On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 21:51:20 GMT, The PretZel
wrote:

On 2006-07-03 01:00:49 -0700, Seethis Pass said:

On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 03:01:42 GMT, Joe Bergeron
wrote:

In article , Seethis Pass
wrote:

On the other hand, If we went to the moon without any real computers
in 1969, Why is it so hard to do now with 37 years of further
technology and scientific advances behind us?
It would be a lot easier to fake it than to actually do it.


I'm not convinced either way as to whether we actually went to the
moon or not, but the government has an exceptionally poor record of
issuing the truth in their news releases.
They hold onto the truth and almost never mention it.

Do you think all we need is fast computers to make it easy to go to the
moon?

I think we probably can't do it even With fast computers.
There is too much problematic radiation from the sun.

Do you think materials have gotten that much lighter in that time?

Absolutely, Might I mention Kevlar for instance? The best they could
do in the sixties was aluminum and plastic though they had developed
the mighty transistor.

Have rocket propellants gotten any more energetic?

No but that point is on my side, Blasting ourselves all the way to the
moon it is so hard to do that it was probably faked. There is the 'new"
development of magnetically powered rail guns that
might well fire rockets without the explosion and with instant
re-charging for another launch. On board fuel wouldn't be needed until
Earth's gravity had been left behind, making the fuel part of the
problem much less problematic.

It has always seem especially ignorant that we find ourselves trying
to ---Blow Ourselves Off Of The Planet! --- with a rockets
explosive energy. It is simply not the best way.

Magnetic force is cheap when set up in a linear array of
electromagnetic rings, fired sequentially to launch a spacecraft, There
is no explosion that could get out of control.

'Rail guns' are the way to go.

Has engineering and testing advanced spacecraft become a low-cost enterprise?
Yes.
Computers are great at that, and they do make engineering and testing
a relatively low cost enterprise.

Our spacecraft are still made of Earthly materials and are still
powered by rockets. They're still crewed by fragile human beings. Those
37 years of advancements haven't amounted to much when it comes to
space transportation, any more than they've transformed cars or
airliners into anything better than fancier versions of what we had in
the 60s. It would be hugely expensive merely to duplicate the Apollo
hardware.

It would be hugely expensive and dumb as hell to duplicate 38 year old
technology.

I saw their banks of greenish rack mount equipment, plenty of
transistors but almost no memory, no such thing as a hard drive ( all
ancient tape based ) and very few monitors
The tube based computers of the mid sixties ( they had to be made at
least a couple of years before launch) were humongous, had to be
refrigerated to keep the vacuum tubes cool, and were at best, weak.

If your friend developed transistor based computers for the Apollo
mission that's great but how good could they have been without a
modern operating system?
I remember my old "trash 80" computer ten years later having all of
the computing power of a modern wrist watch.

All of the possible computing power they could muster in the early to
mid sixties would be less than what's found in a cheap hand held
electronic game today, I'd hate to try to get to the moon and back
with that.

NASA hopes to do something more ambitious than that. That
will be an extremely expensive enterprise, if it ever gets done at all.

Right If it Ever gets done at all.

In another of your replies, you mention the size of the moon set,
implying that it was too small.
If the government wanted to fake a moon landing, the size of the set
would not be much of an obstacle.

There is thought the problem you raise of Russia going along with the
hoax.That was your best point.
Exactly how would they know what had happened? Spy satellites? A
russian Hubble? Spies at the launch site? Someone on the moon to
report back?

Nah.
They had to get whatever they knew about it mostly second hand from us
and we lie.

Maybe we went to the moon in 1969 but it's more likely that we did
not.
The government lies are piled high and their credibility is very weak.
If they say something fantastic, consider it propaganda and you won't
often go wrong .

CHRIST STP, I thought you were smarter then this...


You don't need an OS to do what their computers did. Just memory...
Fine.

TTL logic circuits could do what was needed for calculating the math.
I'm assuming the data needed was in the form of a solid state device. I
don't know but I doubt any on-board tape was used...

Of course not, to bulky and un-necessary.

We went to the moon. Plain and simple.

The set you mention was just that. A set to simulate a landing site on the ground to test equipment
and technique. NASA left nothing to chance. They still don't.
Everything is written down and in triplicate. It's a giant bureaucracy
with a CYA tool set. There is NO WAY a hoax could survive. tens of
thousands worked on Apollo, damn it.

No one knows what happened once the launches were out of sight from
the ground. We have only the governments say and that is tainted to
the limit.

Give them the respect they deserve.

I did.

also... Our disposable rocket set is limited. Nobody is going to
re-build a Saturn V. They're probably going to use two rockets on the
return mission. Lander and command module meet up in orbit with booster
mounted on the lander rocket most likely, but I don't know.

Moon return isn't Apollo and I'm sure there are many redesigns that
need to be made. Personally I think the manned mission is foolish but
if they Internationalize it maybe it would be a cool thing. It would go
back to being a political rather then scientific mission for its main
reasoning for it.