EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: raptor1956 on January 24, 2017, 11:29:18 pm
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Nvidia modeled the lunar surface and the Apollo 11 LEM as well as Neil and Buzz using some of there skills to address a few of the conspiracy theories about the landing. It looks like they jumped into this to give themselves a little more publicity but that's OK -- interesting nonetheless...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVP6zDZN7I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVP6zDZN7I)
Brian
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Even at 1.5x speed, his talk is excruciating slow, but I want to watch it, so I'll let it slide ;D
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Ok, that gets :-+ :-+
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Worth the watch.
Any gamers or people with an appreciation of the Nvidia technology who might have been suspicious about the moon landing should now have their suspicions put to rest.
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Depending which point want to prove you can manipulate rendering and prove it. This presentation is not convincing at all, and i am not a backer of one side or the other, i do not care. BTW, the guy is an awful presenter.
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Depending which point want to prove you can manipulate rendering and prove it.
Agreed. The moon landing hoax/flat earth people are nutjobs, anybody who disagrees with their point of view is just part of the conspiracy, logic is irrelevant. This would prove nothing to them, except that Nvidia is also part of the conspiracy, along with every scientist/engineer/physicist/etc in every country of the world. Not a big leap for them.
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No one has to evaluate any scientific evidence to know that the Apollo Conspiracy is bunk. Think of the number of reputable scientists and technicians who would have to agree and be in on the "fix". What would they do to those who didn't agtree? Think of the number of death bed confessions that would be presented by now. How many Edward Snowdens would there be in among that many people? Not even a totalitarian police state like Russia or North Korea could keep a secret about an event that big. It boggles the mind to even think about the logistics of faking such an event.
Ratch
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My Uncle, who recently passed away was the Program Manager for the LEM at Grumman. I have many of his notes, including the faded E size schematic blueprints of the LEM camera, meeting notes with Werner von Braun and LEM technical manuals. Over the years he shared many stories with me including the technical challenges in getting to the moon and one very particularly challenging problem.....how to deal with human waste, like stools. He told me that working in the space program was the most rewarding time of his life.
If the Apollo mission was indeed a hoax then it had many more people on the ground fooled, including my dear Uncle, who managed the hardware aspect of the project until the LEM project was obsoleted
@grouchobyte
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The moon landing hoax/flat earth people are nutjobs, anybody who disagrees with their point of view is just part of the conspiracy, logic is irrelevant.
Not entirely; some are highly intelligent albeit misguided.
I have a distant relative with two delightful daughters. Their mother is Russian, as is their grandmother. The grandmother has apparently worked closely with Putin over many years, so clearly she isn't a nutjob.
The mother and grandmother are both convinced that the moon landings are capitalist lies. I haven't embarrassed the daughters by asking their opinion, but I'm told they haven't been to Russia.
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You can actually download the demo: http://www.nvidia.com/coolstuff/demos# (http://www.nvidia.com/coolstuff/demos#)!/apollo-11
Mind you, it won't run on any old GPU.
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Even at 1.5x speed, his talk is excruciating slow, but I want to watch it, so I'll let it slide ;D
Yeah, he is particularly bad -- he must be an engineer! :o Being a narrator or giving a public speech is NOT EASY!.
If you happen to look at the comments made about the video you can see the deniers feel no need to back down. There are, of course, peoples from certain parts of the world that are inclined to think the US made this all up and it isn't just the obvious parts of the world -- many in the western world including strong allies of the USA don't particularly like the USA for one reason or another and are quick to jump on anything that puts the US down. One of the things that the US space program did from pretty much day one was bring cameras in and show pretty much everything live -- this greatly complicates the falsification of things. In the decades since the program ended the technology to expose falsification have greatly improved and at each step these advances only confirm the fact that human kind walked on another world.
Brian
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I've decided there is no sense in even debating with a conspiracy theorist. Their belief is just that, a belief, and since it is not based on facts or reason to begin with, it is useless to use facts and reason to try to convince them otherwise. They begin with an assumption that the official explanation is always a lie no matter how reasonable or sensible it may be and then assemble impossibly complex conspiracies, relying on confirmation bias to find "evidence" supporting their views. Additionally much of what they claim as evidence requires a gross misunderstanding of science and/or physics.
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Hey Groucho,
Do you want to sell any of your uncles moon program artifacts?
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My Uncle, who recently passed away was the Program Manager for the LEM at Grumman. I have many of his notes, including the faded E size schematic blueprints of the LEM camera, meeting notes with Werner von Braun and LEM technical manuals. Over the years he shared many stories with me including the technical challenges in getting to the moon and one very particularly challenging problem.....how to deal with human waste, like stools. He told me that working in the space program was the most rewarding time of his life.
If the Apollo mission was indeed a hoax then it had many more people on the ground fooled, including my dear Uncle, who managed the hardware aspect of the project until the LEM project was obsoleted
@grouchobyte
Pieces of history, probably worth alot to collectors or museums.
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It would certainly be good to get that stuff scanned and archived online somewhere so that everyone could enjoy it. I'm sure there are organizations out there who would be happy to help.
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I've decided there is no sense in even debating with a conspiracy theorist. Their belief is just that, a belief, and since it is not based on facts or reason to begin with, it is useless to use facts and reason to try to convince them otherwise.
Indeed. My statement was a tad naive.
At best, it might persuade some fence-sitters, but hard core theorists would stand their ground irrespective.
Even if they were taken up there to see for themselves, they would probably believe a "Total Recall" scenario over the truth.
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Excellent idea.
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That anyone believe moon landing is a "conspiracy" is incredible. It is so easy to debunk and we have direct proof even without Nvidia.
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong left something on the moon on July 21, 1969: a corner-cube reflectors mirror array. Being a corner-cube reflectors array, shoot a laser beam at it and it will bounce right back to the origin regardless of what angle it hits the mirror face.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/21jul_llr (https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/21jul_llr)
We earthlinks can and did use those mirrors to measure the rate of moon's recede to a high degree of accuracy.
Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror. Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between. So when in doubt, reach for a laser.
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Unfortunately, it won't work, I know as I have tried. All they will say is that they were placed there by unmanned landers, exactly like the Russian one's were.
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If you listen to some of the old 2 way audio recordings between the Earth and Moon, you can find places where they've forgotten to edit in the 2.5 sec. delay. :P
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If you shoot a laser at the moon you can measure the return to Earth of the light because its quite precisely reflected back by corner cube prisms which were left on the Moon by the various missions. Also when modern satellites fly over the moon you can see the sites where they landed with the equipment still there. Its visible in the imaging. They couldn't fake that.
There is a lot of fake news today but not all of it is coming from the nuts, some of it is coming from the people who claim to be the sources of truth.
So, just because the BS about the Apollo landings turns out to be just that, BS, doesn't mean that everything is the way they say it is.
People have no idea (http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6891-2013-ADD-1-DCL-1/en/pdf)...
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Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror. Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between. So when in doubt, reach for a laser.
I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.
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Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror. Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between. So when in doubt, reach for a laser.
I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.
Yeah, it is not that easy. It was just an expression.
I have used laser (in 1970's) to measure length of a hallway about 100 feet long. 100 feet was short so I used split beam and interference based on wave length. But I still needed the laser to be stable and well aimed. I had a hell of a time doing it.
(When my neighbor's trees were not so tall...) Viewing a fairly low grade (90mm reflector) telescope aimed at the moon, I know a truck is passing by on the next street by the vibration of my telescope.
To aim a laser at that mirror on the moon and get a reflected signal is certainly not something done outside a well built astronomy-lab/observatory. And of course one has to account for the diffraction due to air movement before we even get the bloody photon there, and back.
So, there is a hell of a lot of stuff to account for to make the bloody thing work. Point is, we (human) left something there that many universities at the time used. That is proof we were there.
EDITed a zillion times. (Too late in the day, can't write worth a damn...)
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No need to debunk the lunar landing. Those who think it was staged are just not worth listening to unless you want to be ear bashed about the Illuminati.
In 2003, a random poll of 1003 adults suggested about 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 attacks. And that 63% believe the US was right in going to war in Iraq. People are allowed to believe what they want, but the poll inidcates some people are simply too ignorant, gullible or just plain stupid to seek the truth :scared:.
There is no point trying to convert the epsilons of society into becoming alphas. Just let them go their merry way and let them believe whatever :bullshit: that is fed to them, as long as they don't do any harm to anyone else.
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Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror. Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between. So when in doubt, reach for a laser.
I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.
It's actually quite a difficult problem from a mechanical perspective as well:
1. It's a very long way away.
2. It's very small.
3. It's moving bloody fast relative to the sender.
It's like trying to shoot the dick off an ant riding on an express train 10 miles away.
As for the original question, it's very improbable that we didn't get there and have an amble around. I know how hard it is for even a small group of people to keep a secret even in the defence sector.
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Personally, I dont see the reason to convince people of thing this magnitude. If they believe the earth is flat, let them. If they dont believe the moon landing, whatever. Or fluoridation, or snake people or anything bullshit like that. They are entitled to believe in any of this. They are entitled to live their pitiful life, fearing gods and whatnot.
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It's like trying to shoot the dick off an ant riding on an express train 10 miles away.
Hahahah!
:-DD
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EXCEPT...
NASA still says we can't penetrate the Van Allen Belt with its deadly radiation. And they would have needed to make it through twice to get to the moon. Not a conspiracy believer, just sayin....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51DED8dcNkA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51DED8dcNkA)
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Re exposure to radiation in space. NAC is invariably the first thing that reach for to help reduce the cellular damage caused by gamma radiation in space. (It also reduces hearing damage caused by impulse noises, and cell damage caused by UV radiation, i.e. sunburn, although some other antioxidants are better.)
Jpc you should read the paper. It explains a complex situation. generally the very young, the old and especially pregnant or nursing women or possibly soon pregnant women are in a situation where glutathione levels become critical. That doesnt necessarily mean that any unborn child will be critically damaged, its probably quite unlikely that any given child would be - except in areas where exposure is quite high. But, other changes, like reduced IQs occur predictably in children especially, with exposure to even very low levels of some strongly pro-oxidant substances like lead.
Also, some chemicals exposure profiles are not linear, they may have more effects at low levels (EDCs are often like that) within a certain range.
With low levels and some chemicals, and some sequelae (cancers) its a bit like a game of chance, with a random distribution which increases with more exposures, other exposures predictably cause problems, with more exposures causing more of them.
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I don't buy it....
If you can't trust Joe Rogan, who can you trust...... really..... :)
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Cdev, learn the difference between ethyl mercury and methyl mercury before you quote irrelevant research papers.
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Cdev, learn the difference between ethyl mercury and methyl mercury before you quote irrelevant research papers.
me... me... I know this one... I know this one...
the difference is... the "M"...
Two gold stars!
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EXCEPT...
NASA still says we can't penetrate the Van Allen Belt with its deadly radiation. And they would have needed to make it through twice to get to the moon. Not a conspiracy believer, just sayin....
They didn't go through the dense portion of the Van Allen belts, but skirted the edges. Yes, radiation was a concern, but by taking the trajectory that they took, the astronauts got a very small dose of radiation, far below the level expected to cause health effects. For more details:
http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/VABraddose.htm (http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/VABraddose.htm)
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Getting back to the topic ....
It's very clear Nvidia didn't do this as an exercise to debunk the debunkers. They did it to demonstrate the capabilities of their graphics cards.
By using a subject that already had interest, they simply made good use of the fertile field that was already out there.
I think they did a pretty good job showing off those capabilities.
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EXCEPT...
NASA still says we can't penetrate the Van Allen Belt with its deadly radiation. And they would have needed to make it through twice to get to the moon. Not a conspiracy believer, just sayin....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51DED8dcNkA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51DED8dcNkA)
:palm:
Think for a second and actually listen to the guy before "just say'n"
They are talking about the systems on Orion surviving.
The Apollo systems survived no problem because their silicon features were thousands of times larger than modern electronics, i.e. massively more robust. Modern electronics is fragile in a radiation environment.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/five-things-we-ll-learn-from-orion-s-first-flight-test (https://www.nasa.gov/content/five-things-we-ll-learn-from-orion-s-first-flight-test)
4. Radiation Levels – Traveling 15 times farther into space than the International Space Station will take Orion beyond the radiation protection offered by Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. In fact, the majority of EFT-1 will take place inside the Van Allen Belts, clouds of heavy radiation that surround Earth. No spacecraft built for humans has passed through the Van Allen Belts since the Apollo missions, and even those only passed through the belts – they didn’t linger.
Future crews don’t plan to spend more time than necessary inside the Van Allen Belts, either, but long missions to deep space will expose them to more radiation than astronauts have ever dealt with before. EFT-1’s extended stay in the Van Allen Belts offers a unique opportunity to see how Orion’s shielding will hold up to it. Sensors will record the peak radiation seen during the flight, as well as radiation levels throughout the flight, which can be mapped back to geographic hot spots.
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Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror. Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between. So when in doubt, reach for a laser.
I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.
Yeah, it is not that easy. It was just an expression.
I have used laser (in 1970's) to measure length of a hallway about 100 feet long. 100 feet was short so I used split beam and interference based on wave length. But I still needed the laser to be stable and well aimed. I had a hell of a time doing it.
(When my neighbor's trees were not so tall...) Viewing a fairly low grade (90mm reflector) telescope aimed at the moon, I know a truck is passing by on the next street by the vibration of my telescope.
To aim a laser at that mirror on the moon and get a reflected signal is certainly not something done outside a well built astronomy-lab/observatory. And of course one has to account for the diffraction due to air movement before we even get the bloody photon there, and back.
I'd be interested to know is any amateur has been able to laser bounce the moon?
Radar moon bounce is common with HAM's, but that's a many orders simpler ballgame
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I'd be interested to know is any amateur has been able to laser bounce the moon?
Radar moon bounce is common with HAM's, but that's a many orders simpler ballgame
Graduate student in Astro-physics with access to equipment doing it for fun (ie, amateur), easy. Run of the mill amateur, no chance.
(Assuming lab grade highly focused powerful laser can be purchased by amateur... which I don't know is or is not the case...)
Very serious amateur astronomer with help from an graduate level astro-physics or a physics major have a chance, but it depends on how series the guy is. Equipment for tracking should be rather advance even for amateur. Even in 2000-2005, my lowly ETX90 has motorized option and tracking software. Doing long duration light collection should be something serious amateur is good at. Finding and locking on to objects is something serious amateur astronomers should be good at, but they are use to receiving the light and not hitting the object with light first. So, in theory, doable, but difficult.
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To aim a laser at that mirror on the moon and get a reflected signal is certainly not something done outside a well built astronomy-lab/observatory. And of course one has to account for the diffraction due to air movement before we even get the bloody photon there, and back.
I'd be interested to know is any amateur has been able to laser bounce the moon?
Radar moon bounce is common with HAM's, but that's a many orders simpler ballgame
Virtually impossible. Think of it. You have a laser beam aimed at the moon. Unless the reflective surface has portions exactly perpendicular to the beam, nothing is coming back. It's like winning the lottery. Plus of course you have beam divergence in both directions to deal with. Then you have the issue with discriminating the photons with any other light around. It ain't happening by a ham that's for sure.
However I knew a ham from Melbourne who modulated his voice into a single 1W Luxeon LED and transmitted the light from Launceston to the top of Mount Wellington near Hobart in Tasmania. That is about 200km distance, but the curvature of the planet was not an issue due to one end being a mountain. He used two plastic fresnel lenses scavenged out of old rear projection TV's at each end to convert the point source to a parallel light beam and vice-versa at the receiving end. The guy at the receive end was able to demodulate his voice and it was intelligible. After the photodiode light detection, the DC light from the stars and other stray light was simply decoupled using a simple capacitor as a DC blocking capacitor. Very impressive achievement.
Another thing the bloke did was transmit speech via a domestic house incandescent light bulb. The audio was amplified to a couple of hundred volts RMS, so the bulb glowed hot like a normal room light. The light was transmitted to a friend at the other end of his street a couple of hundred metres away, and the friend demodulated the light to intelligible speech. I would have thought the light would be quite constant on a light bulb, but not so apparently - the AC is still there - up to 1kHz! Again, quite impressive.
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Virtually impossible. Think of it. You have a laser beam aimed at the moon. Unless the reflective surface has portions exactly perpendicular to the beam, nothing is coming back. It's like winning the lottery.
No it's not. It's a retroreflector, it works at any angle.
Also, from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
Details[edit]
The distance to the Moon is calculated approximately using this equation:
distance = (speed of light × time taken for light to reflect) / 2
In actuality, the round-trip time of about 2.5 seconds is affected by the location of the Moon in the sky, the relative motion of Earth and the Moon, Earth's rotation, lunar libration, weather, polar motion, propagation delay through Earth's atmosphere, the motion of the observing station due to crustal motion and tides, velocity of light in various parts of air and relativistic effects.[7] Nonetheless, the Earth–Moon distance has been measured with increasing accuracy for more than 35 years. The distance continually changes for a number of reasons, but averages 385,000.6 km (239,228.3 mi).[8]
At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (4.0 mi) wide[9] and scientists liken the task of aiming the beam to using a rifle to hit a moving dime 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) away. The reflected light is too weak to see with the human eye. Out of 1017 photons aimed at the reflector, only one is received back on Earth every few seconds, even under good conditions. They can be identified as originating from the laser because the laser is highly monochromatic. This is one of the most precise distance measurements ever made, and is equivalent in accuracy to determining the distance between Los Angeles and New York to 0.25 mm (0.0098 in).[6][10] As of 2002, work is progressing on increasing the accuracy of the Earth–Moon measurements to near millimeter accuracy, though the performance of the reflectors continues to degrade with age.[6]
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OK, first the disclaimer, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, however something is bothering me.
The pictures.
Take a look at the pictures brought back from the moon, every one of them is perfectly framed and exposed, and this is done using a chest mounted camera that has (I think) manual exposure. Granted, these were highly trained guys, but where are all the bad photographs that just show Buzz Aldrin's knees?
Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.
However, when considering all the other evidence I still think that they went to the moon.
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There are zillions of photos that were never published. They were likely never printed either, i.e. left on the negatives.
You should look at all the efforts people have pursued to resurrect some of that old footage. Its not easy.
There is a group that has set up in the old McDonalds at NASA-Ames Research Center (Moffett Field/Mountain View, CA) to sift through and process old footage. I forget their name.
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jpc, mercury is the third most commonly occurring toxic substance in the US* and the most dangerous. (See link below)
* Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). 2001 CERCLA Priority List of Hazardous Substances. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/clist.html (http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/clist.html)
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How Buzz deals with an idiot. :clap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptn5RE2I-k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptn5RE2I-k)
:-DD
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Take a look at the pictures brought back from the moon, every one of them is perfectly framed and exposed, and this is done using a chest mounted camera that has (I think) manual exposure. Granted, these were highly trained guys, but where are all the bad photographs that just show Buzz Aldrin's knees?
They didn't get developed. They were on the moon, there's no way they're just going to take one of each picture and hope it comes out well. They likely took 10 of every picture with various framing and exposure and only developed the best one.
Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.
Ambient temperature doesn't mean a whole lot when there's no air. Cover it in white and add a small resistive heater and it's pretty easy to regulate the temperature of something like a camera in space. Earth-orbiting satellites are pretty simple to keep between 0-40 C in sunlight or shadow unless they're using some serious power, I can't imagine it's that different on the moon. Besides, there's a temperature regulated suit literally right there that they could tap into for heating/cooling if necessary to keep the film at the right temperature.
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I am sure that there are huge numbers of photos from all the moon flights except for Apollo 13, which was more focused on survival than photography. Most were never "published" (by NASA Public Affairs)
Apollo was before the Internet and WWW existed, don't forget. The process for publishing anything was formal - much more formal than in recent years.
Space missions now are 100% focused on getting specific goals accomplished safely and on schedule and they produce terabytes of data, and its ALL available, pretty much. Which is really quite amazing.
Try here first.
https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/ (https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/)
If that doesn't lead you to what you want, I would use Google to do a domain search (use Google's site operator) to search the domains jsc.nasa.gov (Johnson Space Center in Houston) since that was where the manned space flight programs have been/are based, and then if that doesn't pan out, all of nasa.gov and then the whole web.
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The archive is there, but takes a while to bring up images from the Exabyte tape library into short term hard drive storage. There are a lot of low res thumbnails of all images for preview ( around 500k each IIRC) and then you simply enter an email address ( or keep chimping and refreshing the page for around 10 minutes for the tape library to get arounf to mounting the tape, finding the file and pulling it into cache) and then have 30 mins or so to copy the image.
The ones you see typically are cropped slightly to get level horizons, are slightly compressed to get the contrast range into something a computer display will handle, and then converted from TIFF to JPG. Makes them look better, and the original film was the best quality, selected for small grain size and carefully graded and processed. for every roll flown there would be 2 rolls from before and after the selected area used to calibrate the developing system.
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You probably couldn't get a more contrasty subject so its good actually that they used film. I think the camera they used on the Moon was a Hasselblad large format camera. I am pretty sure that even today, conventional film still has more dynamic range than almost all imaging sensors.
So, if the negatives still exist (its likely they do somewhere) its likely that the more recent the scan of them the better the capture is.
When I am scanning film, if the subject matter is really contrasty sometimes I do several manual scans of the same image and combine them in Gimp so that the problem areas get personalized attention. Its usually possible to rescue over or underexposed images using a combination of different approaches.
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Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.
The astronauts seemed to have managed with those conditions pretty well.
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You probably couldn't get a more contrasty subject so its good actually that they used film. I think the camera they used on the Moon was a Hasselblad large format camera. I am pretty sure that even today, conventional film still has more dynamic range than almost all imaging sensors.
So, if the negatives still exist (its likely they do somewhere) its likely that the more recent the scan of them the better the capture is.
When I am scanning film, if the subject matter is really contrasty sometimes I do several manual scans of the same image and combine them in Gimp so that the problem areas get personalized attention. Its usually possible to rescue over or underexposed images using a combination of different approaches.
No, digital sensors completely blow away film for DR -- not even in the same universe!
Brian
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I was disappointed with the video.
I was expecting an accurate physics model recreating the module landing phase and addressing the "no crater" myth, showing dust particle trajectories and accounting for the lower gravity and lack of atmosphere.
Instead they wasted all that effort on the shadow thing, which is easily reproduced on earth. Even amateur photographers know about reflectors and how they are used to reduce shadows. You can get the same effect if you stand on a white, highly reflective floor (eg moons surface!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls_FXg-F0Fs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls_FXg-F0Fs)
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... You can get the same effect if you stand on a white, highly reflective floor (eg moons surface!)
The moon's surface is dark grey. What Nvidia did show is that it is significantly retroreflective. I did not know that.
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I was disappointed with the video.
I was expecting an accurate physics model recreating the module landing phase and addressing the "no crater" myth, showing dust particle trajectories and accounting for the lower gravity and lack of atmosphere.
... and how would that promote the Nvidia technology?
I doubt they would have had the information to try for a Physx model - and the result would not have been particularly persuasive unless the audience was well versed with the physics involved. Also, comparison to the actual event would have required a camera monitoring the descent of the actual LEM at a useful angle - otherwise, it would just be an animated clip. A fantasy.
What Nvidia did is exactly what I would have expected .... except, perhaps, in their choice of presenter.
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Since nobody mentioned the "Moon landing hoax" episode from the Mythbusters tv show, I take the opportunity. I found the episode on Dailymotion: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2m7k1z (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2m7k1z)
They talk about the retroreflector from 42:00.
A visit is made to the Apache point observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory), which is the home of the "APOLLO" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory_Lunar_Laser-ranging_Operation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory_Lunar_Laser-ranging_Operation)
"The APOLLO laser has been operational since October 2005, and routinely accomplishes millimeter level range accuracy between the Earth and the Moon."
Ákos
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OK, first the disclaimer, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, however something is bothering me.
The pictures.
Take a look at the pictures brought back from the moon, every one of them is perfectly framed and exposed, and this is done using a chest mounted camera that has (I think) manual exposure. Granted, these were highly trained guys, but where are all the bad photographs that just show Buzz Aldrin's knees?
Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.
However, when considering all the other evidence I still think that they went to the moon.
The film was never left in direct sunlight nor was it left out in open space exposed directly to the cold. It was kept inside a camera, covered by insulation.
As for exposure settings, yes, the Hasselblads used manual settings, but since all the photos were taken in direct sunlight, with no clouds, that doesn't present a problem. Set the aperture to f 16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the film speed. I've shot hundreds of rolls of film in non-metered manual cameras using that setting, and it works very well and very consistently in direct sunlight.
The Hasselblads had fairly wide-angle lenses, and the negatives were fairly large, making it easy to crop the photos to nice compositions.
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I have a "friend" - well old high school friend that loves to say the moon landing was a hoax. He a dirty hipster that just says it for attention. :-DD
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Graduate student in Astro-physics with access to equipment doing it for fun (ie, amateur), easy. Run of the mill amateur, no chance.
(Assuming lab grade highly focused powerful laser can be purchased by amateur... which I don't know is or is not the case...)
First I thought, couldn't be that difficult. But the site http://www.csr.utexas.edu/mlrs/ (http://www.csr.utexas.edu/mlrs/) links to the configuration here: https://ilrs.cddis.eosdis.nasa.gov/network/stations/active/MDOL_sitelog.html (https://ilrs.cddis.eosdis.nasa.gov/network/stations/active/MDOL_sitelog.html)
The laser has just an output of 1500 mJ. But pulse width is just 200 ps, so this would be equivalent to a 7.5 gigawatt laser. Don't know, might be difficult to buy this from eBay. And good optics for a highly focused beam would be expensive, too.
The telescope has a 0.75 m aperture. Searching the internet for 30 inch telescopes, looks like you can buy one for like $20,000. The receiver is one of those single photon detectors (model F4129F, from Tennelec). Can't find a price for it, but if you have to ask for it, you usually can't afford it :) IIRC Dave has one of these photon detectors, from a mailbag? An EEVblog episode where he builds such a moon-earth distance measurement machine would be cool.
Maybe if you don't want cm resolution it could be built cheaper? The laser pulse could be much longer, and the light could be modulated, so that a less sensitive telescope / detector combination could amplify it easier, with a narrow filter and AC coupled (like a AM radio). All the parameters are known, and the earth-moon (and back) way could be simulated with sufficient attenuation (a few ND 1000 filters) to test it on earth first.
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I was disappointed with the video.
I was expecting an accurate physics model recreating the module landing phase and addressing the "no crater" myth, showing dust particle trajectories and accounting for the lower gravity and lack of atmosphere.
Instead they wasted all that effort on the shadow thing, which is easily reproduced on earth. Even amateur photographers know about reflectors and how they are used to reduce shadows. You can get the same effect if you stand on a white, highly reflective floor (eg moons surface!)
No you can't.
The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things, they did the modeling to such detail that it popped out the perfect result. It is a triumph of science IMO.
Let's see you prove it...
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The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things, they did the modeling to such detail that it popped out the perfect result. It is a triumph of science IMO.
It is mainly a marketing video for their graphic cards and VXGI technology. For all what we know they could have modeled the scene (which is impressive), and then tweaked the reflection, ambient light etc. parameters until it matches the photograph (still impressive). I couldn't find scientific details how it was programmed. Should be based on the physical properties of the objects and light sources only. A realtime rendering with the imperfect VXGI technology couldn't do that and I'm sure there are shortcuts to make it look real. You need raytracing for a physically correct rendering. Might be possible to do it with POV-Ray (http://www.povray.org), which has very advanced physical correct raytracing capabilities.
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Re the return loss path of Earth Moon Earth, I recall a figure of 10e-24 or so in the radio part of electromagnetic radiation spectrum. The moon is a rubbish RF reflector, don't hold me to it but I thought the loss at the surface was about 10e-6 or so.
As RF EME is possible for an enthusiast, I would be pretty sure, optical EME would be as well. Pulsed laser transmitter, a great reflector on the moon, and optics with very sensitive photo detectors would have to be as good or better than RF.
I thought the moon TV pictures were really bad, (I can recall seeing them live) so for a 'fake' they could have done a bit better!
Re the 'sceptics' , I think it is an extension of natural suspiciousness (can be part of a healthy scepticism) , an extreme version is paranoia.
Re those old NASA LEM blue prints - look after them - that is so cool.
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IIRC the TV pictures from the moon were shot with a special camera that did sequential color, it was not standard NTSC, so the video that was broadcast to the world on TV was created by pointing a TV camera at a monitor that displayed the live image. Obviously that's going to result in something less than spectacular picture quality. This was well before it was possible to digitally convert various video formats.
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The hardest part of making physically accurate renders is getting the shaders right. There are many phenomenon that are quite difficult to model with shader code and have a reasonably large effect on the final image. At least on the moon you don't have an atmosphere to make your lighting more difficult (no absorption, scattering etc) To do truly scientifically accurate shading, you probably have to do spectral rendering as well instead of simplifying colors to RGB blends.
This area of rendering photorealism is my specialty and it's fascinating how even the most realistic of renders is full of "fudges" to account for phenomenon that aren't modeled in the shader.
The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things, they did the modeling to such detail that it popped out the perfect result. It is a triumph of science IMO.
It is mainly a marketing video for their graphic cards and VXGI technology. For all what we know they could have modeled the scene (which is impressive), and then tweaked the reflection, ambient light etc. parameters until it matches the photograph (still impressive). I couldn't find scientific details how it was programmed. Should be based on the physical properties of the objects and light sources only. A realtime rendering with the imperfect VXGI technology couldn't do that and I'm sure there are shortcuts to make it look real. You need raytracing for a physically correct rendering. Might be possible to do it with POV-Ray (http://www.povray.org), which has very advanced physical correct raytracing capabilities.
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IIRC the TV pictures from the moon were shot with a special camera that did sequential color, it was not standard NTSC, so the video that was broadcast to the world on TV was created by pointing a TV camera at a monitor that displayed the live image. Obviously that's going to result in something less than spectacular picture quality. This was well before it was possible to digitally convert various video formats.
And then the original hi-res video tape recordings were written over with satellite data |O (look it up)
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The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things
I can't see how's that a proof of any specific location the photo was taken at. It only replicated specific lighting conditions, but It could have been Buzz grandma's garage.
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OK, first the disclaimer, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, however something is bothering me.
The pictures.
Take a look at the pictures brought back from the moon, every one of them is perfectly framed and exposed, and this is done using a chest mounted camera that has (I think) manual exposure. Granted, these were highly trained guys, but where are all the bad photographs that just show Buzz Aldrin's knees?
Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.
However, when considering all the other evidence I still think that they went to the moon.
The film was never left in direct sunlight nor was it left out in open space exposed directly to the cold. It was kept inside a camera, covered by insulation.
As for exposure settings, yes, the Hasselblads used manual settings, but since all the photos were taken in direct sunlight, with no clouds, that doesn't present a problem. Set the aperture to f 16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the film speed. I've shot hundreds of rolls of film in non-metered manual cameras using that setting, and it works very well and very consistently in direct sunlight.
The Hasselblads had fairly wide-angle lenses, and the negatives were fairly large, making it easy to crop the photos to nice compositions.
You'd only use f/16 with a large format camera owing to diffraction limiting, but the camera they used, the Hasselblad 500el, was larger than 35mm (Wiki says 56mmx56mm). With a modern high grade DSLR the resolution is much higher than the finest grain film NASA would have used and with a DSLR you'd probably want to keep the aperture more open than f/8 when possible. Hand held you want shutter speed so there's no particular need to stop down above f/8. But, with larger format you can go higher in f/# before diffraction kicks in.
Brian
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You'd only use f/16 with a large format camera owing to diffraction limiting, but the camera they used, the Hasselblad 500el, was larger than 35mm (Wiki says 56mmx56mm). With a modern high grade DSLR the resolution is much higher than the finest grain film NASA would have used and with a DSLR you'd probably want to keep the aperture more open than f/8 when possible. Hand held you want shutter speed so there's no particular need to stop down above f/8. But, with larger format you can go higher in f/# before diffraction kicks in.
Brian
This is drifting into photography technique, but I'll just point out that the 60mm Biogon they used on the lunar surface had a maximum aperture of f/5.6, so you couldn't open up much beyond f/8 if they wanted to, as they only had one more stop to play with. Also, there's a bit of trade-off to get the sharpest pictures, between diffraction, depth-of-field, and desirability of a fast shutter speed to freeze motion blur. Depth of field would have been an important constraint, because the lens was manually focused, and incompatible with a reflex finder. That means the astronaut had to estimate distance, and manually turn the focusing ring to the proper distance, without any feedback of seeing how well-focused the image was in a viewfinder. I suspect they mostly just set the lens to the hyperfocal distance for the aperture, but that technique works better at smaller apertures. The lens had available stops of 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, and 45, so f/16 was right in the middle of the scale. I don't know what actual shutter speeds and apertures were used.
But anyway, the "sunny 16" rule, which all photographers knew in the days when cameras without built-in light meters were common, is just a starting point. It's convenient to remember, because it's the aperture that works when the shutter speed is set to the reciprocal of the film speed. Of course you can open up the aperture while speeding up the shutter, or you can close down the aperture while slowing down the shutter, while maintaining the same exposure.
My point in mentioning that rule was just to show that consistently good exposures aren't hard to achieve with manual cameras that don't have light meters, as long as you know what the lighting conditions are going to be.
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The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things
I can't see how's that a proof of any specific location the photo was taken at. It only replicated specific lighting conditions, but It could have been Buzz grandma's garage.
Of course the exercise they went through, by itself, didn't prove that the astronauts went to the moon. It wasn't intended to be a comprehensive proof of exactly where the photos were taken. It was intended to debunk the theory that the photos couldn't have been shot on the moon because things wouldn't have looked that way. And it achieved that pretty well. It shows that those photos were consistent with what would be expected under the conditions claimed.
That won't convince the conspiracy theorists, of course. Any time one of their pet ideas is debunked, they'll go on to another one. And it'll be debunked, and they'll go on to another, and another, etc. I haven't yet seen any supposed evidence of a fake trip that hasn't already been debunked many times over.
I'm old enough to remember watching Neil and Buzz walking around on live TV, and I also remember the Soviets. They were watching the mission closely, using their radio equipment, telescopes, and radar. If the Soviets had had evidence that it was faked, they would have called us on it. Anyone who claims the Soviets were in on the NASA conspiracy has a very distorted view of what world politics were like in the 1960s.
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And your still ignoring the difference between ethyl and methyl mercury. Ethyl mercury, previously used commonly in vaccines, now in only in certain Flu ones IIRC, is cleared quickly and safely by the body. Methyl mercury on the other hand, is not and is the dangerous one that accumulates in the body causing long term problems. So again, learn the difference between them before you quote from irrelevant sources.
BTW, even ignoring the fact that the ethyl mercury in vaccines was nothing to worry about, anybody living downwind of a coal powered power station would accumulate orders of magnitude more actual harmful mercury from the output of the stations than the amount anyone would have received from vaccine doses orders of magnitude larger than anybody ever received. Coal through its use as a fuel, though primarily in power stations only nowadays, is one of the biggest contributors of mercury to the environment.
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I'm old enough to remember watching Neil and Buzz walking around on live TV, and I also remember the Soviets. They were watching the mission closely, using their radio equipment, telescopes, and radar. If the Soviets had had evidence that it was faked, they would have called us on it. Anyone who claims the Soviets were in on the NASA conspiracy has a very distorted view of what world politics were like in the 1960s.
Especially considering that the Soviets were likely only months away form their own attempt as, IIRC, only weeks before the actual moon landing, the Soviets put another lander on the moon as part of their preparation. What better for their ideology than to prove the US not only couldn't do it but were lying to you and then months later actually do it, even if they failed in the attempt.
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Has anyone watched this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/user/hunchbacked/videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/hunchbacked/videos)
He has lots of videos pointing out strictly technical issues related to module systems, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NevVM6Bpq6s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NevVM6Bpq6s)
I watched some of these long time ago - remember that overall his point was that documentation related to main rocket was looking like real deal, but for module itself seemed more like mockup. Interesting what hardware gurus here think.
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Assuming he has accurate block diagrams - I think he is equating contemporary low power equipment with 50 year old stuff. Things he questions like pauses, and limiting bus sizes to bare minimums - it's because that's how they HAD to do it using 1960's technology to make something low powered enough, light weight enough to carry along, and robust enough to last in harsh conditions. Sure - TODAY you can find any number of off the shelf microcontrollers that would run rings around anything they landed on the moon AND draw an order of magnitude (maybe - but definitely a LOT less) current. 50 years from now the'll probably be some designer thinking what fools we were for using a micro that had a sleep current of 1 microamp.
All this complex crap to try and 'prove' that it was all faked - there's too much PHYSICAL evidence which says otherwise and sometimes when I watch some of the more extreme of these videos I feel like Buzz Aldrin and want to just smack the presenter for being such a moron. Same with these "flat earth" types.
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I would not put it all in one bucket. Pathological conspiracy theorist is no worse or better than pathological believer in current (!) official standpoint. There are several global/local "interest groups" wanting to create "virtual reality" biased in one or other way. In current type of society fundamental way to gain and keep control is lie and manipulate "reality" of target group.
Best we can do in this system is analyze facts in harsh scientific manner while not attached to any belief system offering false sense of security...
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But the scientific method means looking at ALL the evidence, not just the evidence that supports your belief. Unfortunately, all the real CT types I have met practice only the latter method, not the former one, i.e. they only look for evidence that supports their beliefs while ignoring anything that contradicts them. For the minute you show why one piece of their 'evidence' is not what they think it is, they move the goalposts and move on to the next on their list until in the end they are back at the beginning and starting all over again, and here I speak from experience from past dealings with a few obsessed ex-friends who haven't seen a CT they dislike.
That is not to deny that conspiracies exist, e.g. Nixon and the VC Paris peace talks pre-1968 election, Watergate/Nixon, Reagan and the Iranian Hostage Crisis pre-1988 election, Reagan again and Iran/Contra, to name but four actual conspiracies that I can think of off the top of my head over the last 50 years. I'm not picking on the US as other countries have had their fair share as well but those were particularly big ones when they became known fairly soon after the event in most cases. But what they do show is that as soon as you have anything but the originator/s of the conspiracy involved, it is only a matter of time before it becomes public.