Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Death Stranding Essay

Norman Reedus as Sam the delivery man from the video game Death Stranding.

The slog of a lifetime. (Some Spoilers!)

The main thing I learned from playing Death Stranding is how good most game developers treat their players.  We are given many luxuries to avoid slow pacing, levels of difficulty, updates with bug fixes, fast travel on big maps and so forth. They make the game fun for us. I didn’t how realize how much we are afforded to make playing a game efficient and enjoyable.  We are babied.  Not so with Death Stranding.  This game is a mix of carrot and stick with more stick than carrot.

With Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding players are forced into a slog of epic proportions, sometimes getting a break with road building and vehicles only to be forced back into the slog again as the game progresses into areas not accessible with trikes and trucks.  Fast travel for the main plot progression does not exist.  Kojima seems bound to not make the play ability easy on the player.  There is an attempt to lower the frustration of the game's mechanics so it does not become overwhelming, but the journey remains exhausting.

Another element that does help a bit is the addition of online players building on the maps.  You don’t interact with them, just see their names on the things they left behind from ladders and ropes to bridges and completed highway segments.  It does invoke a feeling of gratitude to find a ladder that aids in a climb left by a fellow traveler.  

It is ironic how easy the boss fights are compared to hoofing packages up mountain slopes in snow, rain, fog and slippery terrain.  Death Stranding’s toughness is in the journey, not the destination or physical conflicts.

So it is called by many a walking and package delivery simulator, however later in the game, it becomes a mountain climbing simulator.  Imagine a huge load of packages on your back, often in knee deep snow, trudging up and down rocky crags sometimes in blizzards and whiteout conditions.  On top of that you are under threat of the dreaded BT ghosts either to battle with or sneak past. Sneaking by them is a very slow process.  I got to the point of dreading the next delivery and story arc.  I took a break to go do some infrastructure building, mainly highways.  I actually found this to be an enjoyable side occupation.  One gets a sense of accomplishment going about gathering resources to complete a stretch of highway or place a bridge over a rushing stream.

Many have complained of wanting to play a game, not watch a movie.  The huge amount of cut scenes are another part of the slog.  Heavy on exposition; way too heavy with a mind bending plot that is a mix of reality and the paranormal.  To speed thru Sam’s (Norman Reedus) shower clips you have to skip through 4 cut scenes.  Other parts of the narrative require this as well.  To be fair, the videos are well done with excellent motion capture rivaling a big budget movie production.  Just overdone and another element of the continuous slog the player is put thru.  Overall, the game's visuals are superb and probably the best of the PS4 generation.  

One disappointment for me was that the main entities you battle with, the BTs, are never defeated.  At the end of the game you can still go back to delivering packages and build infrastructure but the BTs are still there to torment your progress.  

Worth a second play-thru?  I keeping wanting to safe for the memories of the experience, which at times can be quite grueling and fill me with enough dread to cancel the notion.  If I did, I would only work through my favorite chapters and never finish it.  

Saturday, December 28, 2019

2019 Year End Review of NASA Research

President Nixon talking to the astronauts on the moon using a rotary dial phone.



NASA research highlights.



It’s been a great year to research the Apollo moon missions and after all I have learned, I do want to believe men went to the moon and safely returned.  However, due to various discoveries if NASA documents that are freely available to the public, it is getting doubtful the moon landings actually occurred. 

The Right Stuff Never Stumbles
This is probably the clincher for the moon missions not being what we were told.  I had thought I found “smoking guns” in the past but this one is impossible to explain except via deception.  

The space tourists.  After studying their accounts, I discovered that upon landing and after spending more than 10 days in space none of them could walk.  They had to helped out the capsule, put in chairs and carted off the field to a medical tent where nurses helped them get out of the spacesuits. Digging deeper into the Russian cosmonauts and their space experiences, the same is true for them.  Why?  Because the human body is designed for gravity.  Muscles need resistance.  In zero gravity there is none and muscles loose their tone.  The body’s muscles, bone and blood degrades.  After being in space, even as little as 5 days, astronauts feel as if they are too heavy to move.  Their legs feel like tree trunks.  In 24 hours after landing everything returns to normal, though some astronauts do have lingering issues and require therapy.  

What is striking is the Gemini and Apollo astronauts.  In photographs and film they have no problem walking around on the carrier deck after being picked up at sea.  In the longest mission of 1965, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman spent 2 weeks aboard Gemini 7 in orbit.  Images show them happily walking about the deck after splashdown.  All of the Apollo astronauts after their time in space also display no problem walking moments after reentry.  

What we see in these images and films of the astronauts is something that is physically impossible.  

This is a major indicator that these astronauts were not in space as long as they said they were.  How can this be resolved?  Unless NASA developed artificial gravity technology for these missions and it secret until now, which is doubtful, we are witnessing fakery.

NASA Document Implies No Go To Moon
Probably my biggest find of the year was a NASA document found on their technical report server, analyzing the history of radiation exposure to American astronauts from the early days of Mercury to the current era of the International Space Station (ISS).

Included in the report is a chart.  It shows the radiation exposure from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle and finally, the ISS.  Incredibly, Apollo, the only manned mission that went the farthest out, is not at the top of the chart.  The International Space Station is!  Apollo is nestled in the middle right by the Space Shuttle.  The Shuttle never left low earth orbit (LEO).  So the authors of the report are suggesting that the total radiation exposure for all Apollo missions was the same as being in LEO.  But this can’t be possible if Apollo went to the moon and back because they left the earth’s protective magnetosphere.  Not to mention the hazards of flying thru the Van Allen belts and the moon itself, which is a highly radiative place.  They must have the highest exposure if they went to the moon.  Yet they place the ISS at the top of the chart for exposure.

So if Apollo’s exposure to high levels of radiation in deep space is equivalent to LEO, they ever had shielding that is a made of classified materials, secret to this day, or they didn’t complete the mission.

Clavious Is A Spook Site
Actually, I should have defined Clavious as a propaganda site.  It can still be on the Spook side with articles written by no-names, no copyrights and no sources.  This neatly laid out debunking site directed at the NASA moon hoax crowd uses the same techniques found in good disinformation projects.  They do what the players at Snopes do—only provide the right amount of information to prove a point and ignore any issues or evidence that contradict.  Like Snopes, it all reads good and the explanations seem plausible till you dig a bit deeper.  With no sources to expand upon, it is as if they have no need to prove anything.  Take our word for it and move along!

A good example of this is Clavious’s explanation regarding how astronauts could survive getting thru the Van Allen radiation belts.  They use the common and seemingly sensible theory of using a 30° trajectory that would send the spacecraft thru the outer fringes of the belts, lessening the radiation impact on the astronauts.  Sounds feasible till you start looking around for NASA documents to prove this.  If they used a 30° trajectory, which launch would that be?  All of them?  It is never stated.  What is the source document for this?  Not stated.  

I dug around and found a document for the launch trajectory for Apollo 14.  It stated an apogee of 90°.  I don’t know if this is similar for all of the launches.  But what this report does prove is they are not skirting around the edges of radiation belts, but instead flying straight thru them.

Additionally, Frank Borman stated as much in his book, Countdown, that Apollo 8 traveled straight thru the belts and the crew only got a radiation dose equivalent to a chest x-ray.  No fancy flying there!  And no harm done from the alleged radiation danger which Borman wrote off as much to do about nothing.

Did the damaged Apollo 13 and crew limp home thru the edges of the Van Allen belts?  No.  They did a slingshot trajectory and headed straight home through the belts.  They didn’t have the fuel to do anything more except get home alive.

Ultimately, Clavious comes off as well organized and reasonable with seemingly excellent rebuttals to Moon Hoaxers.  That is, till one explores the subject in more detail.  But if NASA really succeeded in sending a man to the moon, why not rebuff the critics with real data and not unsourced made-up commentary?

The Mystery of Apollo 13
And a mystery it is.  One of the mysteries was why did James Lovell, commander of the mission write in his book that the Command Service Module (CSM) weighed 64,000 pounds in zero gravity?  And that the weight was throwing off the “center of gravity” messing up the guidance system? The only reviewer of this book on Amazon to point this nonsense out is me.  Do people not think anymore?  

To compound the Lovell’s weird narrative regarding this disaster that nearly killed him and two other men (provided this event actually took place) is NASA’s technical report on the debacle.  It lists 13 times fuel or water weighing in quantities of pounds.  For example, before they shut down the power in the CSM, they withdrew 14 pounds of water and moved it over the LEM for storage.  How did they weigh that in zero G?  I’d like to see that scale.  Oh, never mind!  

Even the electronic schematics are screwy.  One diagram lists an output with no input.  You have to have the input or else there will be no output!  I thought these guys are billed as engineering geniuses?  But they can’t properly draw up a wiring diagram?  

From Apollo 13 is birthed the NASA “can do” agency myth.  The stuff of legend.  Even more legendary is how the engineers sussed out what went wrong without being able to examine or test the damaged hardware.  Something that would normally take months.  Rocket scientists from MIT or Wizards from Hogwarts School of Wizardry?

It should be noted that when our heroes triumphantly appeared on deck of the carrier, once again, they did not have to crawl.  No problem walking at all. 

Magic Handles And Magic Glass
Once again NASA makes the impossible, possible!  In this case, making components that are resistant to heat damage.   Both the aluminum handles on the CSM capsule and the glass in the windows far exceed their heat tolerance upon reentry.  The handles melting point is at 1,180 degrees Fahrenheit and the glass begins melting at 3,110 degrees Fahrenheit.  Reentry temperatures rise as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  Yet the handles never melt and no damage ever occurs on the glass windows in all of the Apollo flights.  In some pictures the handles look in extraordinary shape considering the high temperatures they were exposed to.  

Something like this is a common pattern when investigating NASA.  Their achievements border on the mythological.  Yet there they are, claiming to have done some nearly miraculous deed.  Such as seen in the top image of President Nixon talking to the astronauts on the moon with a rotary dial phone.  The longest distance call ever!  What is the area code again?  Try to get a mobile phone connection anywhere that is that good today!  


Sources and Links

Articles






Other Links
Apollo 14 flight Trajectory 

Clavious and the Van Allen belts


Saturday, December 7, 2019

The Right Stuff Never Stumbles Part 2


Anousheh Ansari, engineer and space tourist in 2006.

In my first posting on NASA astronauts, namely Gemini and Apollo crews, having little trouble walking after space flight missions (LINK), it seems that this phenomena also extends to the Space Shuttle astronauts as well.   As shown in my original article, the effects of zero gravity on the human body are quite stressful and upon returning to earth walking can be difficult to impossible.  Unless of course if you are a NASA astronauts.  Russian cosmonauts and space tourists 

In Mike Mullane’s book, Riding Rockets, it seems the Space Shuttle astronauts have no lasting effects of being Zero G after a 7 or 10 day mission into space.  For example on page 402, Mullane mentions after the landing of flight STS-27 that the crew put on their blue jumpsuits and walked out of the orbiter.  The mission length was 4 days so that probably helped in being able to walk off on their own.  Although a Russian cosmonaut during a 5 day mission in the 1960’s could not walk upon landing.  Mullane also mentions having trouble with his equilibrium after a flight but it was not enough to prevent walking (p.266).  

The only reported NASA astronauts that have trouble walking are those that have spent a year on the ISS such as Scott Kelly and other astronauts that have spent a year or less in zero gravity.  

Dennis Anthony Tito, the first space tourist spent 8 days on the ISS in 2001.  He needed help getting out of the capsule and after being placed in a large chair, was carted off the landing field in Kazakstan.  He could not walk.  None of the 7 other space tourists could either and also had to be carted off. 

Iranian-American engineer Anousheh Ansari’s has a blog about her stay on the ISS in 2006.  On her blog (link below) she describes the sensation of reentering gravity after being weightless for 11 days.  She needed help getting out of the capsule, needed assistance getting off the landing field and needed help getting out of her space suit.  She could not walk at first and felt extremely heavy, the end result of not using muscles which normally endure resistance against gravity.  Her experience illustrates that it does not take long for one to lose the ability to walk after being in space.

This raises the question of how could the Apollo astronauts walk on the moon in this condition.  Or for that matter, how could they walk so easily after landing on earth?

So apparently, none of the NASA astronauts have trouble walking after being in space unless they are doing missions of six months or more.  This is an issue with no resolution.  Unless NASA has developed some secret technology, such as artificial gravity, of which there is no evidence of. 

Either they went into space or they did not stay as long as they said they did.  Regarding the latter, something that would be hard to fake. 

End Notes
Page numbers from Riding Rockets are from the electronic version.  Might be off from the printed edition since I usually enlarge the type on my tablet for easier reading.

Zero gravity is know commonly called “microgravity.”  Same thing.  

Anousheh Ansari spent three days in orbit and eight days on the International Space Station.

Sources

The Right Stuff Never Stumbles Part 1

Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane

Medical Effects of Spaceflight