The greatest proof we have that the United States was the First Nation to land a man on the moon and did so in July of 1969 is that their primary geopolitical enemy had beaten them at every previous step in the space race and didn’t contest it. If there was a chance that any aspect of it was faked the USSR would’ve used it as propaganda and a cudgel. Instead they confirmed the moon landing. It may be hard for some people to believe we set foot on the moon, but it’s much harder to believe the ussr covered America’s ass on this one.
It’s actually the same basic evidence that we have that Yuri Gagarin was the first human to go into outer space alive and return alive. If it hadn’t happened the United States would’ve contested it.
Okay, just to go full conspiracy theorist on you for a second:
The USSR could’ve covered USA’s ass on this because their own achievements were fake too, and they didn’t want it to come out
I don’t have any evidence for this, nor do I believe it myself, but just playing devil’s advocate here
That doesnt work in the long term unless you kill everyone that knows about it. Its a weak plan at best.
Oh that’s definitely true, but that could be said for literally every conspiracy theory, ever.
My comment was working on the assumption that you already believe in conspiracy theories, and was meant to explain how one could then rationalize this particular one
The issue with this Is that it implies the moon is even real in the first place
Fuck, one of my sisters coworkers said some crazy shit like that. Saying space is a hologram.
Space hologram is just idiot speak for collective hallucination. We can’t properly perceive the great old ones. Wake up before the moon dose or its over for humanity.
How can a rocket and thrusters work in space when there is no atmosphere to push against? The space ship/rocket would stay still and all the thrust matter would just be ejected. - For example, If the rocket wants to turn left, it is always shown as firing a thruster from the right side that turns the rocket/ship to the left. But in a vacuum all that would happen is the matter that came out of the thruster would be sucked into the vacuum and spread out evenly. The ship would not move. 🤔 Nothing to push against.
Edit: I see now (from the more helpful replies) That it is not the rocket pushing back, but rather the combusting expanding fuel that is pushing the rocket forward. Which makes sense to me now.
Google says thrusters are similar, in that it is expanding steam etc.
A rocket does not work because there is “something to push against”. Your initial assumption is flawed, so it’s normal and expected that you cannot reason about this right now. A rocket works because there are gases that are ignited, looking to expand. This expanding force is applied to the nozzle, hence to the entire body of the rocket, and pushes it in the opposite direction : up
Imagine yourself floating in space with a heavy object held in your hands. Say an anvil. You push the anvil away. This gesture is going to push you back by some amount as well, since the anvil is so heavy. Well the rocket is you, and the burning fuel is the anvil. A rocket is just an object continually jettisoning weight behind it so it can move forward
The ignited fuel expands and pushes the rocket. Makes perfect sense to me now. Correct, my initial assumption is where the train of thought went off track! Thanks for the explanation!
A lot of people are offering explanations, but I think I’m going to give one too.
Think of recoil in a gun. If you don’t have a mental image of it, watch a few youtube videos of people firing handguns. Look for videos of big, high-recoil handguns, like the Desert Eagle or the Magnum (or the Super Ruger Redhawk according to chat-GPT).
You need to get a good look at handguns pushed backwards as they are fired.
Now think about this: those bullets aren’t pushing against an atmosphere. They are pushing only against the inside of a gun.
But when this tiny, tiny bullet pushes super-fast against the gun, using the gun to accelerate to incredibly high speeds very quickly… it pushes the gun really hard in the other direction.
Get that mental image into your head. Small object can push large object with a lot of force by kicking off of large object with insane speed.
Now: Take away the person holding the gun. Take away the planet. Take away the atmosphere. Put that gun in space and pull the trigger again. (Just make sure to use a gun that has modern ammunition that doesn’t require oxygen to fire).
What happens to all that recoil? What does the recoil do to the gun now? The bullet still goes flying out of the chamber. Still does this by pushing against the gun.
Hopefully it should now be easy to imagine that the gun will start moving.
Rocket fuel is basically a tank full of bullets.
The main function of rocket fuel is “heavy stuff that is shoved out of the spaceship to make it move.”
The reason we use highly explosive fuel is because “shoving heavy stuff away from you at the speed of a bullet” is going to move you more than “shoving heavy stuff away from you at normal speed.”
Does this make any sense?
Helpful to picture it yeah thanks. I had assumed rockets “push” out the back. But I see now that it is the ignited fuel that pushes the rocket forward instead. Which would work in a vacuum. All makes sense to me now thanks 👍🏻
The same law which makes gun recoil happen. If you fire a pistol in vacuum you would still get the same recoil or even stronger. The rocket engine fires a lot of gas molecules instead of bullets at much higher velocity than a bullet, which gives it the constant push/recoil
Equal and opposite reaction.
There’s a law for this. The matter is “pushing” against the ship, it doesn’t have to push against anything else.
In fact having an atmosphere to push against actually reduces the effectiveness of thrust due to atmospheric pressure, which must be overcome. Which is why different engines are designed to run in atmosphere versus out of atmosphere.
If you throw a baseball in space you have transferred momentum to that baseball, pushing you back. You will move in the opposite direction (likely spin because you just imparted angular momentum onto yourself since you didn’t throw from center of mass)
Yes this is the conservation of momentum.
Given how many people think that railguns have no recoil because “there is no explosion” they might actually seriously believe what they just wrote.
Scientific illiteracy is through the roof.
Or maybe it’s the same as it it’s always been it’s just that people that are scientifically illiterate are given platforms to speak their illiteracy as truth.
Are you saying that I am scientifically illiterate? For asking a question about how a rocket that uses thrust could work in an environment with nothing to thrust against? I don’t think it’s a dumb question. Sure there may be an answer that I am yet to learn, but that is why I am asking the question and seeing what answers I get. Maybe you were born with all the knowledge of the human race, but the rest of us have to learn it. And some of it is true, and some of it is BS.
You’re on to something, I suppose, but the conservation of momentum does allow for travel in a vacuum. The matter ejected by the thruster pushes against the rocket.
Yes I agree with you in that it would have the undisturbed momentum from pushing off from earth. But no way to slow down, or change course. I’m not sure mater ejected could push back. Surly the vacuum of space would just suck the rocket or thruster empty as fast as possible. . It just bugs me. Lol
But no way to slow down, or change course.
It’s very simple actually. If you want to change course or slow down you just eject mass in another direction. To slow down you just spin the rocket around and burn in the opposite direction (or you could have two engines in both directions if you wanted, but I don’t think any rocket has that.)
I’m not sure mater ejected could push back.
Ejected in this case usually means very violently pushing fuel/gas in one direction. There isn’t a small gnome sitting on the engine throwing blocks of fuel into space, even if they technically could have worked. Instead we use very powerful engines.
The ejection itself provides the push back, not the matter. Once the matter has been ejected it doesn’t do jack shit.
Surly the vacuum of space would just suck the rocket or thruster empty as fast as possible. . It just bugs me. Lol
I’m sure they close the valves when they aren’t actively using the engine. It’s not like fuel injectors in cars just constantly spray out fuel, even when parked.
It could be tested to a degree with a vacuum chamber here on earth. Put a little rocket inside horizontally and see if it moves when fired in a partial vacuum.
It might surprise you, but there have been numerous tests in vacuums on earth.
Apparently they say they did it with a super computer in 1969 that had less processing power than a watch today. Those old computers that used spools of tape. And now in 2024 we don’t have the technology to get “back” to the moon. Work that one out.
We can’t go back today because we don’t have a fucking rocket.
If we had the rocket of course we could go back but we don’t. Rebuilding the original rocket is very hard or impossible due to how it was contracted and the fact that many of the suppliers don’t exist any more and much of the knowledge is lost.
Of course the actual technology we have is sufficient. Rockets are extremely simple when it comes to computers. Most calculations needed for actual burns could be done on paper or a video game nowadays.
We could of course build a new rocket but that is really expensive and the budgets for these things are far lower nowadays compared to the cold war. Still we are actually planning on going there soon-ish.
Well the “super computer” argument is just not good because this wasnt an all purpose computer. This was specially build for this task. There are tons of special purpose chips today that wont be able to do general purpuse computing but crush a beefy pc in special tasks. Video encoding for example or tons of other tasks.
If you are actually arguing that our accomplishments in space aren’t real, in good faith, you are very uneducated on the topic.
If the US made up the moon landing, we have many nations that have the technology to call out the lie. Yet none have, not even supposed ‘enemies’ of the US.
That one seems harder to ‘work out’, than your assumption that we couldn’t go to space with the technology at the time.
People have even simulated the first moon landing using the same Apollo guidance code used in 1969. So there is a lot of evidence for anyone to work that one out.
Some real toast to a couple sons of bitches energy.
