# The moon



## Spectric (24 Aug 2022)

Anyone any idea why the Americans want to waste so much money going to the moon, it all seems such a pointless exercise visiting a lump of barren rock with no atmosphere or ability to support human life and it would be much cheaper just visiting a local quarry.


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## Tris (24 Aug 2022)

I read something a few years back that they were looking to extract precious metals and so on and were preparing to declare it US property. Not sure what the rest of the world will make of that. Unfortunately I don't recall the source so feel free to make of it what you will


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## Stigmorgan (24 Aug 2022)

Tris said:


> I read something a few years back that they were looking to extract precious metals and so on and were preparing to declare it US property. Not sure what the rest of the world will make of that. Unfortunately I don't recall the source so feel free to make of it what you will


And I bet they put zero thought into what reducing the moons mass will do to the moon/earth relationship.


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## Sandyn (24 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Anyone any idea why the Americans want to waste so much money going to the moon


Its a stepping stone to go to Mars and beyond. To boldly go where no man/woman (other genders are available) has gone before. They will also be able to explore other areas of the moon. Possibly commercialise what they find. Watch out for the price of cheese to plummet!!
Did you see how fast that rocket lifted off the launchpad!!! wow!!
I think it's really exciting. A new era of space exploration.


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## D_W (24 Aug 2022)

Stigmorgan said:


> And I bet they put zero thought into what reducing the moons mass will do to the moon/earth relationship.



look up the mass of the moon and get an idea of how massive it is. It's not like it can be stuffed in a few shuttles and sprinkled on earth's surface.


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## artie (24 Aug 2022)

Just another way to siphon dollars from the great American public. I don't recall the annual budget for NASA but it's an awful lot for producing fake videos.


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## sawtooth-9 (24 Aug 2022)

I guess if you want to see "what's out there", you have to start somewhere.
However, until we can learn to travel faster than the speed of light it is going to be a slow and costly journey.
Suspect we will have to "discover" a new physics to remove the shackles of our concept of time and our perception of "reality"
But why not have some ( albeit ) expensive fun exploring in the meantime.
Of course, if you didn't spend the money on space research, you could squander it on the odd war here and there !


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## Fitzroy (24 Aug 2022)

Economics has a place in society but it also gets in the way of advancement. If you look at times when economics has been disregarded the technological progress we make is hugely accelerated. Unfortunately abandoning economics is oft done due to bad situations, war, disaster etc The space race, formula 1, slightly odd billionaires equally enable this kind of advancement with less human suffering so I say get on with it.


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## TRITON (24 Aug 2022)

The Chinese are up there, and on the dark side, which must have the US military paranoid. 

The US formed a Space Force, so they could police space.(And yes, everyone else too, even your Auntie Mary)

For some unknown reason they designed a camouflaged uniform. Ideal for all those forests or jungles we have in space.


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## Sandyn (24 Aug 2022)

TRITON said:


> The Chinese are up there, and on the dark side


There is no dark side
of the moon really.
Matter of fact
it's all dark

I'll have to go and listen to it now...


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## TRITON (24 Aug 2022)

I'll refer to it as 'The far side of the moon' from now on.


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## MikeJhn (25 Aug 2022)

Watch the film "Moonfall" then start to worry.


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## rafezetter (25 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Anyone any idea why the Americans want to waste so much money going to the moon, it all seems such a pointless exercise visiting a lump of barren rock with no atmosphere or ability to support human life and it would be much cheaper just visiting a local quarry.


Sorry but if you have to ask that question, then clearly you have not read enough about the subject to make a judgement.

Trust me when I say in a few hundred years the geopolitical situations being played out in the series "The Expanse", or in a sooner timeframe, "For all Mankind" will be a reality.

The amount of minerals and wealth just floating around out there is worth more than the combined value of every single item on earth; you take the value of literally every single man made object for the entirety of history and add that up, and it's insignificant to the wealth just sitting there waiting to be exploited. The english language doesn't even have numbers large enough to explain it.

If the USA doesn't do it, another nation will, and if not another nation, a corporation - it's guarenteed, and if it's a corporation, they will be so wealthy that they would be able to buy ANY nation on Earth and be more powerful than any law ever created.

The race for that wealth and attainment of it will change the basic nature of humanity forever, and be the source of many wars between nations and corporations.


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## KeenToLearn (25 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Anyone any idea why the Americans want to waste so much money going to the moon, it all seems such a pointless exercise visiting a lump of barren rock with no atmosphere or ability to support human life and it would be much cheaper just visiting a local quarry.


Cos they have never been there before lol?


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## Scruples (25 Aug 2022)

Sandyn said:


> There is no dark side
> of the moon really.
> Matter of fact
> it's all dark
> ...


By 'dark side', it is meant to indicate the side we never see. The same part of Moon is always facing the Earth. The Moon has its day and night too.


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## Stuart Moffat (25 Aug 2022)

I’ve had that Pink Floyd tune playing in the background of my head for the last half hour. Looks like it’s going to be there all day, unless I can pass it onto someone else on the dark side of the moon with this post!


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## AlanY (25 Aug 2022)

It was a Cold War thing. An exercise in p*ssing the Russians off. In the history of this planet, only 12 men have left their footprints on the surface of the moon. I do not know how many of these heroes remain, but I suspect they will be long gone before another footprint is made in the dust.


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## sawtooth-9 (25 Aug 2022)

Have all the conspiracy theories you like.
Just maybe you are wrong.

The ONE thing that holds back our understanding, is the thing we called science.
Why - because the tools that have served us so well in the past, are limiting.
Our maths is an evolutionary tool - problem is that we cannot get beyond our basic axioms, so it is not evolving.

We have real number systems and complex number systems - but I suspect we have one simple problem in maths. That is the concept of zero.
Imagine a number system where zero did not exist.

No more problems of infinity.
No more problems of time
No more problems related to time travel

So yes, lets spend some money on space exploration.
BUT we should spend lots more on "discovering" a new system of maths.

And yes, I do think we will continue to waste money on "petty" wars. It seems to be a human trait.


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## --Tom-- (25 Aug 2022)

Why do anything other than eeek out an existence….
Ever wonder how much of the modern world relies on satellites?


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## Sandyn (25 Aug 2022)

Scruples said:


> By 'dark side', it is meant to indicate the side we never see. The same part of Moon is always facing the Earth. The Moon has its day and night too


lol, do you not listen to Pink Floyd?


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## Sandyn (25 Aug 2022)

Stuart Moffat said:


> I’ve had that Pink Floyd tune playing in the background of my head for the last half hour. Looks like it’s going to be there all day, unless I can pass it onto someone else on the dark side of the moon with this post!


Lol. easiest way is just listen to it. That's what I have to do when that happens


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## Phil Pascoe (25 Aug 2022)

Sandyn said:


> lol, do you not listen to Pink Floyd?


Probably just a momentary lapse of reason.


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## stuart little (25 Aug 2022)

Sandyn said:


> There is no dark side
> of the moon really.
> Matter of fact
> it's all dark
> ...


Oh yes there is according to 'The Floyd' !!


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## Scruples (25 Aug 2022)

sawtooth-9 said:


> Have all the conspiracy theories you like.
> Just maybe you are wrong.
> 
> The ONE thing that holds back our understanding, is the thing we called science.
> ...


We need zero. It is that point from which all else starts. Before I went to buy a cake, I had zero cakes. Then, afterwards, I had one cake. When I'd eaten half of it I had zero point five of the cake left and finally, when I'd eaten it all, I was back to zero cake. 

When I bounce a ball it hits the ground at point zero and changes direction, usually upwards. It doesn't bounce at one. and it it did, one would become the new zero.
We have the tools we are clever enough to create and use. There may be more waiting for our mental capacities to evolve. Until then, zero is nothing, right?


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## stuart little (25 Aug 2022)

KeenToLearn said:


> Cos they have never been there before lol?


I'm a non believer. Why haven't there been photos of the Stars & Stripes taken from Earth?


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## MikeH (25 Aug 2022)

There is also the military side. A lot of weapons research comes out of things like space research and a lot of military people work on space based projects. So you can partially fund the miltary and weapons research without telling the public that is where their tax dollars are going, even though most of joe public know anyway. I would also assume that also helps when balancing the budgets and justifying it to the likes of their congress etc.


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## Garden Shed Projects (25 Aug 2022)

AlanY said:


> It was a Cold War thing. An exercise in p*ssing the Russians off. In the history of this planet, only 12 men have left their footprints on the surface of the moon. I do not know how many of these heroes remain, but I suspect they will be long gone before another footprint is made in the dust.


Not so much p*ssing the Russians off, well USSR, as saving face. The Americans hadn't had many wins in the space race up untill then. First, satellite, first animal, first man, first woman and the list goes on all to the USSR.

I often wonder if they had have a few more firsts whether they would have bothered with the moon as it was a bit of a damp squib really, no visits since 1971. I agree with the poster who said that it could end up being developed by a corporation and monetised.


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## loftyhermes (25 Aug 2022)

A lot of what we use today has come from space exploration, there's a loads more than what I've posted if you google it.


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## doctor Bob (25 Aug 2022)

This thread, plus the cup in a bin thread, and other daft threads, have pushed me into getting a real life.
Bit scary but it's quite enjoyable.


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## Jacob (25 Aug 2022)

sawtooth-9 said:


> ....
> Imagine a number system where zero did not exist.
> 
> No more problems of infinity.
> ...


Sounds good. No more zero in my bank balance!  Or less than zero!


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## Spectric (25 Aug 2022)

Hows the retirement going @doctor Bob , is this what you mean by a real life where time is all yours and you reap the rewards of a working life?


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## ajsimmo (25 Aug 2022)

rafezetter said:


> Sorry but if you have to ask that question, then clearly you have not read enough about the subject to make a judgement.
> 
> Trust me when I say in a few hundred years the geopolitical situations being played out in the series "The Expanse", or in a sooner timeframe, "For all Mankind" will be a reality.
> 
> ...


We'll, that's depressing!


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## ajsimmo (25 Aug 2022)

Scruples said:


> By 'dark side', it is meant to indicate the side we never see. The same part of Moon is always facing the Earth. The Moon has its day and night too.


He knows that, its a quote from a PF song.


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## sploo (25 Aug 2022)

stuart little said:


> I'm a non believer. Why haven't there been photos of the Stars & Stripes taken from Earth?


Short answer... you'd need a telescope with something around a 100 meter diameter to have any chance of making out details that small at that distance: https://skyandtelescope.org/astrono...s-answers/can-you-see-astronauts-on-the-moon/

There's also the problem of "seeing". With larger telescopes (capable of resolving smaller detail at distance) atmospheric distortion becomes more of a factor; so as the article above notes, such a (huge) scope would also have to be in space.


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## Spectric (25 Aug 2022)

Thinking about


stuart little said:


> Why haven't there been photos of the Stars & Stripes taken from Earth?


Well as telescopes get better a time will come that someone will be able to say if the yanks ever got onto the moon or not, so realising this they are getting there to put things right and save face.


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## Thingybob (25 Aug 2022)

Scruples said:


> We need zero. It is that point from which all else starts. Before I went to buy a cake, I had zero cakes. Then, afterwards, I had one cake. When I'd eaten half of it I had zero point five of the cake left and finally, when I'd eaten it all, I was back to zero cake.
> 
> When I bounce a ball it hits the ground at point zero and changes direction, usually upwards. It doesn't bounce at one. and it it did, one would become the new zero.
> We have the tools we are clever enough to create and use. There may be more waiting for our mental capacities to evolve. Until then, zero is nothing, right?


What you smokin


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## Sandyn (25 Aug 2022)

stuart little said:


> I'm a non believer


I stayed up all night to watch it. I'm sure I saw a puff of dust come off the moon when they landed. I even bought the commemorative coin. Are you telling me I wasted my money!!!


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## sploo (25 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Thinking about
> 
> Well as telescopes get better a time will come that someone will be able to say if the yanks ever got onto the moon or not, so realising this they are getting there to put things right and save face.


The problem with conspiracy theorists is that supplying proof is simply used as more evidence of the conspiracy...

Make a telescope in Earth orbit that can see evidence of human activity on the moon's surface: it's fake because it's not being seen _from_ Earth.

Make a telescope on the Earth's surface that can somehow see that tiny detail through atmospheric distortion : it's fake because the image is being manipulated.

Fly them to the Moon's surface and show them in person: it's fake because you planted that stuff there yesterday.

Etc.


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## Sandyn (25 Aug 2022)

The Chinese already have a manufacturing plant on the dark side of the moon. They are currently doing all the Christmas stuff for Amazon


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## Droogs (25 Aug 2022)

TRITON said:


> The Chinese are up there, and on the dark side, which must have the US military paranoid.
> 
> The US formed a Space Force, so they could police space.(And yes, everyone else too, even your Auntie Mary)
> 
> *For some unknown reason they designed a camouflaged uniform*. Ideal for all those forests or jungles we have in space.


That's because no one is stupid enough to wear the red shirt


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## Fitzroy (25 Aug 2022)

sploo said:


> The problem with conspiracy theorists is that supplying proof is simply used as more evidence of the conspiracy...
> 
> Make a telescope in Earth orbit that can see evidence of human activity on the moon's surface: it's fake because it's not being seen _from_ Earth.
> 
> ...


I was in the comments section of a facebook post the other day about some paleontological post...... The creationists were out in force one chaps comment was along the lines of, "I've not experienced it so it is hokum". He didn't see the irony that he had no more experience of a flood 6000 yrs ago as the dinosaur making tracks 11million years ago. I think this is 'confirmation bias', if that's the correct term.


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## guineafowl21 (25 Aug 2022)

stuart little said:


> I'm a non believer. Why haven't there been photos of the Stars & Stripes taken from Earth?


Even our best telescopes can’t resolve the image at that distance - it’s 250,000 miles away. Also, the colours are most likely bleached out by the solar radiation. 

They did leave a mirror up there, and if you fire a laser at it, you’ll get the reflection about 2 seconds later.


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## D_W (25 Aug 2022)

guineafowl21 said:


> Even our best telescopes can’t resolve the image at that distance - it’s 250,000 miles away. Also, the colours are most likely bleached out by the solar radiation.
> 
> They did leave a mirror up there, and if you fire a laser at it, you’ll get the reflection about 2 seconds later.



And somewhere on earth, a cat will chase it.


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## --Tom-- (25 Aug 2022)

sawtooth-9 said:


> Have all the conspiracy theories you like.
> Just maybe you are wrong.
> 
> The ONE thing that holds back our understanding, is the thing we called science.
> ...


I’ve pretty much stopped trying to reason with most conspiracists and instead engage in upping the ante instead - faked moon landing -> oh so your one of those people that believes in the moon
Anti mask- oh you believe those government spread rumours to hide the fact it messes with their facial recognition and lip reading satellites


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## William2020 (26 Aug 2022)

sploo said:


> The problem with conspiracy theorists is that supplying proof is simply used as more evidence of the conspiracy...
> 
> Make a telescope in Earth orbit that can see evidence of human activity on the moon's surface: it's fake because it's not being seen _from_ Earth.
> 
> ...


That made me laugh so hard I hit ‘like’ twice!


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## sploo (26 Aug 2022)

William2020 said:


> That made me laugh so hard I hit ‘like’ twice!


Some years ago I heard a great story that there are US based conspiracy theorists who consider the nut job Alex Jones to be a government plant - put in place to give "credible" conspiracy theorists a bad name. I use "credible" in quotes, obviously.


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## Jacob (26 Aug 2022)

doctor Bob said:


> This thread, plus the cup in a bin thread, and other daft threads, have pushed me into getting a real life.
> Bit scary but it's quite enjoyable.


What was the cup in a bin thread? 
PS spotted it! Don't need to know any more about it!


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## Spectric (26 Aug 2022)

Maybe it is desperation, rather than fix and look after the lovely blue/green planet you live on get somewhere else ready for when the Earth becomes a toxic version of the moon at which point the moon becomes desirable. A much better use for the moon would be to take all the nuclear and radioactive material including everyones stockpiles of weapons and dump them there which would be a huge step towards cleaning up the planet.


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## mudman (26 Aug 2022)

sploo said:


> Short answer... you'd need a telescope with something around a 100 meter diameter to have any chance of making out details that small at that distance: https://skyandtelescope.org/astrono...s-answers/can-you-see-astronauts-on-the-moon/
> 
> There's also the problem of "seeing". With larger telescopes (capable of resolving smaller detail at distance) atmospheric distortion becomes more of a factor; so as the article above notes, such a (huge) scope would also have to be in space.


Actually a lot bigger than that. If the flag is about 2m across (I think it's only 4ft but 2m will do), then that will subtend an angle at the earth that is a tiny fraction of an arcsecond, (about 0.00033). The Dawes limit for a telescope, or the smallest angular distance that can be resolved, is 116/D where D is the diameter of the objective in mm. So doing a bit of algebra and solving for D gives an objective size of 386m. The biggest one on Earth is something like 10m so nothing we currently have on Earth could image the flag.
However, even if we did have a c400m telescope, the atmosphere gets in the way, the effect of which is to bounce the image around so that it sort of blurs and means that there are limits to the size of object that can be viewed. The best 'seeing' on Earth rarely gets better than 0.5 arcseconds which means that anything smaller than that, e.g. our flag, will be a blurry mess and can't be resolved. It can be compensated for with some special adaptive optics but the upshot of all this is that, no, you can't see the flag from Earth through a telescope.


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## guineafowl21 (26 Aug 2022)

mudman said:


> Actually a lot bigger than that. If the flag is about 2m across (I think it's only 4ft but 2m will do), then that will subtend an angle at the earth that is a tiny fraction of an arcsecond, (about 0.00033). The Dawes limit for a telescope, or the smallest angular distance that can be resolved, is 116/D where D is the diameter of the objective in mm. So doing a bit of algebra and solving for D gives an objective size of 386m. The biggest one on Earth is something like 10m so nothing we currently have on Earth could image the flag.
> However, even if we did have a c400m telescope, the atmosphere gets in the way, the effect of which is to bounce the image around so that it sort of blurs and means that there are limits to the size of object that can be viewed. The best 'seeing' on Earth rarely gets better than 0.5 arcseconds which means that anything smaller than that, e.g. our flag, will be a blurry mess and can't be resolved. It can be compensated for with some special adaptive optics but the upshot of all this is that, no, you can't see the flag from Earth through a telescope.


The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.


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## mudman (26 Aug 2022)

guineafowl21 said:


> The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.


Depends whereabouts on the surface of the Earth you are it can present at all angles.


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## doctor Bob (26 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Hows the retirement going @doctor Bob , is this what you mean by a real life where time is all yours and you reap the rewards of a working life?



No still going (work), loving it at present, lot of pressure and uncertainties but great fun. Playing a lot of golf and tinkering with some cars.


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## guineafowl21 (26 Aug 2022)

mudman said:


> Depends whereabouts on the surface of the Earth you are it can present at all angles.


I’m not sure about that. The way I’d calculate that is this:
Given the diameter of earth is about 12,000km, this is the max distance between viewing angles (at the equator). The max angle subtended from this distance to the moon (380,000km) is just under 2 degrees.

Like this:






Based on the angle at the moon being 2(arctan(6000/380,000)), assuming the flag is roughly central in the face we see, and the moon is of course tidally locked.

Edit: oops, those distances should be labelled in km, not m, but the ratio is the same.


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## D_W (26 Aug 2022)

guineafowl21 said:


> The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.



There are a few pixelated pictures of the surface of the moon from ..I don't recall, maybe it was a fly by from a small observer. They show a smudge that is more shadow than flag as far as i've seen. 

three flags - one of them with a signature that it was blown over, which one of the astronauts communicated leaving the moon? I'm not a real space nut, so names or terms - feel free to correct. 

I didn't even know there were three flags before yesterday. 

You could put a webcam on top of each of the flags looking at the other at all times and people would still say they were fake. The better the proof, the louder the claims will be that the stuff is fake.


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## guineafowl21 (26 Aug 2022)

D_W said:


> There are a few pixelated pictures of the surface of the moon from ..I don't recall, maybe it was a fly by from a small observer. They show a smudge that is more shadow than flag as far as i've seen.
> 
> three flags - one of them with a signature that it was blown over, which one of the astronauts communicated leaving the moon? I'm not a real space nut, so names or terms - feel free to correct.
> 
> ...


This is true. They took pics of the flag when they put it there. If some people think that’s fake, then they’d surely say the same even if we were able to photograph it from earth.


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## Sandyn (26 Aug 2022)

Have you seen the new book, Apollo Remastered Andy Saunders spent 10 years examining, scanning and enhancing the pictures taken on the mission. He has managed to squeeze an amazing amount of extra detail from the original negatives.


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## Thingybob (26 Aug 2022)

Wow never thought i wood ever meet anyone who used algebra after school


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## guineafowl21 (26 Aug 2022)

Thingybob said:


> Wow never thought i wood ever meet anyone who used algebra after school


*trigonometry


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## Sandyn (26 Aug 2022)

All I can say is..........This


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## Thingybob (26 Aug 2022)

guineafowl21 said:


> *trigonometry


Was nt he in fools n horses


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## Terry - Somerset (26 Aug 2022)

> The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.



You have taken no account of the wind which will either make it flutter - or perhaps even collapse in a storm effectively becoming stars and stripes astro-turf easily identifiable.


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## Phil Pascoe (26 Aug 2022)

The non existent wind?


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## TRITON (27 Aug 2022)

rafezetter said:


> If the USA doesn't do it, another nation will


Not sure the legality of that. The moon could be classed as an asset of the world, as in belonging to everyone, so no single country can exploit it.


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## sawtooth-9 (27 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Maybe it is desperation, rather than fix and look after the lovely blue/green planet you live on get somewhere else ready for when the Earth becomes a toxic version of the moon at which point the moon becomes desirable. A much better use for the moon would be to take all the nuclear and radioactive material including everyones stockpiles of weapons and dump them there which would be a huge step towards cleaning up the planet.


Turn the moon into a toxic dump - you have to be kidding !!!!
If you are not kidding, do you really advocate fu.king the moon to "fix" the earth ? 
That would truely be sick logic. 
I feel sorry for anyone that could even suggest this.


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## Scruples (27 Aug 2022)

Thingybob said:


> What you smokin


Is that a question or another conspiracy theory?


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## Scruples (27 Aug 2022)

mudman said:


> Depends whereabouts on the surface of the Earth you are it can present at all angles.


No.


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## Richard_C (27 Aug 2022)

A question for the Pink Floyd listeners. The quietly spoken "there really is no dark side" etc. is at the very end of the vinyl album - which is the version I have - after a period of silence and often missed if your deck has an auto arm lift. Is it there on the new-fangled CD version or even newer-fangled digital versions? Maybe modern listeners are missing out on vital information.


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## GuitardoctorW7 (27 Aug 2022)

Sandyn said:


> Have you seen the new book, Apollo Remastered Andy Saunders spent 10 years examining, scanning and enhancing the pictures taken on the mission. He has managed to squeeze an amazing amount of extra detail from the original negatives.


Thanks for the info just ordered it. Much as I hate Amazon it's £9 cheaper with them.


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## cerro (27 Aug 2022)

They are watching us on a big computer screen, and it helps with the rateings as wars do for those slow to catch on. Little green men


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## guineafowl21 (27 Aug 2022)

Terry - Somerset said:


> You have taken no account of the wind which will either make it flutter - or perhaps even collapse in a storm effectively becoming stars and stripes astro-turf easily identifiable.


... if that’s a joke, and
... if it isn’t


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## Garden Shed Projects (27 Aug 2022)

TRITON said:


> Not sure the legality of that. The moon could be classed as an asset of the world, as in belonging to everyone, so no single country can exploit it.


It’s not like countries have moved into territory without permission before. 

Coming soon moon war!!!


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## stuart little (27 Aug 2022)

Sandyn said:


> I stayed up all night to watch it. I'm sure I saw a puff of dust come off the moon when they landed. I even bought the commemorative coin. Are you telling me I wasted my money!!!


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## stuart little (27 Aug 2022)

sploo said:


> Short answer... you'd need a telescope with something around a 100 meter diameter to have any chance of making out details that small at that distance: https://skyandtelescope.org/astrono...s-answers/can-you-see-astronauts-on-the-moon/
> 
> There's also the problem of "seeing". With larger telescopes (capable of resolving smaller detail at distance) atmospheric distortion becomes more of a factor; so as the article above notes, such a (huge) scope would also have to be in space.


It was meant as a joke , just to stir up more!


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## stuart little (27 Aug 2022)

I guess I DID stir it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## rafezetter (27 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> Maybe it is desperation, rather than fix and look after the lovely blue/green planet you live on get somewhere else ready for when the Earth becomes a toxic version of the moon at which point the moon becomes desirable. A much better use for the moon would be to take all the nuclear and radioactive material including everyones stockpiles of weapons and dump them there which would be a huge step towards cleaning up the planet.



If you're going to spend the trillions of dollars it would cost to build an orbital rail gun, being about the cheapest reusable option, you'd be better off aiming it at the sun, seeing as it's already a nuclear fusion reactor, it would actually appreciate the extra fuel.

Still extremely shortsighted though.

You know that stuff that gets put on roofs - you know the grey stuff used as flashing to keep the rain out - generally referred to as "lead" - do you know what it actually is?

Most people don't.

I didn't google this I already knew it.

Another name for lead would very accurately be...... Depleted URANIUM.

Uranium, along with two (three?) other isotopes has a very interesting half life decay path and changes into different elements on the way to losing it's radioactive properties - with the final end result after a very, very, very, *very* long time is... lead.

There's a reason it has the highest atomic number of the non radioactive elements, because it used to be one of them.

Master Oaks, my physics teacher would be proud  I don't remember much but that always stuck in my head.

Someone intelligent in the future will learn to either how to do this quicker or deal with the stockpiles of radiactive material and make it "useful" again, and seeing as the earth has only a limited and quite small supply, it would be quite short sighted to fire it off someplace we can't get at easily again, or at all.

Sure dealing with it is a problem for US and will continue to be for a while yet, but the future will be quite happy to have access to it for other technological uses.


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## Spectric (27 Aug 2022)

rafezetter said:


> with the final end result after a very, very, very, *very* long time is... lead


On it's decay to Lead some types of Uranium become Polonium, we have all heard of that stuff and is not to be confused with perfume!


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## MikeK (27 Aug 2022)

rafezetter said:


> You know that stuff that gets put on roofs - you know the grey stuff used as flashing to keep the rain out - generally referred to as "lead" - do you know what it actually is?
> 
> Most people don't.
> 
> ...



Lead (atomic number 82) is NOT depleted uranium (atomic number 92). Natural uranium becomes "depleted" through the fission process when it loses the majority of its isotope U-235. Depleted uranium is still uranium. The process for the most common form of uranium, U-238, to become stable lead, Pb-206, requires over a dozen alpha and beta particle decay phases and takes over 4.5 Billion years to complete.


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## Spectric (27 Aug 2022)

The raw ore is called Galena, there were a lot of lead mines round Cumbria. I should have said Uranium 238 eventually decays to Polonium!


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## sawtooth-9 (28 Aug 2022)

MikeK said:


> Lead (atomic number 82) is NOT depleted uranium (atomic number 92). Natural uranium becomes "depleted" through the fission process when it loses the majority of its isotope U-235. Depleted uranium is still uranium. The process for the most common form of uranium, U-238, to become stable lead, Pb-206, requires over a dozen alpha and beta particle decay phases and takes over 4.5 Billion years to complete.


Thank god for some real information.
As part of my degree in physical chemistry - my major was nuclear chemistry.
Open your eyes, look and learn.
Just be careful who you learn from.


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## rafezetter (28 Aug 2022)

stuart little said:


> I'm a non believer. Why haven't there been photos of the Stars & Stripes taken from Earth?


Don't need to - proof already exists.









Laser Ranging Equipment Measures Distance To The Moon


Laser ranging measures round-trip travel time of the light pulse bouncing off lunar reflectors multiplied by the speed of light. See how we helped!




www.eicsolutions.com





This is real, a laser pinging off a reflector left on the moon, not by a remote rover but a human astronaut.

There's also the moon rocks.

Yes yes a person who knows a little of the subject might say that they are made largely of the same regolith as the earth, and you'd be right, because the moon and the earth collided and shared matter before coalescing again as whole oblate spheres.

Just one small...tiny incy winsy problem. The moon rocks (mostly)** don't have any magnetic flux.

Every rock on earth and I do mean every single one, has an infitessimally small magnetic signature that is imbued into the rock from the magnetosphere when it was formed that is actually traceable like a GPS - because we know so much about the magnetoshpere surrounding and PENETRATING the earth right to the core, it's shape, size and intensity at any given point on earth, that a rock core sample taken from Iceland will have a DIFFERENT magnetic signature to one taken from Nepal.

This is a fact.

The majority of the moon rocks tested for this same signature have been found to have ZERO magnetic flux because they were never subjected to a magnetic field during formation or any time since.

This is proven.

** now here's where the information can get a little confusing - SOME moon rocks do have a magnetic signature, and theories differ as to why, but even then the magnetic signature cannot be assigned a GPS from earth

The bottom line is this, if the moon rocks are on earth and yet they are demonstarably not "OF EARTH" - where exactly did they come from? The only other possible answer than "the moon" is a meteorite, except you're also forgeting that most meteorites than manage to even make it to the ground are mostly metal and crystals, with a very different composition to the regolith found on earth and the moon.

The simple process of elimination gives a highly credible hypothesis that if they have the same regloithic composition as earth, but not the same magnetic signature, the only other object that shares the regolithic composition and has no magnetosphere of it's own is...


the moon.

Sic probatum est.


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## rafezetter (28 Aug 2022)

sawtooth-9 said:


> Thank god for some real information.
> As part of my degree in physical chemistry - my major was nuclear chemistry.
> Open your eyes, look and learn.
> Just be careful who you learn from.





MikeK said:


> Lead (atomic number 82) is NOT depleted uranium (atomic number 92). Natural uranium becomes "depleted" through the fission process when it loses the majority of its isotope U-235. Depleted uranium is still uranium. The process for the most common form of uranium, U-238, to become stable lead, Pb-206, requires over a dozen alpha and beta particle decay phases and takes over 4.5 Billion years to complete.


 pay attention boys and girls, class is in session.









Lead - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





"Lead has the highest atomic number of any stable element and three of its isotopes are endpoints of major nuclear decay chains of heavier elements."


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## mikej460 (28 Aug 2022)

rafezetter said:


> pay attention boys and girls, class is in session.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


hell, I just never considered this when having our roof done....


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## mikej460 (28 Aug 2022)

MikeK said:


> Lead (atomic number 82) is NOT depleted uranium (atomic number 92). Natural uranium becomes "depleted" through the fission process when it loses the majority of its isotope U-235. Depleted uranium is still uranium. The process for the most common form of uranium, U-238, to become stable lead, Pb-206, requires over a dozen alpha and beta particle decay phases and takes over 4.5 Billion years to complete.


gosh, I just know that if I beat the sh*t out of it it goes where I want it to


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## mudman (28 Aug 2022)

guineafowl21 said:


> I’m not sure about that. The way I’d calculate that is this:
> Given the diameter of earth is about 12,000km, this is the max distance between viewing angles (at the equator). The max angle subtended from this distance to the moon (380,000km) is just under 2 degrees.
> 
> Like this:
> ...


Ah, but what you have there is the angle the Earth subtends at the eye of an observer on the Moon. What I was thinking is that the angle the flag will subtend at the earth will depend on the position of the observer on the earth. Something like this:




Where I assumed it was on and perpendicular to the line joining the Earth and Moon but of course, if at an angle to us, then like you said it does become all the more difficult to see. I suppose there are all sorts of conditions that make it more impossible than it is to see.


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## HamsterJam (29 Aug 2022)

Scruples said:


> We need zero. It is that point from which all else starts. Before I went to buy a cake, I had zero cakes. Then, afterwards, I had one cake. When I'd eaten half of it I had zero point five of the cake left and finally, when I'd eaten it all, I was back to zero cake.


You need to buy more cakes and restock before you eat the last one


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## Stan (29 Aug 2022)

The zero symbol plays a vital part in our modern ( not really that modern ) number system.

Consider the number three hundred and six when you don't have a zero symbol. How do you write it? You could write 3 6 or 36 or 3 , 6 but that would be confusing. With 306 it makes it clear what you mean. It forces digits to have a place value and enables calculation by writing numbers in columns.

Without zero, we would be using a system like the Romans, 306 = CCCVI. Try doing long addition/subtraction using just the Roman system. You will soon see why mediaeval people used counting tables and jetons.


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## guineafowl21 (29 Aug 2022)

mudman said:


> Ah, but what you have there is the angle the Earth subtends at the eye of an observer on the Moon. What I was thinking is that the angle the flag will subtend at the earth will depend on the position of the observer on the earth. Something like this:View attachment 142523
> 
> Where I assumed it was on and perpendicular to the line joining the Earth and Moon but of course, if at an angle to us, then like you said it does become all the more difficult to see. I suppose there are all sorts of conditions that make it more impossible than it is to see.


The two lines converging on the flag are meant to be the two most widely spaced observation points on the earth. If you could scuttle between them, your view of the flag would rotate by just under 2 degrees, as far as I can work out. The angles subtended by the width of the flag at the earth would be pretty much unmeasurably small, wouldn’t they?

I couldn’t find a clear depiction of where exactly the flag is on the moon’s face, but it apparently is in the Taurus-Littrow Valley, which is described as the south-western edge of the north-eastern quadrant, so for our purposes, somewhere near the centre.


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## Thingybob (29 Aug 2022)

mudman said:


> Ah, but what you have there is the angle the Earth subtends at the eye of an observer on the Moon. What I was thinking is that the angle the flag will subtend at the earth will depend on the position of the observer on the earth. Something like this:View attachment 142523
> 
> Where I assumed it was on and perpendicular to the line joining the Earth and Moon but of course, if at an angle to us, then like you said it does become all the more difficult to see. I suppose there are all sorts of conditions that make it more impossible than it is to see.


Ok so i have made those and ive got the three wedge pieces now what do i do with them (please remember this is a family forum)


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## guineafowl21 (29 Aug 2022)

Thingybob said:


> Ok so i have made those and ive got the three wedge pieces now what do i do with them (please remember this is a family forum)


Go and see the Headmaster. And no shenanigans on the way.


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## Spectric (29 Aug 2022)

I don't think that the Americans can accept we are really prisoners on planet Earth, there is nowhere else to live and therefore we should be maintaining this planet in better shape. Earth is the only planet in our solar system that supports life as we know it, the next one would take us more than 6000 years to get to with current technology and even then we do not know if it can support us. This then raises all sorts of further questions as to why we are on this planet going round and round the sun but maybe we were the unwanted rejects from somewhere else and were dumped here out of the way and against all odds survived.


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## DrPhill (29 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> but maybe we were the unwanted rejects from somewhere else and were dumped here out of the way and against all odds survived



Golgafrincham


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## sawtooth-9 (30 Aug 2022)

Stan said:


> The zero symbol plays a vital part in our modern ( not really that modern ) number system.
> 
> Consider the number three hundred and six when you don't have a zero symbol. How do you write it? You could write 3 6 or 36 or 3 , 6 but that would be confusing. With 306 it makes it clear what you mean. It forces digits to have a place value and enables calculation by writing numbers in columns.
> 
> Without zero, we would be using a system like the Romans, 306 = CCCVI. Try doing long addition/subtraction using just the Roman system. You will soon see why mediaeval people used counting tables and jetons.


You are right, zero is essential to our form of maths - and serves us well fo a "Newtonian" understanding of physics.
Still necessary in relativity.
So it's what we use.

But there are other number systems - and even those have a concept of zero.
We try to avoid this problem ( that zero and infinity do not exist ) by approaching zero as a "limit"

The REAL problem is the simplest of sums :

1 divided by 0, which we say is infinity ( which does not exist , you can get closer and closer - but never get there )

The axioms in the real number system are it's strength and weakness.
For example, in complex algebra, you can get the square root of a negative number - impossible in the real number system - but, gee it helps in electrical theory.

So as long as we accept the real number system as a base for our understanding, our understanding will be limited


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## MikeJhn (30 Aug 2022)

And the Chinese have found a shed on the Dark side.


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## Sheptonphil (30 Aug 2022)

MikeJhn said:


> And the Chinese have found a shed on the Dark side.


Did it have planning, and conform to regs as far as 2.4m if near the boundary?


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## sploo (30 Aug 2022)

mikej460 said:


> hell, I just never considered this when having our roof done....


I can understand the nomenclature though, as:

"Uraniumed roof" sounds cool, but maybe a bit dangerous
"Depleted Leadium round"... doesn't sound quite so menacing


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## thetyreman (30 Aug 2022)

on a light note the technology needed to create the rockets that took man to the moon was created on the back of forced slave labour and anti semitism during nazi occupation of europe, so many millions had to die in brutal conditions just so we can go to space, was it worth it?


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## Phil Pascoe (30 Aug 2022)

I doubt Herr Schicklgruber had any thoughts of space exploration.


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## Thingybob (30 Aug 2022)

thetyreman said:


> on a light note the technology needed to create the rockets that took man to the moon was created on the back of forced slave labour, anti semitism during nazi occupation of europe, so many millions had to die in brutal conditions just so we can go to space, was it worth it?


Dun no ask the Chinese


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## sploo (30 Aug 2022)

thetyreman said:


> on a light note the technology needed to create the rockets that took man to the moon was created on the back of forced slave labour, anti semitism during nazi occupation of europe, so many millions had to die in brutal conditions just so we can go to space, was it worth it?


As far as I understand the history, Von Braun was working on rocket technology (and was interested in the idea of space flight) well before the rise of the Nazi party. His rockets were then used as weapons of war rather than being intended for space travel.

None of that excuses anything that happened during that period (or the US and USSR recruiting several of those involved in exchange for their expertise).

Unfortunately, the sheer scale and cost of spaceflight requires huge sums of money; meaning that governments will get involved, and will always want there to be some return (e.g. the space race between the US and USSR likely being motivated - at senior level - more by national pride than for science).


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## D_W (30 Aug 2022)

He probably used the nazis as much as they used him, but I would've been hard pressed to have invited him to the states afterwards to continue work (as someone did) given the history. 

I guess the strategic value of what he could do was too much for government officials to resist. 

Only just now did I read what he actually did in the states. If it's true, there's a curve ball I wouldn't have expected - his choice of locations after the war based on religion, and then his fervor after an introduction to a southern hotbox church here in the states after his comment that he initially had some disinterest based on the german notion that churches in the states were "country clubs". 

(for those in the UK, hotbox church meaning churches generally were not air conditioned, many still aren't, and if you're in texas sitting in a building with no A/C, you could have some religious experiences just from the heat).


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## Fitzroy (31 Aug 2022)

Stan said:


> The zero symbol plays a vital part in our modern ( not really that modern ) number system.
> 
> Consider the number three hundred and six when you don't have a zero symbol. How do you write it? You could write 3 6 or 36 or 3 , 6 but that would be confusing. With 306 it makes it clear what you mean. It forces digits to have a place value and enables calculation by writing numbers in columns.
> 
> Without zero, we would be using a system like the Romans, 306 = CCCVI. Try doing long addition/subtraction using just the Roman system. You will soon see why mediaeval people used counting tables and jetons.


Every days a school day, had to Google jetons. Very interesting


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## Cooper (31 Aug 2022)

I have always been under the impression that the space race in the sixties was not really about going into space but devising rockets that could deliver ballistic atomic weapons. By employing Von Braun the US was exploiting the Nazi technology for their own defensive purposes. The morality of how Von Braun acquired his knowledge and skills was immaterial to the US administration. If going to the moon had mattered that much, then why did they stop going to the moon? Surely not just to make the point they could do difficult things and then stop (a point Kennedy made far more eloquently). Don't forget that that Kennedy made his speech around the time of the Cuban Missile crisis.
Martin


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## Spectric (31 Aug 2022)

Cooper said:


> By employing Von Braun the US was exploiting the Nazi technology for their own defensive purposes.


Would it have been so defensive had the Russians not also had the same, was it a good move at the time for people to think that leveling up the playing field will create stability and equilibrium will maintain peace or was it a case of somebody thinking there could be a lot of money to be made if we start an arms race.


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## Thingybob (31 Aug 2022)

Most good inventions come about when we are threatened by war, sickness, fear so the cold war comes in under fear and we all know that greed is a big cause of all three always will be , To hell with what a persons past is if you you come out on top


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## MikeK (31 Aug 2022)

Gentlemen, to avoid closing this thread or banishing it to the Off-Topics 2 forum, please keep mostly to the subject. The Godwin line has already been crossed, so the clock is ticking.


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## Spectric (31 Aug 2022)

Never heard of that one before, you certainly do learn something new every day but that someone has worked out that wherever you start and irrelevant of subject you end up bringing in nazism and fascism. So what is the equivalent in say China and Russia, do they end up with western ideology or is it just a western thing because we see it as such a threat. On these forums I would have though it would end up with sharpeningism, that can be more detrimental to life than fascism, maybe we will get a Godwin equivalent talking about the night of the blunt chisels.


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## sploo (31 Aug 2022)

MikeK said:


> Gentlemen, to avoid closing this thread or banishing it to the Off-Topics 2 forum, please keep mostly to the subject. The Godwin line has already been crossed, so the clock is ticking.


I did Nazi that coming... Ahem.

To be honest I was quite impressed that such a sensitive topic was raised and everyone was quite sensible about it.

That said, it is somewhat on topic; in the sense that space exploration has historically been tied to national pride; in that those at the top have tended to back it for political rather than scientific purposes (and sometimes used the research for the military).

There can be "political" positives too; I understand that the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 caused significant changes to the US education system; with a push to invest in science and engineering (in order to better compete with the USSR).

PS For those of us who are not on the Off-Topic 2 forum; when it's felt a thread should be moved could I request that the original thread is left intact (albeit moderated accordingly, and closed), and a new one started in Off-Topic 2? Otherwise a discussion that was visible to all is suddenly moved behind a wall, with some contributors unable to see new responses (possibly in answer to their already present posts).


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