OT: Moon Landing (cool story bro)
I was just watching the Olympics with the Mrs. and NBC had a piece about the space race between the United States and Russia. It reminded me of an incredible story I heard.
I have had many conversations with a man who was employed at NASA at the time of the first moon landing. As I'm sure you are all familiar with, Neil Armstrong, while taking his first steps on the moon, bounces slightly. Most people think it was because of a lack of gravity. My engineering friend said that was not why Armstrong bounced when he hit the moon's surface.
Before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, there was an extensive amount of discussion involving the NASA brain trust over what, exactly, the moon was made out of. After months of deliberation, the panel had decided on two possibilities. Either the moon was solid, and a human could walk on it. Or the moon had a center comprised of space dust and any human who touched it's surface would fall a hundred meters into it's center and be lost forever.
Neil Armstrong, before placing his feet on the moon's surface, wasn't sure if he'd ever come back to Earth. His bounce was a reflex, because he didn't know if he'd be buried forever in outer space, or be the first human to successful walk on the moon's surface .
I've thought of this so many times and can't believe how bad ass that crew was for taking that trip.
February 15th, 2014 at 6:31 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:36 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:37 PM ^
Once the spacecraft had landed, wouldn't it have been clear that a person could walk safely?
February 15th, 2014 at 6:41 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 8:07 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 9:38 PM ^
Likely no concern because the Surveyor program had done some fairly extensive testing of the lunar surface during the years immediately proceeding Apollo 11.
Armstrong may have in fact been hesitant, but by the time he was stepping on the moon NASA scientists knew that he and Aldrin would be able to make their way around without sinking out of sight.
February 15th, 2014 at 6:41 PM ^
the area of the landing pads meant the lander was basically wearing snowshoes.
*jackhole with a "the landing was faked" comment in 3... 2... 1...
February 15th, 2014 at 6:47 PM ^
Informal poll - Upvote me if you think it was real. Downvote me you think it was fake. Let's see how the board really feels.
February 15th, 2014 at 6:51 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 7:08 PM ^
Okay
Upvote for fake.
Downvote for real.
February 15th, 2014 at 7:31 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 7:37 PM ^
No worries. I was acutally curious and trying to get a feel for how the board really feels. I hope people cast a vote on the second comment I set up. Personally, I am not sure if we really went.
February 15th, 2014 at 7:55 PM ^
What other interesting things do you believe?
• JFK's brain is being kept alive in a secret Nevada facility
• Elvis was an alien
• The world is controlled by a small cabal of Jewish financiers
• Every NBA game is fixed by the Vegas mob.
February 15th, 2014 at 8:14 PM ^
yes
no
yes
yes
February 15th, 2014 at 8:38 PM ^
February 16th, 2014 at 6:43 AM ^
Jim Trott?
February 15th, 2014 at 8:11 PM ^
Yes, we really went. Several other countries have since photographed the landing sites. We left a reflective mirror on the moon that scientists use all over the world. The Soviets kept track of the mission too and would have blown the lid off on a hoax.
February 15th, 2014 at 8:20 PM ^
This is how to beat any moon hoxer. We were racing the soviets. If it were faked, they would've known and called it out.
February 15th, 2014 at 8:09 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 7:59 PM ^
We've all seen the Shining. We all know the truth.
February 15th, 2014 at 6:45 PM ^
But there was still a possibility of a snowshoe effect, where the size of the saucers on the landing craft allowed it to stay up on a deep powdery surface that a human might sink through. Not to the center of the moon, of course, but deep enough to be effed.
Unlikely, of course... but how sure would you really be?
February 15th, 2014 at 6:51 PM ^
I could be wrong, but one source of the speculation (I believe several other people were working on similar indirect experiments / theories) - as far as I understand - from a very rough estimate of the relative amount of dust on the moon made by a guy who was using atmospheric dust from the easily accessible area near Mauna Loa and estimating through some method how much of that dust must have come from space. This was in the early 1960s before there was any satellite data regarding the subject, as I recall.
Mind you, this comes from a very old issue of Scientific American that I came across in a library while working on a project, so I could be misremembering something. I believe he based the assumptions based on the amount of nickel which was in known meteorites and then scaled his own estimate for Earth to fit the Moon (the assumption that it might be a linear relationship alone makes me wince). He did say that this was purely speculative and based on indirect observation, but it did help fuel the discussion that the OP mentions (I imagine a few other scientists had similar reservations, but I cannot imagine it was that many). I will say, however, that I would be shocked if anyone at NASA was surprised that the lunar module, and susequently Armstrong, landed just fine.
February 15th, 2014 at 6:40 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:52 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 8:17 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:45 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:59 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:48 PM ^
Except that over the previous decade, NASA launched a number of probes that both landed on the moon and sent back pictures... And the Soviets had, too.
February 15th, 2014 at 6:49 PM ^
Yeah this is definitely an "incredible story" in the literal sense. The Surveyor program, in which the US landed several probes on the moon to take various readings in preparation for the Apollo landings, had already answered that question quite definitively. Scientists at the time also knew that the moon was solid for various other reasons, including the ability to calculate its density based on the ratio between its size and gravitational influence.
February 15th, 2014 at 7:01 PM ^
Two other holes to punch in the story: craters and LEM thrusters.
Throw a rock into the snow. Does it make a crater like the ones on the moon? No.
I'll maybe buy the snowshoe effect, but the LEM had descent thrusters which would've blown all that loose dust away.
February 15th, 2014 at 7:20 PM ^
February 16th, 2014 at 10:51 AM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:53 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 6:59 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 7:05 PM ^
I was just going to say. How the cheese theory was KO'd? Seems legit to me.
February 15th, 2014 at 7:23 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 7:37 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 8:21 PM ^
February 15th, 2014 at 8:00 PM ^
I think the real question is: if the moon were made of spare ribs, would you eat it?
February 15th, 2014 at 9:58 PM ^
Do you really have to ask that question?
February 15th, 2014 at 10:41 PM ^
Fair enough. But now for the real noodle-scratcher, if you were a hotdog, would you eat yourself?
February 16th, 2014 at 10:10 AM ^
Only if I was covered in mustard, chopped onions, and hot relish.
February 16th, 2014 at 10:23 AM ^
February 17th, 2014 at 10:39 AM ^
It depends what kind of hotdog. But I could see myself lathered in ketchup and chowing down.
February 15th, 2014 at 8:01 PM ^
That's why he hopped. He didn't want to fall in a hole and fall through the moon so he hopped over the hole.
February 15th, 2014 at 7:06 PM ^