Re: Man Never went to moon

From: Jay Windley (webmaster_at_clavius.org)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:44:30 -0600

The site is finally up now; it wasn't before.

SHADOW DIRECTIONS

What makes you think I have to agree that your arrows drawn on photographs
are the uncontestable direction the shadows are falling? The shadow you
have marked for the flag is actually the shadow of the solar wind
experiment. The shadows you have marked on the footprint are simply
randomly chosen directions.

Drawing lines along the "apparent" direction of shadows of irregularly
shaped objects cast on irregular surfaces is not a geometrically valid
method of reconstructing lighting vectors. If you go to my web site you'll
see photographs of shadows cast by the sun that do not obey your "rules" for
them. Hence you haven't discovered a way to tell real photos from fake ones
by looking haphazardly at shadows.

You imply that multiple shadow directions could only be caused by multiple
light sources. Multiple light sources cast multiple shadows for each
individual object, not one different shadow for each object. Again,
examples on my site.

FOOTPRINT DEPTH

You claim that moon's gravity is too weak to allow impression. Wouldn't
this have something to do with the soil mechanics, which you have completely
ignored?

FLAG WAVING

If you had bothered to study anything about the Apollo flags you'd have
realized there's a horizontal rod through the flag's upper edge.

STARS IN PHOTOGRAPHS

You've obviously never held a camera in your life. Stars are far too weak
to be exposed on film simultaneously with properly exposed sunlit objects.

LM THRUST

Your 25,000 lbf thrust figure is pure fantasy. Maximum for the DPS was
10,000 lbf and hover thrust was around 2,500 lbf. Maximum for the APS was
3,500 lbf. Compare that to the 27,000 lbf takeoff thrust for the Hawker
Harrier (which doesn't leave a crater either) and see where your claim lies.

You simply declare that a crater should have been dug. Where are your fluid
dynamics and dynamic fluid pressure computations to support such an
expectation? The fluid pressure of the 2,500 lbf thrust distributed over
the plume impingement area is actually quite small, actually *greater* than
the static mechanical load of an astronaut distributed over one footprint.
This is one of those cases where an ounce of mathematics is worth a pound of
"common sense".

VISOR REFLECTION

Armstrong is the photographer; the visor belongs to Aldrin.

The shadow angle depends on the horizontal component of the phase angle,
which is by no means guaranteed to align with the camera's line of sight in
any particular photo. Your expectation is simply a non-sequitur.

Since your photos are not from NASA but instead from a popular conspiracy
theory book, I presume that's the source of your arguments and you have done
no original research whatsoever.

The argument that the camera angle is too high ignores the fact that Aldrin
was standing in a crater when that picture was taken. Roll 40 from Apollo
11 contains a photo of that crater with Aldrin's footprints in it. It also
ignores that Aldrin was leaning forward, as was common for the astronauts to
do in order to balance the weight of the backpack.

You claim the photographer would have to be 7-7.5 feet tall. Where are your
computations to support such a precise quantitative estimate?

SHADOW

Light still undergoes diffuse reflection from surfaces even in the absence
of atmosphere. The secondary light source in this photo is the lunar
surface itself on either side of the LM's shadow, as can be verified by the
shading patterns on the astronaut's equipment. If the "fill" lighting were
due to atmosphere, the top of his backpack would be lit, not the bottom or
sides.

SHADOW LENGTH

Discussed extensively on my site. The ground is not level there, and it
affects the lengths of the shadows.

FLAG SURVIVABILITY

You claim the astronauts said their last glimpse of the moon was the flag
they had posted. Transcripts exist of the mission and no such statement can
be found in it. Further, the Apollo 11 crew testified subsequently that the
flag was blown over by the RCS hot fire test. Please provide a documented
source for your claim.

Further, you have grossly inflated your claims regarding LM thrust, so it's
pretty safe to say your claims that it would have "fried" the flag suffer
from the same exaggeration. Since rocket plumes are known to disperse
rapidly in a vacuum, losing both heat and density to the tune of several
orders of magnitude compared to operation in earth's atmosphere, please
justify your claim that enough heat would have been transferred to the flag
(had it remained standing) in order to melt or otherwise destroy it.

So far it appears your claims are nothing more than the ignorant hogwash
that has been perpetuated for others' profit for more than 30 years, and
debunked for just as long. 

-- 
                                          |
The universe is not required to conform   |  Jay Windley
to the expectations of the ignorant.      |  webmaster @ clavius.org

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