Could someone explain to me how Apollo 11 went 240k miles in three days, twice? It seems so impossible to me.

Question

I try to keep thinking the Apollo missions were real but the pictures all vanished after I heard rumors if was faked and now I am really suspicious. No, I don't have a tin foil hat, do you?

Answer 1

It's easy to explain; not so easy to do. The trans-lunar injection burn accelerated the service module (CSM) and lunar module from their earth-orbit speed of 17,500 mph to 25,000 mph, in the direction of where the moon would be when they got there. Because of the earth's gravity, the craft slowed over time, but still averaged over 3,000 mph. At about 210,000 miles out, the moon's gravity took over, and accelerated the craft to over 5,000 mph by the time it neared the moon; as the craft traveled behind the moon, a burn from the CSM engine reduced the speed to about 3,000 mph to put it into an orbit around the moon. The descent stage took off the remaining velocity to set down on the surface, and after the exploration the ascent stage engine restored the velocity to put it into lunar orbit. Once it rendezvoused with the orbiting command and service module, the ascent stage was no longer needed and was discarded. (It was arranged to crash on the moon so that moonquake measuring instruments could be calibrated.) A burn from the CSM engine then raised the speed to 5,000 mph and took it out of lunar orbit, headed back toward earth. The craft slowed as it reached the gravity crossover, then accelerated toward the earth, reaching 25,000 mph again. Shortly before entering the earth's atmosphere, the service module was discarded (to burn up in the atmosphere), and the command module was then slowed by atmospheric friction and landed in the Pacific Ocean. The basic physics is simple enough -- it's just Newton's laws.

Answer 2

Stefan, get this straight and don't be foolish about it any more, okay? The basic technology required for a manned flight to the moon was developed in Germany in the late 1930s through the mid 1940s. This technology needed a lot of refinement to make a safe manned flight a reality.

We worked on that technology through the 1950s and 60s, and made the first manned moon flight in 1969. It all fits together, and if you read all the history and don't let the wackos lie to you, it will be impossible for you to continue to be fooled into believing that the moon missions did not take place.

The American people were much better educated and more intelligent in the 1960s and 70s than they are now, and it would never have occurred to NASA engineers and managers that 35 years later a bunch of ignorant dolts with nothing to do would come up with a stupid conspiracy theory stating that the moon landings were faked.

If that had occurred to them, I suspect the engineers would have gone to the trouble to create a larger and more visible object of proof, to compensate for the decline in the quality of the American mind and its education that occurred during and after the Reagan presidency.

But there is a real physical proof available. The astronauts who landed on the moon left behind reflectors that are used every day by astronomers to measure the irregularities of the moon's orbit. This is done by bouncing laser beams off reflectors at known locations that were left by the astronauts. Ask your science teacher for information about these experiments. You can arrange to see this done with your own eyes.

Let me put the question to you this way: If you think the moon landings were faked, when did they become "fake?" When did the idea become popular that NASA had invented the idea of an imaginary moon mission and created a huge technological empire to fool people? When was all this fakery done? In the 60s? 70s? 80s?

And why? What was the point? And how did they fool all the people that reported the news, operated the machinery, built the moon rockets, and watched them take off and land?

Do you realize that one American in 500 was a part of the Apollo program? Millions of them are still alive. Are they fooling you? Why? If you go out to a football game, look around you. In the stadium there are people who worked on the Apollo program.

Ask around. You are surrounded by people who know for sure that American astronauts stood on the moon more than 35 years ago.

Answer 3

What is escape velocity? Alex for 10 points!

Asked by: Michael Metzger

Answer

If you throw an object straight up, it will rise until the the negative acceleration of gravity stops it, then returns it to Earth. Gravity's force diminishes as distance from the center of the Earth increases, however. So if you can throw the object with enough initial upward velocity so that gravity's decreasing force can never quite slow it to a complete stop, its decreasing velocity can always be just high enough to overcome gravity's pull. The initial velocity needed to achieve that condition is called escape velocity.

From the surface of the Earth, escape velocity (ignoring air friction) is about 7 miles per second, or 25,000 miles per hour. Given that initial speed, an object needs no additional force applied to completely escape Earth's gravity.

Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor


Escape velocity is defined to be the minimum velocity an object must have in order to escape the gravitational field of the earth, that is, escape the earth without ever falling back.

The object must have greater energy than its gravitational binding energy to escape the earth's gravitational field. So:

1/2 mv2 = GMm/R

Where m is the mass of the object, M mass of the earth, G is the gravitational constant, R is the radius of the earth, and v is the escape velocity. It simplifies to:

v = sqrt(2GM/R)

or

v = sqrt(2gR)

Where g is acceleration of gravity on the earth's surface.

The value evaluates to be approximately:

11100 m/s
40200 km/h
25000 mi/h

Answer 4

It IS fast, but not really SO fast. The space shuttle orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, so it is going about 17,500 MPH. At that speed it would only take 14 hours to get to the Moon. Nobody says the Shuttle is impossible, do they?

Apollo STARTED out at 25,000 MPH, but Earth's gravity slowed it to only a few thousand until it got near enough to the Moon to speed up again in the Moon's gravity.

Answer 5

The Saturn V rocket was powerful enough to get the capsules into orbit, just as the shuttle engines can get the shuttle into orbit. Now if you work out the velocities needed to stay in an Earth orbit you will find that they had plenty of speed. In fact they had to slow down otherwise the Moon's weaker gravity could not capture them.

I watched some of the Moon missions on TV. They were real.

Answer 6

well would it seem impossible that they traveled in the biggest most powerful spacecraft evermade going a 13 miles per second? Any way all of the so called proof that we didn't land on the Moon can all be proved wrong.I mean do you really think the U.S. would made a 10 year space program that produced the biggest rocket ever made that cost 3.5 billion dollars just to stand there and say "wow that looks big! " .The Moon landing were real and we didn't just go there once we went there 6 times and before the Apollo mission we did Mercury and Gemini All with different rockets and learned enough to go to the Moon.WE WENT TO THE MOON.

Answer 7

If you think about it... it should've been there in 10 hours. It left orbit at 25,000MPH - so it SHOULD have arrived in 10 hours, right?

Wrong.

As it left Earth, Earth's gravity slowed it down. By the time it reached lunar orbit, it was moving just above 2000MPH. And, the reverse is true, also - it left Lunar orbit going about 4000MPH, and accellerated all the way home - until it was travelling at about 25,000 MPH when it began re-entry.

Answer 8

There is no air friction in space. The speed it starts with is the same at the end without any kind of fuel. divide 240000 by 72 hours, you will get about 3400 miles per hour, it is not a whopping speed in space. As for the allegations, I have no idea about that but the speed aspect does not disprove anything
Regards

Answer 9

What's so hard to believe about 240,000 miles in three days? That's an average speed of 3,333 mph. The Space Shuttle orbits at around 17,000 mph.

Answer 10

Rocket power builds tremendous speed. It has to go 17,000 mph to escape the gravitational pull of the earth, for instance. They were true and real explorations by bold and daring men. Average speed was near 7000mph. 240,000 X2 divided by 72hr.=6723mph. Pretty fast for cruising speed.
Ouch, my brain has not done any math for a few years. (Nyuk!)