Apollo’s engines!!

The very fact that the astronauts walking on the moon did not create “blast craters” underneath them should be explanation enough as to why the engine did not create a blast crater under it — the pressure was simply too low.

Then Why Did They Think It Would Before?

Good question. The best explanation that I could find is that when the hoax believers say, “NASA scientists,” it implies all NASA scientists. But it could just as well mean 2 NASA scientists as 2000. Hence, I would hypothesize that this was a possibility that was raised by a few people, but the majority in the review board said it would not happen and so the missions went ahead.

As for the artist renderings, well, many of the pictures painted at the time also show a big yellow-red flame coming out of the rocket engine as the LM touches down. But – as was known by all NASA engineers who knew about the fuel system – the fuel used would create no visible exhaust “flame” while in the lunar environment. Hence, an artist rendering should be taken as just that – an artist rendering and not as a scientific gospel.

Final Thoughts

Well, this is actually one of my shorter posts, but I’m trying to be less verbose these days as some feedback I’ve gotten is that I type too much. Regardless of that, though, I think that I’ve covered this claim reasonably well. All because some people thought one thing prior to Apollo landing does not mean that Apollo finding something else is evidence of a hoax. That’s what scientific exploration is.

TL;DR - Physics

Jebslund wrote:

Aillyria wrote:Alot of the footage from the moon is questionable, the astronauts do many unnatural movements and how come the thrust from the boosters didn't leave any indentation on the lunar surface?

First off, the phrase you're looking for is, "A lot". Sorry, that's a pet peeve of mine. Second, unnatural how? Because if you mean how they're bouncing around, they're in a low-G environment and need to be careful how they move.

As for the thrust, you got me. Best way to find out would be to fill a sand pit big enough to comfortably land a landing module in with lunar dirt and rock in as close an approximation of the lunar surface as we can, then fire boosters in the right configuration in a simulation of a landing.

EDIT: See the above response. Another day, another learning.

Aillyria wrote:

Jebslund wrote:
First off, the phrase you're looking for is, "A lot". Sorry, that's a pet peeve of mine. Second, unnatural how? Because if you mean how they're bouncing around, they're in a low-G environment and need to be careful how they move.

As for the thrust, you got me. Best way to find out would be to fill a sand pit big enough to comfortably land a landing module in with lunar dirt and rock in as close an approximation of the lunar surface as we can, then fire boosters in the right configuration in a simulation of a landing.

EDIT: See the above response. Another day, another learning.

https://youtu.be/uOpTv_j6-u4
^unnatural movements I was talking about.

Earthchan wrote:(Image)

Alvecia wrote:

Aillyria wrote:
https://youtu.be/uOpTv_j6-u4
^unnatural movements I was talking about.

That looks pretty much exactly like I would expect for people in bulky, restrictive suits and about 1/6th Earth's gravity.