ISS Tour (and the difficulty of faking things)

levi, do you really believe that the only method to achieve weightlessness, or the appearance thereof, is orbital travel or witchcraft?

can it be inferred if this is the case that you believe in the potential to achieve weightlessness, or the appearance of such, by use of witchcraft (in which case may i ask you to elaborate on the specific spells, rituals or other processes involved) or are you in fact claiming there is only one possibility?

If witchcraft exists, then it's not unreasonable to say that you can use it to become weightless.  It was a joke, however.

There is one other way of achieving weightlessness other than orbital travel, which is to go up high enough and then just start falling.  If you do this in a plane (like NASA's Vomit Comet), you will become weightless, and appear to float relative to the plane.  That's essentially what's happening in orbit, except you're just falling perpetually around the earth.  The point is that the above video shows periods of weightlessness that are too long to have been done by just going up in a plane and then letting the plane fall back to the earth.  The Vomit Comet (and similar planes, if exist) have a 25 second limit, which was a major factor in the filming of Apollo 13 that they had to work around, mostly by limiting their weightlessness scenes to no more than 20 or so seconds (with 5 seconds to get into position).

Edit: is your shift key broken?  I haven't seen you type a single capital letter in your posts.  It seems kind of silly to be so pedantic about using an unnecessarily rich vocabulary but not in the presentation of it.

utilizing as much of the available vocabulary is i think beneficial when trying to convey ideas or opinions, you seem to interpret it instead as a negative. and unpleasant it would seem judging by the adjectives you attach to your references to it.

the most accurately and succinctly a post can be written, the less likely the need to expand upon or clarify the meaning.

punctuation is certainly of assistance in the same way, and so i try to make use of it to the same ends.

capitalization, other than in quite rare instances, is not in my opinion of any great help in this regard, so i do not concern myself with its use.

my keyboard is fully functional, thank you for your concern

Fair enough, I suppose.  Did that part I wrote about the ways to achieve weightlessness make sense, or did I make an error somewhere?  If I didn't, then this would seem to imply that NASA isn't lying about having the ISS in orbit, which implies that the earth is round.

no, it does not.

it only makes sense if you both believe in the credibility of nasa, and in the complete impossibility of other methods of achieving weightlessness, or the appearance of it.

even if only the one method existed to provide the effects seen during the claimed iss footage, it is hardly a huge leap to consider the time claimed by nasa of 25 secs maximum is untrue.

whether from the outset, as an obvious future rebuttal of expected claims of fakery, or made so since due to advances in aerospace technology or techniques, this 25 second claim is unlikely to have remained static since whenever it was first stated.

so even a voracious consumer of the dubious fare served up by nasa must question the accuracy of this time limit, even if its purpose were to keep secret some advancement of avionics preferred not to be in the public domain.

if, that is, some other explanation beyond nasa showing a perfect record of compulsive lying and fraud from inception to the present day were needed.

what, may i ask, is your immediate reaction to the planned asteroid rodeo and moon orbit corralling of a celestial steer?

it only makes sense if you both believe in the credibility of nasa, and in the complete impossibility of other methods of achieving weightlessness, or the appearance of it.

even if only the one method existed to provide the effects seen during the claimed iss footage, it is hardly a huge leap to consider the time claimed by nasa of 25 secs maximum is untrue.

The only way to achieve weightlessness is to not combat the force of gravity, which is what's happening in both orbiting, falling, and being at a Lagrangian point.  This is pretty much what "weight" is.  It only happens when there is some active resistance to the force of gravity.  That's what distinguishes it from mass.  Weight is just the force imparted by one body on another due to gravity.

You are correct in questioning NASA's statement that the maximum is 25 seconds.  However, it's not just NASA that says this.  Other, private companies that offer the same service also place the limit in the 20-30 second range, supporting NASA's claim.

Maybe Sceptimatic bought a thesaurus and changed his name to RuSpinningAround?

And that limit is hardly technological. It is mostly due to the dynamics of a parabolic flight path.

in regard to zero g and other weightlessness commercial flight providers, they are governed by a specific faa regulation that dictates the altitude parameters that can be utilized.

they cruise, it says there at the link, at 24k ft, climb to 34k ft and then the 'fun' begins.

maybe these limits are due to the possibly less experienced or less robust physiology of potential customers, but i can remember it being stated while travelling on commercial aircraft that we were at an altitude of 55k ft, that being a 747.

so with a superior aircraft and/or relaxed or removed limits on altitude and it would be possible to extend the zerog quoted 20-30 seconds of 0g by a significant amount.

the fact this company, and i would suspect any others that offer such trips, was started by and staffed with ex astronots and space commerce types is of course relevant to both the credit and lack of depending on your opinion of nasa.

It's gotta be scepti...

Sure, but how much longer?  Felix Baumgartner's jump from the edge of space took 4 minutes and 20 seconds, and he jumped from about 39 km (approximately the limit for jet planes).

This video shows a Google+ hangout with three people aboard the ISS that took place live a month or so ago.  It shows about 20 minutes of continuous weightlessness (their video feed is always visible at the bottom).

Video: " class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">

It doesn't seem to be in proportion.

Edit: holy bollocks, this forum is annoying.  It's always taking my YouTube links that have timecodes in the URL and removing them so that it can embed them.

If anyone is interested, a simulated zero-grav dive from the maximum altitude for a 747-400 of a conservative 60,000 feet (which I will approximate as 20km) can be derived as follows:

d = 0.5 x g x t^2
20,000 = 0.5 x 9.81 x t^2

t = 63 seconds

This is very optimistic since it assumes that the jet is in free fall for the entire period between maximum altitude and ground level. More realistic would be about half that, which is pretty well spot on what most of the free-fall zero grav simulations are at.

Sure, but how much longer?  Felix Baumgartner's jump from the edge of space took 4 minutes and 20 seconds, and he jumped from about 39 km (approximately the limit for jet planes).

This video shows a Google+ hangout with three people aboard the ISS that took place live a month or so ago.  It shows about 20 minutes of continuous weightlessness (their video feed is always visible at the bottom).

Video: " class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">

It doesn't seem to be in proportion.

Edit: holy bollocks, this forum is annoying.  It's always taking my YouTube links that have timecodes in the URL and removing them so that it can embed them.

you are of the opinion mr bum gardener was up in space?

that is not an opinion i share.

you are of the opinion mr bum gardener was up in space?

that is not an opinion i share.

...from the edge of space...he jumped from about 39 km...

These days, I believe space is defined as beginning 100km above the surface, but with the atmosphere already being pretty thin at 39km, I can live with that being referred to as "the edge of space".

I still think RUSpinning is scepti... It's the same dumbness but with added spell-check. Also when he started posting scepti stopped.

I still think RUSpinning is scepti... It's the same dumbness but with added spell-check. Also when he started posting scepti stopped.

I thought so, too. But his style is so much different.

So begins (S)ceptimatic (T)rolling (T)heory. If RUSpinning is Scepticon (troller in disguise), then he pulled off an incredible con and I would be forced to tip my cap.

I don't expect anyone to believe me but I'm willing to prove it if there is a way to prove it.

It would be nice if you would, because not understanding something or calling it garbage is not proof of anything but your own ignorance.

Maybe it isn't proof but it's equally not proof of anything that you or anyone else says is it.

This is a masterpiece!

Quote from: markjo on April 07, 2013, 10:56:28 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on April 07, 2013, 09:23:00 AM

I don't expect anyone to believe me but I'm willing to prove it if there is a way to prove it.

It would be nice if you would, because not understanding something or calling it garbage is not proof of anything but your own ignorance.

Maybe it isn't proof but it's equally not proof of anything that you or anyone else says is it. Be honest.

Perhaps, but learning about physics and performing proper experiments yourself so that you can make an informed decision is about as solid proof as you can get in science.

I still think RUSpinning is scepti... It's the same dumbness but with added spell-check. Also when he started posting scepti stopped.

'still' think.

you have maintained this opinion for up to 3 days.

impressive.

it is a pity you do not apply such levels of scepticism regarding the reality of things you have believed for an even longer period of time.

Why does someone who likes to represent them self as a cunning linguist not capitalize their sentences?

He reckons it doesn't add to clarity.

And here we enter the part of the story where post frequency from FE people specifically concerning the evidence presented takes a nosedive, having had their one moment of "ha ha I gotcha!" and feeling no need to follow-up at all, despite the responses given.  Hopefully I'm wrong and we can continue this lovely discussion of faking weightlessness, but I'm not optimistic.

You don't know sceptimatic. He is like something from a zombie movie. Keeps coming!

Welcome back.

Quote from: markjo on April 07, 2013, 11:43:02 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on April 07, 2013, 11:19:18 AM

Quote from: markjo on April 07, 2013, 10:56:28 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on April 07, 2013, 09:23:00 AM

I don't expect anyone to believe me but I'm willing to prove it if there is a way to prove it.

It would be nice if you would, because not understanding something or calling it garbage is not proof of anything but your own ignorance.

Maybe it isn't proof but it's equally not proof of anything that you or anyone else says is it. Be honest.

Perhaps, but learning about physics and performing proper experiments yourself so that you can make an informed decision is about as solid proof as you can get in science.

Agreed. If I performed an experiment that proved something I would have no qualms about it.

Good to hear.  Here are a few simple experiments that you can do at home to prove Newton's laws of motion.  After that, weightlessness should make a whole lot more sense.
http://www.hometrainingtools.com/newton-s-laws-of-motion-science-projects/a/1256/

Would you like to explain what's happening here Levi?

Uhh, she's weightless?  The titles don't really bring up any valid points (the video is really painful to watch for very long).  They just ask a lot of random questions; almost as if they are expecting the point of the video to be to prove that the ISS isn't a hoax.  And then there's just annoying, irrelevant things like this:

Voice: "Big international adventure..."
Text: "(International scam)"

If you want something to think about, remember that a weightlessness plane must necessarily go back up after a weightlessness dive.  This imparts just under 2 Gs of force on the occupants.  If this were the case, we would have clearly seen this in her hair.  Note how easily it moves around when she moves her head, so we would expect it to very visibly shoot downward when the plane began its trip back up.  Can you show me where this happens?

Worrying about small things like how they deal with toothpaste, which may have any number of valid explanations, isn't nearly as helpful as focusing on analyzing predictable phenomena that, if they didn't visibly occur, cast gargantuan amounts of doubt on the proposed initial conditions, which in this case is why doesn't her hair shoot downward when the plane goes up, yet wiggle around so easily when she shifts her head a little bit?

Worrying about small things like how they deal with toothpaste, which may have any number of valid explanations, isn't nearly as helpful as focusing on analyzing predictable phenomena that, if they didn't visibly occur, cast gargantuan amounts of doubt on the proposed initial conditions, which in this case is why doesn't her hair shoot downward when the plane goes up, yet wiggle around so easily when she shifts her head a little bit?

I'm well aware of the laws of motion, but they don't apply to gravity.

It's baffling how much stupid you can fit into such small sentences.