Posted by Shyaku on July 31, 2019, 6:37 am, in reply to "Moon Landings"
OK lets have a shot at this ..
(1) Glad you brought up Apollo 8, where the iconic earthrise photo was taken. If true that we cannot traverse the van allen belts, this was either a hoax or a robotic mission that nobody knows about. This goes for all Apollo-era photos of the earth from a distance. Time for the cosplaytheorists to get cracking on this one.
Why not beyond low earth orbit since 1972? Short answer -why? NASA has always been about moving on to the next thing; NASAs aim was to build human endurance and reusable technology with a space station and shuttle, then go back to to the moon to stay. But the Shuttle program was so expensive - 1 billion dollars per flight, I recall. Remember they were supposed to fly a mission every fortnight and build a space station. But as they started to up the schedule the challenger blew up, due to the rush, so they retreated to a super-safe routine and ended up flying one every 6 months. Shuttle ended up a boondoggle for Lockheed & Boeing, never fulfilled expectations, finally scrapped. Now its scrapped, they freed up resources to return in an Apollo style rocket, and this is slated to occur in the next few years.
Meanwhile, the Soviet N1 rocket exploded during launch 4 times in a row, seriously flawed, they scrapped it. No strategic reason to go to moon at the time since the US had given up also.
2) No need to invoke Van allen belts, see economics above.
3) I don't know, I don't have a TV and didn't follow it. Maybe because Neil Armstrong is dead? Most likely because it was the giv'mint wot done it. The narrative since the 1980s in the US is that the guv'mint can't do anything - privatize it!! So, they don't want people to hanker after another national pulling together around a big govt project. Those days are over, Hollywood makes it clear that is HISTORY, we are all atomized individuals now. Serves the powers that be much better. They will go to the moon themselves, they don't want BIG GOVERNMENT doing anything inspiring. They want to drown the government in a bathtub.
4) The first few mins is a bit weird from Armstrong specifically, but not really the others, and not really after that. For Armstrong - he looks like he has a LOT on his mind. Post-partum depression? Armstrong was like a robot. Can you imagine training for years and years of absolute total immersion, non-stop for a mission, doing it, then that's it? No structure, nothing left to aim for? I can identify with this feeling, but for him it must be infinitely worse. Its all over, the highlight of his life is over. Finished. He will never have another moment like that. What's to live for? What is the next challenge? What shall I do now? Plus, he's a military guy, that's a bit of how they are. Plus, I have been to many geeky presentations that absolutely have that tone about them. People who are so used to talking to their own people, that they have no charisma at all in front of a general audience. This is not Hollywood, these are real people who were trained like robots to keep their emotions in check. Thats the best I can do.
(5) I can't address it.
(6) is simple: They had explosive bolts attaching the descent stage with the legs, to the ascent stage sitting on top. What you see are the explosive bolts firing (Nasa used these all the time, eg to join rocket stages during ascent from earth). The actual rocket plume is invisible because the propellant used doesn't burn with a visible flame, and because in a vacuum the jet spreads enormously more than in an atmosphere. Many other rockets with this fuel can be seen burning with an almost invisible plume. They also uad explosive blades cutting the lines to the descent stage which stored things like water etc. The ascent was short, so didn't need supplies.