[markjo]

So, what is the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter straight up at 7 miles per second, and that NASA can do the impossible on a daily basis, explore the solar system, and constantly wow the nation by landing a man on the moon and sending robots to mars; or is the simplest explanation that they really can't do all of that stuff?

Tom, you seem to enjoy dragging out this tired piece of copypasta, but you never seem explain just what it means.  For example, exactly what "never before seen rocket technologies" are you referring to and who said that NASA invented them from scratch?  You do realize that solid propellent rockets were invented hundreds of years ago and liquid propellent rockets were invented more than 30 years before NASA was even founded, don't you?  What rocket technologies did NASA invent for the moon program that didn't already exist in some form or other?  If anything, NASA pretty much just scaled up the rocket existing technology.

Also, when did NASA ever claim that they were doing the impossible, let alone on a daily basis?  I think that you also have a rather unconventional notion of "constantly" when referring to moon landings and Mars probes.

Personally, I think that the simplest explanation is that you are desperately grasping at straws so that you can dismiss any evidence that so completely and conclusively contradicts FET.

[Gulliver]

So, what is the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter straight up at 7 miles per second, and that NASA can do the impossible on a daily basis, explore the solar system, and constantly wow the nation by landing a man on the moon and sending robots to mars; or is the simplest explanation that they really can't do all of that stuff?

Tom, you seem to enjoy dragging out this tired piece of copypasta, but you never seem explain just what it means.  For example, exactly what "never before seen rocket technologies" are you referring to and who said that NASA invented them from scratch?  You do realize that solid propellent rockets were invented hundreds of years ago and liquid propellent rockets were invented more than 30 years before NASA was even founded, don't you?  What rocket technologies did NASA invent for the moon program that didn't already exist in some form or other?  If anything, NASA pretty much just scaled up the rocket existing technology.

Also, when did NASA ever claim that they were doing the impossible, let alone on a daily basis?  I think that you also have a rather unconventional notion of "constantly" when referring to moon landings and Mars probes.

Personally, I think that the simplest explanation is that you are desperately grasping at straws so that you can dismiss any evidence that so completely and conclusively contradicts FET.

Thank you, markjo. You make excellent points.

Please let me "springboard" off those points here. Tom, you seem to be reaching for Occam's Razor, or the Law of Parsimony See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor. It provides a set of guideline to select between two competing hypotheses to explain a result. For example, if a bird spins in a circle and then pecks a blue button, she receives a bit of food. If the same bird just pecks a blue button and still gets a bit of food then she should apply the principle and at least try to save the effort of spinning around for the same result.

Since FET does not use hypotheses (or theories) (Refer to EnaG Chapter 1.), FET does not use the Razor and cannot benefit from it.

The zetetic process is complete when the conclusion is beyond all reproach Unfortunately for Rowbotham, he made a grievous error regarding momentum. As a result his conclusion integral to the rest of the book fails and all conclusions from that mistake forward must be reworked and never relied upon. See:

R. fails to understand Kinetics. An object in motion tends to remain in motion. No, a ball thrown from a moving object does not lose its motion just by being thrown. This knowledge was written down carefully and precisely over 190 years before the publication of EnaG. R. is out of step with our understanding of Kinetics and fails miserably on this page. Why do FEers point to a text with such clear mistakes?

[Tom Bishop]

Tom, you seem to enjoy dragging out this tired piece of copypasta, but you never seem explain just what it means.  For example, exactly what "never before seen rocket technologies" are you referring to and who said that NASA invented them from scratch?  You do realize that solid propellent rockets were invented hundreds of years ago and liquid propellent rockets were invented more than 30 years before NASA was even founded, don't you?  What rocket technologies did NASA invent for the moon program that didn't already exist in some form or other?  If anything, NASA pretty much just scaled up the rocket existing technology.

NASA created a rocket with such fantastic technology that it broke the mold for how rockets scale up. Check out this article: The Great 1952 Space Program That Almost Was

In the early 50's the great physicists and aerospace scientists of the time, including Wherner Von Braun (before he was put in charge of NASA), got together and carefully calculated what would actually be required to get into space and to the moon. The conclusions were that a single rocket to the moon would need to be 1250 feet tall and weigh 800,000 tons. And yes, they knew all about rocket staging, and coasting with inertia in space, which is mentioned several times in the article.

Here are the requirements for what would be required merely to reach earth orbit and provide supplies for an orbital space station:

"The orbital spaceship would be a monster rocket, 265 feet tall—as tall as a twenty-four-story building—and would weigh 7,000 tons, as much as a light naval cruiser. By comparison, the Apollo program’s Saturn V was 363 feet tall and weighed 3,211.5 tons. The Space Shuttle, which the Collier’s ship most resembled in both form and function, was 184 feet tall and weighed 2,250 tons at takeoff."

The ability for a single rocket to reach escape velocity and get to the moon all in a single craft would be an economic impossibility: "That would require, according to von Braun, a rocket taller than the Empire State Building—and ten times the weight of the Queen Mary!"

The government and the military needed to get into earth orbit and to the moon with realistic figures. The resulting product after Kennedy's moon speech was a single Saturn rocket to the moon which was 266 times smaller than what what was predicted. Suddenly going to the moon wasn't such an impossibility anymore. So yes, NASA is claiming to have invented fantastic new technologies contrary to all physics, rocketry, and engineering.

Also, when did NASA ever claim that they were doing the impossible, let alone on a daily basis?  I think that you also have a rather unconventional notion of "constantly" when referring to moon landings and Mars probes.

NASA is constantly in space, and therefore constantly doing the impossible. Space travel is a military fantasy and a scientific delusion.

[markjo]

The ability for a single rocket to reach escape velocity get to the moon all in a single craft would be an impossibility: "That would require, according to von Braun, a rocket taller than the Empire State Building—and ten times the weight of the Queen Mary!"

You do realize that was for a 50 man crew to go to the moon, not a 3 man crew, don't you?

Also, when did NASA ever claim that they were doing the impossible, let alone on a daily basis?  I think that you also have a rather unconventional notion of "constantly" when referring to moon landings and Mars probes.

NASA is constantly in space, and therefore constantly doing the impossible. Space travel is a military fantasy and a scientific delusion.

If NASA is constantly in space, then it obviously isn't impossible, now is it?

[Tom Bishop]

The ability for a single rocket to reach escape velocity get to the moon all in a single craft would be an impossibility: "That would require, according to von Braun, a rocket taller than the Empire State Building—and ten times the weight of the Queen Mary!"

You do realize that was for a 50 man crew to go to the moon, not a 3 man crew, don't you?

The link does not say that he's talking about the 50 man mission. Von Braun had also stated in works he had previously written that a rocket would need to be of that size to get to the moon, and discounted the idea of a single rocket to the moon as an impossibility. The 50 man mission proposal with the space plane and space station published in the Collier 1952 magazine is a separate comprimise.

The fact is that von Braun and the experts believed that enormous rockets would be necessary. As stated in the article, a cargo rocket which simply could get into earth orbit to provide supplies to a space station, with a cargo capacity of 32 tons (a cargo figure similar to the shuttle and heavy lift rockets), would need to be the size and weight of a light naval cruiser, which is far larger than anything NASA has ever built.

[Rama Set]

I don't know why miniaturization strains your credulity. We went from having room sized computers in the 60s to the first desktops by the late 70s. MBs of memory in the 90s to GBs by the 2000s.

[Tom Bishop]

I don't know why miniaturization strains your credulity. We went from having room sized computers in the 60s to the first desktops by the late 70s. MBs of memory in the 90s to GBs by the 2000s.

Your analogy is meaningless. Not everything advances at the rate of computer chips. The efficiency of the internal combustion engine has barely improved over the last 20 years. Spoons haven't improved over the last 20 years. Rockets have not been doubling in efficiency every year.

In fact, improvements in computer chips are increasingly no longer the case. Core clock speed has not improved by any significant margin for years. The clock speed of a core is still 3 to 4 Ghz and has been that way since 2004.

The improvements now come from combining multiple chips together into a multi-core chip. Now you can burn a dvd and play a video game at the same time. This is not an improvement in computer chips. I could have bought two computers in 2004. That's like saying that car technology is improved by a factor of 2x if you buy two ferraris.

[garygreen]

The Collier articles were only ever meant to describe what was technically feasible in 1952.  They were demonstrations, not theoretical limits.

“Speculations regarding the future technical developments have been carefully avoided,” or, as von Braun explained, “While the [Collier’s] designs may be a far cry from what Mars ships some thirty or forty years from now will actually look like, this approach will serve a worthwhile purpose. If we can show how a Mars ship could conceivably be built on the basis of what we know now, we can safely deduce that actual designs of the future can only be superior. Only by stubborn adherence to the engineering solutions based exclusively on scientific knowledge available today, and by strict avoidance of any speculations concerning future discoveries, can we bring proof that this fabulous venture is fundamentally feasible.”

[Tom Bishop]

Right, and by 1958 all technical limitations were overcome, all rocketry limitations became a thing of the past, physics was blown wide open, and the US Government could begin sending things into earth orbit and beyond through the next decade with much smaller and cost effective rockets. Keep dreaming.

[Rama Set]

Right, and by 1958 all technical limitations were overcome, all rocketry limitations became a thing of the past, physics was blown wide open, and the US Government could begin sending things into earth orbit and beyond through the next decade with much smaller and cost effective rockets. Keep dreaming.

You mean engineering was blown wide open. There was no meaningful advance in physics from the rocket engine. Your argument from personal credulity continues unabated. Can you propose a single engineering reason why there could not be a quick advance in technology over a relatively short timespan given sufficient logistical, intellectual and financial capabilities?

[Tom Bishop]

Right, and by 1958 all technical limitations were overcome, all rocketry limitations became a thing of the past, physics was blown wide open, and the US Government could begin sending things into earth orbit and beyond through the next decade with much smaller and cost effective rockets. Keep dreaming.

You mean engineering was blown wide open. There was no meaningful advance in physics from the rocket engine. Your argument from personal credulity continues unabated. Can you propose a single engineering reason why there could not be a quick advance in technology over a relatively short timespan given sufficient logistical, intellectual and financial capabilities?

As I said, NASA is claiming to have created never before seen rocket technologies. It's a fantastic claim to have created something thought to be impossible. Despite that the Saturn V rocket engine is using the same basic operation as the V2 weapon from WWII, using fuels well studied for many years, we are expected to believe that they somehow broke the mold and achieved an improvement by a fold of 266 which allowed the US Government to gain moon victory.

It's simply an absurd claim. Anyone with a basic understanding of engineering knows that physical technologies don't improve like that. Shame on you for believing it.

[markjo]

Right, and by 1958 all technical limitations were overcome...

Not all technical limitations, just enough limitations to get the job done.

...all rocketry limitations became a thing of the past...

Not all rocketry limitations, just enough to get the job done.

...physics was blown wide open, and the US Government could begin sending things into earth orbit and beyond through the next decade with much smaller and cost effective rockets. Keep dreaming.

Huh?  The Saturn V was the biggest rocket that the US ever made.

[markjo]

As I said, NASA is claiming to have created never before seen rocket technologies.

Again, which specific technologies are you referring to?

It's a fantastic claim to have created something thought to be impossible.

Do you mean something impossible like a very large liquid propellant rocket engine?

Despite that the Saturn V rocket engine is using the same basic operation as the V2 weapon from WWII, using fuels well studied for many years, we are expected to believe that they somehow broke the mold and achieved an improvement by a fold of 266 which allowed the US Government to gain moon victory.

What mold are you referring to?  The F-1 engine certainly was a huge engineering challenge, but what about shouldn't we believe?

It's simply an absurd claim. Anyone with a basic understanding of engineering knows that physical technologies don't improve like that. Shame on you for believing it.

What makes you think that the Saturn V falls in the category of basic engineering?  If anything, it was some of the most sophisticated engineering of its time.

[Tom Bishop]

The difference between physical propellant engineering improvements and the improvements in other technologies such as computer chips, is that with computer chips there was never a theoretical limit in the 1960's saying that a silicon chip could not compute cycles at 4 GHz. With rockets, there is a theoretical limit to how much they can lift and whether it could achieve escape velocity.

NASA is claiming something entirely contrary to rocket physics. The scientists of the time knew all about liquid oxygen and kerosene. They said it couldn't be done. But then comes US Government, in space heat, creating an organization which immediately invents this fantastic technology, using known fuels, using an engine which adopts the same basic operation of the V2 weapon.

Clearly questionable. The simplest explanation is that they did not do that.

[Rama Set]

As I said, NASA is claiming to have created never before seen rocket technologies.

It was the first time, of course they had never been seen before.  What else would you expect?

It's a fantastic claim to have created something thought to be impossible.

Who said it was impossible?  The whole point of the Colliers article you linked to was to give plausibility to the idea.

Despite that the Saturn V rocket engine is using the same basic operation as the V2 weapon from WWII, using fuels well studied for many years, we are expected to believe that they somehow broke the mold and achieved an improvement by a fold of 266 which allowed the US Government to gain moon victory.

Argument from personal credulity.

It's simply an absurd claim. Anyone with a basic understanding of engineering knows that physical technologies don't improve like that.

All evidence to the contrary.

Shame on you for believing it.

Dude, you believe Vitamin C can cure Ebola and you are questioning my critical thinking skills?

[Tom Bishop]

The things NASA is claiming are not improvements. The claims break physics themselves. It is absurd that anyone could sit and entertain the idea that one can make a M67 grenade, using the explosive material Composition B, explode with 200 times as much force as it already does. It's simply not going to happen, no matter how much money is thrown at it. Physics are physics.

[markjo]

The difference between physical propellant engineering improvements and the improvements in other technologies such as computer chips, is that with computer chips there was never a theoretical limit in the 1960's saying that a silicon chip could not compute cycles at 4 GHz.

That analogy is so far off, I'm not sure how to respond.

With rockets, there is a theoretical limit to how much they can lift and whether it could achieve escape velocity.

Yes, which is why they designed bigger rockets that could lift and propel more.

NASA is claiming something entirely contrary to rocket physics.

Huh?

The scientists of the time knew all about liquid oxygen and kerosene. They said it couldn't be done.

What about liquid oxygen and kerosene couldn't be done?

But then comes US Government, in space heat, creating an organization which immediately invents this fantastic technology, using known fuels, using an engine which adopts the same basic operation of the V2 weapon.

Do you mean liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen?  If so, the V2 didn't use that.  It used liquid oxygen and alcohol/water.

Clearly questionable. The simplest explanation is that they did not do that.

Didn't do what?

[Tom Bishop]

NASA is doing the physically impossible and all I hear is willful denial and avoidance. Instead of beginning to seek out the truth for your own self, you comply to kneel down and bury your faces into the lap of an organization with the motive and the means. If the government says so it must be true. No question or doubt about it.

Physics are physics, markjo. GM can't improve a combustion engine by 200x beyond present technology, no matter how many billions they poured into it. Try not to play ignorant. It is obvious and transparent.

[Rama Set]

Can you please substantiate the claim that what NASA did was physically impossible?

[Tom Bishop]

Can you please substantiate the claim that what NASA did was physically impossible?

Please follow along. Scientists of the time said that much bigger and economically unfeasible rockets would be required and then NASA had some kind of undisclosed breakthrough immediately after being founded which allowed them to push liquid kerosene/hydrogen/oxygen beyond physical ability.