So, we didn't go to the moon then

I'm surprised. I expected you to dodge and you gave a straight answer. Again, I admire independence and willingness to take ideas to logical conclusions.

Forget moon landing, you don't believe that either of the things on my list is real! You don't believe in GPS even though you can pull out your phone and locate your position right now. No evidence I have for the Apollo program is nearly as strong as that! Until you believe in rockets, any discussion on that topic would be meaningless. Don't worry: when (if) you do, we'll come back to it.

Let me read your comments and understand why you think rocket engine is impossible. Might take a day or so.

 

I'm tempted to just end the conversation between us right now since I find you dumping the moon landing stuff suspicious, but I won't lie, I'm a bit interested in where you're taking this. I'll wait for your reply.

 

@Davinblake @brilliantidiot I'll get to you two soon.

 

Why, I'm happy to quantify this for you. First let me describe my methodology:

• I will be expressing the force created by the atmosphere in inches of murcury ("hg), the standard unit of pressure in the United States.
• To control for air temperature and density, I will be using a standard pressure deviation that will reflect the normal ranges of pressure seen throughout any given week.
• These numbers will quantify the force created by atmospheric pressure as measured by a standard barometer. From these numbers, we'll have a good benchmark for the forces we've been discussing so far.

The standard, mean pressure of the atmosphere is 29.92 "hg at sea level. Since one inch of murcury is equal to 0.491 psi, we can use the standard barometric pressure to find the average pressure applied to Earth's surface in psi. In this case, the standard pressure found at Earth's surface is equivalent to around 14.7 psi.

But, as you have mentioned, there are deviations from this standard pressure. Actually, I very rarely see atmospheric pressure at standard when I'm setting my aircraft's altimeter before a flight. The normal ranges that I have personally seen while working is pressure as low as 29.72"hg, and as high as 30.42"hg (just last month actually). Pressure is known to exceed these ranges from time to time, but those events are outliers and don't serve our purpose of defining the pressure on a normal day.

Based on these ranges, the normal pressure one would see in a given week at sea level would be between 14.59 psi and 14.94.

So as it turns out, air is pretty damn heavy. In fact, if you put a cylinder around the Eiffel Tower, the air within that cylinder would weigh more than the Eiffel Tower itself! You can verify the methodology of this fact using these figures.

You don't seem to understand what a vacuum is. A vacuum is not some magical, fantastic force that violently rips apart the pressure that it comes into contact with. In fact, I think a vacuum can be more aptly defined as something with no force at all. How do we know this? As we already know, we can use psi to measure the force that is created by pressure. What is the psi of a perfect vacuum? Zero. No force.

So it stands to reason then that the violent action of Earth's pressure rapidly ascending into the vacuum of space, as envisioned by the average moon landing denier, would not be a product of a vacuum, but rather, a pressure differential. The greater the difference of the two pressures, the more violent the reaction. An explosive decompression event in an airline? Extremely violent, because there's a huge differential (my first post in this thread goes over the numbers). A tire blowing out? Less violent than an airplane decompression, as the difference in pressure is not as great. A soap bubble popping? Not violent at all, the difference in pressure is almost negligable.

So, even if there were no pressure gradient found on Earth, and the Earth's high pressure directly bordered the vacuum of space, that would only be a differential of 14.7 psi! To put that into perspective, that's less than the force caused by a 40 psi car tire blowing out. And that right there, is the force of air rushing into the vacuum of space, as defined through the moon landing denier's point of view.

Ah, but the 14.7 psi of pressure at sea level doesn't directly border the vacuum of space, does it. It's that pesky gradient again. See, if we're using pressure differential to define the force of air rushing out of our atmosphere, or the air rushing out of a popping balloon, it would be intellectually dishonest of us to throw out the gradient, as it changes the differential, which is what we use to find force in the first place. So, again, 14.7 psi (sea level) to 0 psi (space) creates a measurable force. But, sea level doesn't border space. Instead, 14.7 psi borders 14.6 psi. This creates a measurable force. 14.6 psi borders 14.5 psi. This creates a measurable force. And so on, until we we arrive at 0.1 psi bordering 0.0 psi. Hardly the violent force that the esteemed moon landing denier had in mind.

So, the force of the high pressure slowly transitioning to zero pressure, creates a weak force. This force is opposed and equalized by gravity. This concept is called hydrostatic equilibrium. I won't get into the specifics of this subject as you will accuse me of "obfuscating the issue", so I encourage you to research the methodology yourself and see how we calculate this equalization of forces.

This force isn't just caused by pressure though. The pocket of air inside of a balloon is literally surrounded by stretched out latex that forces the air out of a specific point of the balloon as it contracts. No weather system or atmospheric pressure gradient operates in that way. Maybe a car tire would be a better example? Since the force of the the releasing air is purely caused by the pressure difference, I think it's a better analogy. Is that fair?

To be clear, I'd like to address the specifics of this point, but I think there are pressure related items that can get this point across better than a balloon. Since our goal is to make this as simple as possible, we should strive to eliminate any unnecessary variables from the discussion.

As I have already pointed out, I don't give a shit if someone believes the moon landing or not. I'm just pointing out a flaw in your reasoning, a reasoning that just happened to step into my field of expertise and experience. That's all.

Well seeing as the force seen at Earth's sea level is 14.7 pounds per square inch, and the force of a perfect vacuum is 0 pounds per square inch, ummm, yeah, I'm gonna have to go with Earth on this one. lmao

You seem to like analogies. So I will use my own to explain why orientation does indeed matter with respect to these forces.

As we've established in our previous posts, a meteorological pressure system has a lateral pressure gradient. We also know that differences in pressure creates a force. Since the pressure gradient is lateral - i.e. it follows the surface of the Earth - then the resulting force also follows Earth's surface. We also know that gravity is an equal, downward force, i.e. it pushes down on the gradient that follows Earth's surface. Here's where my analogy comes in

Let's say I park my car on a slight incline. I get out of the car. But, I left the car in neutral. The car starts to lurch forward. A gradient is causing the car to move. This creates a force that follows the surface of the Earth. Sound familiar?

So, it's my job to stop this force caused by a gradient. Now, will I push down on the car in order to stop it? Of course not. I will push against the car's movement. i.e. I will oppose the force in order to stop it. This is orientation of forces. I can stop the car if I apply an equal force in the opposite direction. Will the same thing happen if I apply the same force, but downwards? hmmmmmm

 

Academics is not subservient to willful ignorance.

 

hahahahahaha

Not only am I a licensed commercial pilot, but I am also a licenced flight instructor. The safety of me and my passengers greatly rests on my ability to understand weather and pressure as it directly affects the performance of my aircraft. After over 1,000 successful flights, you could say that I'm pretty good at this. But the really funny thing about this comment is that the language I've used in all of my posts is the same exact language I use to teach my flight students about these forces. All of these students have successfully meet the FAA standards for meteorology, aerodynamics and pressure knowledge, so it sure seems like they didn't have any trouble understanding my explanations for these very concepts.

So, what's more likely? That my students all passed their pilot check rides despite my incorrect explanations of the material? Or could it be that you aren't as willing to learn as you say you are? Why, not only do I have expertise on this field, but I have experience flying through the very systems we're discussing. In fact, I seem to remember a little quote you mentioned earlier:

So, it seems like you define the best method for seeking truth to be personal experience/findings. By your very own definition, you must hold my experience in very high regard then? After all, I have experienced all of the meteorological forces first hand, closer and more intimately than anybody else here. Why, my life depends on my understanding of these forces. So why are you arguing with the knowledge I have from this experience? Aren't our personal findings and experiences the best way to lead us to truth?

I appreciate you trying to "teach me", but nothing a kid with google says will teach me anything that the hundreds of hours actually experiencing these concepts already didn't. Sorry young fella

 

I love this app! I always use it to check out the ISS, it's a really cool thing to see.

It's almost the perfect experiment for a moon landing denier. All you have to do is download the app and wait for the ISS orbit to cross your location. You can even see the ISS reflect the sunlight into your field of view, which is called the lens flare. But I'm sure it's all government trickery right? I guess personal findings/experience is only held in high regard when it doesn't conflict their beliefs.

 

If you don't mind me asking, what are the personal reasons you have for not believing that the moon landing happened? If you don't want to answer, that would be ok and I wouldn't be offended.

 

Seeing as how it's taking me days to form a response, (don't you just love RL /no sarcasm) I'm might have to call it quits for this discussion, unless waiting for a few days for a response is fine with y'all.

That being said, let me address the last two folks replying to me:

Not only is this a shoddy attempt to explain how rockets could move on Earth, it doesn't address moving in space at all. You still cannot create "small atomic reactions" in an infinite vacuum or "small explosions".

It also doesn't address the problem that you can't create any form of locally high pressure directly underneath the rocket in order to make it move in space. And the problem of objects in a vacuum falling at a constant speed, where everything the rocket itself would release at a speed so quickly and constantly, that it couldn't make anything move at all since it's just getting sucked into an infinite void.

You basically just restated what my previous opposition did, but in a different way.

Besides, all this being said, even if rockets could move in space, it doesn't mean we went to the Moon. Which is the most fundamental problem here.

...These... these are all extremely easy to explain. Take your last one, for example, that's just bandwagon rationale, no different than previous arguments. As for the rest of your questions, anybody that's done a modicum of research into the moon landing, satellites, and rockets could answer those easily for you.

Seriously, you could just YouTube some anti-satellite, anti-rocket, and anti-moon landing videos and you'd get your answers. Better yet, you're better off just looking into the entire hoax yourself rather than asking some stranger on a forum these questions, said stranger giving you answers you may not even accept, which is one of my main reasons for discussing this. Don't take what I say at face value, but don't take what ANYONE, including NASA or the government, says at face value either. Look into it yourself. I could answer them for you and if you really want me to, I will, but these questions aren't hard to answer by yourself, man. All it takes is some research (like a YouTube video or two that goes into detail about this stuff) and just a bit of critical thought.

If the information presented to you, be it from someone in a forum (though I've only found useful information from someone in a forum just once in my life) to a YouTube video to research done by yourself lays it out in a specific, detailed, logical, and reasonable way, then you may just be on your way to discovering what could really be going on.

 

Parting it out would do nothing in a vacuum. Said molecules you speak of, their force would constantly be moving in one direction, which is away from the ship, and said force couldn't be returned to it.

 

That's pressure in a localized area, which is within the rocket. You still need it outside of it, which can't happen. Unless you'd like to explain to me how. And if you're willing to wait a few days in-between responses, I'm afraid.

 

Oops, almost forgot about this. So I've read through all your stuff @DeservedCriticism but I can't seem to find where exactly is the problem. I'd like to locate it, so let's take it one small step by step. I'm not a physicist so be patient with me.

The most basic, high level picture is

gas escapes one way => rocket moves in the opposite direction​

Let's not care how to make that gas leave the tank first, I need to be absolutely sure that I understand what you think. Do you accept this implication (law of conservation of momentum)?

 

Neither am I. We're just two individuals using our collected knowledge to discuss whether or not something did or did not happen (moon landing) and whether or not something could or could not happen (rockets moving in space). Of course I'll be patient.

Accepted.

 

Alright. What will happen if I take a sealed chamber with gas in it to space and open the lid?