The moon is a good place. Definitely deserves a short visit.
Neil Armstrong
Almost half a century has passed since the flights of the Apollo spacecraft, but the debate about whether the Americans were on the moon does not subside, but becomes more and more fierce. The piquancy of the situation is that the supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" theory are trying to challenge not real historical events, but his own, vague and error-ridden idea of them.
Lunar epic
Facts first. On May 25, 1961, six weeks after Yuri Gagarin's triumphant flight, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech to the Senate and House of Representatives in which he promised that before the end of the decade, an American would land on the moon. Having suffered a defeat at the first stage of the space "race", the United States set out not only to catch up, but also to overtake the Soviet Union.
The main reason for the backlog at that time was that the Americans underestimated the importance of heavy ballistic missiles. Like their Soviet colleagues, American experts studied the experience of German engineers who built the A-4 (V-2) missiles during the war, but did not give these projects serious development, believing that under conditions global war long-range bombers will suffice. Of course, the Wernher von Braun team, taken out of Germany, continued to create ballistic missiles in the interests of the army, but they were unsuitable for space flights. When the Redstone rocket, the successor to the German A-4s, was modified to launch the first American spacecraft, the Mercury, it could only lift it to suborbital altitude.
Nevertheless, resources were found in the United States, so American designers quickly created the necessary “line” of carriers: from Titan-2, which launched the two-seat Gemini maneuvering ship, to Saturn-5, capable of sending the three-seat Apollo spacecraft » to the moon.
redstone 
Saturn-1B 
Saturn-5 
Titan-2
Of course, before sending expeditions, it was necessary to carry out colossal work. Spacecraft of the Lunar Orbiter series carried out detailed mapping of the nearest celestial body - with their help, it was possible to identify and study suitable landing sites. The Surveyor series landers made soft landings and transmitted beautiful images of the surrounding area.
The Lunar Orbiter spacecraft carefully mapped the moon, determining the places of future landings of astronauts
The Surveyor spacecraft studied the Moon directly on its surface; parts of the Surveyor-3 apparatus were taken and delivered to Earth by the crew of Apollo 12
In parallel, the Gemini program developed. After unmanned launches, on March 23, 1965, the Gemini 3 spacecraft was launched, which maneuvered, changing the speed and inclination of the orbit, which at that time was an unprecedented achievement. Soon the Gemini 4 flew, on which Edward White made the first spacewalk for Americans. The ship worked in orbit for four days, testing orientation systems for the Apollo program. On Gemini 5, which launched on August 21, 1965, electrochemical generators and a radar designed for docking were tested. In addition, the crew set a record for the duration of their stay in space - almost eight days (the Soviet cosmonauts managed to break it only in June 1970). By the way, during the flight of "Gemini-5" the Americans for the first time encountered the negative consequences of weightlessness - the weakening of the musculoskeletal system. Therefore, measures were developed to prevent such effects: a special diet, drug therapy and a series of physical exercises.
In December 1965, the Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 ships approached each other, simulating a docking. Moreover, the crew of the second ship spent more than thirteen days in orbit (that is, the total time of the lunar expedition), proving that the measures taken to maintain physical fitness are quite effective during such a long flight. On the Gemini-8, Gemini-9 and Gemini-10 ships, they practiced the docking procedure (by the way, Neil Armstrong was the commander of the Gemini-8). On Gemini 11 in September 1966, they tested the possibility of an emergency launch from the Moon, as well as a flight through the Earth's radiation belts (the ship rose to a record height of 1369 km). On Gemini 12, the astronauts tried out a series of manipulations in outer space.
During the flight of the Gemini 12, astronaut Buzz Aldrin proved the possibility of complex manipulations in outer space.
At the same time, the designers were preparing for testing the "intermediate" two-stage Saturn-1 rocket. During her first launch on October 27, 1961, she surpassed in thrust the Vostok rocket, on which Soviet cosmonauts flew. It was assumed that the same rocket would launch the first Apollo 1 spacecraft into space, but on January 27, 1967, a fire broke out at the launch complex, in which the crew of the ship died, and many plans had to be revised.
In November 1967, tests began on the huge three-stage Saturn-5 rocket. During the first flight, she lifted the command and service module of Apollo 4 into orbit with a mock-up of the lunar module. In January 1968, the Apollo 5 lunar module was tested in orbit, and the unmanned Apollo 6 went there in April. The last launch due to a failure of the second stage almost ended in disaster, but the rocket pulled the ship out, demonstrating good "survivability".
On October 11, 1968, the Saturn-1B rocket launched the command and service module of the Apollo 7 spacecraft with the crew into orbit. For ten days, the astronauts tested the ship, carrying out complex maneuvers. Theoretically, "Apollo" was ready for the expedition, but the lunar module was still "raw". And then a mission was invented that was not originally planned at all - a flight around the moon.
The flight of the Apollo 8 spacecraft was not planned by NASA: it was an improvisation, but it was carried out brilliantly, securing another historic priority for American space exploration.
On December 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft, without a lunar module, but with a crew of three astronauts, set off for a nearby celestial body. The flight went relatively smoothly, but before the historic landing on the moon, two more launches were needed: the Apollo 9 crew worked out the procedure for docking and undocking the spacecraft modules for about earth orbit, then the Apollo 10 crew did the same, but already next to the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin set foot on the moon, proclaiming US leadership in space exploration.
The crew of the Apollo 10 spacecraft held a "dress rehearsal", completing all the operations necessary for landing on the moon, but without landing itself
The lunar module of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, named "Eagle" ("Eagle") goes to land
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moon landing was broadcast via the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in Australia; the original records of the historical event were also preserved and recently discovered there
Then new successful missions followed: Apollo 12, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, Apollo 17. As a result, twelve astronauts visited the Moon, conducted reconnaissance of the area, installed scientific equipment, collected soil samples, and tested rovers. Only the crew of Apollo 13 was unlucky: on the way to the Moon, a tank of liquid oxygen exploded, and NASA specialists had to work hard to return the astronauts to Earth.
Theory of falsification
Devices for creating an artificial sodium comet were installed on the Luna-1 spacecraft
It would seem that the reality of expeditions to the moon should not be in doubt. NASA regularly published press releases and bulletins, specialists and astronauts gave numerous interviews, many countries and the world scientific community participated in the technical support, tens of thousands of people watched huge rockets take off, and millions watched live TV broadcasts from space. Lunar soil was brought to Earth, which many selenologists were able to study. International scientific conferences to comprehend the data that came from the instruments left on the moon.
But even at that eventful time, there were people who questioned the facts of landing astronauts on the moon. The skepticism towards space achievements appeared as early as 1959, and the probable reason for this was the policy of secrecy pursued by the Soviet Union: for decades it even concealed the location of its cosmodrome!
Therefore, when Soviet scientists announced that they had launched the Luna-1 research apparatus, some Western experts spoke in the spirit that the communists were simply fooling the world community. Experts foresaw the questions and placed a device for evaporating sodium on Luna-1, with the help of which an artificial comet was created, with a brightness equal to the sixth magnitude.
Conspiracy theorists even dispute the reality of Yuri Gagarin's flight
Claims also arose later: for example, some Western journalists questioned the reality of Yuri Gagarin's flight, because the Soviet Union refused to provide any documentary evidence. There was no camera on board the Vostok ship, appearance the ship itself and the launch vehicle remained classified.
But the US authorities have never expressed doubts about the reliability of what happened: even during the flight of the first satellites, the Agency national security(NSA) deployed two surveillance stations in Alaska and Hawaii and installed radio equipment there capable of intercepting telemetry that came from Soviet devices. During Gagarin's flight, the stations were able to receive a television signal with the image of the astronaut transmitted by the onboard camera. Within an hour, printouts of individual frames from this broadcast were in the hands of government officials, and President John F. Kennedy congratulated the Soviet people on their outstanding achievement.
Soviet military specialists working at the Scientific and Measuring Station No. 10 (NIP-10), located in the village of Shkolnoye near Simferopol, intercepted data from the Apollo spacecraft during the entire flight to the moon and back
The Soviet intelligence did the same. At the NIP-10 station, located in the village of Shkolnoye (Simferopol, Crimea), a set of equipment was assembled that allows intercepting all information from the Apollos, including live TV broadcasts from the Moon. Aleksey Mikhailovich Gorin, head of the interception project, gave an exclusive interview to the author of this article, in which, in particular, he said: “A standard system of drives in azimuth and elevation was used to point and control a very narrow beam. According to the information about the place (Cape Canaveral) and the launch time, the flight path was calculated spaceship in all areas.
It should be noted that during about three days of flight, only occasionally did the beam pointing deviate from the calculated trajectory, which was easily corrected manually. We started with Apollo 10, which made a test flight around the moon without landing. This was followed by flights with the landing of the Apollo from the 11th to the 15th ... They took quite clear images of the spacecraft on the Moon, the exit of both astronauts from it and travel on the surface of the Moon. Video from the Moon, speech and telemetry were recorded on appropriate tape recorders and transferred to Moscow for processing and translation.
In addition to data interception, Soviet intelligence also collected any information on the Saturn-Apollo program, as it could be used for the USSR's own lunar plans. For example, scouts monitored missile launches from the waters Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, when preparations began for the joint flight of the Soyuz-19 and Apollo CSM-111 spacecraft (ASTP mission), which took place in July 1975, Soviet specialists were admitted to official information on the ship and rocket. And, as you know, no claims were made against the American side.
The claims came from the Americans themselves. In 1970, that is, even before the completion of the lunar program, a pamphlet by a certain James Cryney “Has a man landed on the moon?” (Did man land on the Moon?). The public ignored the pamphlet, although it was perhaps the first to formulate the main thesis of the "conspiracy theory": an expedition to the nearest heavenly body technically impossible.
Technical writer Bill Kaysing can rightfully be called the founder of the "lunar conspiracy" theory.
The topic began to gain popularity a little later, after the release of Bill Kaysing's self-published book We Never Went to the Moon (1976), which outlined the now "traditional" arguments in favor of conspiracy theory. For example, the author seriously claimed that all the deaths of the participants in the Saturn-Apollo program were associated with the elimination of unwanted witnesses. It must be said that Kaysing is the only one of the authors of books on this topic who was directly related to the space program: from 1956 to 1963 he worked as a technical writer for the Rocketdyne company, which was just designing the super-powerful F-1 engine for the rocket " Saturn-5".
However, after being fired "of his own free will," Kaysing became a beggar, grabbed any job, and probably did not have warm feelings for his former employers. In a book that was reprinted in 1981 and 2002, he claimed that the Saturn V rocket was a "technical fake" and could never send astronauts on an interplanetary flight, so in reality the Apollos flew around the Earth, and television broadcasts were using unmanned aerial vehicles.
Ralph Rene made a name for himself by accusing the US government of rigging the moon landings and orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The creation of Bill Kaysing was also initially ignored. He was brought to fame by the American conspiracy theorist Ralph Rene, who posed as a scientist, physicist, inventor, engineer and science journalist, but in reality did not graduate from any higher educational institution. Like his predecessors, Rene published the book How NASA Showed America the Moon (NASA Mooned America!, 1992) at his own expense, but at the same time he could already refer to other people's "studies", that is, he looked not like a lone psycho, but like a skeptic in searching for truth.
Probably, the book, the lion's share of which is devoted to the analysis of certain photographs taken by astronauts, would also have gone unnoticed if the era of TV shows had not come, when it became fashionable to invite all kinds of freaks and outcasts to the studio. Ralph Rene managed to make the most of the sudden interest of the public, since he had a well-spoken tongue and did not hesitate to make absurd accusations (for example, he claimed that NASA deliberately damaged his computer and destroyed important files). His book was repeatedly reprinted, and each time increasing in volume.
Among the documentaries devoted to the theory of the “lunar conspiracy”, outright hoaxes come across: for example, the pseudo-documentary French film “The Dark Side of the Moon” (Opération lune, 2002)
The theme itself was also asking for a film adaptation, and soon there were films with a claim to documentary: “Was it just a paper moon?” (Was It Only a Paper Moon?, 1997), What Happened on the Moon? (What Happened on the Moon?, 2000), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, 2001, Astronauts Gone Wild: Investigation Into the Authenticity of the Moon Landings, 2004) and the like. By the way, the author of the last two films, film director Bart Sibrel, twice molested Buzz Aldrin with aggressive demands to confess to deception and in the end received a blow in the face from an elderly astronaut. A video of this incident can be found on YouTube. The police, by the way, refused to start a case against Aldrin. Apparently, she thought that the video was faked.
In the 1970s, NASA tried to cooperate with the authors of the "lunar conspiracy" theory and even issued a press release debriefing Bill Kaysing's claims. However, it soon became clear that they did not want a dialogue, but they were happy to use any mention of their fabrications for self-promotion: for example, Kaysing sued astronaut Jim Lovell in 1996 for calling him a “fool” in an interview.
However, what else to call people who believed in the authenticity of the film "The Dark Side of the Moon" (Opération lune, 2002), where the famous director Stanley Kubrick was directly accused of filming all the astronaut landings on the moon in the Hollywood pavilion? Even in the film itself, there are indications that it is fiction in the mockumentary genre, but this did not stop conspiracy theorists from accepting the version with a bang and quoting it even after the creators of the hoax openly admitted to hooliganism. By the way, another “evidence” of the same degree of reliability recently appeared: this time, an interview surfaced with a person similar to Stanley Kubrick, where he allegedly took responsibility for falsifying the materials of lunar missions. The new fake was exposed quickly - it was made too clumsily.
Hiding operation
In 2007, science journalist and popularizer Richard Hoagland co-authored the book Dark Mission with Michael Bara. The Secret History of NASA (Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA), which immediately became a bestseller. In this hefty volume, Hoagland summarized his findings on a "cover-up operation" - allegedly carried out by US government agencies, concealing from the world community the fact of contact with a more advanced civilization that has mastered solar system long before mankind.
Within the framework of the new theory, the “lunar conspiracy” is considered as a product of the activities of NASA itself, which deliberately provokes an illiterate discussion of the falsification of the moon landings so that qualified researchers disdain to deal with this topic for fear of being branded as “outcasts”. Under his theory, Hoagland deftly adjusted all modern conspiracy theories, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to "flying saucers" and the Martian "sphinx". For his vigorous activity to expose the "cover-up operation", the journalist was even awarded the Ig Nobel Prize, which he received in October 1997.
Believers and non-believers
Supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" theory, or, more simply, "anti-Apollo" are very fond of accusing their opponents of illiteracy, ignorance, or even blind faith. A strange move, given that it is the “anti-Apollo” people who believe in a theory that is not supported by any significant evidence. In science and jurisprudence operates Golden Rule: an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. The attempt to accuse the space agencies and the world's scientific community of falsifying materials that are of great importance to our understanding of the universe must be accompanied by something more significant than a couple of self-published books produced by a resentful writer and narcissistic pseudoscientist.
All the many hours of footage of the Apollo lunar expeditions have long been digitized and are available for study.
If we imagine for a moment that in the United States there was a secret parallel space program using unmanned vehicles, then we need to explain where all the participants in this program have gone: the designers of the “parallel” technology, its testers and operators, as well as the filmmakers who prepared kilometers of films of lunar missions. We are talking about thousands (or even tens of thousands) of people who needed to be attracted to the “lunar conspiracy”. Where are they and where are their confessions? Suppose they all, including foreigners, swore to remain silent. But there should be piles of documents, contracts, orders with contractors, relevant structures and landfills. However, apart from nit-picking some NASA public materials, which are indeed often retouched or presented in a deliberately simplified interpretation, there is nothing. Nothing at all.
However, the “anti-Apollonists” never think about such “little things” and insistently (often in an aggressive form) demand more and more evidence from opposite side. The paradox is that if, by asking "tricky" questions, they themselves tried to find answers to them, then this would not be a big deal. Let's take a look at some of the more common claims.
During the preparation and implementation of the joint flight of the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft, Soviet specialists were admitted to the official information of the American space program
For example, "anti-Apollo" people ask: why was the Saturn-Apollo program interrupted, and its technologies were lost and cannot be used today? The answer is obvious to anyone who has at least general idea about what happened in the early 1970s. It was then that one of the most powerful political and economic crises in US history occurred: the dollar lost gold content and was devalued twice; the protracted Vietnam War was draining resources; youth embraced the anti-war movement; Richard Nixon is on the verge of impeachment in connection with the Watergate scandal.
At the same time, the total costs of the Saturn-Apollo program amounted to 24 billion dollars (in terms of current prices, we can talk about 100 billion), and each new launch cost 300 million (1.3 billion in modern prices) - it is clear that further funding has become exorbitant for the waning American budget. The Soviet Union experienced something similar in the late 1980s, which led to the inglorious closure of the Energiya-Buran program, the technology of which was also largely lost.
In 2013, an expedition led by Jeff Bezos, founder of the Internet company Amazon, lifted fragments of one of the F-1 engines of the Saturn V rocket that delivered Apollo 11 into orbit from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Nevertheless, despite the problems, the Americans tried to squeeze a little more out of the lunar program: the Saturn-5 rocket launched the Skylab heavy orbital station (three expeditions visited it in 1973-1974), a joint Soviet-American flight took place " Soyuz-Apollo (ASTP). In addition, the Space Shuttle program, which replaced the Apollos, used the Saturn launch facilities, and some technological solutions obtained during their operation are used today in the design of the promising American SLS carrier.
Work crate containing moonstones in the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility
Another popular question: where did the lunar soil brought by the astronauts go? Why is it not being studied? Answer: it has not gone away, but is stored where it was planned - in the two-story building of the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, which was built in Houston (Texas). Applications for soil studies should also be submitted there, but only organizations with the necessary equipment can receive them. Each year, a special commission reviews applications and grants between forty and fifty of them; on average, up to 400 samples are sent out. In addition, 98 samples with a total weight of 12.46 kg are exhibited in museums around the world, and dozens of scientific publications have been published on each of them.
Pictures of the landing sites of the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 spacecraft taken by the main optical camera LRO: the lunar modules, scientific equipment and the "paths" left by the astronauts are clearly visible
Another question in the same vein: why is there no independent evidence of visiting the moon? Answer: they are. If we discard the Soviet evidence, which is still far from complete, and the beautiful space telephotos of the moon landing sites, which are made American apparatus LRO and which the “anti-Apollonians” also consider to be a “fake”, then the materials presented by the Indians (Chandrayaan-1 apparatus), Japanese (Kaguya apparatus) and Chinese (Chang'e-2 apparatus) are quite enough for analysis: all three agencies have officially confirmed, that they found traces left by the Apollo spacecraft.
"Moon Deception" in Russia
By the end of the 1990s, the “lunar conspiracy” theory also came to Russia, where it gained ardent supporters. Its wide popularity, obviously, is facilitated by the sad fact that very few historical books on the American space program are published in Russian, so an inexperienced reader may get the impression that there is nothing to study there.
The most ardent and talkative adherent of the theory was Yuri Mukhin, a former engineer-inventor and publicist with radical pro-Stalinist convictions, who was noticed in historical revisionism. He, in particular, published the book "The Selling Girl of Genetics", in which he refutes the achievements of genetics in order to prove that repressions against domestic representatives of this science were justified. Mukhin's style repels with deliberate rudeness, and he builds his conclusions on the basis of rather primitive distortions.
Cameraman Yuri Elkhov, who participated in the filming of such famous children's films as "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1975) and "About Little Red Riding Hood" (1977), undertook to analyze the film shots taken by the astronauts and came to the conclusion that they were fabricated. True, he used his own studio and equipment for testing, which has nothing to do with NASA equipment of the late 1960s. As a result of the "investigation", Elkhov wrote the book "Sham Moon", which was never published on paper due to lack of funds.
Perhaps the most competent of the Russian "anti-Apollo" remains Alexander Popov - Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, a specialist in lasers. In 2009, he published the book "Americans on the Moon - a great breakthrough or a space scam?", In which he gives almost all the arguments of the "conspiracy" theory, supplementing them with his own interpretations. For many years he has been running a special website dedicated to the topic, and at present he has agreed that not only the Apollo flights, but also the Mercury and Gemini ships are falsified. Thus, Popov claims that the Americans made the first flight into orbit only in April 1981 - on the Columbia shuttle. Apparently, the respected physicist does not understand that without huge previous experience it is simply impossible to launch such a complex reusable aerospace system as the Space Shuttle the first time.
* * *
The list of questions and answers can be continued indefinitely, but this makes no sense: the views of the "anti-Apollo" are not based on real facts that can be interpreted in one way or another, but on illiterate ideas about them. Unfortunately, ignorance is tenacious, and even the hook of Buzz Aldrin is not able to change the situation. It remains to hope for time and new flights to the moon, which will inevitably put everything in its place.
MOSCOW, July 20 - RIA Novosti. Famed cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who personally prepared for participation in the Soviet lunar exploration program, denied years of rumors that American astronauts were not on the Moon, and the footage broadcast on television around the world was allegedly edited in Hollywood.
He spoke about this in an interview with RIA Novosti on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first landing in the history of mankind of US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the surface of an Earth satellite, celebrated on July 20.
So were or weren't the Americans on the moon?
“Only absolutely ignorant people can seriously believe that the Americans were not on the moon. And, unfortunately, this whole ridiculous epic about the allegedly fabricated footage in Hollywood began precisely with the Americans themselves. By the way, the first person who began to distribute these rumors, was imprisoned for slander," Aleksey Leonov noted in this regard.
Where did the rumors come from?
“It all started with the fact that when, at the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the famous American film director Stanley Kubrick, who created his brilliant film Odyssey 2001 based on the book of science fiction writer Arthur Clarke, journalists who met with Kubrick’s wife asked to talk about her husband’s work on the film in Hollywood studios.And she honestly said that there are only two real lunar modules on Earth - one in a museum where no filming has ever been done, and it’s even forbidden to walk with a camera, and the other is in Hollywood, where, to develop the logic of what is happening on the screen and additional filming of the landing of the Americans on the moon was made," the Soviet cosmonaut specified.
Why was studio photography used?
Alexei Leonov explained that in order for the viewer to be able to see the development of what is happening on the movie screen from beginning to end, elements of additional filming are used in any movie.
“It was impossible, for example, to film the real opening of the hatch of the descent ship on the Moon by Neil Armstrong - there was simply no one to film it from the surface! For the same reason, it was impossible to film Armstrong’s descent to the Moon along the ladder from the ship. Kubrick in Hollywood studios to develop the logic of what is happening, and laid the foundation for numerous gossip that the entire landing was allegedly simulated on the set, "explained Alexei Leonov.
Where Truth Begins and Editing Ends
“Real shooting began when Armstrong, who first set foot on the Moon, got a little used to it, installed a highly directional antenna, through which the broadcast to Earth was carried out. its movement on the surface of the moon," the astronaut specified.
Why did the American flag fly in the airless space of the moon?
“They argue that the American flag was flying on the moon, but it shouldn’t be. The flag really shouldn’t be flying - the fabric was used with a rather rigid reinforced mesh, the cloth was twisted into a tube and tucked into a case. The astronauts took with them a nest, which they first inserted into the lunar soil, and then they stuck the flagpole into it, and only then removed the cover. And when the cover was removed, the flag's cloth began to unfold in conditions of reduced gravity, and the residual deformation of the springy reinforced mesh created the impression that the flag was rippling, as if in the wind " , - Alexey Leonov explained the "phenomenon".
“It is simply ridiculous and ridiculous to argue that the entire film was filmed on Earth. The United States had all the necessary systems that tracked the launch of the launch vehicle itself, acceleration, correction of the flight orbit, the descent capsule flying around the Moon and its landing,” - concluded the famous Soviet cosmonaut.
What did the "lunar race" lead to two space superpowers
“In my opinion, this is the best competition in space that humanity has ever carried out. The “moon race” between the USSR and the USA is the achievement of the highest peaks of science and technology,” Alexei Leonov believes.
According to him, after the flight of Yuri Gagarin, US President Kennedy, speaking in Congress, said that the Americans simply thought too late about what triumph could be achieved by launching a man into space, and therefore the Russians triumphantly became the first. Kennedy's message was clear: within ten years, put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.
“This was a very true step of the great politician - he united and rallied the American nation to achieve this goal. Huge funds for those times were also involved - $ 25 billion, today, this is, perhaps, all fifty billion. The program included a flyby of the moon, then the flight of Tom Stafford to the point of hovering and selection of a site for landing on Apollo 10. Sending Apollo 11 already provided for the direct landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Michael Collins remained in orbit and waited for the return of his comrades, " - said Alexei Leonov.
18 Apollo-type ships were made to prepare for landing on the moon - the whole program was implemented perfectly, except for Apollo 13 - from the engineering point of view, nothing special happened there, it just failed, or rather, one of the fuel cells exploded , the energy weakened, and therefore it was decided not to land on the surface, but to fly around the Moon and return to Earth.
Alexei Leonov noted that only the first flight around the moon by Frank Bormann, then the landing of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon and the story of Apollo 13 remained in the memory of the Americans. These accomplishments have brought the American nation together and made every individual empathize, walk with fingers crossed, and pray for their heroes. The last flight of the Apollo series was also extremely interesting: American astronauts no longer just walked on the Moon, but traveled on its surface in a special lunar car, making interesting photographs.
In fact, it was the peak of the Cold War, and in this situation, after the success of Yuri Gagarin, the Americans simply had to win the "moon race". The USSR then had its own lunar program, and we also implemented it. By 1968, it had already existed for two years, and even the crews of our cosmonauts were formed for a flight to the moon.
On censorship of the achievements of mankind
"The launches of the Americans as part of the lunar program were broadcast on television, and only two countries in the world - the USSR and communist China - did not broadcast these historical footage to their peoples. I thought then, and now I think - in vain, we simply robbed our people "The flight to the moon is the property and achievement of all mankind. The Americans watched Gagarin's launch, Leonov's spacewalk - why couldn't the Soviet people see it?!", laments Alexei Leonov.
According to him, a limited group of Soviet space specialists watched these launches through a closed channel.
"We had on Komsomolsky Prospekt military unit 32103, which provided space broadcasting, since there was no MCC in Korolev then. We saw, unlike all other people in the USSR, the landing of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon, broadcast by the United States to the whole world. The Americans set up a television antenna on the surface of the moon, and everything they did there was transmitted through a television camera to the Earth, several repetitions of these television broadcasts were also made. When Armstrong stepped on the surface of the moon, and everyone in the USA clapped, we here in the USSR, Soviet cosmonauts, also crossed our fingers for good luck, and sincerely wished the guys success, "the Soviet cosmonaut recalls.
How was the implementation of the Soviet lunar program
"In 1962, a decree was issued, signed personally by Nikita Khrushchev, on the creation of a spacecraft for flying around the moon and using the Proton launch vehicle with an upper stage for this launch. In 1964, Khrushchev signed a program for the USSR to fly around , and in 1968 - landing on the moon and returning to Earth. And in 1966 there was already a decision on the formation of lunar crews - a group was immediately recruited for landing on the moon, "Alexey Leonov recalled.
The first stage of the flyby of the Earth satellite was to be carried out with the help of the launch of the L-1 lunar module by the Proton launch vehicle, and the second stage - landing and returning back - on the giant and most powerful N-1 rocket, equipped with thirty engines with a total thrust of 4.5 thousand tons with the weight of the rocket itself about 2 thousand tons. However, even after four test launches, this super-heavy rocket did not fly normally, so it had to be abandoned in the end.
Korolev and Glushko: the antipathy of two geniuses
"There were other options, for example, using a 600-ton engine developed by the brilliant designer Valentin Glushko, but Sergey Korolev refused it, since he worked on highly toxic heptyl. Although, in my opinion, this was not the reason - just two leaders , Korolev and Glushko - could not and did not want to work together. Their relationship had its own problems of a purely personal nature: Sergei Korolev, for example, knew that Valentin Glushko had once written a denunciation against him, as a result of which he was sentenced to ten years When Korolyov was released, he found out about this, but Glushko did not know that he knew about it, "said Alexei Leonov.
A small step for a man, but a giant leap for all mankind
NASA's Apollo 11 spacecraft on July 20, 1969, with a crew of three astronauts: Commander Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, became the first to reach the Moon in the USSR-US space race. The Americans did not pursue research tasks in this expedition, its goal was simple: to land on the Earth's satellite and return successfully.
The ship consisted of a lunar module and a command module that remained in orbit during the mission. Thus, of the three astronauts, only two went to the moon: Armstrong and Aldrin. They had to land on the moon, collect samples of the lunar soil, take pictures on the Earth satellite and install several instruments. However, the main ideological component of the trip was still the hoisting of the American flag on the moon and the holding of a video communication session with the Earth.
The launch of the ship was watched by US President Richard Nixon and German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth. A total of about a million people watched the launch at the cosmodrome and mounted observation platforms, and more than a billion people watched the television broadcast, according to the Americans, around the world.
Apollo 11 launched to the moon on July 16, 1969 at 1332 GMT and entered lunar orbit 76 hours later. The command and lunar modules were undocked about 100 hours after launch. Despite the fact that NASA intended to land on the lunar surface in automatic mode, Armstrong, as the expedition commander, decided to land the lunar module in semi-automatic mode.
The lunar module landed on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20 at 20:17:42 GMT. Armstrong descended to the lunar surface on July 21, 1969 at 02:56:20 GMT. Everyone knows the phrase that he uttered when he stepped on the moon: "This is one small step for a person, but a giant leap for all mankind."
Aldrin also landed on the moon 15 minutes later. The astronauts collected the necessary amount of materials, placed the instruments and installed a television camera. After that, they planted an American flag in the field of view of the camera and held a communication session with President Nixon. The astronauts left a commemorative plaque on the Moon with the words: "Here, people from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon. July 1969 of the new era. We came in peace on behalf of all Humanity."
Aldrin was on the moon for about an hour and a half, Armstrong for two hours and ten minutes. At the 125th hour of the mission and the 22nd hour of stay on the Moon, the lunar module was launched from the surface of the Earth's satellite. The crew splashed down on the blue planet about 195 hours after the start of the mission, soon the astronauts were picked up by the aircraft carrier that came to the rescue.
49 years ago, on July 21, 1969, one of the greatest events in human history took place. On this day, American astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first step on the surface of the moon. And his phrase about this event became winged:
True, there are serious doubts that this huge leap was made on the lunar surface, and not among the Hollywood scenery created by the great master of American cinema, Mr. Stanley Kubrick.
The idea that man has never been to the moon is called the "lunar conspiracy" theory. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union was the main and only competitor of the United States in the space race, the theory was born in the States. Moreover, there was no doubt in the USSR that American astronauts actually landed on the moon.
"Lunar conspiracy"
The founding father of this conspiracy theory can be called Bill Caseing. In 1974, he wrote the book We Never Flew to the Moon. In it, he convincingly argued that the lunar expeditions of the Americans were a falsification.
The author finds a lot of "blunders" in the footage of the landing of astronauts. These are multidirectional shadows from objects, and the absence of stars in the sky, and the small size of the Earth. But the most striking evidence was considered the waving American flag in the airless space of the lunar atmosphere. Bill also believes that NASA technology from the late 60s of the last century did not allow reaching the moon.
Following Caseing, other supporters of the theory of falsification appeared. In particular, some of them argued that the astronauts could not fly alive, they would have been killed by solar radiation along the way.
There was no doubt in the Soviet Union
On the other hand, the fact that no one in the USSR doubted the landing of American astronauts speaks volumes. After all, a fierce battle for space was going on between the Soviet Union and the United States. At the slightest doubt about the reliability of the Americans' flight to the moon, the Soviet media would raise a real storm.
The fact is that we have closely watched the American space program. The flight was monitored by ground services, communications between the crew and the Earth were intercepted. It was impossible to falsify communication sessions while remaining on Earth. More precisely, it is possible, but such a hoax would be more complicated than a real flight.
The well-known Soviet cosmonauts Leonov and Grechko did not doubt the authenticity of the presence of Americans on the moon. But they do not rule out that in order to better illustrate the event, some of the material was filmed on Earth. Yes, and traces in the photographs, allegedly indicating falsification, were left during retouching and editing of the material.
Almost all the arguments in favor of the hoax had an explanation. Even the waving flag can be explained. After installation, oscillations in vacuum do not subside for a long time, therefore oscillatory movements the cloth, touched during installation, did not interfere with the air, so they lasted a long time.
Unmanned spacecraft sent to the Moon, and not only American ones, subsequently managed to detect and film the American landing sites. Distinct traces of the presence of an earthly landing force were found there, leaving no doubt that people still visited the moon.
This article casts doubt on whether the Apollo mission was on the Moon.
Most of the official illustrations of Apollo's flight path to the Moon mark only the main elements of the mission. Such schemes are not geometrically accurate, and the scale is rough. An example from a NASA report:
Obviously, for the correct representation of the Apollo flights to the Moon, another approach is important, namely, the exact determination of the position of the spacecraft from time to time. This allows us to consider the trajectory of the Apollos during the passage of the Earth's radiation belt dangerous for humans, as well as to develop elements of the trajectory for a safe flight to the Moon.
In 2009, Robert A. Braeunig presented the orbit elements of the Apollo 11 translunar trajectory with the calculation of the position of the spacecraft depending on time and orientation relative to the Earth. The work is presented on the Global Web - Apollo 11 "s Translunar Trajectory and how they avoided the radiation belts. NASA defenders speak highly of this work, for them it is the gospel for worship, they write: "Bravo", and it is often referred to during discussions with opponents about radiation exposure and the impossibility of the Apollo mission.
ill. 1. Apollo 11 trajectory (blue curve with red dots) through the electron radiation belt as calculated by Robert A. Braeunig.
The calculations have been checked and they indicate the following errors by Robert A. Braeunig:
1) Robert used the values of the gravitational constant and the mass of the Earth from the 60s of the last century.
In these calculations, modern data are used. The gravitational constant is 6.67384E-11; the mass of the Earth is 5.9736E+24. Apollo 11's calculations for speed and distance from Earth were slightly different from Robert's, but they were more accurate than published data in 2009 by PAO NASA (NASA Public Relations Service).
2) Robert A. Braeunig states that the rest of the Apollo trajectories are typical of those of Apollo 11.
Let's look at the points of entry of the Apollos into translunar orbit (abbr. - TLI) according to NASA documents. We see and have a different position relative to the geographic (geomagnetic) equator and have a different - ascending or descending trajectory relative to the equator. This is illustrated below.
ill. 2. Projection of the Apollo orbit on the Earth's surface: the yellow dots indicate the exits to the flight path to the Moon TLI for Apollo 8, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17, the red line the trajectory of the waiting orbit is indicated, the red arrows indicate the direction of movement.
ill. 2 shows that the exit to the translunar trajectory is different on a flat map of the Earth:
- for Apollo 14 below the geographic equator approaching it at an angle of about 20 degrees,
- for Apollo 11 above the geographic equator at an angle of about 15 degrees,
- for Apollo 15 above the geographic equator at an angle of about zero degrees,
- for Apollo 17 above the geographic equator approaching it at an angle of about -30 degrees.
This means that on a translunar trajectory, some Apollos will pass above the geographic equator, others below. Obviously, this statement is true for the geomagnetic equator.
Calculations were made for all Apollos from Robert's steps. Indeed, Apollo 11 passes above the proton radiation belt and flies through the electronic ERP. But Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 pass through the proton core of the radiation belt.
Below is an illustration of the trajectory for Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, and Apollo 17 relative to the geomagnetic equator.
ill. 3. Trajectories of Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 relative to the geomagnetic equator, the internal proton radiation belt is also indicated. Stars indicate official data for Apollo 14.
ill. 3 shows that on the translunar trajectory, Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 (also the Apollo 10 and Apollo 16 missions due to close TLI parameters to A-14) pass through the proton radiation belt dangerous for humans.
Apollo 8, Apollo 12, Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 pass through the core of the electronic radiation belt.
Apollo 11 also passes through the Earth's electron radiation belt, but to a lesser extent than Apollo 8, Apollo 12, and Apollo 15.
Apollo 13 is the least in the Earth's radiation belt.
Robert A. Braeunig could calculate the trajectories for the other Apollos, as a man with a scientific background should. However, in his article, he limited himself to Apollo 11 and called the rest of the Apollo trajectories typical! Videos posted on the popular YouTube:
For history, this means deception and deliberate misleading of users of the Global Network.
In addition, one could open the NASA archives and look for reports on the Apollo trajectory. Even if there are only a few coordinates.
ill. 6. Return of the Apollos (first point, 180 km above the Earth) and splashdown on Earth (second point). For Apollo 12 and Apollo 15, the first point is at an altitude of 3.6 thousand km. The red curve marks the geomagnetic equator.
From ill. 6, it is important to note that Apollo 12 and Apollo 15 will pass through the inner Van Alen radiation belt when they return to Earth.
7) Robert does not discuss the features and condition of the Sun before the flight and during the flight of the Apollos.
During solar-proton events, coronal ejections of protons and electrons, solar flares, magnetic storms, and seasonal variations, the fluences of ERB particles increase by several orders of magnitude and can persist for more than half a year.
On ill. Figure 10 shows the radial profiles of the radiation belts for protons with Ep=20-80 MeV and electrons with Ep>15 MeV, constructed from the data of measurements on the CRRES satellite before the sudden impulse of the geomagnetic field on March 24, 1991 (day 80), six days after the formation new belt (day 86) and 177 days later (day 257).
It can be seen that the proton fluxes expanded by more than two times, and the electron fluxes with E > 15 MeV exceeded the quiet level by more than two orders of magnitude. Subsequently, they were registered until mid-1993.
For the spacecraft crew during the flight to the Moon, this means an increase in the passage of the proton ERP by 3-4 times and an increase in the dose of radiation from electrons by 10-100 times.
The first manned flyby of the Moon, the Apollo 8 mission, was preceded by a powerful magnetic storm two months later, October 30-31, 1968. Apollo 8 passes through the Earth's extended radiation belt. This is tantamount to a multiple increase in the radiation dose, especially in comparison with the doses of spacecraft crews in the reference orbit of the Earth. NASA stated for Apollo 8 a dose of 0.026 rad/day, which is five times less than the dose by orbital station"Skylab" 1973-1974 corresponding to the years of decline in solar activity.
On January 27, 1971, a few days before the launch of Apollo 14, a moderate magnetic storm began, which turned into a small storm on January 31, which was caused by a solar flare towards the Earth on January 24, 1971. . When flying to the Moon, an increase in radiation levels could be expected by 10-100 times the average values. Apollo 14 passes through the proton radiation belt. The doses will be huge! NASA claimed a dose of 0.127 rad/day for Apollo 14, less than the dose on Skylab 4 (1973-1974).
Apollo 15 spent several days in the Earth's magnetotail during its mission to the Moon. There was no magnetic protection against electrons. Electron fluxes are several hundred joules per square meter per day. Colliding with the spacecraft skin, they give rise to hard x-ray radiation. Due to the electronic X-ray component, the radiation dose will be tens of rads (taking into account high-energy electrons, the data of which are still missing, the doses are increased). On its return to Earth, Apollo 15 passes through the inner radiation belt. The total dose of radiation is huge. NASA stated 0.024 rad/day.
Apollo 17 (the last moon landing) was preceded by three powerful magnetic storms before launch: 1) June 17-19, 2) August 4-8 after a powerful solar-proton event, 3) from October 31 to November 1, 1972. Apollo trajectory 17 passes through the proton radiation belt. This is deadly to humans! NASA claims a radiation dose of 0.044 rad/day, which is three times less than the dose on the Skylab 4 orbital station (1973-1974).
8) To estimate the radiation dose, Robert A. Braeunig neglects the proton contribution of the Van Alen radiation belt, which is dangerous for humans, and uses incomplete data from the electron radiation belt.
Robert uses incomplete VARB data to estimate radiation dose, fig. 9.
ill. 11. Radiation doses in the Van Alen belt and the trajectory of Apollo 11 by Robert A. Braeunig.
From ill. 11 it can be seen that part of the Apollo 11 trajectory passes above the missing ERP data, the radiation dose error is almost an order of magnitude. It is impossible to estimate radiation doses from such a picture!
In addition, this illustration concerns only the electron radiation belt. This can be seen from Fig. 12.
ill. 12. Doses of radiation in the Van Alen belt from the electronic component (1990-1991).
It should be noted that illustrations 11 and 12 are similar to the fluence of electrons with an energy of 1 MeV in the Van Alen radiation belt according to NASA - The Van Allen Belts.
ill. 13. Electron profile relative to the geomagnetic equator according to NASA.
Then, on the basis of this illustration, it is possible to reconstruct the picture of the radiation dose for the electronic ERP.
ill. 14. Radiation doses in the Earth's electron radiation belt and the trajectory of Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15 and Apollo 17.
ill. 14 similar ill. 12, the difference in the complete data of the electronic ERP.
According to ill. 14, Apollo 11 passes through a radiation level of 7.00E-3 rad/s in 50 minutes. The total dose will be D=7.00E-3*50*60=21.0 rad. This is almost 1.8 times more than indicated in Robert's article. In this case, we only consider the dose on the translunar trajectory and do not take into account the back passage of the electron ERP.
Accounting for the contribution of the proton radiation belt is neglected in the article by Robert A. Braeunig. No radiation hazard data! But the contribution of proton RPZ to the absorbed dose of radiation can be an order of magnitude greater and dangerous for humans.
For what reason does the author, who calculates the translunar trajectory of Apollo 11 and is an authority, not notice the main thing? For one reason - for the ignorant reader, because the layman trusts an authoritative source and it does not matter that the author cheats in favor of a scam.
9) Robert incorrectly discusses the radiation shielding of the Apollos.
PROTON COMPONENT OF THE EARTH'S RADIATION BELT
According to radiation physics, 100 MeV protons pierce through the Apollo command module. To reduce the flow by half, not completely, but only 1/2, you need a thickness of aluminum 3.63 cm. To be clear, 3.63 cm is the height of the entire selected paragraph! In astronautics, there is a scientific term - the thickness of the spacecraft protection. If we assume that the entire body is aluminum, then the thickness of the Apollo KM was 2.78 cm (without the last two lines). This means that more than half of the protons penetrate into the spacecraft and cause human radiation exposure. In fact, the thickness of the Al shell of the command module is less, mainly 80% rubber and heat insulator. The protection thickness of these materials is ~7.5 g/cm 2 , the same as that of Al. The difference lies in the fact that the length of the path of protons increases many times...
We consider that the case is aluminum with a thickness of 2.78 cm.
ill. Fig. 15. Graph of dependences of the absorbed dose on the path length of a proton with an energy of 100 MeV, taking into account the Bragg peak for protons through an external shield of 7.5 g/cm2 and biological tissue. The dose value is given per particle.
In addition to protons, electron flows collide with the KA metal and emit radiation in the form of a highly penetrating hard x-ray radiation.
To completely extinguish proton and X-ray radiation, lead screens 2 centimeters thick are needed. The Apollos did not have such screens. The only object on board the spacecraft that almost completely absorbs 100-MeV protons and X-rays is man.
Instead of this discussion, Robert A. Braeunig gives an illustration for the ignorant layman - a fluence of 1 MeV of protons (Fig. 16).
ill. 16. Fluence 1 MeV of protons in the Van Alen belt according to NASA. Click to enlarge.
From the point of view of radiation physics, 1 MeV and 10 MeV protons for a spacecraft is the same as scratching an elephant with a match. This is shown in Table. 1.
Table 1.
|
Ranges of protons in aluminum. |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Energy: |
20 | 40 | 100 | 1000 | ||||
|
Mileage, cm |
2.7*10 -1 | 7.0*10 -1 | 3.6 | 148 | ||||
|
Mileage, mg / cm 2 |
3.45 | 21 | 50 | 170 | 560 | 1.9*10 3 | 9.8*10 3 | 400*10 3 |
From the table we see that the range of protons with an energy of 1 MeV in Al is 0.013 mm. 13 microns, that's four times thinner than a human hair! For a person without clothes, such flows have no danger.
The main contribution to the radiation exposure of the RPZ is made by protons with an energy of 40-400 MeV. Accordingly, it is correct to provide data on these profiles.
ill. Fig. 17. Time-averaged proton and electron flux density profiles in the plane of the geomagnetic equator according to the AP2005 model (numbers near the curves correspond to the lower limit of particle energy in MeV).
On the fingers. For protons with an energy of 100 MeV, the flux intensity is 5·10 4 cm -2 s -1 . This corresponds to a radiation energy flux of 0.0064 J/m 2 s 1 .
Absorbed dose (D) - the main dosimetric quantity, is equal to the ratio of the energy transferred E by ionizing radiation to a substance with a mass m:
D \u003d E / m, unit Gray \u003d J / kg,
through the ionization losses of radiation, the absorbed dose per unit time is equal to:
D \u003d n / p dE / dx \u003d n E / L, unit Gray \u003d J / (kg s),
where n is the radiation flux density (particles/m 2 s 1); p is the density of the substance; dE/dx - ionization losses; L is the path length of a particle with energy E in biological tissue (kg/m2).
For a person, we get the absorbed dose rate is equal to:
D \u003d (1/2) (6) (5 10 4 cm -2 s -1) (45 MeV / (1.843 g / cm 2)), Gy / sec
Multiplier 1/2 - decrease in intensity by half after passing the protection of the Apollo command module;
factor 6 - degrees of freedom of protons in RPZ - movement up, down, left, forward, backward and rotation around the axes;
the factor 1.843 g/cm 2 is the range of protons with an energy of 45 MeV in the biological tissue after the loss of energy in the body of the command module.
Converting all units to SI, we get
D=0.00059 Gray/sec or 0.059 rad/sec, (here 1 Gray = 100 rad).
The same calculation is carried out for protons with energies of 40, 60, 80, 200, and 400 MeV. The remaining proton fluxes make a small contribution. And they fold. The absorbed dose of radiation will increase several times and is equal to 0.31 rad/sec.
For comparison: for 1 second of stay in the proton RPZ, the Apollo crew receives a dose of radiation of 0.31 rad. For 10 seconds - 3.1 rad, for 100 sec - 31 rad ... NASA, on the other hand, declared for the Apollo crews for the entire flight and return to Earth the average dose of radiation was 0.46 rad.
To assess the risk of radiation to human health, an equivalent dose of radiation H is introduced, equal to the product of the absorbed dose D r created by irradiation - r, by the weight factor w r (called - radiation quality factor).
The unit of equivalent dose is Joule per kilogram. It has a special name Sievert (Sv) and rem (1 Sv = 100 rem).
For electrons and X-rays, the quality factor is equal to one, for protons with an energy of 10-400 MeV, 2-14 is taken (determined on thin films of biological tissue). Such a coefficient is due to the fact that the proton transfers a different part of the energy to the electrons of the substance, the lower the proton energy, the higher the energy transfer and the higher the quality factor. We take the average w=5, since a person completely absorbs radiation and the main energy transfer occurs in the Bragg peak, with the exception of the high-energy part of the protons.
As a result, we obtain the equivalent dose rate of radiation for protons with an energy of 40-400 MeV in the RPZ
H = 1.55 rem/sec.
A more accurate calculation of the equivalent radiation dose yields a smaller value:
H=0.2∑w r n r E r exp(-L z /L zr - L p /L pr), Sv/s,
Where w r - radiation quality factor; n r - radiation flux density (particles/m 2 s 1); E r - energy of radiation particles (J); L z - protection thickness (g/cm 2); L zr is the path length of a particle with energy E r in the protective material z (g/cm 2); L p - the depth of the internal organs of a person (g / cm 2); L pr is the path length of a particle with energy E r in biological tissue (g/cm2). This formula gives the average value of the radiation dose with an error of ¹25% (a more accurate Monte Carlo calculation for many orders of magnitude energy-intellectually costly will give an error of ¹10%, which is associated with the distribution of proton ranges according to Gauss).
The factor 0.2 in front of the summation sign has the dimension m 2 /kg and is the reciprocal of the average effective thickness of the biological protection of a person in the RPZ. Roughly, this factor is equal to the surface area of a biological object, divided by a sixth of the mass.
The summation sign means that the equivalent dose of radiation is the sum of the radiation effects for all types of radiation to which a person is exposed.
The flux density n r and the particle energy E r are taken from radiation data.
The path lengths of a particle with energy E r in the protective material L zr (g/cm2) are taken from GOST RD 50-25645.206-84.
- for protons with an energy of 40 MeV - 0.011 rem/sec;
- for protons with an energy of 60 MeV - 0.097 rem/sec;
- for protons with an energy of 80 MeV - 0.21 rem/sec;
- for protons with an energy of 100 MeV - 0.26 rem/sec;
- for protons with an energy of 200 MeV - 0.37 rem/sec;
- for protons with an energy of 400 MeV - 0.18 rem/sec.
Doses of radiation add up. TOTAL: H=1.12 rem/sec.
By comparison, 1.12 rem/sec is 56 chest x-rays or five head CT scans compressed into one second; corresponds to a zone of very dangerous contamination during a nuclear explosion and is an order of magnitude greater than the natural background on the Earth's surface in one year.
Apollo 10 on a translunar trajectory passes through the inner ERB in 60 seconds. The radiation dose is H=1.12 60=67.2 rem.
Apollo 12, when returning to Earth, passes through the internal ERP in 340 seconds. H=1.12 340=380.8 rem.
Apollo 14 on a translunar trajectory passes through the inner ERP in 7 minutes. H=1.12 7 60=470.4 rem.
Apollo 15, when returning to Earth, passes through the internal ERP in 320 seconds. H=1.12 320=358.4 rem.
Apollo 16 on a translunar trajectory passes through the inner ERB in 60 seconds. H=1.12 60=67.2 rem.
Apollo 17 passes through the inner ERP in 9 minutes. H=1.12 9 60=641.1 rem.
These radiation doses were obtained from the average value of the proton profiles in the RPG. Apollo 14 was preceded by a moderate magnetic storm a few days, Apollo 17 was preceded by three magnetic storms three months before launch. Accordingly, radiation doses are increased, for Apollo 14 by 3-4 times, for Apollo 17 by 1.5-2 times.
ELECTRONIC COMPONENT OF THE EARTH'S RADIATION BELT
Tab. 2. Characteristics of the ERP electronic component, effective electron range in Al, time of flight of the ERP by the Apollos to the Moon and when returning to Earth, the ratio of specific radiation and ionization energy losses, X-ray absorption coefficients for Al and water, equivalent and absorbed dose of radiation*.
|
ERP electron flow data and Apollo time-of-flight data |
Dose of radiation for Apollo from the electronic component of the RPZ |
|||||||||
|
samples in Al, cm |
flow, / cm 2 sec 1 |
J/m 2 sec |
flight time, *10 3 sec |
Ener, J / m 2 |
share of rent, % |
coefficient weakened in Al, cm -1 |
coefficient |
Command Module Apollo |
Apollo Lunar Module |
|
|
Total: |
Total: |
|||||||||
|
Total: |
Total: |
|||||||||
*Note - integral calculation will increase the final doses of radiation by 50-75%.
**Note - in the calculation, as well as for protons, six degrees of freedom of radiation are taken.
For the Apollos, which go through the double electronic ERP, the average dose of radiation will be 20-35 rem.
Apollo 13 and Apollo 16 carry out the mission in spring and autumn, when the electron fluences in the ERP are increased by 2-3 times the average (5-6 times the winter ones). Thus, for Apollo 13, the radiation dose will be ~ 55 rem. For Apollo 16 will be ~40 rem.
ill. Fig. 18. The time course of the fluxes of electrons with an energy of 0.8-1.2 MeV (fluences) integrated over the flight of the GLONASS satellite through the radiation belt for the period from June 1994 to July 1996. The indexes of geomagnetic activity are also given: daily Kp-index and Dst-variation. Bold lines are the smoothed values of fluences and Kp-index.
Apollo 8, Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 were preceded by magnetic storms before their missions. The electronic component of the RPZ will expand by 5-20 times. For these missions, the dose of radiation from the ERP electrons will increase, respectively, by 4, 10 and 7 times.
ill. 19. Changes in the intensity profiles of electrons with an energy of 290-690 keV before and after a magnetic storm for various moments of time on the shells of the Earth's radiation belt from 1.5 to 2.5. The numbers next to the curves indicate the time in days elapsed after the electron injection.
And only for Apollo 11, a decrease in the radiation dose due to the summer mission by 2-3 times or 10 rem can be noted.
TOTAL EQUIVALENT RADIATION DOSES DURING THE FLIGHT TO THE MOON ACCORDING TO NASA
Doses of radiation of proton and electronic RPZ add up. In table. Table 3 shows the total doses of radiation for the Apollos, taking into account the features of the RPG.
Tab. 3. Apollo mission, ERP features and equivalent doses of radiation*.
|
*Note - the dose of solar wind radiation (0.2-0.9 rem/day), X-ray radiation (1.1-1.5 rem/day in the Apollo suit) and GCR (0.1-0.2 rem/day) was neglected .
Table 4 lists the values of the equivalent dose of radiation, leading to the occurrence of certain radiation effects.
Table 4. Table of radiation risks for a single exposure:
|
Dose, rem* |
Likely effects |
|
0,01-0,1 |
Low danger to humans according to the IAEA. 0.02 rem corresponds to a single human chest x-ray. |
|
0,1-1 |
The normal situation for a person according to the IAEA. |
|
1-10 |
Great danger to humans according to the IAEA. Influence at nervous system and psyche. 5% increased risk of blood leukemia. |
|
10-30 |
A very serious danger to humans according to the IAEA. Moderate changes in the blood. Mental retardation in offspring of parents. |
|
30-100 |
Radiation diseases from 5-10% of exposed people. Vomiting, temporary oppression of hematopoiesis and oligospermia, changes in the thyroid gland. Mortality up to 17 years in the offspring of parents. |
|
100-150 |
Radiation diseases in ~25% of exposed people. A 10-fold increase in the risk of leukemia and cancer mortality. |
|
150-200 |
Radiation diseases in ~50% of exposed people. Lung cancer. |
|
200-350 |
Radiation diseases in almost all people, ~20% fatal. 100% skin burn. Survivors have cataracts and permanent testicular sterility. |
|
50% deaths. Survivors have total alopecia and x-ray pneumonia. |
|
|
~100% deaths. |
Thus, the passage of the Earth's radiation belt according to the scheme and official NASA reports, taking into account magnetic storms and seasonal variation of RPG, leads to fatal radiation diseases for the Apollo 14 and Apollo 17 crews. For the Apollo 12 and Apollo 15 astronauts, a 100% skin burn is noted in the further development of cataracts and sterility of the testes. For other Apollo missions, the radiation effect leads to cancer. In general, the radiation doses are 56-2000 times higher than those values stated in the official NASA report!
ill. 20. The result of exposure to radiation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is contrary to NASA, in particular, the results of the Apollo 14 flight were:
- excellent physical training And high qualification astronauts, in particular - the physical endurance of Shepard, who at the time of the flight was 47 years old;
- no morbid phenomena were observed in the astronauts;
- Shepard gained half a kilogram in weight (the first case in the history of American manned space exploration);
- During the flight, the astronauts never took medication ...
CONCLUSION
NASA by proxy Robert A. Braeunig creates his own positive image - they say the Apollo circled the Earth's radiation belt, like Apollo 11, using the substitution technique or Gelsomino in the land of liars. Upon careful examination of the work of Robert A. Braeunig, errors were found that cannot be called anything other than a deliberate distortion of facts. Even for Apollo 11, the radiation dose is 56 times higher than officially stated..
Table 5 shows the total and daily doses of radiation from manned flights on spacecraft and data from orbital stations.
Table 5. Total and daily radiation doses of manned flights
on spacecraft and orbital stations.
|
duration |
orbit elements |
sum. radiation doses, rad [source] |
average |
|
|
Apollo 7 |
10 d 20 h 09 m 03 s |
orbital flight, orbit height 231-297 km |
||
|
Apollo 8 |
6 d 03 h 00 m |
|||
|
Apollo 9 |
10 d 01 h 00 m 54 s |
orbital flight, orbit height 189-192 km, on the third day - 229-239 km |
||
|
Apollo 10 |
8 d 00 h 03 m 23 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 11 |
8 d 03 h 18 m 00 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 12 |
10 d 04 h 25 m 24 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 13 |
5 d 22 h 54 m 41 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 14 |
9 d 00 h 05 m 04 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 15 |
12 d 07 h 11 m 53 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 16 |
11 d 01 h 51 m 05 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Apollo 17 |
12 d 13 h 51 m 59 s |
flight to the moon and return to earth according to NASA |
||
|
Skylab 2 |
28 d 00 h 49 m 49 s |
orbital flight, orbit altitude 428-438 km |
||
|
Skylab 3 |
59 d 11 h 09 m 01 s |
orbital flight, orbit altitude 423-441 km |
||
|
Skylab 4 |
84 d 01 h 15 m 30 s |
orbital flight, orbit altitude 422-437 km |
10,88-12,83 |
|
|
Shuttle Mission 41–C |
6 d 23 h 40 m 07 s |
orbital flight, perigee: 222 km |
||
|
orbital flight, orbit altitude 385-393 km |
||||
|
orbital flight, orbit altitude 337-351 km |
0,010-0,020 |
It can be noted that the Apollo radiation doses of 0.022-0.114 rad/day, received by astronauts allegedly during the flight to the Moon, do not differ from radiation doses of 0.010-0.153 rad/day during orbital flights. The influence of the Earth's radiation belt (its seasonal nature, magnetic storms and features solar activity) is zero. While during a real flight to the Moon according to the NASA scheme, radiation doses cause a 50-500 times greater effect than in the Earth's orbit.
It can also be noted that the lowest radiation effect of 0.010-0.020 rad/day is observed for the ISS orbital station, which has an effective shield twice as high as the Apollos - 15 g/cm 2 and is located in a low Earth reference orbit. The highest radiation doses of 0.099-0.153 rad/day were noted for the Skylab OS, which has the same protection as the Apollo - 7.5 g/cm 2 and flew in a high reference orbit of 480 km near the Van Alen radiation belt.
Thus, the Apollos did not fly to the Moon, they circled in a low reference orbit, being protected by the Earth's magnetosphere, simulating a flight to the Moon, and received doses of radiation from a conventional orbital flight.
NASA's mistake in the late 60s of the last century is a new modern understanding the Earth's radiation belt, which
- increases its radiation hazard to humans by two orders of magnitude,
- introduces seasonal dependence and
- introduces a high dependence on magnetic storms and solar activity.
The work is useful for determining safe conditions and the trajectory of a human flight to the Moon.
Questions, questions...
Friends from Kyiv sent me american film Island World studios "For All Mankind"("For all mankind"- with a polyphonic translation into Russian), directed by Al Reinert, released in 1989 for the 20th anniversary of the landing on the moon of the first people - American astronauts N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin. The film raises a lot of questions, even without watching it.
"For All Mankind", full NASA movie (1989)
(without translation into Russian - in English)
For example, why is the Soviet audience not familiar with him? Why was this and subsequent anniversary films never shown on our television? For example, in the USSR it was not shown for ideological reasons, but after all, already under Gorbachev, we opened the doors for the propaganda of the older pale-faced brother. Why did US agitprop never insist that its main achievement - landing on the moon - be promoted in the captured country?
Long road
Some total figures. This supposedly documentary about the first people on the moon is 75 minutes. In about half an hour, you will definitely begin to swear: when will the moon finally be? The fact is that landing on the moon and everything else about the stay of astronauts on the moon (everyone, not only Armstrong and Aldrin) take only about 25 minutes in the film, and shooting on the moon is about 20.5 minutes, and the astronauts themselves there are less than 19 minutes. Agree that this is not much, if we consider that according to legend, the astronauts of all expeditions spent about 400 hours on the Moon.
You ask: What is shown in the first 50 minutes of the film? Yes, whatever!
How astronauts dress before launch, how they are examined, how they walk, how they are lifted onto the ship, how they take off, how they admire the view of the Canary Islands from space, how they change clothes, how they eat, how they shave with an electric razor, how they are thrown by objects suspended in weightlessness, how they sleep, how they eat again, how they shave again, however, now with a safety razor. How the music of the audio player is listened to, what kind of music it is, what the musicians said when it was recorded, etc. and so on. Since there is no hurry, they show how the astronauts jokingly shoot a video about themselves, how they draw screensavers for it, these screensavers (4 or 5), of course, are necessarily shown to the audience. How astronauts broadcast a comic TV report on sports news from space, scores in basketball league matches are transmitted. Etc. and so on. And all this with sparkling American humor. For example, they joke merrily, showing how the astronauts are recovering (it is explained in detail that the bags with excrement must be tightly closed with lids, otherwise the excrement will stick around the entire cabin). When one goes to recover, the rest, making faces, put on oxygen masks, letting the audience know that it stinks badly. Funny. In general, in the abyss of space, there is an abyss of humor. American.
So that the audience does not get bored too much, an accident is arranged: "leakage of liquid oxygen in the maintenance compartment, where oxygen is stored for the crew to breathe." This liquid oxygen is shown as a fountain. For some reason, the MCC is looking at something that looks like a storage battery and give a peppy command: "Try plans No. 4 and No. 3." At this command, the astronaut grabs a roll of adhesive tape and quickly seals something with it, brilliantly saving the life of the crew.
Spectators are not deprived of original views, but first a few words about the design of the Apollo spacecraft. It is launched into the Earth's orbit by two stages of the Saturn rocket, the third stage accelerates it to the Moon. The Apollo itself consists of the main unit, which houses the cockpit and engine. In this cabin, astronauts fly to the moon and return to Earth. The engine of the main unit slows down the Apollo near the Moon and accelerates it to return to Earth. A lunar cabin is docked to the engines of the main unit, in which two astronauts descend to the Moon and return to the main unit. A landing platform is docked to the lunar cabin from the side of its engine, the engine of which puts the platform and the lunar cabin on the surface of the Moon. (The lunar cabin then starts from this platform).
Launch vehicle "Saturn-5""
1. Emergency Rescue System (SAS).
2. Compartment of the crew of the spacecraft "Apollo"
3. The engine compartment of the Apollo spacecraft.
4. Lunar cabin of the Apollo spacecraft.
5. Lunar platform.
6. Equipment compartment.
7. Third stage (rocket S-4B).
8. J-2 engine.
9. Second stage (rocket S-).
10. Five J-2 engines.
11. First stage (rocket S-1C.
12. Five F-1 engines.
The crew compartment is small: it is a cone with a diameter at the base of 3.9 m and a height of 3.2 m. . There are no gateways.
Nevertheless, 2 hours after the launch from the cosmodrome, when the Apollo with the third stage of the Saturn was supposed to be still in Earth orbit, someone from the Armstrong crew decided to urgently take a walk in space: they opened the hatch and went out. There were enough TV cameras inside the crew compartment, but at that time they were not filming, and this is not surprising: after all, oxygen must be lowered from the Apollo into the open hatch, and the two remaining crew members would also have to put on spacesuits. That astronaut who went into outer space did it solely to hang in empty space and say, "Hallelujah, Houston." Soon, Houston demanded that he return to the compartment, since in a few minutes the Apollo acceleration to the Moon began. By the way, the absence of the third stage of the Saturn was clearly visible.
In the film, the mission control center (MCC) looms annoyingly. Since there is nothing to show in it - the consoles and the people behind them, the poor director climbed out of his skin to diversify the picture: he showed how they worry at the MCC, and how they rejoice, and how they laugh at the endless jokes of the astronauts, and how they yawn, and how they drink coffee, how they eat, how they smoke. The trousers and boots of the flight director are shown three times in the film, and everyone should remember that the trousers are short and the boots are brightly polished. At the very least, with this technique, the director pulled the MCC footage for 9 minutes of the total time of the film.
Be that as it may, but in the end with jokes, jokes, music and songs, the astronauts finally flew up to the moon.
My technically savvy acquaintances claimed that the Americans could not land on the moon due to the fact that they had no experience in docking spacecraft. Really. According to legend, on the way to the Moon, the astronauts had to undock the main block of the Apollo from the third stage of Saturn, turn it 180 degrees and dock again to the lunar cabin so that the upper hatch of the main block was aligned with the upper hatch of the lunar cabin, otherwise Armstrong and it was impossible for Aldrin to cross into it.
So, not a word is said about this most complicated operation in the film! There are no shots of the farewell of the astronaut remaining in the main block with those going into the lunar cabin, no shots of their return. But this is not a scene of the departure of small and large needs by the astronauts and not a scene of their shaving, these were supposed to be the most powerful shots in terms of drama. But they are not for any lunar expedition! Moreover, after approaching the Moon, the cameras of the crew compartment were no longer turned on, and there is not a single frame with its interior. The main block was shown outside all the time. If I am right and the Americans dropped lunar cabins on the Moon without astronauts, then it should be so, because all three astronauts were in the crew compartment and it was impossible to show it, just as it was impossible at that time to shoot scenes of farewells and meetings that did not take place without real weightlessness .
On the moon
Anyway. And so they finally sit down. A television camera located somewhere outside (neither it nor the portholes on the lunar cabin in its drawings were found by me), filming the landing on the moon. Approximately a few meters from the surface, as seen from the shadow on the Moon's surface, what looks like jets of gas from an engine flickers in front of the lens and then the camera shakes with the impact of the landing. No pebble, no sand, no speck of dust flew out from under the engine of the lunar platform with a thrust in a vacuum of 4530 kG. But when, at the end of the film, the launch from the moon of the lunar cabin of some next Apollo, starting from its metal platform, is shown, then from the jet of the engine with a thrust of 1590 kG, stones flew up at a tremendous speed, at least 20-50 kg by eye. Nothing to say - cinema! Hollywood. By the last series, they guessed that the engine jet should somehow act on the ground.
A few words about the fact that people who are sure that the Americans were on the moon consider the lighting spotlights of the shooting pavilion that have fallen into numerous photographs to be glare on the lens. Spotlights also hit the frames of this film and they are well distinguishable from glare. (When the camera is rotated, the highlights change shape and follow the camera, while the spotlights remain stationary).
The Americans for the first time installed corner reflectors of a laser signal on the lunar surface. Since then, the photon signal reflected from them has been repeatedly recorded in sessions of laser ranging of the Moon at observatories. different countries including the USSR. This is considered reliable evidence of the presence of Americans on the moon. True, opponents immediately admit that “later, similar devices were delivered to the Moon in Soviet experiments with Lunokhods and are used for the same purposes along with American ones,” i.e. for their installation, it is not necessary to land a person, this can also be done by an automatic station. The USSR also delivered a corner reflector to the Moon and took soil samples, but does not boast that its astronauts were on the Moon. So this is absolutely circumstantial evidence. And direct evidence of the presence of American astronauts on the moon is genuine film and photography. You can't make them anywhere.
The most touching, of course, are the shots of the installation of the American flag. "On the Moon" one astronaut drove a peg into the ground, another planted a flagpole on it. According to legend, the flag was made of stiff fabric on a wire frame, i.e. the flagpole looked like the letter "G". So the flag had only one free corner, and this corner showed that it was really free. It fluttered so merrily in the wind of the "airless" space of the "Moon" that the astronaut was forced to pull it up. Hanging angle. But as soon as the astronaut departed, the flag fluttered merrily again. (Probably, some damn Negro opened all the time and closed the gate in the filming pavilion, creating a draft).
Since the too obvious absurdity of these shots began to immediately catch the eye of any more or less reasonable person, fans of America tried to get out of the situation, offering some explanations for this fact. It is worth dwelling on them in more detail. At the moment, all pro-American scientists adhere to one of two mutually exclusive hypotheses. The first asserts that “these are just natural vibrations of the flagpole-flag elastic system”. But one must not only know these clever words, but also figuratively imagine what it is. Take something elastic, for example, a ruler, hold one end of it, pull it back and release the free one. These are elastic vibrations in their purest form. Their peculiarity, like any oscillations, is that the oscillating part of the system deviates from the zero position all the time - the one in which the oscillations subside.
So, in the film there is no hint of these very "elastic oscillations". The flag is blown away by the wind in one direction from the zero position, and the ribbon stretching behind the astronaut "going into space" is also blown off in one direction. She always covers him only on one side and trembles in the draft. Those. and "spacewalk" is also a Hollywood fake. By the way, with this "exit" cumulus clouds are visible as close as they are seen from an airplane, and not from space station. (By the way, American journalists themselves caught NASA on the fact that they gave the press photos of "spacewalk" obviously falsified). By giving this forgery, the Americans show that they have a catastrophic lack of material for a film about the flight to the moon. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that in the spacewalk scene there are a number of shots of clearly cosmic origin: in particular, the inclusion of the sustainer engine in Earth orbit - the jet from the engine is just the same as it should be when it flows into a vacuum (very underexpanded), is visible its structure in the form of shock waves. So they still flew into space. And installation is a matter of technology.
The second hypothesis is that the flag had a motor that created vibrations. But, in addition to the fact that it is rather difficult to imagine such a thing, it should also be noted that the oscillations created by the motor must, firstly, be strictly periodic, and secondly, have a wave profile that is constant in time. We don't see anything like this in the pictures. Of course, enthusiasts can assume that there, inside the flag, there was also a Pentium II or even III (and why not? Near the motor!), Which pulls the flag at random intervals in a random direction with a random effort, but still region science fiction we do not consider.
In addition, an important caveat should be made: Truth is always concrete, and therefore the realization of both mutually exclusive hypotheses is impossible. If it's a matter of free oscillations, then why involve the hypothesis with a motor? After all, this is simply stupid! If there was a motor, then who do you need to be in order to believe in the hypothesis of free oscillations? As you wish, but even if one of these hypotheses were true, it means that the supporters of the other are simply extremely stupid. Sometimes there are instances that try to combine these two hypotheses and talk about free oscillations with a motor, but this already stems from elementary ignorance of physics, and, apart from the advice to read school textbooks, such people simply have nothing to say.
Another psychologically very interesting episode. The astronauts, like O. Bender of reference, presented the world with proof that they were really in the airless space of the Moon. One astronaut took a hammer in one hand, a bird's feather (!) in the other, raised them to shoulder height and simultaneously released them. The hammer and feather hit the ground at the same time. But for us, firstly, it is not this cheap trick that is important, but the fact that the American children of Lieutenant Schmidt planned this on Earth in order to prove their stay on the Moon, for which the astronauts took the "feather" with them. If they really were on the moon, then why is this necessary? Secondly, in Hollywood they were not smart enough to understand that they had conducted a physical experiment by which one could calculate the acceleration of free fall, and by its value to understand whether this happens on the Moon or not. I think that if they understood this, they would stick a feather in the ass of the one who came up with this trick. But more on that below.
All "lunar" shots are frankly playful: the astronauts play their stay on the Moon, and this is striking. For example, an episode: between the TV camera and two astronauts there is about 20 m of sandy surface. About 2 meters from the chamber, a stone 10 centimeters in diameter and 20 centimeters high vertically sticks out. There are no other more or less large stones anywhere else. In theory, the astronauts themselves had to install the TV camera and, moving away from it, they had to stumble over this stone. The episode has begun. An astronaut from afar moves back to the camera and joyfully exclaims: "Look, what a stone!" And in the center of the frame begins to raise it. Those. this is the "lunar" version of the joke about the piano in the bushes.
In these shootings "on the moon" there is not a single documentary, natural episode. Here is an astronaut demonstrating a useful activity - he drives a small pin into the ground. There are no wires coming from the pin, there are no devices - a bare metal pin. He scored, put the hammer in his pocket, turned and ran, singing some song. And why did he take him to the moon and why did he score?
Lunar episodes with astronauts are clearly played in slow motion in order to create the appearance of astronauts moving "like on the moon." When running and jumping, the astronauts slowly leave the surface and slowly descend. For several minutes of the film, they deliberately fall to show that the fall is slow. Considering the risks of actually and very carefully being on the Moon, the behavior of the astronauts with their pranks and falls clearly indicates that if they and the MCC are not completely kamikaze, then this is not the Moon.
Let's get back to running. If we ignore the slow motion, it is clear that the astronauts in spacesuits are very hard. But they are on the moon, where the weight is six times less than on earth, despite the fact that the strength of the muscles remains the same. For example, astronaut Aldrin in a space suit (about 11 kG) and with a life support pack (45 kG) weighs 161 kG on the Earth, and 27 kG on the Moon. Let's remember the school and count a little.
Running on the moon
When walking and running, the foot lifts us off the ground and throws us up to a certain height. h. The energy of this throw is equal to our weight multiplied by this height. On the moon, our weight will be 6 times less, therefore, with the same usual muscular effort, the leg will throw us to a height h 6 times higher than on Earth.
From high h we are brought back to earth by the force of its attraction in time t, calculated by the formula
(It seems doubtful to me that such a decrease in speed would be noticeable by eye, I'm afraid that I won't be able to tell by eye whether a person is walking at a speed of 5 km/h or 4.1 km/h, whether a car is traveling at a speed of 10 km/h or 8 km/h).
Let's assume that on Earth Aldrin, wearing just his shorts, makes it above the surface in the 0.14 seconds we calculated. step length of 0.9 m. On the Moon in a spacesuit, his speed will decrease by 1.22 times, but the time before descending to the surface will increase by 0.71 / 0.14 \u003d 5.1 times, therefore, the width of Aldrin's step will increase by 5 ,1 / 1.22 = 4.2 times, or up to 0.9 x 4.2 = 3.8 m. The suit makes movement difficult and, let's say, for this reason, its step will decrease by 0.5 m on Earth. On the Moon, it will also decrease by this distance and will be 3.8 - 0.5 \u003d 3.3 m.
Therefore, on the Moon in a spacesuit, the astronauts' step speed above the surface should be slightly slower than on Earth, but the height of the ascent at each step should be 4 times higher than on Earth, and the step width should be 4 times wider.
In the film, the astronauts run and jump, but the height of their jumps and the width of their steps are much smaller than on Earth. This is not surprising, because when they were filmed in Hollywood, they still had at least an imitation of a spacesuit and a life support pack, they were pretty loaded and it was hard for them. And slow-motion playback cannot hide this heaviness. Astronauts kick their feet very hard when running, kilograms of sand fly out from under their feet, they can hardly raise their legs, their socks are rowing along the surface all the time. But slowly....
Such an episode. Aldrin with jokes and jokes jumps from the last step of the lunar module to the "Moon". The height is about 0.8 m, he holds the stairs with his hands. Since his weight in the suit is 27 kg, i.e. four times lighter than in shorts alone on Earth, then for his trained muscles this jump is tantamount to jumping on Earth from a height of 0.2 m, i.e. from one step. Let each of you jump from such a height, without even holding on to anything with your hands, and look at your condition. Aldrin, while jumping from the step, slowly sank to the surface, then his knees began to bend and he bent at the waist, i.e. he hit so hard during the "lunar landing" that his trained muscles could not keep his body in a spacesuit in an upright position.
ground pressure
A little preface to the next calculation. My opponent brought me a thick book "Lunar Soil from the Sea of Abundance" Nauka, M., 1974, so that I myself could read and make sure that the lunar soil delivered by the Soviet automatic station "Luna-16" corresponds to the soil taken by the astronauts . Yes, it says so in the book. But how is it set? Our scientists reported to the Americans the results of studies of lunar soil, and the Americans informed us that they had the same. Of the 400 kg of American "lunar soil" not a gram was sent to the USSR for research, and, it seems to me, still. Yes, a certain amount of lunar soil can be obtained using automatic stations. But since these samples were taken in the absence of people - meaninglessly, just like they were taken by Soviet automatic stations - the scientific result from the study of these samples should not have differed greatly from zero.
For example, the American Lunar and Planetary Institute holds 2 conferences a year dedicated to the Moon, and a lot of lectures are given there. And yet, we know little about the composition of the Moon. And where does this knowledge come from? Two or three point samples from the most uninteresting and uninformative points of the Moon - from flat areas? It is possible to analyze these samples for at least a hundred years by any new methods of analysis, but all the same, these analyzes will not say anything about the Moon, since on the surface of the Moon, as well as on the Earth, there may be the devil knows what that is not related to either the crust or the structure of the planet . But there is not the slightest hint that the Americans on the Moon made at least the smallest attempts at geological exploration! The USSR, with the help of then imperfect automatic stations, could not carry out any geological exploration, but they, with people and cars, why didn’t they try to do it? Why didn't they take samples of soil, bedrock and ore deposits meaningfully?
The fact is that with the help of their lunar soil, the Americans were ahead of the USSR only in a single issue - in proving the existence of paranormal phenomena.
A specialist in this matter A. Kartashkin in the book "Poltergeist" (M., "Santax-Press", 1997) reports this:
"Alexander Kuzovkin wrote an article "Some Aspects of the UFO and Poltergeist Phenomenon".
It tells (with reference to the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper of October 6, 1979) about an absolutely incredible case. Recall that by that time American astronauts had already visited the Moon and brought samples of lunar soil back to Earth. Of course, this soil was immediately placed in a special sophisticated encrypted storage. Suffice it to say that this vault cost $2.2 million to design and build. Of course, that the room with the lunar soil was guarded with particular partiality. It is all the more striking that a significant number of samples of lunar soil soon ... disappeared without a trace" . (Highlighted by me - author's article)
And Americans lament that we know very little about the Moon. But how can you learn more if Barabashka stole the most valuable samples from the unfortunate Americans. How do you like this American Lamb? No patriotism!
Regarding the footprints of the astronauts "on the Moon", such data from the aforementioned book on lunar soil are of interest. The researchers write (p. 38) that the lunar soil "is easily molded and crushed into separate loose lumps. Traces of external influences- instrument touches. The soil easily holds the vertical wall..." From this it formally follows that the astronauts' shoe protectors, compressing the soil from above and from the sides, could leave a clear mark. less than a stack). Those. soil without pressing does not "hold the wall". If we pour wet sand into a glass on the beach, and then turn the glass upside down and remove it, then the sand will retain the internal shape of the glass, it will hold the wall even without pressing, with free pouring. And if we pour dry sand into a glass and turn it over, then the sand will spread, forming a cone with an angle of repose, i.e. he does not hold the wall.
It follows that the footprint of the tread of the soles of American astronauts should be clear only in the center, and along the edges of the shoes, where the ground is not pressed, it should crumble at an angle of 45 degrees. Such a trace - with crumbling edges - was left on the Moon by our "Lunokhod". In American photos, the soil keeps the wall on the footprints both in the center of them and from the edges. Those. it's not moon soil, it's wet sand.
Further from this book, you can find out the compressibility of the lunar soil. But first, let's calculate. There is a famous full-length profile shot of Aldrin. It is unlikely that his height is less than 190 cm, taking into account the soles and his helmet. In relation to his height, the length of his shoes is about 40 cm. From the photo of individual footprints of the astronauts, it can be seen that the width of the footprint is almost equal to half its length, i.e. the sole area is about 800 sq. cm, to take into account the rounding of the sole, we reduce this value by a quarter - up to 600 sq. cm. The track has 10 transverse treads, and given the approximately equal size of the depressions, these treads are 2 cm wide and high. The surface area of the protectors is estimated at half the total area of the sole, i.e. in 300 sq. cm. Aldrin's weight on the moon is well known - 27 kg. Hence, the pressure on the ground only by the protectors is less than 0.1 kgf/sq.cm.
From diagram 7 on p. 579 in the mentioned book, it follows that at such a pressure, the lunar soil will shrink (settle) by less than 5 mm. Those. in real lunar soil on the moon, even the protectors of the soles of an astronaut could not completely sink. But in all the photos, the prints of the soles are imprinted in such a way that the side surfaces of the shoes form vertical walls even above the sole! If these footprints really were on the Moon, then we would not see the full footprints of the astronauts' shoes, but only shallow strips of tread. No, it's not the Moon, it's all 161 kG of Aldrin's Earth weight pressing down on the wet sand!
Acceleration of gravity
Now back to the hammer and feather drop experiment. In this trick, it was important for the Americans that the hammer and the "feather" fall at the same time, but they did not realize that the time for which they would fall is also important. The astronaut dropped them from a height of at least 1.4 m. The average fall time for several measurements gave a result of 0.83 seconds. From here, according to the formula a = 2h/t squared, the free fall acceleration is easily calculated. It amounted to 2 x 1.4 / 0.832 = 4.1 m / s. in a square. And on the Moon this value should be 1.6 m/sec. squared means it's not the moon! Experimented, nerds?!
There is another episode in the film. An astronaut is running, and on his shoulder he has a bag full of samples. One stone falls on the run and falls to the ground in 0.63 seconds. Even if the astronaut bent his knees very strongly while running, the height from which the stone fell could not be less than 1.3 m. According to the above formula, this gives the value of the gravitational acceleration of 6.6 m/sec. in a square. The result is even worse!
The question before me was - is this difference my mistake in measuring time? I made seven measurements of the time of the fall of the stone and got (sec.): 0.65; 0.62; 0.61; 0.65; 0.71; 0.55; 0.61. On average - 0.63, we will not consider the standard deviation, since even the maximum error in both directions turned out to be 0.08 sec. If it were on the moon, then the time of the fall of the stone would be
The difference between 1.27 and 0.63 is much larger than my error of 0.08 sec. So it's not a mistake, and therefore not the moon!
The launch of the lunar cabin from its platform from the Moon was also shown. Firstly, the flame of a running engine was not visible at the starting cabin. Nevertheless, several dozen stones flew out from under the platform very quickly. One stone had an upper zero point, after which it began to decline until it went off the screen. Focusing on the dimensions of the cabin, I roughly estimated that while the stone was visible, it fell by 10 meters. But the time of the fall could not be determined. I could not press the button at the right speed on the stopwatch: the minimum that I could squeeze out of the stopwatch and myself was 0.25 seconds. But the speed of the fall of the stone was even greater, it disappeared before the stopwatch could squeak under my finger. Therefore, let us assume that the stone descended by 10 m precisely in these 0.25 seconds. Then the free fall acceleration is 2 x 10 / 0.252 = 320 m/s2. This, you see, is somewhat more than 1.6 m/s squared on the Moon and 9.8 m/s. squared on earth. Was it the sun?
I think that's the point here. The lunar cabin "during launch" was lifted up with a winch, and the winch cable cannot be fixed so that it passes exactly through the center of gravity, and the winch itself is difficult to set strictly in the center of gravity, and if you raise the cabin quickly, pull it, then it will begin to sway ( hang out). I had to pull slowly, and then scroll the film very quickly. As a result, the stones, which simultaneously rose up with an expelling charge, acquired incredible speed.
Battle for the Moon
But why did the Americans need it - to take a huge risk in order to deceive the entire population of the Earth? Why risk your career like that? Yes, then, that losing Soviet Union in the lunar race, they lost everything - 30 billion from the federal budget, prestige, self-importance, careers, jobs. No one in America would need this Moon for nothing, and no one could convince the American taxpayer to allocate money to an organization that is unable to defend America's prestige. So there is a motive. NASA knew how to send three people to the Moon and FLY AROUND the Moon, but had no technical experience with landing on the Moon. How to undock from the "mother" ship (flying in lunar orbit) and lower in a smaller, self-contained "shuttle" (lunar module), launch a lunar landing rocket pushing the module with a force of 10,000 pounds, bring the module to the planned lunar landing site, land, put on spacesuits, go to the surface, tinker, act out a scene on the surface, ride on the moon, return to the module, take off, rendezvous and dock with the mother ship, and finally return to Earth.
So they faked everything. Considering that Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey block blaster was being filmed at the same time, the technology for the necessary special effects already existed. And for a tidy sum of 20 billion dollars, you can make a very long movie.
In a video released on VHS cassette, titled "It's just a paper moon", American investigative journalist Jim Collier points out several minor inconsistencies listed below:
1. Two Apollo astronauts fully dressed in spacesuits simply could not physically fit in the module and, in addition, open the door, because the door opened INSIDE, not out. They wouldn't be able to get out of the module while wearing their space suits. He (D.K.) measured distances with a film.
2. The Apollo astronaut was physically unable to squeeze through the tunnel connecting the mother ship and the module. It's too narrow. Collier went to the NASA museum and measured it. The ends of the tunnel contained a ring of docking devices. The NASA "in-flight" footage we've been talking about was allegedly taken during a flight to the Moon and shows the astronauts flying freely through the tunnel, which in itself says a lot, apart from the fact that the film didn't show any docking devices. Plus, the hatch of the tunnel opened in the wrong direction. So these shots were taken ON GROUND.
3. On the frames taken during the flight to the Moon, BLUE light is visible pouring into the windows of the spacecraft. But since there is no atmosphere in outer space capable of decomposing light into a spectrum, space is BLACK. These shots were taken ON GROUND, most likely in the cargo hold of a supersonic aircraft that went into a deep dive to create the effect of weightlessness.
4. Photos taken by the astronauts who landed on the moon show the module standing on a flat, smooth, undisturbed surface. This could not have been the case if they had actually landed on the moon with the help of jet engines, the pressure of which was 10,000 pounds per square inch. The entire surface of the landing site would be severely damaged. These pictures were taken ON THE GROUND.
5. There are no stars in any of the pictures of the Apollo astronauts. None. This cannot be. Astronauts, if they were on the Moon, would be surrounded by stars shining with white light, the presence of an atmosphere would not prevent them from sparkling to their fullest. These pictures were taken here ON GROUND. (It is usually objected that, due to the different brightness, it is impossible to capture both the surface of the Moon and starry sky. Opponents probably do not know that the Moon is a very dark object, its albedo is only about 10%. Right now I am holding in my hands the book “Course of General Astronomy” by Bakulin, Kononovich and Moroz, where on page 322 there is a photograph of the lunar landscape transmitted by the Luna-9 station. A piece of the sky is visible on it - and there are stars on it!)
6. Each astronaut and objects standing on the lunar surface cast many shadows, and shadows of various lengths. This cannot be. There is no other source of light on the Moon than the SUN, and, quite obviously, the light must fall in one direction. So these pictures were taken ON GROUND.
7. Considering that the lunar gravity is 1/6 that of the Earth, the "cock's tail" of dust raised by the wheels of the "dune carriage" (lunar rover) would have to rise SIX TIMES higher than it would be on Earth when driving with the same speed. But this is not. In addition, the dust falls in layers - LAYERS! What is impossible where there is no atmosphere. The dust should have fallen in the same smooth arch as it had risen.
8. Even in a collapsible form, the lunar rover could not physically fit on the lunar module. Collier went and measured everything. A few feet missing. Pictures taken "on the moon" show astronauts GOING to the module to take out the rover. Then the shooting ends. When the moon panorama reappears, the rover has already been dismantled. How oooooooooooooooooooooooool!
9. The Lunar Module crashed - CRASHED - during its only test on Earth. So why was his next test an attempt to land ON THE MOON? If you were an astronaut's wife, would you let him participate in such a suicide attempt?
10. None of the Apollo astronauts ever wrote a book on the topic "How I Went to the Moon" or any other memoirs on the same topic.
11. But that's not all - far, far, far from everything. You can talk about the placement of guide engines, smoke from burning rocket fuel, and so on and so forth ...
Two great discoveries
In 1982, 10 years after the complete end of the lunar program, a beautifully illustrated book "Space Technology" (Space Technology) was published by a team of American, Soviet and other authors. The chapter "The Man on the Moon" was written by the American R. Lewis.
The section from this chapter, "Some Summary," I will give in full, so that no one will think that I have hidden any of the outstanding American achievements. But I draw your attention to the fact that in this chapter there should be only that knowledge about the Moon that was obtained due to the stay of a person on this satellite of the Earth, and not a general la-la. Therefore, evaluate what exactly R. Lewis wrote in this section so that it turns out to be longer than three lines.
So: "The Apollo 17 expedition was the last expedition to the Moon. During six visits to the Moon, 384.2 kg of rock and soil samples were collected. In the course of the research program, a number of discoveries were made, but the following two are the most important. "First, it was found that the moon is sterile, no life forms were found on it. After the flight of the Apollo 14 spacecraft, the previously introduced three-week quarantine for the crew was canceled."
Amazing discovery! In "Small Soviet encyclopedia"for 1931 (I did not find anything earlier) states: "The moon is devoid of atmosphere and water, and therefore life" . For this "important" discovery, it was necessary to send people to the moon ?! And most importantly, what exactly did the astronauts do to discover this discovery? Quarantine passed, did you work as experimental mice?
“Secondly, it was found that the Moon, like the Earth, went through a series of periods of internal heating. It has a surface layer - a crust that is quite thick compared to the radius of the Moon, a mantle and a core, which, according to some researchers, consists of iron sulfide ".
And what exactly did the astronauts do for this conclusion? Indeed, in their soil samples (as well as in Soviet ones) sulfur is completely absent! How did the Americans determine that the core was composed of iron sulfide?
“While the Moon and Earth are quite close in chemical composition, they differ significantly in other respects, which supports the view of scientists who reject the assumption that the Moon separated from the Earth during the formation of the planets.
The conclusion that no forms of life have ever existed on the Moon is confirmed by the complete absence of water here, at least on the lunar surface or near it "...
According to limited seismic survey data, the crust of the part of the moon closest to us has a thickness of 60-65 km. On the part of the Moon remote from us, the crust can be somewhat thicker - about 150 km. Under the crust to a depth of about 1000 km is the mantle, even deeper - the core.
After 30 years, the Americans began to send automatic stations to the Moon in order to still find out what their astronauts allegedly had already "discovered".
The results are reported, for example, in the article (Feldman W., Maurice S., Binder B., Barraclough B., Elphic R., Lawrence D. Fluxes of fast and epithermal neutrons from Lunar Prospector: evidence for water ice at the lunar poles // Science 1998. V. 281. P. 1496 – 1500.) Read.
The American spacecraft Lunar Prospector worked in lunar orbit for eighteen months.
Throughout its mission, this machine, weighing 295 kg and slightly larger than a household washing machine, has constantly puzzled scientists with amazing discoveries. For the first time in early 1998, Lunar Prospector stunned the scientific community by discovering a huge amount of ice in the shaded areas near the lunar poles!
When rotating around our natural satellite, the device experienced minor changes in its speed. Calculations based on these indicators revealed the presence of a core in the Moon. Assuming that it, like on Earth, mainly consists of iron, experts calculated its size. In their opinion, the radius of the lunar core should be from 220 to 450 km (the radius of the Moon is 1738 km).
Lunar Prospector's magnetometers detected a weak magnetic field near our natural satellite. This field was used to specify the size of the nucleus. Its radius turned out to be 300-425 km. With such dimensions, the mass of the core should be about 2% of the mass of the moon. We emphasize that the core of the Earth with a radius of about 3400 km accounts for a whole third of the mass of the planet.
So . The valiant American astronauts "found out" that the core of the Moon has a radius of 1738-1000=738 km. And the automatic station found out that it is equal to 300-425 km, two times less! Valiant astronauts "find out" that the core of the Moon is composed of iron sulfide. And "Lunar Prospector" found out that there is little iron in the core. Valiant astronauts "find out" that there is no ice on the Moon. And "Lunar Prospector" found out that there are many!
So what is the difference between the results of the landing of the Americans on the moon and empty chatter?
I think I have already answered the question indicated at the beginning of the article - why the Americans do not require Russian TV to show these films about their "most outstanding victory in the 20th century." We, the generation that received a normal education, have not yet died out, we have not yet been completely replaced by those who chose Pepsi and safe sex. Well, how can we show such nonsense? And, looking at this American propaganda fake about landing on the moon, we have to state: no, you guys weren't there!
