Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.
brianv
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by brianv »

NotRappaport » October 30th, 2017, 4:24 am wrote:
brianv » October 29th, 2017, 6:19 pm wrote:I live in a rural area mostly uncontaminated by "ground light" and lots of sky, I have never seen a satellite or the space station nor anything of the sort. People keep telling me there's shit up there but I don't buy it!
Staring at the sky for a few minutes at random times in random directions is not the way to spot the ISS. You have to know exactly where and when to look for it and that's what sites like heavens-above.com will tell you.
brianv » October 29th, 2017, 6:19 pm wrote:Once again, how fast was your point of light traveling?
According to the official numbers about 27,580 km/h, which is 7.66 km/s. If you want to visualize what that looks like you have to take into account it's distance from you. When overhead it's distance is ~405km, so:
ARCTAN(7.66/405) = 1.08°
It moves at a rate of about 1° per second across your field of view when it is directly overhead (to help put that distance into perspective, the full moon's angular diameter is about 0.5°). When its 10° above the horizon (distance ~1450 km) it will move at a maximum rate of ~0.3° per second if it's trajectory is parallel to the horizon and significantly less than that if the trajectory is perpendicular.
So under no circumstances will anyone ever see the "ISS" in the sky unless they visit a website first? I see lots of airplanes every day, low, mid and high altitude, I don't need to visit aviation.com to see them. Then you make it out that the unseeable "ISS" is practically static in the sky? 27500 kmh is 150 times the speed of a bullet. :wacko:
It wouldn't be a streak unless I was photographing it and using a long exposure.
For the record? You have never seen what's commonly referred to as a "shooting star"?
These amazing streaks of light you can sometimes see in the night sky are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up
No camera or f stops or arctans necessary and I can see tiny bits of dust burning up as they hit the atmosphere! How about that? I didn't even visit spaceparticles.com. But I can't see the "ISS".
NotRappaport
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by NotRappaport »

brianv » October 29th, 2017, 9:22 pm wrote:So under no circumstances will anyone ever see the "ISS" in the sky unless they visit a website first?
The odds are severely against it. The "ISS" is only visible for - at most - a few minutes once or twice a day (within an hour or so before sunrise or an hour or so after sunset). Usually only once per day and sometimes for less than a minute. For example, here's what it shows for passes near my area:
Image

Clicking on one of those dates shows the details and a skymap that plots the path it will take and the time it will be at points along that path, including at what point it becomes visible:
Image
brianv » October 29th, 2017, 9:22 pm wrote:I see lots of airplanes every day, low, mid and high altitude, I don't need to visit aviation.com to see them.
The ISS can only be seen at certain times before sunrise or after sunset (it can't be in earth's shadow and you can't be in daylight). If you're not looking in the right place during that several minute window that it is visible, you won't see it. Look at the schedule above.
brianv » October 29th, 2017, 9:22 pm wrote:
It wouldn't be a streak unless I was photographing it and using a long exposure.
For the record? You have never seen what's commonly referred to as a "shooting star"?
As a matter of fact I haven't. I've never watched a meteor shower before either.
brianv » October 29th, 2017, 9:22 pm wrote:I can see tiny bits of dust burning up as they hit the atmosphere! How about that? I didn't even visit spaceparticles.com. But I can't see the "ISS".
That is because you refuse, for reasons I can't quite fathom, to use the schedule that would tell you when it will be visible.
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by brianv »

So despite there being a double-decker sized Heath Robinson contraption with array of reflective mirrors, flying around up there, I will never see it unless I first visit a website?

Sounds to me like this object, (how much does it weigh...on earth?) should be visible to the naked eye on a clear day.

This tin foil hat object is situated where exactly? Am I to gather it lives in a zone where the external forces of space and the earth's pull are equal?

A: Why hasn't it been ripped in half by said enormous planetary forces?
B: Why isn't there a naturally occurring field of debris at that altitude?
patrix
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by patrix »

Thank you NotRappaport for some very interesting posts. So ISS is observable. And we know for sure that it ain't no space station or a satellite. So the question is what is it?
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

The question is whether the thingy is manmade or a NEO. If it can be seen with the naked eye, and NASA is encouraging Joe Sixpack to photograph it (by telling him exactly when this is possible), one would think it is a manmade contraption, an orbiting decoy of sorts. On the other hand, the existence of a manmade dummy station moving at that speed implies that sending rockets beyond the atmosphere and placing satellites in orbit is possible, even if something is needed to counteract the gravitational pull.
This is why it is important to examine the "many, many such pictures taken all the time by amateurs and posted in astronomy forums". NRpt, I think you ought to take the time to locate and post on CF at least half a dozen good examples.
NotRappaport
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by NotRappaport »

brianv » October 30th, 2017, 6:56 am wrote:So despite there being a double-decker sized Heath Robinson contraption with array of reflective mirrors, flying around up there, I will never see it unless I first visit a website?
I'm not sure if you are actively trolling or wilfully ignorant to the extent I get the strong impression I'm trying to converse with someone who is afflicted with a severe intellectual disability (my condolences, btw). No offense, but I'll just decline any further discussion with you, brianv.
patrix » October 30th, 2017, 8:54 am wrote:So ISS is observable. And we know for sure that it ain't no space station or a satellite. So the question is what is it?
That is the interesting question. And as you say, we know it isn't a "space station" or satellite - because it's altitude is far too low. Even at 400km there is enough atmosphere to cause drag (and, helpfully, still enough atmosphere for rockets to work). Even official sources say satellites cannot orbit at such low altitudes because there is still atmosphere to cause drag.

This has been brought up previously in the thread, back in 2013, by Simon here:
simonshack » May 17th, 2013, 4:33 pm wrote:*

I learned something interesting today as I was studying the ionosphere, Haarp and related matters...
"The ionosphere is traditionally very difficult to measure. Balloons cannot reach it because the air is too thin, but satellites cannot orbit there because the air is still too thick."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequ ... ch_Program
So I wondered, where does the ionosphere start and when does it end? I decided to look up the most authoritative source I could think of: the official HAARP website. Of course, HAARP's stated mission is "to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance".

So here's what the official HAARP website says:
"The layer of the earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere begins approximately 30 miles above the surface and extends upward to approximately 620 miles."

Oh, good. So the ionosphere extends from 30miles to 620 miles - and satellites cannot orbit there because the air is still too thick. But wait a minute: how then can the ISS orbit there? We all know that the ISS is supposed to orbit at an average altitude of 250miles, don't we?

Am I missing something here? :blink:
The exact altitude it is at is what is called the "F region" of the ionosphere. According to Wikedpedia:
The F region contains ionized gases at a height of around 150–800 km above sea level, placing it in the Earth’s thermosphere, a hot region in the upper atmosphere, and also in the heterosphere, where chemical composition varies with height. Generally speaking, the F region has the highest concentration of free electrons and ions anywhere in the atmosphere.
Unfortunately this didn't get much discussion when Simon originally brought it up and now at least one poster in the thread has regressed back to "there's nothing up there, all pics are fake" type arguments. This is not useful and makes the discussion appear foolish to people who have actually seen and taken photos of the thing. It also forever stalls real inquiries into the nature of the "ISS" thing and how we really do know it is not an orbiting satellite.

Given that it's path information is accurate and it's viewable times are known many days in advance, its very hard for me to imagine that - among all the people who take the time to regularly track and document it with magnified telescopic views - no one would notice if it didn't look like what we're told it looks like. And it is equally hard for me to believe that every single person who submits images of the "ISS" to cloudynights.com and other astronomy forums is a hoaxster who no one among all rest of the stargazing enthusiasts ever call out as such.

So from that I conclude that it almost certainly does look like what is shown in the images taken by people on the ground. More importantly, I know of no close-up images that don't show the same basic thing that all the other images show. If there were people posting close-up images of the "ISS" that looked nothing like the typical image (in ways not explainable by exposure settings and light conditions) of the "ISS", for example showing only a big dot with no angular shapes or showing it was a plane... THEN I would consider that a genuine controversy and make a real effort to see it up close for myself and go through the bother of getting the telescope set up to try and accomplish this.

Given the available data and its observability, I've reached the conclusion that there is "something" there at that ~405km altitude and it has the same dimensions given for the "ISS". But it is not pressurized, not occupied, and is basically an empty shell that has no mechanical function beyond rotating the solar panels and generating upward thrust to keep itself aloft and subsequently passed off as a "space station" to the gullible public.
Flabbergasted » October 30th, 2017, 10:55 am wrote:The question is whether the thingy is manmade or a NEO.
It can't be a NEO because it's altitude is too low to be in orbit. It has to expend fuel to avoid crashing to the ground The important takeaway from all this is the "ISS" is NOT actually in orbit. It is constantly refueled and is constantly boosted up (evidenced by its altitude charts), so it is actually fighting against gravity - so there is no weightlessness aboard the thing unless they let it plummet for a bit. But more importantly, such a contraption is an absolute deathtrap and could never survive being pressurized without rupturing in short order due to differential structural stresses during accelerations (not to mention being punctured by the occasional micrometeorite travelling at hundreds of km per second).
Flabbergasted » October 30th, 2017, 10:55 am wrote:NRpt, I think you ought to take the time to locate and post on CF at least half a dozen good examples.
Very well, just to show that there are indeed plenty of different amateur pictures to find on cloudynights.com. Note that I cut these out of their original images and condensed them all into a single image so as not to unnecessarily clutter the thread). The streak at the bottom is an example of a 30 second exposure taken with a normal camera.
Image

And of course there are the two Simon posted earlier in this thread:
Image
Image
brianv
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Taking the ISS

Unread post by brianv »

Photographing the International Space Station through a Telescope

Image
yes, I have seen it once with my eyes (not through a camera/telescope) about a year ago. To the naked eye it looks almost as bright as Venus but too small to see any detail beyond a bright point of light..
The International Space Station crosses our skies on a regular basis. Many of us would love to spend time on this early starship(???) as it circles the Earth and studies all that is above and below. But for most of us, all we can do is occasionally watch as it streaks across the sky.

People have done it and you can too. But you need to apply some common sense and a new approach to your telescopy. The International Space Station is not like the moon or other celestial objects subject to the gradual rotation of the Earth. It's moving across the sky and it’s moving fast!

The ISS is moving too fast for most motor drives and the calculations would take you days to estimate. Besides, many motor drives simply won't move fast enough to track it. This is a handheld proposition and you can do it with a traditional reflector or better yet, a Dobsonian scope. Some people have captured a shot with a DSLR camera with a good telephoto, but they've also used some tricks. These include automatic exposures set to repeated shots and not surprisingly, video mode. In fact, the video mode is the best way to capture the ISS but you may only get a frame or two of the actual station. That's okay. That’s the idea.

So by my calculations the "ISS" streaks across the sky in 1/15 of a second (assuming 30fps)
yes, I have seen it once with my eyes (not through a camera/telescope) about a year ago. To the naked eye it looks almost as bright as Venus but too small to see any detail beyond a bright point of light..
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
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Re: Taking the ISS

Unread post by NotRappaport »

Can we please get a moderator to weigh in on this? I say brianv is trolling and adding absolutely nothing of value to this thread.

For anyone curious about how quickly the "ISS" flies across the sky, there are "ISS Flyby" videos on YouTube:

ISS flyby posted by Oscar Blanco on Apr 4, 2015

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVcrSi963oU
(flyby begins at about 1:50 in the middle of the screen)
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Re: Taking the ISS

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

NotRappaport » October 30th, 2017, 8:38 pm wrote:Can we please get a moderator to weigh in on this? I say brianv is trolling and adding absolutely nothing of value to this thread.

For anyone curious about how quickly the "ISS" flies across the sky, there are "ISS Flyby" videos on YouTube:
brianv is probably the forum's most skeptical user. Get used to it and stop acting like a child or encouraging the mods to engage in censorship because another forum user doesn't agree with you. You are posting some good arguments, although a youtube video is hardly proof of anything. Try to take brianv's skepticism as an exercise in bolstering your argument and expanding your critical thinking skills. You don't have to agree with him, just continue to focus on refining your arguments and evidence. For what it's worth, I tend to lean in the direction of agreeing that there is something up there but I also haven't observed it for myself, so I'm open to other ideas as well.
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Re: Taking the ISS

Unread post by NotRappaport »

anonjedi2 » October 30th, 2017, 11:38 pm wrote:
NotRappaport » October 30th, 2017, 8:38 pm wrote:Can we please get a moderator to weigh in on this? I say brianv is trolling and adding absolutely nothing of value to this thread.

For anyone curious about how quickly the "ISS" flies across the sky, there are "ISS Flyby" videos on YouTube:
brianv is probably the forum's most skeptical user. Get used to it and stop acting like a child or encouraging the mods to engage in censorship because another forum user doesn't agree with you.
This is not simple disagreement (which I have no problem with at all), he has been wrong about literally everything he has posted here recently. Most of my posts have been spent debunking his nonsense - embarrassingly bad poorly thought out nonsense that indicates he can't think straight. Whines that he can't see the "ISS" but irrationally refuses to use the tracking tools that will tell him when to look. Thinks the "Barbie ISS Pics" Simon posted are stills from a youtube video, but posts screenshots that don't match at all (and nevermind that he posted the fotoforensic analysis which actually indicated the pics are 100% legit). Quotes Sherlock Holmes - a fictional character written by a guy who believed in fairies. Regards transit-finder as suspect because the guy who runs it is Polish (he also thinks he's a sim). No understanding of angle and distance calculations.

Just in his last post he uses some statement he found online about being able to get one or two usable frames by filming an ISS flyby through a telephoto lens /telescope and proceeds to demonstrate his abysmal reading comprehension by inferring that it means the total length of the video is one or two frames and therefore the "ISS" crosses the sky in 1/15 of a second. That is absurdly bad logic and poor research. It reflects terribly on the standards aspired to on this forum. He's either trolling or is genuinely that dense.
a youtube video is hardly proof of anything
The youtube video was only to visually demonstrate what the "ISS" looks like to the naked eye when its moving across the sky. This is something anyone who has ever taken the time to watch a flyby in real life will know is accurate. No cameras or telescopes required.
NotRappaport
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by NotRappaport »

Confirming the altitude of the "ISS"

To verify that the thing called the "ISS" is hundreds (not tens) of kilometers above, we only need to know it's current location - that is the location on earth it is directly above - and then check how far above the horizon it is when viewed from another location a sufficient distance away. As most "ISS" trackers use 10° above the horizon as the lowest point at which it is still considered fully visible in most areas, let's find out how far from the "ISS" current location we can be before it appear 10° above the horizon.

If it were only 30km in altitude, then it would appear 10° when viewed from locations 170km away from where it is directly overhead. This 170km distance is calculated by multiplying the altitude by the cotangent of 10°, and the formula can be further reduced to simply 5.67 * altitude to find the distance at which the viewing angle is 10° above the horizon.

Here's a helpful chart showing the trigonometric ratios:
Image
In the context of this post, "a" would be the viewing angle. "A" would be the altitude. "B" is the distance from the location the "ISS" is above and "C" is the distance to the "ISS" itself.

At 170km there is also earth curvature to deal which will make it a little bit less than 10° above the horizon because the ground it is above is hidden by the curve. But at 170km the hidden part is only 2.2km out of the 30km altitude.

The curve is much more pronounced for the distances involved if the altitude is over 400km. For example, you may notice most tracking sites give the time at which the "ISS" will be 10° above the horizon and will give a distance along with it - usually around 1440 km. This is how far away the "ISS" is from your viewing location when it is 10° above the horizon. If we do the math to find the altitude:
1440 * sin (10°) = 250km
Factoring in the curvature, which at 1440km distance gives 162km hidden by the curve: 250km + 162km = 412km. This is very close to the claimed altitude of just over 405km

If we look at the chart on Oct 31, 2017 for 40.9834°N, 117.6572°W (Humboldt County, Nevada) it will be almost directly overhead (81°) slightly northeast of zenith at 6:22am.
http://heavens-above.com/passdetails.as ... 996&type=V

So let's move Eastward to Salt Lake City, Utah (over 500km away).
http://heavens-above.com/passdetails.as ... 689&type=V

Note that Utah is in a different time zone (1 hour later) than Nevada, so here we see at 7:22 it is 47° above the horizon. I tried looking even further east, but the same pass is not visible due to daylight.

If the ISS were 30km in height, it would be far below the horizon at this distance. Even if it were 100km high it would be less than 10° above the horizon.

Given that these charts are pretty accurate, this indicates that whatever the "ISS" is, it's altitude is at least a few hundred kilometers and probably exactly the claimed altitude (a little over 400km).
Last edited by NotRappaport on Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Taking the ISS

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

So spend your time deconstructing/debunking his arguments and providing counter points. Let your arguments speak for themselves, instead of asking the mods to intervene. The readers here are very intelligent and discerning. You should be confident enough in your positions without feeling the need to call for moderators.
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Re: Taking the ISS

Unread post by NotRappaport »

anonjedi2 » October 31st, 2017, 3:14 am wrote:So spend your time deconstructing/debunking his arguments and providing counter points. Let your arguments speak for themselves, instead of asking the mods to intervene. The readers here are very intelligent and discerning. You should be confident enough in your positions without feeling the need to call for moderators.
I have no problem doing that. My concern is really how it looks to lurkers and casual browsers when they see such horrible logic being put on display in the first place. But if it doesn't bother the mods, then it doesn't bother me and I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

NotRappaport » October 30th, 2017, 5:46 pm wrote:Note that I cut these out of their original images and condensed them all into a single image so as not to unnecessarily clutter the thread).
Thanks, NRpt, that´s very considerate on your part. By any chance, you wouldn´t have saved the URLs where you found each of those six pictures?
...he posted the fotoforensic analysis which actually indicated the pics are 100% legit
Fotoforensics will sometimes show when an image has been tampered with, but unfortunately it doesn´t work the other way round (confirming legitimacy).

edit: I just realized: you were referring to the EXIF data, not the ELA.
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Re: Fakery in Orbit: THE I$$

Unread post by brianv »

The lady doth protest too much methinks!

:lol:
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