Moon Hoax. what do you think?

[Rade]

Can someone that has decided humans did not land on the moon, explain to me how in 1994, this article appeared in the journal Science, and it includes data from French scientists that had been recording laser ranging measurements from reflectors left on the moon by numerous Apollo landings over a 20 year period ?

 

http://www.physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/doc/Dickey.pdf

 

I mean, are you now claiming that France, Germany, Australia governments also were involved in this fake Apollo program since they all have been conducting laser ranging experiments on Apollo reflectors. Are you claiming that scientists not connected to NASA have continued to record false data from the early 1970's and knowingly submit false laser data for publication ? Are you claiming that the peer reviewers for the journal Science are also involved in this cover-up, or not intelligent enough to know what they review are false data--being somehow transmitted by NASA on the earth ?

 

From my perspective, 100% of the claims I have read on this forum that the Apollo missions did not occur are thus falsified (both logically and scientifically) by this single 1994 publication.

[JMJones0424]

Don't forget, India must now be included as a co-conspirator as well. Their first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, among many other accomplishments, managed to map the Apollo sites.

[Rade]

Don't forget, India must now be included as a co-conspirator as well.

Yes, thank you. But, why do I have the nagging feeling that someone will find conclusive evidence of a can of tomato soup in Figure 1 from the 1994 Science paper cited above :shrug:

[Buffy]

Until standard embeddable operating systems came along, every black box system was custom. People reused whatever code was lying around from the last project and modified it to provide the "operating system" and since the hardware was all hand built, the "complier" was too, and you did successive refinement to get it right.

Of course you do refinement until you get it right, but the code which is provided in the project is supposed to be working, and it isn't.

Well you were arguing that it *could not* work because of the *approach*, and now you're just avoiding the fact that your point has been disproven. How disingenuous.

 

Now as to "supposed to be working and it isn't": care to provide any proof that it does not? You're basing this on the simulators that you dismissed earlier in the thread as "fakes"? Or your perfect, expert's analysis of the source code along with your complete knowledge of both the actual hardware and the compiler tools?

Have you ever heard of Lisp? Are you not aware that in the days when Assembler ruled that virtually every program had self-modifying code *precisely* because of memory limits?

Yes I have heard of Lisp, but that doesn't excuse the errors I have seen; it's not minor errors, it's not code which is to be completed, it's very important errors, even with deadlock situations.

No, actually you did not point out any *actual* deadlock situations, you only described a theoretical issue of a simple computer architecture making it possible to reach a deadlock situation. You did not point out specific places in the code where program code could possibly induce one. I was pointing out the actual and common techniques used to deal with your theoretical objection and you've completely ignored it.

 

Again, you're not even trying to address the issues I've presented and devolved into a tedious and unsupported rambling about "there are errors in the code."

..and you program around it. Do you know how many of these systems had instruction manuals with pages that ended with "...and if that happens, hit the reset button?"

Oh come one, you hit the reset button, and the program locks again because it enters the same deadlock situation; if you keep resetting the computer, I doubt it will be any use.

In a system with real-time inputs? Shirley, you jest.

 

Such systems are almost entirely non-deterministic, and error conditions are often caused by one-time glitches sensor input. If you "doubt it would be of any use" then why are they so common?

 

From here it again does not sound like you have any real-world experience with such systems in spite of your claims to the contrary:

I know what dealing with the real world means, that's what I'm doing all day long in my job. I have even worked on an embarked missile guiding program in the seventies, and on helipcoter stabilization, so I know what dealing with the real world means, but that's not what I see in the AGC.

Cool! Please let me know what helicopter that was....

When an interrupt service routine is triggered, not only the program counter is saved, which is a normal operation, but furthermore the instruction which was about to be executed is also saved into a special register "BRUPT", and this is not normal at all!

Why? Because this instruction will anyway be executed upon return of the interrupt routine, so why save it? It's useless and takes CPU cycles for nothing; it doesn't make any sense.

...and this is why I was trying to explain to you what self-modifying code was above, and why it becomes obvious that you have no grasp of this programming concept since you passed right over it without any hint that you understood.

 

This is perfectly logical if you expect the programmer to possibly modify code on the fly, because you may want to optionally override the modification (which by the way is a technique for building recursion without a stack).

 

Again if you had any real familiarity of the way it was done back in the old days, you'd understand this.

The "DV" instruction divides the pair of CPU registers A and L by a data of which the memory address is given on 12 bits.

The problem with this instruction is that it works according two different modes (divide the pair A&L by a single precision value or by a "double length 1s complement integer" pointed to by the memory location), but absolutely nothing tells the CPU what mode to use, since there is just the instruction and the memory location and no additional information.

The CPU must be extralucid to determine what mode to use!

That's because there's no need to tell the CPU anything. If you go back and read the documentation you include on your own website, its an issue of interpretation by the programmer: the nature of the way the instruction works turns out to be exactly the same bits.

the "RAND" instruction is said to logically bitwise ANDs the contents of an I/O channel into the accumulator.

Other CPUs only read or write I/O channels, even the most modern ones; the Apollo CPU is the only one in the world since the processor has existed which can modify an I/O channel in the same instruction that reads it!

Not bad for a CPU which is said to be limited in possibilities.

So what? When memory is at a premium, adding a frequently used instruction that does two things in one word can save critical space. And since this is I/O in a critical real-time system, saving an instruction cycle or two is also a huge win.

 

All this is obvious, and yet you can't appreciate why it's logical to do this?

 

The "DTCB" instruction is said to perform a jump and switch both fixed and erasable banks.

This is perfectly ridculous, this instruction has a so limited use that it is practically impossible to use; they rather should have implemented a more practical instruction instead, and many are missing!

Based on what? That that's what they have in an i7? Who are you to say that this is useless, when you have shown in your previous posts that you don't even understand how banked memory was used?

 

In fact, programs that were built in banked memory systems often grouped code and data into the same bank for performance reasons. In the case of the AGC, since the program was in fixed memory, it made sense to bank that and do the switch of both the data and fixed banks in one step, again, because it saved a word and a cycle or two.

 

This is the same logic and it actually makes a lot of sense....unless you don't have any idea of what they were trying to do.

 

The "TS" instruction transfers the accumulator to a data memory; if we say just that, this instruction is normal; but it can also destroy the contents the accumulator in some conditions.

That restricts considerably the use of this instruction, and many instructions of the AGC are in this case.

Sure it "restricts" it, but not adding the logic to the CPU to always maintain or clear it probably saved a large number of chips. In the manual under the DV instruction we were just discussing, having the divisor less than the dividend results in "total nonsense". Sure in *theory* that's not a good thing, but it was not worth the time or hardware to do anything about it.

 

Again, you're arguing this point entirely from a theoretical standpoint without any appreciation of the hardware limitations imposed and the time pressures of meeting unreasonable deadlines (and if you think deadlines are ever reasonable in programming or engineering, that says much about your experience...or lack thereof).

 

There also are instructions which are quoted in the documentation, but without specifying what they do (such as STCALL); it's the first time I see this in a CPU documentation.

You've seriously never known of any hardware to have undocumented instructions? Don't you see from the documentation that much of the design was done on the fly because it's a single purpose black box?

the instruction "STORE" probably stores something into the specified address; I say "probably" because what it does is not explicitly specified.

They say that 'X' is either an unswitched erasable address or in the current erasable bank.

if it is in the unswitched erasable bank, it is provided as such in the instruction word.

If it is in the current erasable bank, it is computed as: 0400 * Erasable BankNumber + (X-1400)

This is where it becomes comical: Why provide the number of the erasable bank in the formula, since it can only be the one of the current erasable bank and no other one?

And what happens if in the formula another number of erasable bank is used instead (which is normally forbidden)? How will the instruction behave?

This is totally illogical!

Again you continue to base this claim of "illogic" based purely on a theoretical view of how you think it "ought" to work. As with many of the other AGC instructions, context is everything, and making the programmer do some mental gymnastics to save memory or time was always above everything else.

 

Oddly enough, many of your arguments seem to be built on the notion that having so few instructions made it "illogical" which of course shows no appreciation of the CISC vs. RISC debate in CPU design. Moreover, as Assembly Language has totally disappeared, instruction sets have ironically become even more "illogical" because something one of my professors at Berkeley used to say has come to pass: "Compiler writers should be the ones who define the instruction sets of CPUs...."

 

Before big CPUs and high-level languages really came to the fore of black box development, the kinds of things you see in the AGC were commonplace. You speak as if you have no appreciation of these issues at all, and you're unwilling or possibly unable to discuss this in any rational manner because of that.

 

You're welcome to post more here on this topic--although I notice you've copied and pasted a good chunk of the so-called "objections" you have on your web site--but by continuing to avoid the counter-arguments I've posted here, you do little to support your position or get anyone to take you seriously.

 

But please do: I *so* look forward to your incisive critique of the uselessness of the NOOP instruction....

And you want me to believe that this operating system is normal? No way!

I want to make this clear: I have no desire to convince *you* that you're incorrect about your arguments, as I believe that to be both practically impossible and a waste of my time. My posts here are for everyone *else* who may read this to demonstrate the utter vacuousness of your "proof."

 

An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy, :shrug:

Buffy

[BuzzL]

Moderation note:This post was moved from a new thread to this one, because it is about the same subject

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfZq0lN_odg&feature=related

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGjmTxgOxbM&feature=related

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndbFw6z_8Tk&feature=related

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvZ2xWy6iG4&feature=related

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKBNHtylkHI

[dduckwessel]

This is a really good thread as I have personally wondered about the legitimacy of a moon landing and I know many others have as well.

 

The convincing proof in my estimation (and for what it's worth) was mentioned on 'The Bing Bang Theory' television show where the characters pinged the Apollo debris on the moon with a laser (as I understand it, such a beam would only deflect off metal) - the information which was no doubt got from the same source as Rade posted (#52).

 

I'm curious though! According to some sources, passing through the Van Allen Belt should have killed the astronauts as some suggest they were inadequately shielded from the radiation! They very obviously did not die so then is the Van Allen Belt as formidable as some people believe?

[CraigD]

The convincing proof in my estimation (and for what it's worth) was mentioned on 'The Bing Bang Theory' television show where the characters pinged the Apollo debris on the moon with a laser (as I understand it, such a beam would only deflect off metal) - the information which was no doubt got from the same source as Rade posted (#52).

The ongoing LLR experiment you describe, Dduck, relies not on Apollo debris, but on several mechanically simple but purposefully built and placed radar reflector panels, known as LLRRs. Even bouncing off of these, specialized observatories with powerful transmitters and large collectors are needed to detect the return signal – everyday vehicle and fixed radars can’t.

 

The moon itself, though less reflective to radio than Even with purpose-built targets, is big, so radar ranging of the moon was possible nearly a decade before Apollo 11 put a reflector on its surface. Such ranging, however, reflecting from a large area of the moon’s spherical surface, isn’t very accurate. The LLRRs placed by the Apollo missions, being tiny compared to the Moon’s whole surface, allows the awesomely high accuracy that’s let us discover, for example, that the Moon-Earth distance is increasing by 0.038 m/year

 

I too consider the LLRR returns confirmation that the Apollo moon landings were real, not hoaxes. Moon landing hoax proponents, though, tend to argue with their usual tenacity that the LLR experiments themselves are fabrications (and the people who do them, then, liars), or that the LLRRs were placed on the Moon by unmanned vehicles.

 

I'm curious though! According to some sources, passing through the Van Allen Belt should have killed the astronauts as some suggest they were inadequately shielded from the radiation! They very obviously did not die so then is the Van Allen Belt as formidable as some people believe?

You’ve put it about right, I think – the Van Allen Belts (there’re 2, an inner and an outer) are not as lethal as some people believe.

 

Still, they’ve not, especially the smaller inner belt which has most of the highest energy protons, healthy places for humans or machines, so putting manned or unmanned spacecraft in them for prolonged periods is to be avoided. There’ve even been suggestions or artificially draining them of charged particles to make them safer for humans and machines (see the wikipedia link above for more) – but so far the only artificial fiddling with them was the 1962 Starfish Prime nuclear weapon test, which made them more intense (and somewhat misshapened) for 5 years of so.

[Daddyo930]

Here are some facts.

The Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System

Catalogue of LDE flares (January 1969 - March 1986) differential rotation of the Sun during the period 1921-1971

The catalogue of LDE flares contains data on 646 flares observed in the 20th and on 1029 flares observed in the 21st cycle of solar activity. LDE flares constitute an important subgroup of two-ribbon flares. They are characterized by a strong and long-lasting process of magnetic field reconnection, they produced accelerated protons which propagate into interplanetary space and generate SID's by enhanced shortwave emission

According to this data, apollo 11 was on the moon during a solar proton event. M3 and X5 class solar proton event that caused sudden ionospheric disturbance in the 3+. According to NASA, apollo 11 took of November 14, 1969. On November 17, 18 and 19th there were solar proton events.

 

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most luminous electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several minutes, although a typical burst lasts 20–40 seconds. The initial burst is usually followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitted at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, micro and radio).

 

Most observed GRBs are believed to consist of a narrow beam of intense radiation released during a supernova event, as a rapidly rotating, high-mass star collapses to form a neutron star, quark star, or black hole. A subclass of GRBs (the "short" bursts) appear to originate from a different process, possibly the merger of binary neutron stars.

 

The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away from Earth, implying that the explosions are both extremely energetic (a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime) and extremely rare (a few per galaxy per million years[1]). All observed GRBs have originated from outside the Milky Way galaxy, although a related class of phenomena, soft gamma repeater flares, are associated with magnetars within the Milky Way. It has been hypothesized that a gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, pointing directly towards the Earth, could cause a mass extinction event.

This is a picture of gamma ray burst detected by the BATSE satellite. 2704 in 8 years from one satellite.

Gamma ray bursts and Magnetars are not subject to the inverse square law.

Nowhere in the diagram or specifications for the apollo spacecraft do I see shielding designed to protect against gamma ray bursts, galactic cosmic rays or solar proton events.

[maddog]

I have made a complete web page explaining what's weird with the operating system, and why the program can't work.

Here are some tips: Why restrict the addressing to 12 bits, and make memory bank switching, when memory addressing could perfectly have been made on 16 bits, without the need of using memory bank switching which is extremely penalyzing and doesn't simplify hardware, far from it.

There are some weird instructions, almost impossible to use, whereas some basic instructions are missing.

For example to make a conditional jump, there is one instruction testing the accumulator, which only does a jum if accululator is zero; this is totally unsifficent, all other processors have a complete set of conditional jump instruction;

 

You are mixing technologies. The space race to the moon was in the sixties. This was before Intel, before the microprocessor. So 16bit mp didn't even exist (nor did 8-bit). Memory bank switching was a sever penalty in the sixties. This was done with TTL normal but for radiation hardened space you had to use wire circuits as Integrated circuits then could not well survive space environment. The "computer" then (12-bit) was a circuit board. Some concessions would have to be made. Having only one kind of jump (one that also compares) makes the instruction table a lot simpler.

 

... there is another instruction, CCS, which can test the sign of a data memory, but this instruction destroy the contents of the accumulator by computing siomething weird in it which can hardly have a practical use.

Never a normal conceptor of CPU would have made it this way, it makes no sense at all.

 

Not true at all. If what was in the Accumulator was Only needed for the test, then who cares. Early chip concept did this a lot.

 

And hardware pulses never take CPU cycles, the concept of "unprogrammed sequences" triggered by hardware pulses is a complete inepty; it would be a complete waste of time for a CPU to count hardware pulses, it's always an electronic counter which does it.

There are plenty of other points, but it would be too long to list them here.

Not when this was before such hardware counters. All of your complaints are of 80's era of computing and engineering. So you are only grabbing straws (one of the virtual variety) to form conclusions to defend a theory/conspiracy that is fallacious. Only you DON'T see that. Sad. <_<

 

maddog

[paigetheoracle]

I think that what possibly is true, is that some photos may have been taken on Earth because the ones on the Moon didn't look very good. I think the authorities would be loathed to disclose that because you would then have people jump on the band wagon, claiming that this was proof it was all faked and we never went anywhere.

[jab2]

I was just sent a link to photos taken by the LROC of the moon landings sites by a friend. Wonder what the denial explanations to this will be.

[CraigD]

I was just sent a link to photos taken by the LROC of the moon landings sites by a friend. Wonder what the denial explanations to this will be.

You need only read the comments on a page like this 21 Oct 2011 Space.com story for a sample of what the predictable manned Moon landing deniers’ responses, the most common of which is that the LRO images were faked – “photoshopped” is how some put it.

 

One on that page I hadn’t heard is funny enough to quote:

So NASA is going to continue with the hoax. The thing they say that landed on the moon appears to be a Granny Clampett, Goober, concoction. It would not pass a simple safety inspection on earth, yet NASA says it went to the moon.

Apparently some deniers are of the impression that the Apollo program could not have involved much risk to its astronauts, or perhaps that some consumer protection agency was required to test and approve its vehicles before they could be used.

 

I long ago gave up on arguing with MMLDers, as I concluded that nothing – not even flying them to the Moon and letting them touch an Apollo descent stage and rover – can convince most of them to change their minds on the subject, because even such evidence could be faked. These folk are, in my experience, a silly and mentally pathological bunch.

 

When I saw the latest news stories about these images, and thought “why is this news? I saw these images years ago”. This NASA webpage explains, and has a cool interactive “wipe” graphic, showing the improved resolution of the recently released images.

 

Note that none of the optics or electronics on the LRO have been improved. In Sep 2011, a maneuver was made to change it from its original nearly circular 50 km altitude polar orbit to an elliptical one with a min altitude of about 21 km. Though various sources, such as wikipedia, stating that the LRO “will be transitioned into a fuel-conserving elliptical orbit for the remainder of the mission”, this NASA press release says that it was returned to its circular orbit 6 Sep 2011.

 

I wonder how high the image resolution could be gotten if its orbit were dropped yet further?

 

My favorite image is of the Apollo 17 (the last one) site:

I hadn’t expected rover wheel tracks to be as visible as they are, and wish I had a wider image so I could follow them as far as they lead.