Unified apollo program conspiracy theory, of sorts
by
daystar
09/08/2009, 4:42 PM #
toss dirt in the air, rip clothes, and get ready to scream... or not, but I feel ready to take a stab at what might have happened on the Apollo missions. Just a preliminary guess, mind you.
The main starting point is the 1965 conference devoted to creating the S-Band communications for the Apollo missions. At this point in time, NASA schemes to build 14 global positions equipped with 30 foot antennas, some of them mounted on ships... these are for communication for near earth flight and after re-entry... get that part, the bulk of the system is designed for low earth orbit. The plan also calls for three 85 foot dishes to handle outer space flight to the moon and back. The system makes the bold jump from VHF and UHF frequencies utilized for projects Mercury and Gemini up to the microwave frequency. Pretty awesome project, wouldn't you agree?
The other big addition to the Apollo S-Band communications is television. Culturally, this makes a big impact and changes the world, not enough can be said about that. Electronically, it requires much greater bandwidth and stresses the limits of the new S-Band system. The television signal comes out ghostly transparent, has poor definition, and is basically a huge failure until Apollo 15; when they finally get it right.
Today, when we look back at the moon broadcasts, some of us think we see evidence of earth's gravity and atmosphere. That's a nasty fight and since we are all friends here at BOTF, I have avoided it. But, alas, I'm not very smart and the television broadcasts tempted me with their tantalizing range limitations. Here's why; in a normal network tv broadcast to a local area, the broadcast antenna puts out a 120 VAC signal in the 15-20 kilowatt range. We living in the coverage area pick up that signal with our 120 VAC televisions, which consume roughly 8.5 amps. This situation is the equivalent of the 30 foot antennas built for Apollo, except it is reversed; the Apollo command module broadcasts a low powered signal the equivalent of our tv sets and the radar has the 15-20 kilowatt reception. So far, this is not a giant leap for mankind, it is a baby step, totally in line with the technological capabilities of the day.
Now let's look at the camera Westinghouse intended to build in 1965 for this new S-Band system. Notice the 6.5 watts of power consumption. Also notice that the camera has a pre-amp and two post-amps (power up amps boosting signal) a mixer, and if you study the schematic, it requires a cabinet full of electronic stuff. The first mission to go up with a tv camera is Apollo 10. Westinghouse reports that this mission was a success, notice the actual camera built consumed 20 watts. The contractors were not able to build to the desired specs, but hey, this was the first tv camera in space, not a bad achievement.
Something else happened on Apollo 10, because we decided that the 85 foot radar dishes were not handling the communications. Apollo 11 barged into a deep space radar detection facility in Australia to borrow their 200 foot dish. This was not part of the S-Band system. So get that, the whole system immediately proved to not be adequate. Stop the whining that NASA was too awesome and great to screw up, they screwed up plenty. And stop trying to say that the system was plenty powerful and I just don't understand it... I'm not a communications engineer, but obviously they went up one time with the new system and rushed right over to get access to a 200 foot dish. If they only built 85 foot dishes and immediately discovered they needed the 200 foot dish, isn't it obvious that they way, way, way under built? Was that just a colossal engineering gaffe or was that just the limitations of our technological abilities? Did NASA build 85 foot dishes when they needed 200 foot dishes or did NASA simply build their very first global microwave communication system and it simply didn't have the kind of reach they said it had. In other words, it looks like they were doing all they could, making a giant leap forward in technology, but it was still near earth technology.
...................................................the scam.......................................................
Well, think, how far does this S-Band communication system reach on analog microwave radio and television? It reaches farther on radio because radio doesn't require the bandwidth of television. So what was the range of the television signal? The 30 foot dishes likely had twice the penetration of network television, which would have been around 600 miles. That gives the 85 foot dishes a range of 1500 miles. I hate to tell you, but I'm being generous. If they were powering up the signal in the capsule, the ranges increase; but there was a reason for a low power broadcast: a high powered microwave broadcast would have cooked the astronauts alive. Remember, this all brand new stuff. It was an awesome system, and it worked really nice, it was a huge success. But it was never going to broadcast tv from the moon and NASA knew that.
