Showing posts with label Jim Lovell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Lovell. Show all posts

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

Thursday, September 5, 2019

The Right Stuff Never Stumbles

Gemini 7 astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell.

(Edited with corrections at Substack:  https://georgebailey.substack.com/p/the-right-stuff-never-stumbles)


“The most miraculous thing was when they could get out of the spacecraft and not flop on their faces; and they could go up into the helicopter and get out on the carrier deck and walk pretty well. They were in better physiologic shape than the V crew. Initially, their tilt-table responses were not as bad and did not last as long. It looked more like four-day responses, by far, than eight-day. The calcium loss was the same way. Amazingly, they maintained their total blood volume. They didn't get any decrease, but they did it in a peculiar way. They lost the red-cell mass still, but they replaced the plasma-they put more fluid in. Apparently, there had been enough time for an adaptive phenomenon to take place.”
On The Shoulders Of Titans, p. 294

From sea legs to space legs.


The effects of weightlessness on the human body are well documented such as muscle degradation, calcium loss and other physical irregularities.  The problems do not end there.  Astronauts once returned to earth and gravity have a difficult time getting readjusted to having weight and mass and spatial orientation.  They can have trouble talking and have blood pressure issues.  Even the immune system can be compromised causing an astronaut to battle a minor infection.  In many ways it is similar to sailors getting their “sea legs” once back on land after being months at sea.  

Basically, zero gravity messes with your body.

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

As astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti after her 200 days in space said, “Your co-ordination, your balance, all the little tiny muscles that you don’t even know you have but that help you to sit upright and walk upright”—all that was gone.” This required her to experience weeks of rehabilitation after returning from space.  Walking was so difficult that Cristoforetti remarked that her legs felt like “tree trunks.”

Shuttle astronaut Dr. Anna Fisher remarked, “Also in your sensory canals there is a mismatch between what you’re feeling and seeing so it take a while to adapt not only to get your space legs when you come back you find you are actually walking down the hall at an angle because you have to recalibrate to not moving all over the place.”

These astronauts are examples of how prolong space travel affects them physically and the hard work required to get back to normal physical health.  

Space tourist Dennis Tito unable to walk after landing.

And lastly, space tourists.  So far the list is Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen, Anousheh Ansari, Rick Tumlinson and Guy Laliberté. None of them can walk or remove themselves from the capsule after landing without help.  Once removed they are placed in chairs and then toted off the landing field.  They are never seen walking away.  Most space tourists spend around 10 to 12 days on the ISS.  That seems to be enough time to stop their ability to move independently and orient themselves upon landing and returning to normal life. 

The Enigma Of Gemini And Apollo Astronauts 
Incredibly, the after effects of being in weightlessness had no noticeable effects on the astronauts of the Gemini and Apollo programs.  

The leading quote above is from page 294 of On The Shoulders Of Titans by Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood.  The physical effects of returning to earth from space were well known to NASA early on.  After being two weeks in space there little trouble for Gemini 7 astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell walking on the deck of the carrier the USS Wasp after stepping off the rescue helicopter.  The authors referred to it as a “miraculous thing” that they didn’t stumble and fall on their faces.  And finally ending with the quote, “Apparently, there had been enough time for an adaptive phenomenon to take place.”

What kind of adaptive phenomenon would that have been?  Seems like they are grasping for straws.  They have no answer for how these two men who spent two weeks in weightlessness, with no exercise, immediately upon landing could walk without a fuss.  Clearly, the adaptive phenomenon is not at work now.  Astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists are incapacitated of walking upon landing. The alleged miracle is hung in the air, will never be officially answered, and it will remain as it is, a mystery. 

(Likewise, the other returning Gemini astronauts had not problem walking on a carrier deck after arriving from their respective flights.)


Apollo 8 crew after landing in 1968 after spending 7 days in space.

This ability to walk after along spaceflight, which apparently cannot be done now, is evident in the above photographs of the Apollo 8 crew stepping out of their chopper aboard the USS Yorktown.  There are many other photos of the astronauts being greeted by the captain and crew. Everybody is smiling and nobody is having any issues adjusting to gravity.  It is as if they never left earth.


Apollo 13 crew right after landing.
This ability to walk after along spaceflight, which apparently cannot be done now, is evident in the above photograph of the Apollo 13 crew stepping out of their chopper aboard the USS Iwo Jima.  There are many other photos of the astronauts showing them on deck during a prayer service, shaking hands with the Iwo Jima’s captain and officers and having a dinner with the officers and crew of the ship.  Everybody is smiling and nobody is having any issues adjusting to gravity.  It is as if they never left earth.

While their mission was cut short, lasting only 5 days, that is apparently enough time to disable the ability to walk upon return to earth.  This was experienced by Russian cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko in 1967 who could not walk after landing from a 5 day mission.  Other Russian missions, such as Soyuz 9 in 1970, both cosmonauts after an 18 day mission could not walk till 6 days after landing.  Except for long stays on the ISS and select space shuttle missions, no NASA astronaut has these issues.


How did the astronauts walk on the moon?


In Closing
I am disappointed to conclude that it appears that the Gemini and Apollo Astronauts were not in space as long as has been officially reported.  The effects of zero G are well documented and known for over 50 years.  The idea that these astronauts, especially the Gemini crews, shown no evidence of physical problems makes no sense.  They should have had issues.  But we see these men returning from space without as much as a hitch in their giddyup.  This is the closest thing I have seen regarding fraud in the United States space program.  

 Astronaut Anne McClain being helped out of capsule after landing.

End Notes
Gemini 7 was launched in 1965 and at the time was the longest NASA space orbital mission lasting 14 days.

On The Shoulders Of Titans is an in-house NASA publication documenting the history of the Gemini program.

At the time of her interview, astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti set the 200 day record for the longest period in space for a European woman astronaut.  Record broken in 2017 by Peggy Whitson.

Zero Gravity and Microgravity are interchangeable.  It appears that zero-G has fallen out of favor.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neal Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin spent 6 days in space before landing.  Did the 1/6 gravity help them with walking on the moon?  Micheal Collins did not land but was in space for a total of 10 days.  He had no issues leaving the spacecraft for rescue or walking afterward.  But the space tourists spending 10 days in space do.

If it takes a year to travel to Mars, how are the astronauts going to walk when they get there?  They would need an artificial gravity system for the trip.  Is that in development?

Update

12/04/19
2006 Space tourist Anousheh Ansari’s blog describing not being able to walk after spending 11 days in space.
http://spaceblog.xprize.org/2006/10/05/second-birth/

12/02/19
"U.S. space agency NASA announced in June that it plans to allow two private citizens a year to stay at the ISS at a cost of about $35,000 per night for up to a month. The first mission could be as early as 2020."

We shall see of the latest batch of space tourists can walk after landing. 


http://news.trust.org/item/20191202002950-4ux9n

Sources
On The Shoulders Of Titans by Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood.  Available free as a PDF from nasa.gov.  Kindle and paperback versions are available on Amazon.  

Samantha Cristoforetti
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/11708381/Record-breaking-astronaut-Samantha-Cristoforetti.html

Dr. Anna Fisher

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/06/23/space-tourists-could-struck-astro-sickness-warns-nasa-astronaut/


Russian cosmonauts not being able to walk after landing.

https://www.aulis.com/apollo-soyuz13.htm

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

The Mystery of Apollo 13



Will We Ever Know the True Story On Apollo 13?

Jim Lovell’s book reads like an account of the movie Apollo 13 rather than a story of the actual event he participated in.   Some of the science in the book is flawed and some of it ranks as absurd.  In other areas the documenting of dialogue exchanges between the Apollo 13 astronauts and Mission Control are provably false.  I am at a loss to explain why this was done since Lovell and co-writer Jeffrey Kluger are supposed to be telling us the truth.  There are enough voices crying “fake” regarding the moon landings as-is and this book’s flaws just adds more reasons for their theories.

Center of gravity in no gravity…
Shortly after the fuel cells blew the Command Service Module (CSM) and Lunar Landing Module (LM) were thrown out of wrack.  The attitude control was thrown off and Jim Lovell’s job was to get the trajectory to conform to the flight path, which he accomplished after some difficulty.  

On page 148 in Lovell’s book it is stated that the added “weight” of the command module, coming in at 63,400 pounds, was causing the problem. It was actually stated that the attached CSM's weight which was throwing off “the center of gravity” of the ships.  Is there a center of gravity in no gravity?  Of course not!  Everything weighs nothing.  And how did the CSM suddenly gain weight in zero G?  Please note this is not an issue on a normal mission when the CSM is in control and LM is docked and not being used to transit to the moon.  

All of this is patently absurd.  Co-author Jeffrey Kluger, an otherwise good science writer obsoletely failed the readers with this nonsense.  It should also be noted in NASA’s Apollo 13 Mission Report, that none of this was ever mentioned regarding weight throwing off the guidance system.  I am surprised Jim Lovell let this go through, or anything such as this, is written in a serious book on this near fatal disaster.  After all, this book is a reprint of Lost Moon, originally published in the 1994, and this flaw, with a host of others, is in that book as well.  There clearly was enough time to correct this.

And to go even further, it is stated on page 225 that the added weight of the CSM was checked out in the flight simulator by two astronauts to see if it would effect the guidance system.  No problems found.  Of course not!  The very idea that they would be doing a test in a simulator when they have to know the CSM weighs nothing in zero gravity, is astonishing.  



(Also, the LM’s weight is never noted.  It was still weightless?  Of course it was as the CSM had to be.)

(None of this reported CSM weight issue is mentioned in NASA technical reports such as the Apollo 13 Guidance, Navigation, and Control Challenges report,  Apollo 13 Mission Report, and the Apollo 13 Flight Journal transcripts.  Links below.)

Pulling the bio-med sensors
Jim Lovell’s irritation with his biomed sensors and the removal of them made for a fine dramatic effect in the Apollo 13 movie, when actor Tom Hanks in the role of Lovell, ripped his off.  

However, it made for the worst part the book because the incident is falsely presented with an invented conversation between Lovell and mission control that never happened.  As the book describes, after Lovell removed the biomeds he was concerned that he would get a lecture by flight controller Vance Brand who supposedly knew he had done this.  He was not reprimanded but was told to turn off his biomedical transmission switch.  The fact is, this conversation is not recorded in Apollo Flight Journal transcript.  According to the transcript, Lovell was told by flight controller Joseph Kerwin to turn off the biomed switch in the LM to conserve power.   Nothing more.  Also, The Apollo 13 Flight Journal, states that once the CM was powered down, all biomed data from the astronauts was no longer being transmitted to NASA.  Brand, if he had actually talked to Lovell would have known this and would not have been able to detect that Lovell’s sensors had been removed.  Besides, at that point, the astronauts were not plugged in to any ports to upload the data.  However, they might have had wireless data transmission since the sensors were connect to the biomes belt the astronauts wore.  But this is unclear in any NASA documentation available. It is clear that to communicate with ground control, they had to be plugged in via a comm cable.

So, the incident as reported by Lovell and Kruger is false, according to NASA’s official transcript.  It is unknown why they would bear a false witness regarding this incident.  

Even the official report features odd flaws
Just as Lowell’s book features constant references to measurements based on pounds, so does the Apollo 13 Mission Report.  For example, it is stated on page 5-11, that 55 pounds of propellent was used for third stage buster separation. On page 5-13, before the command module was shut down, 14 pounds of water were transferred from the CM to the LM.  Overall, some thirteen pages of the report reference pounds as a measuring system.

I am surprised that in an official report such as this, the use of “pounds” being used as a unit of measurement while in zero gravity.  In zero G, how would they know the exact weight say, of water in a tank?  How did they measure 14 pounds of water in zero G?  There is no gravity, hence no weight.  In my research, I have yet to find an answer for this. I don’t see this questioned anywhere.  I also don’t know why the moon Hoaxer crowd hasn’t jumped on this as evidence of fakery.  After all, the only place pounds could be measured would be on a sound stage in Earth.

Even one of the electronic schematics is wrong, showing an output component with no input listed.  There would be no output without an input.

Question
Why are none of of the reviewers of this book on Amazon catching any of this?  

Will we ever know what happened?
Overall, Apollo 13 reads like a dumbed down account of what happened aboard this doomed ship.  Too much dramatic license is taken to the point of making things up.  It’s an insult to the brave men who nearly lost their lives, and to the superb group of technicians and engineers that helped bring them home safely.

The public which paid for the space program deserves the truth.  


Sources

Apollo 13, Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger
https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-13-Jim-Lovell/dp/0618619585/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Jim+lovell&qid=1552480406&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Apollo 13 transcript, Biomeds

The Apollo 13 Flight Journal

Apollo 13 Mission Report

Apollo 13 Guidance, Navigation, and Control Challenges, John L. Goodman
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090026451.pdf