"Amanda Angelika" <manic_mandy@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:FRQ4h.18980$r4.15667@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net: 

In news:Xns9877630B4D723kiwilovesomewherenz@203.109.252.31,
Harvey@NZ <kiwilove@co.nz> typed:

I think you'll have to be into rocketry to know whether the Saturn V
was all that it was cracked up to be? The biggest rocket doesn't mean
the most efficient rocket, with the most thrust (efficiency)
possible. It could have been burning up huge amounts of fuel, and not
providing the vital thrust?
There was a programme about a Russian rocket, how it's design
efficiency was much more efficient - that it got the Americans
attention.

I saw a film about rocketry recently. I think I saw that on Youtube.
Of course the real reason for the development of such large rockets
was to develop ICBMs. In many ways the space race was a show of power
and a means to test new weapons. A peaceful alternative to nuclear
war. :) 

<snip>

I wouldn't be so sure that universities at that time, had the
necessary tracking equipment available, although the Australian
tracking station would have.

Well even radio hams were monitoring the early Apollo missions, They
would have only needed to compare notes on signal direction, signal
strength and have done some calculations allowing for distance and the
curvature of the Earth to get a fairly accurate position. It would
have been impossible to have fooled the public without at least
sending a space probe to the Moon to relay signals back, because
anyone with a suitable antenna or dish connected to a suitable
receiver could have monitored it's position comparing notes with
others. It isn't difficult to construct a radio telescope in one's
back garden with some parts from a hardware store and some electrical
wiring, building aerials is fairly simple and you don't even need a
Radio Ham Licence to receive signals.

We know now that NASA's track record isn't too good, with 2 fatal
space shuttle mishaps, which were totally preventable - yet no one
was lost on the Apollo missions. I couldn't be bothered watching the
Apollo 13 movie or documentaries about it. I don't know why? I had no
interest in watching anything about it? At the time, I didn't have
any kind of thoughts it all being faked, etc etc. Maybe my pysche was
telling me something?
Conspiracy theorists wouldn't have a leg to stand on, if there
weren't missions to the moon since. By anyone.
Will we have to wait until NASA again goes to the moon?

Well sending people into space is a dangerous business. I never
bothered watching the Apollo 13 film. After all we know what happened.
It was nail biting at the time, but the film seemed pointless, there
was no suspense. 

I think a decent VCD quality is OK to watch - but anything less than
that, does not do the footage justice, etc.
I have converted avi etc files to VCD - and it's amazing how small
the file can shrink down to, and still be of reasonable, watchable
quality. It is a slow conversion process to do this, via Nero.
I will guess, that YouTube prefers even smaller files than this - and
only when broadband is dirt cheap and extra high speed is normal,
will they up the quality possible...? there

The problem I find with Youtube and Google videos is they use a sort
of flash player. Which on my system plays things at about 4 frames a
second if I try to watch it fullscreen, so I have to watch them at the
reduced size. I don't get that trouble with any other video format. I
find anything around 320x240 is quite watchable and no worse than VHS
as long as it isn't too heavily compressed. I tend to watch most
videos fullscreen if I can. I have a 19" Dell CRT monitor so can sit
down in an arm chair and it's basically no different than watching a
small to medium sized TV set. Although the sound system is better than
most Televisions since it comes through both the computer speakers and
a hi-fi, so I do at least get all the hair raising digital Dolby 3d
surround sound effects when I watch better quality DVDs. Which is
quite funny really because the sound can be absolutely epic and you 
sort of expect the picture to be about 50ft across LOL

I have downloaded probably all the Time/Life Lost Civilisations
series, and some are of poor quality. ie. The video quality of the
copy, off the Internet is very poor at times.
I haven't watched them all, only
a fraction of them, they all seem to tell the same story - constant
warfare. I've got a reasonable number of UFO documentaries to watch,
and will try to see which are the better ones?
When I first watched the poor quality Nazi UFOs one - I thought it
was too far-fetched, but since reading "The Hunt for Zero Point" and
watching "Nature was my Teacher - the Vision of Viktor Shauberger" -
it is not so far fetched after all.
Blank DVD media is so cheap these days - that I don't bother with
conversion to VCD or SVCD format anymore.
I will eventually get around to downloading all the astronomy and
hubble documentaries I can find - all the NASA documentaries,
etc etc etc.

Harvey