A post submitted by CGI member ScienceTruth.
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The Winnemucca Institute for Advanced Studies Presents:
A Critique of, and Corrections to: "We Never Went to the Moon"
[ This is Part 2, Yesterday's 'backstory' article, "The Rocketdyne J2 Rocket Engine" was Part 1 , to see the 13 great photos !! in Part 1, click this link - https://cgi.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=23917 ]
Abstract:
** In this week's 'run up' to the grand Celebration Day of the USA's 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which is on Saturday, I'd like to do each day this week, a 'brief history' of something that made America Great !! And today's journey begins in the late 1950's with the scientific development of rocket engines, as this 'fundamental base' was the Real Foundation for the true ability that enabled "Our Going to the Moon", which then began more in earnest in the 1960's !! when John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech on why we should go to the Moon, "not because it is easy, but because it is hard" !!! And in the doing so, we will learn a very great deal about the Real Physics of the Real Universe, and also learn a very great deal about Ourselves !!! which is perhaps even more important !!! (") Prophetic words from Mr. JFK !!!
Yesterday's article was Part 1, here in Part 2 let's begin with some answers to Bill Kaysing's questions in his 'self-published' book "We Never Went to the Moon", as the 7 letters he wrote to corporate and government agencies, copies of the replies to which are included in his Appendix A, in which 6 letters are his requesting information, but all 6 responses provide no information whatsoever !!, and the 7th letter is from his "to be publisher", who replies "I am afraid we disavow it.", meaning they won't publish his book !! and for 'political pressure' reasons I fully suspect !!
So, let's get started ! **
Introduction:
Bill Kaysing's 'pamphlet-style' 87 page 'self-published' book "We Never Went to the Moon", written in the 1970's, has 7 photos of the North American Aviation Division of Rocketdyne's Santa Susanna Test Facility in the hills northwest of Canoga Park, in the San Fernando Valley area of greater Los Angeles, CA. These show the 'test stands' and terrain where 'engine tests' were conducted, tests that were crucial to the successful development of the H1, J2, and F1 liquid fuel rocket engines, that were used in the Moon Program.
It's always been interesting to me, that we learn much more from our 'failures' than we learn from our 'successes' !! As we 'study' our 'failures' to see 'what went wrong', but how often do we 'study' our 'successes' to analyze 'what went right' ?? and then try to learn more from them !! I think you'll agree, "Nope, that don't happen much." As we're much more inclined to 'party' at our success !! than to sit down and 'study' it !! (myself included !)
And, speaking of failures, let me tell you !! there were some 'classic' as well as very 'unexpected' gigantic 'failures' on those Santa Susanna Test Stands !!! So let's take a moment and delve into that for a minute.
In the late 1950's and into the early 1960's there was considerable 'debate' and 'investigation' into what 'fuels' and what 'oxidizers' would be best to use, and which would provide the most 'thrust' for use in rocket engines. Almost everything was tried !! Hydrazine, Fluorine, Tetroxides, Peroxides, Pentoxides, everything they could think of, and many had very toxic 'exhaust products', requiring the 'local atmospheric wind' to be blowing in a direction that would keep those byproducts away from the San Fernando Valley, which was quite densely populated ! A delay of 3 days, cost !, a delay of a week or two, got expensive !! because if you were using Liquid Oxygen for an oxidizer it had to keep it 'cold' ! as the boiling point of LOX was around Minus 300 Fahrenheit ! Thus, it was much more efficient to have "Liquid Air" or "Air Products" deliver the LOX very close to time of use !
The 'fuels' were less of a problem but they were no 'cake walk' either ! The low temp items had to be 'vented', because if they 'warmed' too much, the pressure could cause a 'leak' ! and an 'uncontrolled vent', a leak !, could get serious !! as How do you stop it !! ?? So that was one lesson learned !
Another lesson, but a much more 'unexpected' lesson, unless you were born in 1920 like my Dad was, is the 'air hammer' effect, like when a bathroom sink's water valve is suddenly 'shut off ' !! and a 'pressure wave' is initiated at the sink valve, which then 'travels' away from the suddenly closed valve !! and continues 'backwards up the supply pipe' until it encounters a 90 degree 'bend', upon which it will then 'reflect' back again in the opposite direction !!, traveling all the way back to the originating 'quickly shut sink valve' !!! whereupon it will again 'reflect' back towards that 90 degree bend that it just 'reflected off of ' !!!
Plumbing in the 1920's and 30's often had this problem ! and if you've ever experienced this ! you'll remember the first time it happened !!! I sure did !! It goes 'bang', 'bang', 'bang', and keeps 'banging' until you reopen the sink valve !!! which 'stops' the 'pressure wave reflection action' ! You then, slowly close the water valve ! and it then 'behaves itself ' !, and doesn't do the bang, bang, bang, any more, but which seemed at the time it would continue on forever !!!
I experimented one time ! and let it keep 'banging away', and after 'what seemed like forever', but it was probably only 10 seconds or less, as it was really loud, and very disorientating because of the induced mental stress, so actual elapsed time is difficult to correctly determine, and the longer it went on, it almost seemed like it was getting louder !! and the pipes started to sound like they were beginning to move 'back and forth' inside the walls !!!, and I 'freaked out' and began to worry the pipe was going to 'fail' somewhere and I'd be in 'deep do-do' !! for if the pipes started to leak !! how could that leak be stopped !! especially if it was 'in the wall' !!! so I hurriedly re-opened the sink valve, and then closed it more 'slowly' ! and hoped like heck I hadn't damaged something somewhere ! But did think it would be interesting some time to let it go on much longer, and see if the pipes would actually 'fail' at some point, or would the 'banging' eventually stop on its own ? ( Yes, it's the 'age old question' of, "How long can this go on" ? (which is also the title of a Robert A. Heinlein short story !!)
Modern plumbing has 'solved this problem', sometimes using 4" to 6" vertical 'riser pipes' in the wall near the sink in question as an 'after market' solution.
Rocketdyne had this happen during an engine test one time !!! and the 'reflecting pressure wave' actually caused a pipe 'failure' and a 'leak' ensued !!! and the resulting explosion did some serious damage !! It was a bit of a mystery early on as to 'what exactly' caused the 'pipe failure' to happen, but the 'fast valve shut-off action' was a 'red flag' to Dad ! , when he learned the characteristics of the valve's operations. The investigation then took a turn that discovered what to do 'to solve the problem' for next time ! , design the valves to 'close more slowly' !! Another 'lesson learned' !
I later learned from Dad, after they'd done further investigations into the 'valve action', that when the pressure wave 'reflects', the 'energy' of the wave 'doubles' after each 'reflection' !!! This might be why, during 'my experiment' years earlier, that it sounded like the pipes were beginning to move 'back and forth' inside the wall !! that's because they were !!! beginning to move 'back and forth' inside the wall !!! from the 'energy increase' in the reflecting wave action !! Lol ! The things I never knew until later on !! ( story of my life ! )
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[ ** Now, if you can hear the water pipe 'air hammer' bang bang bang, that means the 'pressure wave' is losing energy !! and if it really is 'moving the pipes back and forth in the wall' it's also 'losing energy' from that action too ! But if the "energy wave reflection doubling effect" is even partially correct, then the 'air hammer' as it was called, has 'energy to burn' and can easily afford to bang bang bang and move the pipes !, and this is WHY the 'effect' keeps going on and on and on, and "won't stop" ! It has enough of an 'energy replacement' in the reflecting wave increase, that it can 'sustain' despite energy losses from 'noise' and induced physical pipe motions !!! So there 'is something' to the idea of the 'energy wave is increasing' during each 'reflection' !
And this may have some relation to how a Planetary Nebula or an SGZ Nebula can 'give off ' so much Energy !!! This 'air hammer' "water-pipe-effect-action" may be a very important and excellent clue to use in our 'theoretical investigation' into how do PNe and SGZ's give off "so much Energy" !! and where is that Energy coming from !!! ** ]
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Another Test Stand Event, and this time the fuel was Fluorine !! which is a 'very active' element !! This time an extremely small 'leak' occurred at a 'junction' where one 'fitting' screwed onto another 'fitting', like an elbow onto a straight length of pipe, and that tiny, tiny leak around the threads, allowed the extremely active Fluorine liquid to 'erode' the metal of the pipe so fast, that it very rapidly enlarged the tiny leak !!! into a catastrophic leak !!! The Fluorine then ignited from something 'hot' and another 'big expensive failure' ensued !! This, another somewhat different, but very necessary lesson, that was learned this time !!
I think that pretty much covers the 'failures' that I know about, up on 'the Hill' as 'the guys' used to refer to the Santa Susanna Test Facility.
One last story, Dad bought a new 1962 VW bug, and he and 3 of 'the guys' would go out to Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. He liked those trips ! but never said why they went out to Edwards, as teenage boys are so trustworthy ! Lol ! and he did 5 or 6 of those trips as I remember ! Later, in 1996 (I think it was) Edwards had an "Open House" and as my neighbor at the time had worked for Lockheed, but was now retired from there, he told me about the Open House, and I went out there !! It was a bit of a 'windy day' and at one point 'we' the crowd and I, sought shelter in the open doorway of one of the big 'hanger buildings', and the F117A stealth fighter flew past, and very slowly too !! as it was flying into the wind !! And later, as the wind 'picked up again', I and a lot of others sought shelter in a B-52 bomber that was 'open for a walk thru' by the public !! and on being 'inside' with a totally packed cargo bay space full of people, and the wind was 'rocking' the plane a bit, and the wing was moving up and down a bit, it felt like we were 'flying' !! and I was imagining 'us all' were 'escaping' from Vietnam ! in this totally packed full of people B-52 cargo bay, that was so full you couldn't squeeze in another person ! That was quite a day ! And as an Asian couple was standing next to me, it really brought to life that illusion ! and maybe for them too when our eyes met for a moment !
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So, let's return to almost yester-year, and back to Bill Kaysing's book "We Never Went To The Moon", as written in the 1970's.
Bill makes numerous 'errors' in his analysis of photos 'taken of Space', from and on the Moon, which definitely need correcting !!
The astronauts going to the Moon used 'film' cameras, not 'digital' cameras like we use today, and as such, actual 'film' has a 'speed' coefficient ! Star light from stars in the sky, is very 'weak' or low energy, and as such if the 'film speed' they used wasn't 'fast enough' the film would NOT record the 'star in the sky', because it didn't have enough 'time' for the 'energy' of the star light to 'activate' the film emulsion to 'record' it !! This was 'compounded' by the very bright Lunar surface material ! in that the Lunar surface was so bright the film camera had to use a 'fast shutter speed' so as to not 'overexpose' the film in the camera !! This 'fast shutter speed' disallowed the film to record the 'weak energy' of the 'stars in the sky' !!! and is the reason why !! the stars in the sky in all of the photos taken 'on the Moon' or from the 'spacecraft looking out the window' for example, the stars do NOT show up in the pictures !!! The film was 'too slow' and the shutter speed 'too fast' for the stars in the sky to be 'recorded' by the film emulsion !!!
In Chapter 3, page 19 thru 25, Bill questions why the stars in the sky don't show up in any of the photos, and the above explanation is what I believe is the answer as to why the stars do not show in the photos ! It's because the camera used too fast of a shutter speed, and the film had too slow of a 'speed rating', for the film emulsion to be activated and record the star light in the amount of time that it was open for exposure !
Page 27, and 52 to 60, discuss 'limited access to' areas where 'sets' could have been constructed to 'fake' the Moon surface, and how 'sets' were constructed that 'look like the Lunar surface' and could be used 'to fake' photos of astronauts 'on the Moon'.
I would say, that yes, they did construct Lunar surface 'sets' and they did so, so that the astronauts wouldn't be 'doing this' for 'the very first time' !!! This is so they could develop some kind of 'muscle memory' of 'doing this before' !! and that would lower their 'stress level' !!! Also, it has been 'standard practice' in the military etc, to do 'practice runs' so the men engaged in the 'operation' aren't "doing this for the very first time" !!! If you have 'done this before' you have a confidence that you can do it again ! And going to the Moon would be a really 'foreign experience' !!! So you'd want to 'practice' all you can !! and multiple times too ! of 'every type of encounter' of a 'new situation' you can plan for !!! And it would be next to 'criminal' NOT to build 'sets' and have the astronauts 'practice' all they could, Before They Go To The Moon !!! So I have NO PROBLEM with the 'building of sets' that look like the Lunar surface, and would 'expect' this to be done !! , so as to ensure a higher degree of Mission Success !!!
I do remember some TV program talking about how General Motors gave 'free of charge' a Corvette car to every astronaut in the Space Program !!! as a 'perk' for being in the program !! And being in the Space Program as an astronaut has 'very high risk', and it also had the 'benefit' of promoting GM's Corvette car !! and the astronauts were also the 'type' of guys who loved 'fast cars' and 'status cars' !!! so it was a real win-win for everyone !! and a very smart move by GM !!
On Page 23, Bill questions why the 'face plate' on the spacesuit of the man in the photo has a strong 'reflection' despite the 'light source', being indicated by the shadow of himself, as being 'behind him'. I would say the Lunar surface has a very high reflective index !! Albedo is the word they use. The Lunar Surface Albedo is so high that it 'illuminates' all over the place, and that's why the faceplate has the 'picture' reflected in it, that it does !
Bill also erroneously states, "Exposure to the sun on the moon produces the temperature of molten lead plus. In the shadow, temperatures go to virtually absolute zero. No indication of this extreme contrast is shown in this picture."
This is because the temperature on the Lunar surface in full Sunlight is in the plus 200F to 300F range, and in the shadows it's in the minus 200F to 250F range. Molten lead !! no way !! and that's so very wrong it should be embarrassing to Bill, unless someone 'changed the description' at the "printer's" !!! as a way to cast Bill in the light of being 'a scientific moron' !!! which has been done to others !! and Bill probably didn't 'fully read' his "self-published book" when he got it back from the printer !! and thus missed this attempt to ruin his 'reputation' by an easily done, and easily overlooked, 'change' in the text !!! CIA has been caught doing this very type of thing to others they despise !!!
Also, Lunar "dust" !! it falls very fast on the Moon, well at 1/6th the gravity of Earth, it's slower ! but, with virtually No Atmosphere at all, any 'dust' falls with near zero resistance !! and it will NOT 'hang' in the atmosphere like here on Earth, because there is NO Atmosphere on the Moon !! thus No Dust on the faceplate !! and the Moon is "Not Dusty" in general, despite the Lunar surface being "very dusty" !!! any 'dust' gently settles directly down and to the Lunar surface and stays there ! because there is No Wind on the Moon !! because there is No Atmosphere on the Moon !! So it is dusty, and it is not dusty, at the same time ! [ Kind of 'Zen Quantum Theory' ! , like Schrödinger's Cat ! ]
Another complaint by Bill is; Why do the photos show "next to no disturbance at all" of the Lunar surface directly under the LEM lander, or any of the other spacecraft that have obviously 'landed' on the Moon ! ? The Moon's gravity is 1/6th of Earth's ! and the LEM and other 'landed' items, have a very low 'weight' to begin with !! So, they don't need to have much 'thrust' to support them in the Moon's gravity field, nor to 'slow them down' as they 'touch down' !! And yes, the exhaust from 'landing' will blow the Lunar 'dust' away from under the exhaust 'plume', but !! the exhaust 'blast' is very 'weak' !! as a low 'throttle' is only needed to slow the "low weight to begin with" LEM etc, and it's a 'short blast' anyway !! So I'd say, yes, some Lunar soil is 'blown away', but it's such as small amount, and the exhaust 'blast' is so 'weak' or 'low' that not that much Lunar soil is 'displaced' !!! and it can then easily look like no exhaust blast happened there !!! as it really didn't ! it was a very 'weak' blast at most ! and didn't move that much material ! Certainly not like here on Earth !! where the vehicle weight is 6 times more, and the exhaust 'blast' is commensurately stronger !! and for a much longer time too !! Bill Kaysing wasn't a 'scientist' in terms of 'mind set' nor 'training', so it's understandable how he might make mistakes like these, but it's sad if he really did make these mistakes.
Oh, one last item, in Dad's work on investigating what fuels and oxidizers would be best for 'thrust' energy and 'safety', he, after a while, found that Oxygen and Hydrogen produce the 'biggest bang' per pound of propellants of all the combinations he and others studied !!! and they produce the 'cleanest' exhaust products too !!! Water to be exact !!! The only problem was; as the Arthur D. Little 'research report' stated, "The United States total national industrial production capacity for Liquid Hydrogen in 1960, was 6 gallon a month." !!! which wasn't enough to even do a test run of an engine !! So, we had to wait for production capacity to be constructed and 'ramped-up' !! and that took a couple of years !
" Rocketdyne launched the development of the J-2 with an analytical computer model that simulated engine operations and aided in establishing design configurations. The model was supported by a full-sized mockup which was used throughout development to judge the positioning of the engine's components. The first experimental component, the engine's injector, was produced within two months of the contract being awarded, and testing of the engine's components began at Rocketdyne's Santa Susanna Field Laboratory in November 1960. Other test facilities, including a vacuum chamber and full-size engine test stand, were used during the development, with the engine's turbopumps entering testing in November 1961, the ignition system in early 1962, and the first prototype engine running a complete 250-second test run in October 1962. In addition to flight hardware, five engine simulators were also used during the development process, assisting in the design of the engine's electrical and mechanical systems. Contracts were signed between NASA and Rocketdyne in the summer of 1962, requiring 55 J-2 engines to be produced to support the final designs for the Saturn rockets, which required five engines for each S-II second stage of the Saturn V and one engine for each S-IVB Saturn IB and Saturn V third stage." [1]
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[1] Roger E. Bilstein (1996). "Unconventional Cryogenics: RL-10 and J-2". Stages to Saturn: A technological history of the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicles. The NASA History Series. NASA. ISBN 978-0-16-048909-9.
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