MID Registered User
Posts: 52
(11/21/05 11:38 pm) Reply
Merlin...or anyone elses questions
Merlin:
In response to your guestbook entry (11-21 questions),
No, you're not getting annoying asking these questions.
I should say that it would be helpful to be a bit more specific when asking, as in providing a reference to an example of what you might be talking about. You see, there were 11 manned Apollo missions, 6 of those being lunar landing missions. There were, therefore, hundreds of hours of video, 16 mm film, audio recordings and about 25000 photographs taken throughout the manned flights. It's a little difficult to search through all of that to find a specific reference.
To wit, you ask "Why were 2 Earths seen from the Apollo module?"
There were 20 manned "Apollo modules" flown in the program. Which one? When and where were 2 Earths seen? See what I'm saying?
However, I seem to recall some piece of mis-interpreted film being put together from one of the flights that claimed to see 2 Earths in two different windows of an Apollo CM during the same broadcast during trans-lunar flight. That is perfectly logical if you realize the following:
The Apollo CM was rotating about its long axis continually during trans-lunar or trans-Earth coast (going out and coming back, as-it-were). Every 20 minutes, the spacecraft would rotate a full 360 degrees (this was done to evenly distribute solar heating on all surfaces of the spacecraft and prevent overheating or freezing of certain components or tanks of oxygen or propellants). When a crew was filming inside the CM, or broadcasting video (as they did frequently during the flights), one may have seen the Earth out one of the windows of the spacecraft. In less than 10 minutes, because of the spacercraft's rotation, the Earth could be seen out the window on the other side of the spacecraft. It is of course entirely concievable that the Earth could be easily viewed out two or three different windows of the spacecraft in that 10 minute period of time. That probably is why someone concluded that 2 Earths were seen from an Apollo spacecraft somewhere, and why, due to ignorance of the facts, they claimed that there was something unusual going on up there.
What was going on was simply natural.
But the fact of the matter is that no one ever saw 2 Earths out the window of an Apollo spacecraft. There was only ever 1 of them. There still is to the best of my knowledge!
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"What the hell did the Australians see when it first broadcast?"
I take that to mean Apollo 11's EVA (?).
Merlin, the Australians saw precisely what the rest of the world did, exactly. There was absolutely nothing different about what they saw from what we in the U.S. or anyone else in the world saw that night (or day, depending on where in the world one was). Perhaps you are speaking of that one obscure person who claimed to see a "coke bottle" kicked across the screen in Australia?
If so, you should know that there is no thing or no one anywhere to substantiate that claim. No one else saw this supposed coke bottle, anywhere in the world. When pressed by someone to identify where this person saw it, she pointed to a sequence and an apparent object moving along the ground in the Apollo 11 EVA video for a few frames. The "object" wasn't actually an object at all, but rather a reflection of light from Buzz Aldrin's helmet visor into the TV camera lens.
That "coke bottle" claim was simply another in a series of mis-interpretations and/or mis-understandings about what was going on or what was being seen that was played up by the ignorant into some "evidence" of a conspiracy or a fake.
As to the Apollo 13 mission blue glow out the window...such views are frequently visible in many pictures and video and film records of various Apollo flights. It is absolutely a natural phenomenon of light refraction caused by light being reflected off of spacecraft surfaces, or coming directly into the windows at an angle.
The windows were multi-paned and coated with colored filtering materials which refracted light into several different colors, depending on which way your eye (or your camera lens) might have been looking at any given moment. Blue was a frequent color seen in the windows (also various oranges, reddish hues, greens and yellows were seen in some photos), depending on the lighting conditions, camera settings, etc. Most of the time, exceedingly bright sunlight was hitting the spacecraft directly where it could be seen through the windows, and or was reflecting at angles from the surfaces of the spacecraft (the LM, for instance...attached to the CSM) and entering the windows at various angles. The blackness of space was reserved for those periods where the spacecraft was on a back side pass and no sun was in the "sky"...which were actually pretty rare. Most of the time, it was broad daylight in space...a much broader daylight than any known on Earth.
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Your 4th question is one of those things where I'd really like to see an example for reference.
You know...What pieces of what footage show astronauts seeming to be suspended from wires?
I've seen every second of footage from every Apollo lunar EVA many,. many times, and there's never been any scene in any of those many hours of footage which has anything that looks like "wires" hooked up to an astronaut's suit...or whatever.
I know that some of these people who put forth the Apollo hoax claims have used some (generally unidentified) frame of footage from some mission's EVA to prove that the astronauts were suspended by wires...
However, none of them has ever actually shown any such "evidence" at all.
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The moon landings were indeed real...about as real as anything gets.
I also understand the questions some people have about them, and also how "compelling" some of what the hoaxters put on their web pages seems to be. It is all mis-interpretation and mis-understanding in reality...that, combined with a healthy dose of scepticism about the remarkable accomplishments we were able to achieve in the 1960s and early 1970s, accomplishments which haven't been equalled since (for reasons that are, althoiugh somewhat sad, rather obvious to one who has studied the matter at length).
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I hope this has helped to answer some of your questions, and I'd invite you, or anyone else to ask away should anything else be on your mind or puzzle you about the lunar landings or the Apollo program...
Just a quick note about the Coke bottle incident...
Quote:MID Quote: 'If so, you should know that there is no thing or no one anywhere to substantiate that claim. No one else saw this supposed coke bottle, anywhere in the world. When pressed by someone to identify where this person saw it, she pointed to a sequence and an apparent object moving along the ground in the Apollo 11 EVA video for a few frames. The "object" wasn't actually an object at all, but rather a reflection of light from Buzz Aldrin's helmet visor into the TV camera lens.
That "coke bottle" claim was simply another in a series of mis-interpretations and/or mis-understandings about what was going on or what was being seen that was played up by the ignorant into some "evidence" of a conspiracy or a fake.'
Apparently many people saw the Coke bottle and many readers letters appeared in The West Australian Newspaper. I have personally written to the newspaper asking if they have any archive material that could shed some light on this matter, but unfortunately they did not reply to my Email - make of that what you will.
Im not sure where your information about her rewatching the footage and seeing what she believed was the Coke bottle again, because according to her (Una Ronald) the sequence had already been cut from the footage that she saw later in the day when she watched the landing again with her friends.
We have to remember that because the movie footage was being relayed to NASA and the rest of the World from Honeysuckle Creek in Australia, Australian viewers saw the footage with hardly no time lapse and before the signal could be edited by NASA officials. Of course if such a thing as a Coke bottle was seen then Houston could have stopped those particular frames from being transmitted as they sent out their broadcast to the World (lets remember that the actual Apollo 11 footage shown on TV was shot by cameramen who were filming images on the large screens at Houston). Lets also remember that today if anyone swears on TV during a live broadcast the editors have around 10 seconds to edit out the offending words.
The same scenario could have happened with the Coke bottle could it not?
Edited by: Cosmic Conspiracies at: 11/23/05 4:30 pm
MID Registered User
Posts: 53
(11/24/05 8:09 pm) Reply
Re: RE: Apollo Questions
Hi.
Nice to hear from you!
I should preface this by saying that the coke bottle incident has never been much of a concern for me. It doesn't seem all too relevant since it seems to be a very isolated thing which doesn't lend itself to much in the line of proof. I've certainly read about it of course.
I am also aware than there are claims that many people saw this coke bottle and had reported it to newspapers. I am also aware that it seems that Ms. Ronald maintains that what she saw was not there when she re-viewed the tapes of the Apollo 11 EVA, which of course would point some in the direction that the coke bottle was edited from the film.
However, one thing that strikes me about that is that if a coke bottle was in fact kicked across the field of view, who would be able to recognize a spinning, bouncing coke bottle as a coke bottle specifically..especially given the ghosting quality of the Apollo 11 transmission. I believe Ms. Ronald said that the coke bottle was unmistakable to her. I don't think I'd be able to recognize a coke bottle specifically if I saw one suddenly bouncing and spinning accross the floor. A bottle, perhaps, but given the view I was looking at on Apollo 11, I might have merely seen an obscure object appearing to bounce along the surface.
This story seems to have been publicized in Percy and Bennett's book, Dark Moon. In there, it is stated that Ms. Ronald looked at the re-broadcast of the films the next day and said that she no longer saw the thing. Apparently, she was watching the part of the EVA where she saw the thing and didn't see it any more...but I can't point to exactly where she was looking.
It appears that Bennett and Percy contacted the Australian newspapers regarding the other people who allegedly saw this thing and who sent letters into them claiming such. They too have gotten no reply, like you. It seems that Ms. Ronald is the only one who claims that others saw this coke bottle. I remember reading something once at Clavius.org about this thing. I think they scoured the actual copies of the Australian newspapers from the time Ms. Ronald claims that others wrote to the paper, and they found nothing mentioned about it in them.
It seems no one precisely knows much about Ms. Ronald, save what was published in Dark Moon.
I don't know what's up with that, but it seems to me that the sequence I described in the Apollo 11 video (which occurrs about 50 minutes into the EVA, when Buzz Aldrin begins his descriptions of locomotion on the lunar surface) contains something that could certainly be seen as something bouncing along the surface behind him.
This bouncing object looks very much like someone kicked something across the field of view. However, in looking at it carefully, it matches Aldrin's bouncing precisely and is a reflection of him from inside the camera lens. The reflection phenomenon repeats itself a couple of times during his traverses toward and away from the TV camera.
In concentrating on this sequence, I can see where someone might be posessed to "see" a bottle bouncing along the surface...although I can't imnagine anyone being able to distinctly see a specific brand name, or even a specific shape of the object.
It seems to me that if others had actually seen this distinct coke bottle, that someone else could've, or would've wanted to be identified as having seen it. After all, millions were watching this thing happen...but based on what I've read, it seems that Ms. Ronald is the only named person to have made such a claim, and of course, she doesn't see it any more.
It seems logical to me that she might have been mistaken (or maybe drunk?...no offense meant) and actually saw what I can still see on the Apollo 11 EVA video. But again, who knows?
Kind of makes this a rather non-issue in my humble opinion.
Regards.
MID Registered User
Posts: 54
(11/28/05 11:35 pm) Reply
Re: APOLLO LM PICTURE
Merlin:
That's an interesting observation regarding the painted cardboard look. In looking at it, I can see where that could be a possible impression.
I guarantee you, however, that those exterior panels are extremely thin, chemically milled aluminum alloy. They are coated with micrometeoroid and thermal material of a matte finish, and that, combined with their thinness, and their propensity to buckle, even with such small impulses as thruster fire, give them the visual impression of being something like warped cardboard.
As I mentioned, these panels frequently buckled or wrinkled.
In the upper left portion of this LM, I think what you mention regarding something "peeling away" are in fact some of those exterior panels that seem to have some warp in them. In fact, the aft section of the LM above and to the right of Buzz Aldrin (this is an Apollo 11 photo (AS11-40-5927, obviously taken by Neil Armstrong, to be precise)) shows similar buckling effects.
If you ever have the chance, take a look at the liftoff video of the Apollo 16 LM from the lunar surface. You will actually see these exterior panels buckle severely from the thrust of liftoff. The whole rear end of that spacecraft is wrinkled up like aluminum foil.
Has no effect on the interior compartment or support structures, however. The LM was simply an extremely thin skinned vehicle. It's outer panels were exceedingly milled down, to save weight.
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