Re: Moon Dust, Rocket Engines, and NASA

The Author did not claim that manned space travel was impossible.
That some guy or everyone believes they were real does not make it so.

The author of THIS specific piece made a comparison to the CLAIMS regarding the Mars landing and what was presented for the Moon landing.
Have anything that speaks to THAT -- specifically the lack of a 'dust storm' and 'dust residue' AND no 'crater'?

Regard$,
--MJ

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed." -- Friedrich Nietzsche





At 11:10 AM 8/4/2012, you wrote:

Dr. Van Allen has refuted these claims that manned space travel would be impossible.  Dr. Van Allen does in fact believe that the manned space flights to the Moon back in the late 1960s and early 1970s were quite possible and very real.
 
As for the rest of these allegations and purported claims,  they have been addressed on numerous occasions over the past three and a half decacdes.  I can't speak to all of them, but off the top of my head,  I know that there was never those temperatures with the Apollo module and lunar landing. 

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 4:56 PM, MJ <michaelj@america.net> wrote:

Moon Dust, Rocket Engines, and NASA

by Morgan Reynolds

At 12:31 a.m. central time August 6 NASA will bless us with its latest extravaganza, a multi-billion-dollar, decade-long effort to launch a six-wheel rover dubbed 'Curiosity' on the red planet 154 million miles from home. Reading the newspaper one morning, I was amused to learn about the Rube Goldberg "braking" system invented to control landing on Mars. A huge parachute is supposed to slow the craft despite an atmosphere only one percent of the earth's, followed by freefall, then eight rocket engines ignite and lurch the craft out of the path of the trailing parachute somehow previously jettisoned, followed by a second freefall episode beginning at 66 feet altitude followed by a 'sky crane' lowering the rover as it unfurls its wheels, capped off by pyrotechnic charges that send blades to cut the nylon tethers. Oh my.

The rationale for this dubious landing system? "In theory, the rockets could provide a gentle enough landing to finish the job. But in practice, they would kick up such a dust storm that it could ruin the rover." Ah yes, I agree the inevitable dust storm would be a big problem. Engineers must design around that. But why wasn't a dust storm a formidable problem on July 20, 1969, the occasion of man's "greatest technological achievement," landing a man on the moon and returning him safely via Apollo 11? The moon is plenty dusty too.

Dust, or lack of same, is one of many puzzles about the Apollo missions NASA showed us over four decades ago: how the heck could there be no surface disturbance below the lunar module (LM), no crater blown out by the LM's rocket engine? All six moon landings NASA "conducted" (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) showed the same 'no hole' below the LM. No disturbance whatever (notice no stars in the background too?). If we trust the NASA-generated "real time" broadcast, Neil Armstrong called the surface " fine and powdery" and continued: "Okay. The descent engine did not leave a crater of any size. It has about one foot clearance on the ground. We're essentially on a very level place here."

 

Click on image to enlarge. Source: NASA