Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

Every Shot — A Hole In One / Chap. 8 p. 70
239,000-mile trip at 16,692 miles in diameter. 13
At the halfway mark the circle of uncertainty around the Moon would be 8346 miles in
diameter. One could be over 4,100 miles off course and possibly only detect half of it. A
burn to change inertial vector of 50 tons of a space ship by a few degrees, would certainly
not be a small affair, because the center of mass would want to stay on that old course.
Here on Earth our vehicles rub away inertial vectors by friction. A car does it with tires
that scrub by friction on the roadway as it changes direction; an airplane by the resistance or
friction of the air developed in banking; and a boat by the high friction of the water.
However, in space there is no friction! Cancellation of the inertial vector requires a burn at
right angles to the course powerful enough to accelerate the ship so that the center of mass is
on a new vector heading for the lunar ring of entry. More importantly, an error of this
magnitude would cause many more frequent adjustments in course.
From the Earth, the Moon's area of this circle of uncertainty is 218,829,885 square
miles. 14 To find the odds of hitting the entry target ring around the Moon we must first find
the area of the plane surface of the Moon. It is 3,664,353 square miles. 15 Collins claims the
ring of return to Earth is only 40 miles thick, and if I generously allow the ring of entry to the
Moon to be 5 times that size (200 miles), the total area encompassed would be 5,147,185
square miles. 16 Subtracting the Moon's area from this leaves us with a target area of
1,482,832 square miles. 17 This seems rather large. However, in comparison with the
218,829,885 square miles of uncertainty we find the probability for hitting that ring with
only one burn to be — .67 percent. 18
If NASA made no other corrections, as they claim, they would have only one chance in
147 of sliding into the lunar ring of entry. This figure is derived by comparing the area of
the lunar entry zone and the area of uncertainty. 19 To claim to have done exactly this, eight
times in a row, against odds such as these, boggles the mind — not to mention Murphy's
Law!
It is even more unbelievable that Houston, at the long end of a 1.3-second transmission
time lag, was supposed to make Go-No-Go lunar landing decision for each of the LEMs.
This means that anything transmitted took 1.3 seconds to get to Houston, then after a decision
was made, it took another 1.3 seconds to get the information back. Would you like to
drive in traffic like that
Harry Hurt writes how the LEM was roughly 7,000 feet above the Moon's surface
waiting for the Go-No go decision from Houston. "According to ground based radar, the
spacecraft was diving toward the lunar surface a good fifteen mph (twenty-three feet per
second) faster than called for in the flight plan." 20 Wow! Their resolution in range was better
than anything ever done before. Or since! Not only could that radar tell its exact altitude, it
could also divine its velocity down to one foot per second. Wow!
Despite all this exactness, the Eagle Lander of Apollo 11 fame missed the chosen landing
spot. Michael Collins writes, "Of course, the ground can take its own measurements as
well, but it has no way of really judging where the LM came down, except by comparing
Neil and Buzz's description of their surrounding terrain (lurain) with the rather crude maps
Houston has." 21 (By "ground" Collins means "mission control").
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene