davegtt

Come off it.... theres more to it that my own prejudeces against america, like I say. late '69, the race agains the russians etc.. all seems a bit suspect to me....

davegtt

plus, all these years man had been trying to "fly2 as such we only had half decent planes during WW2 (1940's) yet 20-30 years later we're into space travel all of a sudden.... I know its probably possible but its a bloody big leap.

OllyK

Really? The basic technology for the rockets was in use in the V2 rocket powered bombs at the end of the war. When you consider that, I wonder what took them so long.

Angry

Dave, look at the amount of money being pumped(even today) into the kinds of organisations involved in military and space research. As I stated earlier, they are about 30 years ahead of the commercial technology we all use thanks to that.

Look at the internet, that started out as a Pentagon project in the early seventies!

davegtt

ohh yeah, not to mention live TV being broadcast from the moon. NTL cant even get cable to work correctly in the year 2005 and probably stil wont by the year 3000

Look, Im not saying they did or didnt. I dont honestly care... I choose to BELIEVE they probably didnt... thats my choice and I in no way would want to influence anyone elses beliefs as its unproven from both sides IMO so its a matter of choice which anyone of us decide to believe.

davegtt

Angry, off course they're technology is well advanced, I aint denying that. but most of that technology is still public knowledge (unless its "top secret" ) its nothing new

jasey

100 years ago we were all going round in horses & carts - Now we've got personal transportation devices capable of 200+ mph. (although the average speed today is probably less - but that's a different Issue).

Phones today have 10-100mb disc space - 15 years ago that would have cost you £4,500 and you'd need a small room to put it in !

Progress .

Daz34

We went from 300mph+ piston engined fighters to mach 2 jet fighters in ten years.
You shouldn't be so sceptical of Man's achievements

Angry

Thats the point dave, the money I'm talking about is used to develop secret technology, which generally isnt shared with the public until many many years later.

Daz34

Good point.
The stealth fighter which is still seen (or not!) as highly classified advanced state of the art technology,was developed only a few years after the moon landings.

Angry

Thanks Daz, was going to cite the Stealth as an example but you beat me to it

I have no doubt in my mind that the lights currently being seen in the Nevada desert test ranges are the next gen of american fighter planes, just like in the late seventies early eighties when people where reporting seeing strange lights which turned out to be the stealth's test flights.

davegtt

yeah but all these other acheivments are on EARTH.. thats why these are believable....

TonyG

It doesn't take a huge amount of technology to get a man into space - it's very similar to a submarine in a lot of ways, just tied to a rocket. And subs have been around since the early part of the 20th century.

davegtt

AHHHHH, never said getting a man into space was hard.... getting him to land on the moon, walk on the moon, broadcast it live on TV and fly back again was the hard bit, they did this when? 1969? so why has no-one been setting up camp on Mars yet then? if we are propelling oursleves through technology so quickly 36 years on and we can barely say we've done anything remotely close to something as good as the moon.

Dracoro

Because it cost a fortune and doesn't really advance science. Apart from proving that they could do it again, why do it? There's higher priorities. That's why there's other missions such as the Mars missions etc.

davegtt

So why do it in the first place if its not benefitted us in anyway? Surely thats just a waste of time, research, money etc going all that way just to say we did it.

Angry

If you read about it you'll see why, that one sentence sums it up for me, total ignorance of the subject.

Flying to the moon is a drop in the ocean compared to putting people on Mars.

Angry

Alot of scientific research carried out in space does have benefits back on earth, i.e. growing cells for medicine that wont grow in a environment with gravity, manufacturing procesess which cant work with gravity etc etc.

You should really do some reading.

davegtt

total ignorance? how can you say that? how many topics would you have to read up on to be able to have the knowledge to answer everything? just because you might have some knowledge that I dont means Im ignorant? Im sure I could pick up a few subjects I know more about than you but wouldnt call you ignorant of it.....

Look, like Ive said I choose to believe something. end off. not saying it wasnt possible, not saying we've NEVER done it. but that particular event in 1969 just doesnt add up to me. simple.

TonyG

TV broadcsts from the Moon - easy. Live broadcasts across the Atlantic were already possible at that time, and that was by using a moving satellite (no geostationary comsats in them days).
And as for Mars - it was too expensive - the Vietnam War saw to that. And since then, no one country has had the courage or the vision (or the backing from taxpayers) to do it. Technologically a manned landing on Mars was possible by the early 1980s.

Angry

But I would be ignorant of those subjects you may choose to raise as I know nothing about them.

Dave, I am talking about the knowledge surrounding the moon landing and the technologies which enabled that, at no point and I hope I have insinuated that I have the knowledge to answer everything.

I simply find it amusing that you can "believe" something didnt happen because you dont accept it. Its like me saying oxygen doesnt exist becuase I dont believe it :roll:

davegtt

lol... not at all. I choose to believe that it didnt happen because there are enought "theories" out there that attempt to back up the fact that it was manufactured, and how it was all so convienient of the dates and who it was against. thats all Im saying, I am quite prepared to believe that its been done since etc that I have no doubt but that particualar landing in 1969... Im sceptical and I have the right to be.... just like many others

Jap2Scrap

Also don't forget that as Brits we don't get to see anything for years later anyway. The Americans had microwaves in the 60's.. I saw my first one in the 80's

Angry

As I posted earlier:-

Basing a decison on conjecture?

TonyG

One thing I notice is it's always the 'Moon Landings'.
1968. Christmas. Man rounds the moon in Apollo 8.
The landing could have been made months earlier when Apollo 10 made a full 'dress rehearsal' for the actual landing, including manoeuvering a lander close to the surface (not sure of the actual height, but I think it was around 10 miles) before returning. Were they also faked? Strange that the conspiracy theorists never mention these.

Geezer

But Dave, the theories you talk about are utterly discredited. So you are left with the evidence, which is overwhemingly that they did in fact go to the moon! Of course you are free to believe what you want, but if you look at it objectively then all doubt is swept away, so why do you still doubt?

Provide one credible reason why you still have reason to doubt the validity of the claims.

Geezer

Iain Young

Not read the whole thread (not had time), so not sure if this has been mentioned. But when they went there, they installed a special reflector on the surface of the moon which has been used ever since by astronomers to measure the distance between the moon and earth (it is slowly escaping by a few mm a year). Just a bit more ammunition for the "it did happen camp".

There's also the moon rock they brought back with them of course...

As to why it happened, this has more to do with the military than science. You must not forget that this happened at the height of the cold war. The cuban missile crisis had happened only a few years before (1962), and the americans would have done anything the beat the russians to the moon.

Now the americans want to go back. Bush is claiming this is because they want to sort out living on another planet in preparation for a trip to mars, but I suspect it's more likely to do with the fact that a while ago the chinese announced their intentions to go to the moon.

Getting a feeling of de ja vu here....

CrisPDuk

We probably couldn't do it in this day and age BECAUSE we have become so dependent upon technology.
Apart from the actual getting to the moon & circling it, which is a relatively simple mathematics calculation, and can therefore be programmed into an automatic pilot, all the docking, landing & take off manouvres were carried out by a pilot, and I would imagine (nay, hope) that how to land something is one of the first things a pilot is taught In addition, I can't see that the docking manouvre necessary to attach the re-entry module to the lander is much different technically from that of mid-air refueling, which was already in widespread military use by that time.

IMO, the simple logistical problems of feeding a flight crew and maintaining an air supply aside, it would actually have been much easier to get a human to land on the moon in one piece, than a remotely programmed unmanned lander.

All that, and I've not even mentioned our modern world's (especially the US media's), obsession with health and safety a concept never even heard of in the '60s

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

There's nothing like an emerging superpower to liven up space exploration

ricardo

There is another technological marvel from around the same time as the moon landings - Concorde. Can commercial travellers travel across the Atlantic in that time today ? No. So did Concorde really exist, old technology doing something we can't do today ?

Could we build something like that now ? Of course we could, but it would fail on noise, cost, and environmental concerns.

The moon landings were a politically motivated race with money no object, safety was second place, and there was a direction to it all that NASA lost completely after that. It's amazing what you can do when you really want to.