Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

Gotchas ! / Chap. 17 p. 147
transmitted off-center Any off-center force would begin to rotate one or both vessels.
There may be some truth to the old saying that every dog has its day. I'm an old dog and
Aldrin spit forth this gem while writing about the Apollo 9 mission. My comments are in
normal type and parenthesis. "A couple of hours later they were feeling better and had
separated the CSM (command module) from the S-IVB third stage (last stage of the Saturn
booster). Scott then deployed his command module's docking probe and thrust the spacecraft
neatly around to line up with the conical drogue that was nestled at the top of the lunar
module (LEM). The latches all snapped properly into place. Just over three hours into the
mission they were hard-docked with the LM. Dave Scott then backed the two docked
spacecraft away from the third stage and thrust well clear of the slowly tumbling white
booster." 10
Neither exploding bolts, nor cable shearing, nor the jets which moved the command
module away, moved the booster. Yet, un-docking, which starts out in perfect alignment, can
start the carcass slowly rotating or tumbling. A likely story! Gotcha NASA!
GOTCHA # 4
Remember the PLSS back-pack discussed in the section on the LEM's thermal problems
That entire discussion concerned the volume of water which was carried in the PLSS
for cooling purposes. But the efficiency of the explosive freezing cooling unit became moot
when I finally located a cutaway drawing of a PLSS. By taking the ratio of its known length
and width, not only did I determine that the drawing was to scale, but I determined what the
scale was. By that scale the water storage containers were 3 inches in diameter and 14 inches
long. 11 This gives a capacity of 100 cubic inches, .43 gallons, or 1.63 liters. Less than half a
gallon of water would last about 27 minutes, on the Moon even at the mythical rate of 100 %
efficiency. That's a big difference from the 4 hours PLSS capacity claimed by NASA. Does
NASA have an unrevealed way of concentrating water We keep hearing about space age
benefits — but that one would be incredible. Gotcha, NASA!
GOTCHA # 5
Aldrin claimed that access to, and egress from the LEM's side hatch was done on hands
and knees. 12 Bill Kaysing claims that a friend of his who visited the space museum in
Washington, DC a few years ago took a tape measure and succeeded in actually measuring
the LEM's hatch as well as a space suit and back pack. He says that the hatch was simply too
small to allow a man with a back-pack to pass through.
By scaling a picture of a 1/48 th scale model of a LEM, I determined that this side hatch
(the one that leads to the ladder) was about 30 inches on each side. New information has it
that it was 36 inches wide by 25 inches high. The young astro-nots had a ballooning pressurized
suit to keep them from folding tightly at the waist, wherein I had my fat little belly
accomplishing the same thing. It was a wash! Stripped to a pair of shorts I tried to use hands
and knees to get under the edge of my kitchen table.
Since it has only 25 inches of clearance, in order to fit I had to go down to elbows and
knees instead of hands and knees. But, if I add 10 inches for the thickness of the back pack,
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene