A chat with a guy at the Portland airport made me rethink moon landing doubts

I was stuck in Portland for a three hour layover last month and got talking to a retired engineer at the gate. He calmly laid out the exact math for the lunar module's fuel burn, using numbers from the original mission transcripts. He said, 'The real conspiracy is that we stopped going.' It stuck with me because he didn't get angry, just showed his work on a napkin. Has anyone else had a skeptic change their mind with pure data like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

zara5721mo ago

That napkin math is interesting. What specific fuel burn numbers did he write down? I've seen the general "it took X pounds to land" but never the real time calculations from the mission audio.

gonzalez.reese1mo ago

Checked the transcripts from the Apollo 11 landing. Armstrong called out "60 seconds" with about 5% fuel left, then "30 seconds" right as they were touching down. The computer showed them burning about 1% of the descent fuel every 10 seconds at that final stage.

grace_white1mo ago

Do we really need the exact numbers? They landed with almost no fuel left, that's the main thing.