The most probable origin of NASA moon rocks

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 00:36:51 GMT, (D.K.)
wrote:

In article , "usertx" wrote:

"Michael Petukhov" wrote in message
.com...


indeed. although as far as I know USSR also never officialy said these
lunar expeditions were for real. It was ignored in fact. USSR was
perhaps the only country in the world where "US moon landings" were
not broadcasted live on TV.

Michael

US moon landings were broadcasting in USSR! You are just too young to
remember.

Yep, they were broadcast. I vaguely remember it when I was a kid.

What I'd like to know is how widely Soviet space achievements
(Sputnik, Gagarin, Leonov, Tereshkova) were popularized in the USA?


They were widely reported in all of the media. Of course, live
coverage was impossible due to Soviet secrecy.

Al Minyard

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 17:43:18 -0700, Mary Shafer
wrote:

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:09:44 -0500, Alan Minyard
wrote:

NASA even built a "zero-G" test rig to try out the landers controls.
It had a lift engine that could be throttled to exactly balance out
the weight of the rig, so the thrusted operated at "zero-G"

Nope. The LLRV/LLTVs balanced out 5/6ths of the weight, so they were
operating at lunar gravity, not zero g. They could simulate the LM's
engines, too, so the landings could be simulated, and there were, no
doubt, times when the normal acceleration was zero g, not 1/6th g.

Mary

Thanks, you are, of course, correct. For some reason "zero G" was
stuck in my brain. I could blame my recent stroke :-)

Al Minyard

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 01:10:46 GMT, "Snuffy Smith"
wrote:


"D.K." wrote in message
...
In article , "usertx" wrote:

"Michael Petukhov" wrote in message
. com...


indeed. although as far as I know USSR also never officialy said these
lunar expeditions were for real. It was ignored in fact. USSR was
perhaps the only country in the world where "US moon landings" were
not broadcasted live on TV.

Michael

US moon landings were broadcasting in USSR! You are just too young to
remember.

Yep, they were broadcast. I vaguely remember it when I was a kid.

What I'd like to know is how widely Soviet space achievements
(Sputnik, Gagarin, Leonov, Tereshkova) were popularized in the USA?



Not at all. Sputnik created the space race...which Russia eventually lost,
but you won't find a single yankee soul who knows who Tereshkova was.


Not correct, I know who she was. She was a female cosmonaut intended
to show the world how "emancipated" soviet women were.

Al Minyard

Keith Willshaw wrote:
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" wrote in message
.. .

Snuffy Smith wrote:
...................

Well not you obviously!
Though I don't remember Leonov.

On the contrary his spacewalk was covered on tv
at prime time and the Soyuz Apollo mission was
top TV viewing.

Nothing contrary
I'm not contradicting the coverage.
I just am admitting that I don't remember
many of the names or even details of the
space exploration saga.
Certain events are remembered, others not.
Valentina Tereshkova I remember.
I remember some of the ribald ideas
and conjectures that went around at the time.
--
Rostyk

(D.K.) wrote:

:P.S. First American woman in space was what - 20 years after
:Tereshkova?

Yes, the difference being that we didn't send one until she had an
actual purpose in being there. 'Parachute packer in a can' as a
'first' is hardly something to be beating your chest about.


--
"Rule Number One for Slayers - Don't die."
-- Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

"D.K." wrote in message
...
In article , "Snuffy
Smith" wrote:



but you won't find a single yankee soul who knows who Tereshkova
was.

That's what I thought. I caught the movie "The Right Stuff" while
channel surfing the other day. Although the movie is about American
efforts to put a man into space, it managed to not mention Soviets
even a single time! Not a single word during entire movie - neither
before, nor after Shepherd's launch.


Not so comrade , indeed the movie went to great lengths
to emphasise the fear and paranoia that drove the Americans
to invest so much economic and political capital in the program


LOL. What a piece of propaganda! This is like publishing a book on
American history and managing not to mention the Indians OR the
British.


Actually its more like a book on US history that doesnt mention
the cossacks.

Keith

Fred J. McCall wrote:

(D.K.) wrote:

:P.S. First American woman in space was what - 20 years after
:Tereshkova?

Yes, the difference being that we didn't send one until she had an
actual purpose in being there. 'Parachute packer in a can' as a
'first' is hardly something to be beating your chest about.

Sour grapes?
I believe that in addition to the obvioous political political
purpose, they even manufactured a set of 'opportunity knocks'
scientific, medical, purposes for launching her.

As a slight parallel, What was the purpose of Senator John
Glenns' 1998, STS-95 return trip into space?
--
Rostyk

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"Michael Petukhov" wrote in message
om...


Not necessary. This is because you are not a scientist Keith.
Otherwise you would know that humans never landed
on Sun and other distant stars (at least officially) but
its material compositions are known from spectroscopy data.
Some elements (helium for instance) were first discovered on
Sun and only after that was found on Earth.

Spectroscopy will tell you what elements are present and in what
proportions but can tell you nothing about the structure of the
objects themselves. Diamond, graphite and hard coal all show
up as carbon in a spctroscopic analysis.

So what?


But you know this Michael so you seem to be being somewhat
less than wholly truthful.


100% truthful. NASA had tons of meteorites of different type.
only from ANSMET program NASA got some 10000 Antarctic meteories
Spectroscopy data were good enough to separate lunar rocks from that
stock. BTW lunar meteorites have no single structure. It can be
as different as basalts and breccias.

As for the Lunar
materials... well a standard marker composition can be easily
measured by an automatical probe and results send here by radio.
They did send automatical probes (Surveyors) to moon prior
"manned missions", did'n they? Moreover it was easy to guess
about some picularities of moon rocks, like extreme lack of
water or free oxigen and certain minerals which are known to
originate from nonexistent on moon processes. Given big enough
meteorite collection it is easy to design such a marker set.
Just a piece of cake, Keith!


Nonsense Michael, this tells you nothing about the structure
of the rocks, the density, crystalline structure, evidence of
folding and distribution. All vital to the geologist.

folding... of rocks you mean?


As an example the microscopic pitting and high helium 3
surface content of the surface layer on rocks recovere by
both the soviet and lunar sampling efforts was unexpected.
These are believed to be caused by micrometeoroid impacts
and interaction with the solar wind are unque to those samples
retrieved from the moon as the meteorites of lunar origin have
the surface burned away on re-entry

No idea. Maybe. Although this was not mandatory to separate
lunar meteorites from other types.


by the way Keith so far NASA did not claim to land man on
Mars or in asteroid belt rocks, but meteorites from all
these places are easy to recognize and of course is on
sell with certificates as well.


Because since the 1960's much more advanced automated
landers have been available.


Good! So I record: Keith is agree that samples of moon rocks were
not necessary to recognize lunar meteorites.

So if you believe the Americans faked their samples
by buying lunar meteorites they would have to know
the nature of the lunar rocks or to fake or get the
Soviets to buy similar fakes for their lander several
years later.

"If" is not a proper wording here, keith. They knew for sure.


Hardly Michael , the surveyor probes which landed on the
moon in the late 60's had primitive sampling mechanisms
which were pretty much limited to performing soil
mechanics tests. They were sent to check that the surface
was hard enough to land on.

The experiments performed were


1) Alpha Scattering Surface analyser used to determine the
abundances of the major elements of the lunar surface with
the important exceptions of hydrogen, helium, and lithium

hm..


2) Surface bearing tests using strain gauges , accelerometers
and rate gyros

I find it comical that you claim advanced automatic lab facilities
capable of a full analysis were available when in you earlier
post you were stressing how primitive the available computers
were.

Then Keith even more comic for you is that "Alpha Scattering
Surface analyser used to determine the abundances of the major elements
of the lunar surface..." sounds exactly like determination of the chemical
markers for lunar meteorites I was talking about.



Then of course their the problem of buying 400 kg
of different meteorite fragments with nobody noticing.

why? somebody was noticing. As far as I know so far no
lunar meteorites were officially found in US soil
while it is estimated to be around of a few % of all
meteorites found today. Don't you think it is a bit of
strange give US with US huge deserts?

Since nobody knew what a lunar meteorite looked like
until after Apollo 11 returned its precisely what any
sane person would expect.

If one have reliable markers it was easy to separate lunar
meteorires from the rest and to know "what any sane person
would expect"


Although of course
you don't. particularly given that NASA was known to buy
lots of them from privat persons all over the world.



I'm afraid all you did is demonstrate how prejudice
can lead even intelligent people astary.

Never say never, Keith. European SMART-1 is on the way to moon
and japanese Lunar-A and Selene are getting ready to follow soon.
They can send us very unexpected pictures of Apollo landing sites.
US privat company's "TrailBlazer" can do in principle but who in
a good mind can trust US data? Not me at least.


Doubtless you'll use some other excuse when pictures of the
Apollo Landers are beamed back.

We will see. I do not know how about you but I am looking
forward to see that.

Michael

Keith

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
news
"Snuffy Smith" wrote:

:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
.. .
: (D.K.) wrote:
:
: :What I'd like to know is how widely Soviet space achievements
: Sputnik, Gagarin, Leonov, Tereshkova) were popularized in the USA?
:
: Talked about? Sure. Popularized? Not so much.
:
: It didn't help that the Russians didn't allow TV broadcasts for a lot
: of this stuff out of fear that something might go wrong.
:
:Ever notice any of the parallels between current day China and the old
:Soviet Union?

Not really, no.

:That flu virus that started in China was known for months. The Chinese
tried
:to black out the world on what was going on. People in China didn't even
:know there was a deadly flu bug swirling all around them.

I assume you're referring to SARS? Not a "flu bug". China actually
had public thermometers to check people on the street. You seem a bit
misinformed here.


Well duhhh! Only AFTER they looked like fools in the eyes of the entire
world.

:Now we see that they backed out on showing their space launch live.

This is typical of any semi-dictatorship.

:Then you have all that Falun Gong and Tibet persecution stuff.

Again, typical of any semi-dictatorship.

:The question is how long before China implodes like the Soviet Union????

It won't happen. China has been much more economically flexible than
the old Soviet Union was.


Never say never.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

Give it a rest. The most probable origin of NASA moon rocks is the moon.
Going to the moon and picking up some rocks is just simply far easier and
cheaper than the elaborate scheme that would be required to fake it.
Occam's razor!