Comments by "H. de Jong" (@h.dejong2531) on "How the Integrated Circuit Took Us to the Moon" video.

  1. You should read up on the history of the Apollo program. There was a lot of trial and error involved. They started with the Ranger program. These were unmanned spacecraft that were designed to take photos of the lunar surface as they got closer to the moon, before crashlanding. 5 out of 9 Ranger missions failed, some missing the moon entirely. Then we had the Surveyor missions, which made soft landings. 2 out of 7 missions failed. Gemini was a series of manned missions to learn about docking two spacecraft together in space. They had no fatalities, but several mission failures. Every aspect of the Apollo program was tested: there was an unmanned test of the CSM. The LEM was tried out in Earth orbit (Apollo 9). Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, Apollo 10 tested the LM in orbit of the moon. By Apollo 11 they had confidence a safe landing and return was possible because every facet of the mission had been tested to satisfaction.
    3
  2. People claim we "lost the technology", but that's not an accurate representation of what happened. We still know how to design and built rockets with the complexity level of the Saturn V. In fact, we've advanced: the engines we can built today are superior to the F-1, with better Isp, lower construction cost, reusability and reliability. What's lost is some of the details of manufacturing (order of assembly, for instance). We have drawings, software etc. for everything.
    2
  3. At that time? The civilian IC market basically didn't exist. NASA built the first computer using ICs.
    2
  4. We figured out how to get through the van Allen belts in 1958. For radiation, there are 2 important variables: 1. the radiation intensity 2. the amount of time you are exposed to this intensity. You can multiply these two and get the total radiation dose. Humans die if they receive a dose of about 300 Rad. In 1958, James van Allen and his team discovered the belts that were later named after him. He also measured the radiation intensity. This is what he found: in the part of the belt where the intensity is highest, it is high enough that if you stay for about a week (inside an Apollo command module), you receive a lethal dose. So for the Apollo missions, the trajectory was designed to minimize the amount of time spent there. When the Apollo astronauts flew through the van Allen belts (which took about 3 hours), they received a dose of radiation of between 0.16 and 1.14 rads, or less than 1% of a lethal dose. More details in this video from Scott Manley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YN50xXFJY
    2
  5. They are integrated circuits. Sure, there's only a few transistors, but it's still 4 transistors on one piece of silicon, instead of 4 tripods on a PCB.
    2
  6.  @anticat900  the Asianometry videos are not mine. I've seen some of CuriosMarc's videos on the AGC.
    2
  7. More accurately, none of this says that we didn't. If all they wanted to do was fake it, there was no reason to spend billions developing hardware like the Apollo Guidance Computer. Fun fact: you owe that cheap, super-powerful computer you use to NASA.
    1
  8.  @paladinyyz6868  Have you compared NASA's budget to that of the military? It's tiny. Have you compared the amount of public scrutiny for NASA vs. military projects? It's huge: NASA publishes everything they do. Military organizations are free to work in secret, NASA can't. That makes your idea rather unlikely.
    1
  9. You're arguing from ignorance. We solved that problem before Apollo even began. For radiation, there are 2 important variables: 1. the radiation intensity 2. the amount of time you are exposed to this intensity. You can multiply these two and get the total radiation dose. Humans die if they receive a dose of about 300 Rad. In 1958, James van Allen and his team discovered the belts that were later named after him. He also measured the radiation intensity. This is what he found: in the part of the belt where the intensity is highest, it is high enough that if you stay for about a week (inside an Apollo command module), you receive a lethal dose. So for the Apollo missions, the trajectory was designed to minimize the amount of time spent there. When the Apollo astronauts flew through the van Allen belts (which took about 3 hours), they received a dose of radiation of between 0.16 and 1.14 rads, or less than 1% of a lethal dose. More details in this video from Scott Manley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YN50xXFJY
    1
  10. Don't be an ass.
    1
  11. You're wrong.  1. the Soviets accepted the Moon landing as real. NASA and its contractors were prime targets for Soviet espionage. The Soviets also had the means to track spacecraft on their way to the Moon. The only way to convince them was to actually go to the Moon. 2. Other independent parties tracked the Apollo missions as well, including radio astronomers from various countries. 3. The Indian Moon mission Chandrayaan-2 photographed the landers. So did one of the Chinese Moon missions. 4. The Apollo missions left laser reflectors on the Moon. Anyone with a decent laser and a telescope can ping these and verify they're there. 5. NASA has 380 kg of moon rock samples. These samples are different from anything found on Earth. Any geologist can examine these samples. 6. All of the hardware that was needed for a Moon mission was actually designed and built. Examples remain on Earth and can be examined, and found to be real. Crucial parts like the Apollo Guidance Computer have been examined by outsiders and they work exactly as NASA said they would.
    1
  12. You're mostly correct, we still use inertial guidance. For attitude tracking (i.e. the orientation of the spacecraft), we use star trackers these days: a small camera linked to a computer with a star map. Take a photo, compare to the map to find which way the star tracker is pointing.
    1
  13. The only people lying are the ones making up moon hoax claims.
    1