Apollo landing sites imaged

JoeTheJuggler said:
Ah. I suspect the reason they didn't do that is that imaging the bases wasn't the mission.
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For not being the mission, they got them all (except 12, coming later) and called a press conference pretty quickly after establishing orbit...

I agree it's not the main objective, but just a little PR to pique the public's interest, and they're promising somewhat better pictures later, but it doesn't seem like they're aiming for the best images they could get. And when I see AMURICANS settling for second best, well, it just turns my stomach.
 
bokonon said:
For not being the mission, they got them all (except 12, coming later) and called a press conference pretty quickly after establishing orbit...

I agree it's not the main objective, but just a little PR to pique the public's interest, and they're promising somewhat better pictures later, but it doesn't seem like they're aiming for the best images they could get.
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From the Mission Overview:
LRO will spend at least a year in a low polar orbit approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the lunar surface, while its seven instruments find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology.
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I think if things were changed to get better images of the Apollo sites, it would have compromised the LRO's ability to achieve its mission.

And when I see AMURICANS settling for second best, well, it just turns my stomach.
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:D
Almost makes one long for the Cold War days.
 
temporalillusion said:
I've wondered that too. Maybe there's a point where variations in density below the satellite would interfere enough with the orbit to make it unstable? I.e. it would be possible if the moon were smooth and of uniform density, but it isn't?

ETA: It seems there are mountains 7km tall on the moon, so 30km may just be a margin of error / ability to correct kind of thing then.
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I haven't done the math, so this is speculation, but:

Variations in the moon's gravitational field due to mountains, density variations, etc, will indeed cause some orbital variation. I wouldn't call itunstable, really - it's not like the orbit is critically well-balanced and would rapidly decay if something went wrong, although that always seemed to be an issue on Star Trek. But the orbit would vary some, and those variations might show up as a lower periapsis. If the periapsis was 23 km lower, you'd have to worry about whether it lined up with the wrong mountain and go splat. Since the orbit radius is measured from the center of the moon, 23 km isn't necessarily a huge change.

But (again, haven't done the math) irregularities in the moon's gravitational field are probably a small problem compared to the rest of the solar system. The Earth's gravitational field is still quite significant out there, and the sun's is even bigger (though I'm pretty sure the sun's tidal effects are smaller). The constantly varying earth-sun-moon geometry will perturb the orbit, and probably a lot more than the moon's gravitional anomalies. So you probably want 20+ km of altitude margin at beginning-of-life (BOL) just so you can be confident that you'll still be above the mountains at periapsis at the end of your life.

Certainly, spacecraft in orbit around the earth see their apses drift if no stationkeeping is done.

Also, and probably most important*, as one of the other posters noted, flying low to image Apollo wasn't the main mission

*most important to the mission, not most important to this post.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I think if things were changed to get better images of the Apollo sites, it would have compromised the LRO's ability to achieve its mission.
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I can well believe that 31 miles is a better altitude for surveying potential landing sites than 8 miles. Once they've mapped the whole surface, though, can I still hope they'll take her in for a fly-by of Tranquility Base at 300 feet?
 
Here's a good article to read on cnn.com
Could moon landings have been faked? Some still think so

2 ITEMS IN ARTICLE TO NOTE:

1. See Buzz Aldrin punch Bart Sibrel after Sibrel called him a coward and a liar.


2. Phil Plait is quoted in the last paragraph, although his "JREF President" title isn't mentioned in the article.

Although not mentioned in the cnn.com article, MythBusters did an excellent job explaining the most prominent issues as to why some people think the moon landing was a conspiracy in the
"NASA Moon Landing Hoax," Season 6, Episode 11.
 
I don't know who Bart Sibrel is, but he seems to have been asking for it.

Not that I'm advocating punching out nutball windbags just because they deserve it.
 
bokonon said:
I don't know who Bart Sibrel is, but he seems to have been asking for it.

Not that I'm advocating punching out nutball windbags just because they deserve it.
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I wouldn't necessarily mind if it happened more often though.
 
Bart Sibrel is one of the Moon Hoax "industry" people; he makes money from selling books & videos claiming the landings were a hoax. In this particular case, he was engaging in unarguably stalking behaviour: he'd ambush astronauts, thrust a Bible in their face, and demand that they swear on it that they went to the moon (while recording, of course). If they refused, he used that as ammunition for his claims. At least one astronaut says he did swear on the Bible - but of course Sibrel doesn't admit to that.

If I recall correctly, in Aldrin's case he got him to come to the hotel with a phony excuse, and once Aldrin arrived he was badgering him and blocking his exit.

Local law enforcement refused to lay charges against Aldrin.
 
bokonon said:
I was thinking that, with no atmosphere, there's no reason the LRO couldn't skim along just above the tips of the mountains, and take really detailed photos.

Turns out that the tips of the mountains are about Everest-high, so I'm not sure why they're only planning to get within 30 miles of the surface. Any ideas on why they're not orbiting lower? Surface-to-air missiles?
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I would imagine that the problem with doing that is that the field of view would be so small that it would be very difficult to have full coverage of the moon's surface in a reasonable time, which is one of the mission's objectives. There might be focusing problems from that close to the surface, you'd probably start getting fish-eye distortion from height differences of surface features, and of course, you'd have to avoid any randomly placed alien magnets, the buggers.
 
Random? There's only one, and it's buried under Tyco. We knew that 8 years ago.
 
grmcdorman said:
Bart Sibrel is one of the Moon Hoax "industry" people; he makes money from selling books & videos claiming the landings were a hoax.
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What???? There's money to be made?

That's it, I'm setting up a Moon Landing Hoax chapter in Australia. There must be enough idiots here.
 
lionking said:
What???? There's money to be made?

That's it, I'm setting up a Moon Landing Hoax chapter in Australia. There must be enough idiots here.
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I didn't say it's good money... and if you do set up a chapter, I'll have to come Down Under and slap you silly. :D

(Seriously, there already is one. Look up "Coke bottle" on the moon videos; some sheila believes she saw a Coke bottle on the live moon walk transmission. No validity to it, of course: Clavius: Photo Analysis - kick the bottle :mad:)
 
Mythbusters- Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, interviewed on CNN!

'MythBusters' moon landing 9:26
video added to cnn.com on 20 July 2009

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage (MythBusters) set some of the conspiracy stories straight in this interview:
  • why the U.S. flag looks appears to move
  • why it looked like there were multiple light sources that produced shadows
  • why walking motion had to be in weightlessness, not slowing motion, or using bungee cords

The MythBusters episode the CNN interviewer was referencing was the
"Moon Landing Hoax"
Season 6, Episode 11, originally aired 27 August 2008

Note: I also posted this information in the https://www1.internationalskeptics.com/forum/index.php?threads/148451/ thread in the Conspiracy Theories section. I want to make sure more people see it, so I included it here as well.

One can only hope the CT watch and learn from the MythBusters...

Great work, by the way, Adam and Jamie.
 
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