Hans Wrote:
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> "President John F. Kennedy's decision in 1961 to
> land a man on the moon "before the decade is out"
> meant that NASA had to move quickly to find the
> best method of accomplishing the journey. NASA
> gave serious consideration to three options:
> Initially, direct ascent; then, Earth-orbit
> rendezvous (EOR), and, finally, a darkhorse
> candidate, lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR)."

Quote

After the engineers made their calculations, however, NASA realized that any single big rocket that had to carry and lift all the fuel necessary for leaving the Earth's gravity, braking against the moon's gravity as well as leaving it, and braking back down into the Earth's gravity again, was clearly not a realistic option-especially if the mission was to be accomplished anywhere close to President Kennedy's timetable. The development of a rocket that mammoth would just take too long, and the expense would be enormous.

"Back of the napkin" calculations would quickly show "direct ascent" was an impossibility.

> July 11, 1962, after much technical debate and
> in-fighting, Seamans and NASA Administrator James
> E. Webb announced during a press conference at
> NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., that
> lunar-orbit rendezvous had been selected as the
> primary mission mode for the initial manned moon
> landing. Considering the strong opposition to LOR
> during NASA's intensive evaluation of possible
> mission modes for Apollo, the choice seemed quite
> unlikely.

Yes. As soon as the amount of weight to be lifted was known they could begin preliminary designs for the rocket.

> Work on the Saturn V had begun before the final
> decision on how to use it was made. However they
> did know they needed a bloody big rocket....

I believe you are making an assumption here.

> No they used manpower motivated by superstition,
> magic and religion - we've gone over this same
> premise hundreds if not well over a thousand times
> now Cladking.

"Superstition, magic and religion" are mere beliefs. We don't even need to talk about how no words existed in Ancient Language for "belief" since it's a simple fact that while we act on beliefs and we see only what we believe, that belief is still always and necessarily a destructive force. Certainly it can (and is the only thing) that motivates modern man to action but it can not give us the ability to fly or to leap tall building in a single bound. It can not give men the ability to do the impossible. It can not build a doghouse or a pyramid. Having to invoke the concept that religion is a prime motivator for having built the pyramids is a critical (and fatal) flaw in the assumption that only ramps might have been used. Religion and magic can not transform a mastaba into a pyramid any more than they can transform a mastaba building culture into a pyramid building culture. The construction of a 6 1/2 million ton pyramid can not be accomplished without infrastructure, a viable means, and the ability to carry it out. Moire importantly each of these three requirements should be expected to leave ample evidence of their existence but instead we have no evidence of a means that is held up as the only possible method despite the illogic of the method itself and the lack of evidence.

Yes, we've been through most of this a million times but still it has not been addressed. A restatement of the assumptions and the reasons for those assumptions is not evidence. Egyptology can not show that there was only one possible and highly illogical way to build the pyramids no matter what they have interpreted some of the facts to mean.

Superstition is a severe weakness, a flaw, and not an attribute even if you believe that 6 1/2 million tons were dragged an average 1/ 3 of a mile up paths for which no evidence exists. Superstition impedes physical labor just as much as it impedes mental abilities. This may be hard to see because we are all products of our beliefs but it is still true. Just as you can't whip men to make them work harder you can't lay religion on them as a cross to bear and getmore work out of them. Every man has his own unique limitations as well as limitations imposed by reality. The men who get the most done are usually motivated by enlightened self interest and never by the whip or the "laying on of hands". These can be effective at getting lazy people off their backsides or the infirm to walk but they can't get much out of a healthy and hard working individual. Work isn't done by the hangers on and the infirm; most all of it is done by healthy and motivated people. This is the way it's always been. When you invoke "superstition" and "magic" as motivating forces to lift the pyramid you have surrendered the point. You can not understand the pyramid by looking away from it. You must look it square in the face and ask it how it came to be and the ONLY thing we have to work with is the actual evidence. The ONLY way to reverse engineer the pyramid is to set aside our fears and actually do the science to determine it.

> No matter what you do you cannot
> hand wave away the AE Religion - there belief in
> an afterlife and why they didn't just chuck out
> the Pharaoh's body to the buzzards....

The actual pyramid builders said the body was called out of the iskn of the sky. If we ever figure out what this meant only then will we know what happened to all of the old kingdom mummies. It might even provide a clue to how the pyramids were built. But assuming the meaning here is about the exact same thing as assuming how the great pyramids were built; most unproductive.

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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.