by craig nelms
“Hey, Grampa, whatcha lookin’ at?” The teenager said as he flopped down on the couch. His grandfather sat in an office chair in front of his desk top computer.
“That’s a picture of Dr. Werner von Braun,” the old man said. “The Allies brought him to America after the end of World War Two, though I suspect they had to twist his arm a little.” He pivoted the chair to face the boy, a smile on his face.
“Yeah, just a little,” the young man agreed. “Who was he?”
“He was the guy in charge of the German rocket program. They brought him to the U.S. and put him in charge of the American rocket program.”
“He must have known his stuff, to take the enemy and put him in charge of your own program,” the teenager observed. The old man smiled again at his grandson’s quick mind.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said.
“Uh-oh!” the boy exclaimed, “I suspect my world view is about to change.”
The old man chuckled and continued. “One day a reporter asked Dr. von Braun what it would take to put a man on the moon. Von Braun told him, it would take a rocket the size of the Empire State Building!”
“Why is that? That’s not what NASA used.”
“No, they didn’t, did they.” The old man agreed. “You see, Werner von Braun knew that the gravity of the Earth extended all the way to the moon and beyond. That means it would be uphill all the way and a rocket would have to burn its engine all the way to the moon, using a lot of fuel. The more fuel that you carry in your rocket, the more fuel you have to carry to push that fuel load and so on. That leads to a really big rocket.”
“But…” the boy started, his brow wrinkling in thought.
“And that’s not all, coming back would be downhill, so the rocket would have to face away from the Earth and burn its engine to keep from building up too much speed. Like going up and down a really steep hill on your bike. You have to pedal hard to get up the hill, but then coming down you have to use your brakes so you don’t get going a hundred miles an hour. But rockets don’t have brakes, only the engine, so it would use more fuel burning its engine to keep its speed down.”
“Well, NASA didn’t do any of that. Does that mean we didn’t go to the moon?”
“I didn’t go to the moon, did you?” the boy’s grandfather replied.
The teenager grinned, “Okay, THEY didn’t go to the moon, did they.”
“You’ve always got to watch the language, THEY always want to include us in stuff we’re not involved in. Then it becomes our lie too, not just theirs.” The old man continued. “No, they never went anywhere near the moon.”
“I read that they slingshotted around the Earth and then coasted to the moon.” The young man pointed out.
“Ahh, yes, ‘slingshotted’ around the Earth. Lets look at that. Now when we have an orbit, that’s a delicate balance, an equation, right? Its gravity equals mass times speed. So if you change one side of the equation, like we add additional speed, then what happens?”
“Then we don’t have a equal equation anymore,” the teen said. “You have to add the same thing to both sides to keep it equal.”
“So to have more speed we have to have more gravity. How do we get more gravity?”
“By going down closer to the Earth.”
“And then what happens when we rise back up away from the Earth?”
The young man pondered, then said, “We would lose the speed?”
“Right. Its like having two hills, exactly alike, with a road going over them. We can coast our bicycle down one hill and gain a lot of speed, but when we go up the second hill all that speed goes away and we come to a stop at the top.” The grandfather explained.
“If we even make it to the top of the second hill,” the boy laughed.
“True, but that’s due to drag, like wind resistance and the drag from the tires and the bearings. They say we don’t have anything like that in space.”
“Well, if you come down too close to the Earth to gain speed, you’ll hit the atmosphere and then you’ll have drag!” The teenager, paused, listening and they heard his mother’s voice calling him to take out the trash. “I’ve got to go!”
Poisoned Water 