2881

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Can FE disprove the RE explanation of Gravity?

« on: August 28, 2019, 05:47:43 AM »

While we're here, gravity explains why the earth is round. It also explains why every celestial body we can observe (above a certain mass) is round.
This is yet another thing which gravity explains.
All UA "explains" is that things fall, and it doesn't even explain that as well as gravity - it doesn't explain variations in g across the earth.
A new theory only replaces an old one when it does a better job of explaining observations or makes better predictions than the prevailing one.
I've yet to see any evidence that UA does that. It explains less things than gravity and it doesn't explain the one thing it does explain as accurately as gravity.
There's a reason it hasn't swept the scientific world and no-one has won a Nobel prize for "discovering" it yet.

2882

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Can FE disprove the RE explanation of Gravity?

« on: August 27, 2019, 11:29:05 AM »

I don't know if RE needs to explain gravity or FE needs to explain UA.
Obviously it's nice if things can be explained but I can have a theory that rainbows occur when there's sunshine and rain without understanding the way light refracts and reflects through water drops to cause the effect.
From what I understand GE is our best model of how gravity works right now but the key thing here is whether UA is a better model than gravity?
Does it match observations better? Can it explain things better.
Both gravity and UA can explain why things fall. But UA doesn't explain variations in g across the earth.
It doesn't explain the movements of the celestial bodies.
FE doesn't need to disprove gravity, but in order to be taken seriously it does need to propose a model which works better than it, and right now it doesn't seem to have done that.

2883

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 27, 2019, 08:19:31 AM »

You know what would be simple?  Not hiring new people to replace those who retire , quit, or get fired.  But they're not doing that either.

Indeed, this simple and common method of cost-cutting has been a major factor in the trend we're investigating. Thanks for sharing!

The last sentence of his post says that's not what they're doing. Your reply is basically just "are too!". How is that not low content posting?
To be honest I really struggled to find NASA staff numbers over time although I guess their budget is a rough proxy for staff numbers.

2884

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Which is right?

« on: August 27, 2019, 04:07:49 AM »

For me the killer argument, the one that simply can’t be argued with, is the fact that we have been to space
Hundreds of people have been there now, 7 of them space tourists who paid for the pleasure. We have loads of satellites which make GPS and satellite TV work, we’ve got a lot of film and pictures from space of the globe earth.
Since the space race in the 60s any argument against a globe earth should have been killed stone dead.
That’s where it gets silly and you have to start invoking huge conspiracies - GPS works in some other way, all the pictures and film from space are fake, all the people who have been there are liars, the ISS isn’t what it seems despite the fact you can see it from the ground.
That’s where I start to think FE belief is more about belonging to a club than genuine belief.

The principle of checking things out for yourself is sound but people need to realise that their understanding or ability is limited and we can’t all make our own model of reality based solely on our own observations. The mess of contradictory FE models shows that. Progress is made by publishing results and methods and people cross-checking each other’s work.

2885

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Which is right?

« on: August 26, 2019, 07:49:00 PM »

In the RE model the earth is orbiting the sun and the moon is orbiting the earth. With all are knowledge of gravity we are unable to calculate this orbit. Mathematically it does not work. Google the three body problem.

There is no analytical solution but there are numerical solutions where you take the initial conditions, break the problem down into several 2 body problems and in time steps solve those. Those do perfectly fine as an approximation - good enough to accurately predict the positions of the bodies for all practical purposes. The model is good enough that when the solar eclipse happened the path could be predicted to block level.
Neptune was discovered because the wobbles observed in the orbit of Uranus indicated there must be another body pulling on it.
The model of gravity works very well in most circumstances. Einstein showed Newton wasn't right about certain things but for most practical purposes it works.

I'd say the failure to make an analytical model is more a failure of mathematics, not science.

Many people have come here saying that the sinking ship effect has come as a result of the earth being round yet, it has been demonstrated many times, that the sinking ship effect can also be caused by refraction or chaotic atmospheric conditions.

That certainly does affect results but do you know what I've never seen? In all the pictures you see where a FE person says "aha! you shouldn't be about to see 'x', but you can". I have never seen the whole of 'x'. What I mean is, I've seen videos where people say you shouldn't be able to see the top of a mountain, say, but you can. So they conclude that the earth is flat. But if the earth is flat then where's the rest of the mountain? Yes, atmospheric effects do mean results vary but on the right day you'd surely be able to see all of the mountain or whatever. But you never do. Although yes, there was that experiment with mirrors, which brings me to...

The bishop experiment is one which had a similar experiment done with mirrors which, a very firm 100% round earther admired that it was evidence that supported a flat earth.

The Bishop experiment is really poorly documented to the point where I discount it completely.
But yes, Bobby did agree that the mirror experiment was possible evidence and I'd agree with him.
BUT, he attempted to reproduce the experiment and couldn't reproduce the result.

The reason there are so many different FE models is the mentality is "check things out for yourself". Now, that in itself is not a bad principle.
But there are some things which are quite difficult to check out for yourself. I don't have the means to do the Cavendish experiment, for example, which is evidence for an attractive force between objects. And maybe I'm not very good at experiments and my errors will lead me to wrong conclusions.

The whole basis of science is that people do experiments, document their methods well and then publish the results. That way other people can scrutinise their results, repeat their experiments and that can help push discovery on. Someone else might find an error in the method, or maybe other people get the same result and that gives confidence in the result. That's how progress is made. The idea that everyone should do their own tests and come to their own conclusions is why there is such a mess of competing and inconsistent models.

Given the wealth of evidence for the globe earth I don't understand how people can do experiments, get a result which indicates a flat earth and think they've discovered something so revolutionary and which has such massive implications in terms of the myriad of conspiracies which must be at work...rather than thinking "maybe I suck at doing experiments" or "maybe I don't understand this stuff as well as I think I do". A lot of the FE arguments I've seen are arguments from ignorance or incredulity which is not a very sensible way of forming a world view. We shouldn't blindly believe everything we've been told either of course but there is a middle ground between that and thinking that each person can form their own model based on their own observations. The inconsistencies in your results should demonstrate that. The earth is the shape it is, the sun is the distance it is and so on.

2886

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 23, 2019, 10:10:28 AM »

And what do you think that is? What are you actually getting at here?

Why NASA is being quietly retired into obscurity is left as an exercise to the reader.

Well, it isn't. Over a long period of time there has been a reduction, sure.
But since 2010 that reduction has stopped. Whether it will continue or reverse remains to be seen. There were very rapid reductions from the late 60s to the mid-70s. Further reductions into the mid 80s and then the budget increased for a few years. Possibly to do with the Space Shuttle programme. Since then there was a slow decrease but that stopped after the financial crisis. Since then the funding has pretty much flat-lined, over the last 5 years there's actually been some increase in real terms.
So no, absolutely no sign it's being retired, quietly or otherwise.

I imagine NASA budgets could be affected by private enterprises by SpaceX - why let NASA launch your satellites if SpaceX can do it cheaper?

NASA contractors are still paid from NASA's budget whilst they're working for NASA. This is a non-factor.

Private enterprises are winning contracts from the military to launch satellites.
https://www.defensenews.com/space/2019/02/20/spacex-ula-each-get-air-force-contracts-for-trio-of-space-launches/

I imagine some of that money will end up going to NASA, they're using NASA's launch pads, but I can't imagine all of it will so that would be a factor.
And that's a good thing, NASA shouldn't have a monopoly when it comes to space exploration, it's good that other countries or private enterprises are creating some competition and driving innovation.

2887

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why should the Earth be flat?

« on: August 22, 2019, 08:35:41 PM »

An important point to note about different versions of the Bible is they are more indicative of the way language changes, not the message. And to an extent the way different translators work. Different versions are useful because they often bring out different aspects of the message. But all translations are (or should be) translations of the same source material. It’s a myth that it’s translations of translations and the original message has been lost.

And, again, scientific discovery can change the way we understand certain parts of the Bible. Had I lived a few hundred years ago I’d probably be a young earth creationist. But we know better now, so I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise and believe the deeper truths Genesis is trying to teach me.

2888

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Can FE disprove the RE explanation of Gravity?

« on: August 22, 2019, 07:54:51 PM »

That whole line of "reasoning" was just a deflection to avoid answering the question, anyway.

That would be a cute theory to cover up your logical fallacies, were it not for the simple fact that I already pointed you to an impartial resource on your gravitational model's flaws.

You did, and those do indicate that we have more to learn. But does UA fix any of those problems? And UA doesn’t account for the differences in gravity measures in different locations. If you accept that result then you would need a different mechanism to explain that, if the flat earth is accelerating upwards at a certain rate then g should be constant regardless of location which is not what is measured.

UA solves none of the anomalies mentioned on the source you provided, only explains one phenomenon (us falling) when gravity explains lots more things like orbits of planets and satellites. And UA has additional problems like being unable to explain variations of g in different locations.

A new model only replaces an old one if it does better and predicting and explaining observations than the old ones, like the heliocentric model replacing the geocentric one. UA does a worse job than gravity at predicting or explaining observations.

 

2889

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 22, 2019, 05:57:36 PM »

The rocket was modified by turning the ignition mechanism into a bomb. Good grief.

Well, sort of, yes. A bomb is basically an explosion in a container. What makes them so dangerous is that the container is not strong enough to contain the explosion so it fragments and the parts fly everywhere at great speed and that also releases the energy of the explosion itself. This is what causes the damage.

The difference with a rocket is there is a hole in the container so the gases resulting from the explosion have somewhere to vent, that causes the thrust and the rocket accelerates in the opposite direction. Not because it’s pushing against the atmosphere but because of Newton’s Third Law.

The other difference with a rocket is it has a supply of fuel to keep the combustion going for a long time which means, for rockets designed to get to space, it can keep accelerating long enough to achieve the speeds necessary for orbit. Sometimes as you’ve said this is done by having several stages.

The tricky thing in a vacuum is keeping the combustion going. Combustion needs oxygen. In the video he did that by creating a little chamber full of air. That allowed the combustion to happen, the explosion blew the plug out, the gases vented out the hole and that pushed the rocket forward in a vacuum.

The way big rockets do this is they have their own oxygen supply. If they didn’t then combustion wouldn’t happen and the rocket wouldn’t work.

As totallackey points out ,you are not going to pressurise the vacuum of space .  No pressure = no fuel burn

Correct. Which is why the rockets have their own oxygen supply to allow the combustion to happen.

This isn’t rocket science...

2890

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Can FE disprove the RE explanation of Gravity?

« on: August 22, 2019, 03:36:37 PM »

I appreciate you stepping in to clarify, but what I was asking was much more simple than that. Is there any evidence that the RE explanation can’t be true? which is really just another way of asking is there any evidence that UA is true, since if one is true, the other is untrue, by default. That is all I asked A simple yes, and here is the evidence, or no, there isn't any evidence is all that was needed. Instead, what I get in response is deflection, dissembling, false assumptions, logical fallacies and insults.  Which I guess, is kind of answer of its own.

I think Pete's point is why does FE (or anyone) have to disprove a theory to propose an alternative.
And he's right, they don't. BUT, I would suggest that in order to propose a new theory you surely have to have some evidence that there is something wrong with the prevailing one.
Why would you propose a new model if you have no evidence that there is anything wrong with the existing one?
The heliocentric model was suggested because Copernicus believed there were issues with the geocentric model and that the heliocentric one worked better.
Over time it became adopted because as accuracy of observations improved it became clear he was right.

I don't think UA was suggested because it was felt to work better as a model than gravity, my guess is it came about because if you believe the world is flat then the RE gravity where things are attracted towards the centre of mass can't work, so an alternative has to be proposed. And the premise of UA is that it is in certain regards equivalent to gravity.
But there are other reasons like the variations in gravity which have been mapped why it doesn't work as well. And it has no explanatory power for how any of the celestial bodies move.
UA actually explains less than gravity and doesn't work as well as a model compared to observations. That's why it hasn't revolutionised our scientific understanding.

2891

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 22, 2019, 02:32:43 PM »

Here is a better video of a guy using a proper vacuum chamber in an effort to prove rockets ( won't )work in a vacuum.

That video literally shows the opposite of what you're claiming.

In his initial test he says "The rocket did not ignite" and then says "This motor is not designed to work in a vacuum. The gunpowder can't sustain a burn."

Then when he modifies the rocket so there's some pressure for it to ignite in he shows it works and then says

"Rocket motors can produce just as much thrust in vacuum.
They are not pushing against the air, they are pushing against the fuel that is being burned and thrown overboard."

He concludes:

"Now the rocket was difficult to ignite in a vacuum because it needed some pressure to get the fuel grain to burn but once I did that, it did just fine.
And since I was able to figure it out, I'm sure the folks at NASA can do it."

2892

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 22, 2019, 01:14:36 PM »

Since then yes, there is a downward trend but it's a change from 1% to 0.4% over a 28 year period is hardly "rapid".

It's about as fast as you can go without outright firing half of your staff on the spot, which probably wouldn't work so well. It's as rapid as rapid gets.

Halving your expenditure over a 28 years period is as rapid as rapid gets?
After the space race it went from 4.5% in 1966 to 1% in 1975.
That's more than quartering the budget in 9 years. Now THAT is a rapid scaling down and we all know why - the space race was over. The US won.
The public interest was waning, they could no longer justify that level of spending. That's why the later Apollo missions were scrapped.

It's "rapidly scaling down" I take issue with. It's clearly not true. There was a rapid scaling down after the 60's, sure.
Since then yes, the general trend has been downwards but in the last 5 years NASA spending has gone up in real terms.
Since 2010 the budget has been pretty consistently hovering around 0.5% of the budget (0.52% in 2010, 0.49% this year).

the inconvenient truth remains obvious.

And what do you think that is? What are you actually getting at here? I imagine NASA budgets could be affected by private enterprises by SpaceX - why let NASA launch your satellites if SpaceX can do it cheaper? But that's just a shifting of the money devoted to space exploration* elsewhere. (*using the word in the very loosest sense, I mean it to cover all space related stuff from manned missions to launching probes to fly past Pluto to launching satellites for GPS etc). Let's agree that budgets have, over time, gone down as a %age of the total budget. What do you think that's a smoking gun of?
NASA doesn't seem anywhere close to being quietly closed down, their budget this year is over $20bn, they have over 17,000 employees. They're not about to turn the lights off.
I'm not sure what your actual point is here.

2893

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 22, 2019, 09:38:09 AM »

You also insist on using the wrong unit. Ditch the US Dollar and use the percentage of the budget.

OK.



(source https://www.lpi.usra.edu/exploration/multimedia/NASABudgetHistory.pdf )

Annoyingly this graph isn't up to date but I found this:

For all it does, NASA receives just 0.4% of the $4.7 trillion FY 2020 federal budget.
(source https://www.thebalance.com/nasa-budget-current-funding-and-history-3306321)

Over the past 20 years, this has halved. There is no statistically significant portion of time during which that trend was broken.

After the real peak of spending in the 60s space race it went down rapidly from nearly 4.5% in 66-67 to 1% in about '75.
It went down from then till about '86 to 0.75% then back up to 1% in around '91.
Since then yes, there is a downward trend but it's a change from 1% to 0.4% over a 28 year period is hardly "rapid".
The only period when you could claim that NASA's operation was being "rapidly scaled down" is after the space race and it's obvious why that was, the US won, after the first couple of missions public interest waned, the last few missions were cancelled which is why there's a sodding great unused Saturn V rocket in the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

There is a trend certainly and there was a big cut in funding in the wake of the financial crisis but I don't think you can sensibly claim that NASA is being "rapidly" scaled down.

2894

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 22, 2019, 07:54:36 AM »

It's certainly not a sign that NASA is being "rapidly scaled down"

On a general trend, it absolutely is. Taking a few data points that don't fit the trend and claiming that they disprove the trend is not how you do data analysis.

You said "is being rapidly scaled down". Implying a continuing trend. But that is not the current trend.
You'd need 4% inflation every year for a 22% increase in NASA spending to just be inflation, inflation has been lower than that every year.
Spending has increased in real terms over the last 5 years. I'm not saying that is evidence of rapid expansion of NASA, it isn't.
But neither is it indicating that NASA is being "rapidly scaled down", that implies an ongoing process of scaling down which isn't what the figures show no matter how you wriggle.
Have operations scaled down since the 60s? Of course, the space race provoked a huge spike in spending which clearly wasn't sustainable.
But since then although there has been some cut in spending there is no evidence that operations are being "rapidly scaled down".
If you do have evidence showing that then please present it.

2895

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 21, 2019, 03:50:15 PM »

Their budget has increased by 22% since 2014.
[...]

Sounds like you're describing inflation.

Well, that's a factor. But I took the GDP Growth figure from this list:
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-inflation-rate-history-by-year-and-forecast-3306093
And over the same period, if my maths is right, inflation is less than 13%. The budget went up 22% in that period.
It's certainly not a sign that NASA is being "rapidly scaled down"

2896

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 21, 2019, 03:13:13 PM »

You can't change physical laws to enable rocket engines to produce thrust in a vacuum .

Just to add to my previous post about Newton's Third Law
Here's a video showing this works:

2897

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 21, 2019, 03:00:26 PM »

It was incredibly easy to get men to the moon and even easier to bring them back.

Well no, it wasn't. The first American in space was in 1961, the first man on the moon was 1969. That's 8 years of work with a LOT of money thrown at it, as I showed above it was around 4.5% of the budget of the the entire country at its peak.

Did nasa ever do a trial run

Yes. They did loads of trial runs.
It was Apollo 11 which went to the moon. Before Apollo there were the Gemini and Mercury programmes.
The other Apollo missions were used to practice all kinds of things needed to get to the moon and yes, including rendezvous.
A whole list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmanned_test_missions

Loads of unmanned missions to test the rocket.
Apollo 8 went to the moon.
Apollo 9 tested rendezvous and docking
Apollo 10 tested the same thing but this time at the moon - the LM descended to 8.4 miles from the surface before coming back and docking.
Apollo 11 landed.

So yes, you can see in that list that in incremental stages they tested every thing they could practically test.
On earth they spent hours and hours in simulators testing every conceivable scenario and malfunction.
They spent time practising landing in a device which had rockets which fired to make the craft act as though it was in one 6th gravity. Armstrong famously crashed one, ejecting not long before he did so.
 
So yes. They did lots of trial runs. It wasn't easy.

You can't change physical laws to enable rocket engines to produce thrust in a vacuum

You don't have to change any physical laws.
https://www.livescience.com/34475-how-do-space-rockets-work-without-air.html

So why is it so hard to put man above earth orbit now?

It was always hard. And I posted a link above showing the effect of the Apollo missions on the astronauts.
A combination of budget cuts compared with the 1960s, a lack of political will to go back to the moon and a lack of public interest meant the focus has been on other things like unmanned probes, the Shuttle programme and building the ISS. The focus seems to be switching back to the moon again and I'd be very excited if they did go back as there hasn't been a manned mission in my lifetime, and I'm not that young.

Quite honestly, your arguments are a mix of incredulity and ignorance. Read "A Man On The Moon" by Andrew Chaikin if you want to learn more about the Apollo missions.

2898

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 21, 2019, 01:56:53 PM »

Of course, there's an alternative explanation for why NASA is being rapidly scaled down

Their budget has increased by 22% since 2014.

FY 2014 - $17.6 billion.
FY 2015 - $18.0 billion.
FY 2016 - $19.3 billion
FY 2017 - $19.2 billion.
FY 2018 - $19.5 billion.
FY 2019 - $20.7 billion.

(source https://www.thebalance.com/nasa-budget-current-funding-and-history-3306321)

That was after a few years of cutbacks, admittedly. There's certainly no evidence that it's being rapidly scaled down though in terms of their budget.
My graph was to contrast the level of investment in the 60s when the space race was at its height and investment since that.
Although private companies are sniffing around, SpaceX have been winning contracts to deploy satellites, so there may be less investment in NASA.

2899

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: August 21, 2019, 12:48:04 PM »

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49367792

Trump wants to buy Greenland but Denmark told him to go away.

And now he's cancelled a trip to Denmark because they won't sell him Greenland

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49416740

Honestly, you couldn't make this shit up.

2900

Flat Earth Community / Re: Moon Landing 50th Anniversary.

« on: August 21, 2019, 12:45:15 PM »

Think of it this way, if a champion boxer is up 30 wins and 0 losses in his career, just because 30 people tried to step up and beat him doesn't mean his championship is questionable. He is still the champion. I see FES as one of the challengers.You tried but you lost. You can continue to argue how you won the fight but if you did, you'd be the champion. That is to say, if FES were right and it all made sense then by god, everyone would be agreeing with you.

One thing I can't get my head around is someone wanting to check things out for themselves.
(In itself a reasonable, even commendable thing)
The person doing an experiment in which they can, say, see lower than you'd expect on a globe earth.
And instead of thinking "maybe there's some atmospheric effect" or "maybe I miscalculated" or "maybe I suck at doing experiments" thinking "holy shit, the earth is flat!"
That's quite a leap and the implications of it are massive. It involves the finest minds in the last millennium all being wrong and huge conspiracies to fake space travel and therefore somehow presumably fake all the technologies which work because of satellites like GPS and satellite TV to name just two.

To add to the OP, the Australians were "in on it" too.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apollo-11-50-years-on-a-look-at-australias-role-in-the-moon-landing/