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Nasa did leave retroreflectors (link is external) on the moon that we can bounce lasers off of.
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Yeah, i always brought up the laser reflector experiments performed as a graduate level university exercise in instrumentation… his response? “oh… a computer screen SAYS it detected it… that doesnt prove anything!”
i showed him, i dont remember, maybe it was hubble or another orbiting telescope? had pictures of either the trail of moon footprints, or, maybe it was the lunar lander it could photograph… once again? he explained it as “doctored photos”.
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it all starts to resemble the “flat earth” conversations, lol… the “best” i get out of him? is that we “probably” made it to the moon “much later”, and that we faked the original one.
among his (many) “arguments) is that the radiation is so HUGE, that the spacesuits should enable people to walk into ”nuclear reactors”… when i argue with him? his accusation is that “i dont know anything about radiation belts”. (which is true)… B-U-T… i told him that i TEND to think that “doctor Van Allen HIMSELF would be trusted, since they NAMED the vanallen radiation belts after him”, and proceeded to show him youtube videos of Dr. Van Allen explaining how the belts and the moon shot worked…
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people watch these conspiracy “documentaries” and think they have all this “highly technical knowledge” about shadows and light and stuff… and they really dont.
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it wouldnt be HALF as bad? but… the guy i am talking about? hes OTHERWISE fairly well educated, level headed… its out of character for him to fall wholeheartedly into stuff like this… its weird and out of character.
Simple. Dust follows a ballistic trajectory in the absence of an atmosphere.
As Heinlein described it, a little explosive at the bottom of a tube filled with finely powdered black pigment throws the powder through a stencil at the top of the tube — it goes out, and falls back onto the face of the Moon ….
What Space X is doing is truly incredible. I hope they make it to mars.
Its amazing level of technology that we take for granted to ease our everyday lives. But the truth is we still don’t understand what makes gravity work, what makes our conscience minds tick or even what’s lurking at the bottom of our oceans.
That’s a very different rocket, the video you link there is Bezos’s “Blue Origin” — a rocket that pops up and back down.
It carries far more fuel for the payload, because it doesn’t use any fuel to attain orbit, sideways, around the planet.
So it doesn’t have to slow down after inserting a satellite into orbit at high speed — no braking, no heat problems.
That’s why Bezos’s “Blue Origin” can hover — it’s a big tank full of fuel, with lots to spare — it’s not hot, and it’s not fast.
Neat idea for “space tourist” use. I don’t know if they have any path toward actually putting something into orbit.
This is why we have politics, irrationally denying anything they don’t want to hear, making up stuff to fit preconceived conclusions and finally racism/discrimination (the last one is not always related to conspiracy type theory thinking, its just an extra “bonus”).
1+ Hank.
I was resisting the urge to comment on Blue Origin.
I did have respect for Blue Origin, right up until Bezos tweeted Congrats “Welcome to the club!”. Twitter promptly tore into him. Of course I’m sure Musk is no sweetheart either. But SpaceX is doing real launches, putting commercial payloads into GTO orbit, resupplying the international space station, all while seriously undercutting other launch companies. SpaceX is in a whole other league.
There is a what-if.xkcd on reaching space vs actually achieving orbit.
If they reach the point they have launch barges that can move around carrying the rocket to the ideal spot to launch, they’ll have an added business opportunity, because the closer to the equator you launch, the cheaper it is to get the satellite into geosyncronous orbit.
I was wondering if EM would buy the surplus aircraft carrier Britan was getting rid of a few weeks ago, but apparently no.
And successful so far — satellite on its way to its low Earth orbit, then transfer orbit to geosync.
And successful landing return of the first stage to the drone ship
The problem with these people who don’t believe we landed on the moon or in evolution or what have you is that they are often fairly intelligent but not very educated. Dumb people just drink their beer and watch sports and don’t get involved in topics like that. They just have no interest. The intelligent but ignorant people are more dangerous. They sound convincing to most people and are given equal time to discuss their opinions with people who actually know what they are talking about.
