MidWestGuy

I don't like wearing a watch, so the only jewelry I wear is my wedding ring.

I always carry a pocket knife, does that count as 'jewelry'?

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All it would take to convince me we can go would be to send a life ( dog , cat , rat , mouse whatever , into the radiation belt and back to earth. If that animal is still alive , I would be more inclined to at least believe we CAN go .

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Ummm, help me jump across the massive logical gap you just presented.

A) You don't believe that any astronauts made it out of low Earth orbit.

B) But you are willing to believe that it can be done if we sent some animals?

Why wouldn't you claim the animal mission was fake?

Would you believe that the Soviets sent animals:

LINK

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In September 1968 Zond 5 carried the first Earth lifeforms, including two tortoises, to travel around the Moon and return safely.

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They also communicated to Earth, from the Moon, in 1969, yet...in 2025, we can't get cell reception in certain areas and can't get DirecTV when it rains.

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Another post that has me wondering if the 'deniers' are serious, trolling, or ?

If you are serious, you'd do a modicum of research yourself, and question your own statements. As another poster replied, there is a massive difference between covering all areas with cell reception, and doing it at a monthly price people can afford, using a $200 receiver with a tiny internal omnidirectional antenna, versus getting signal from the moon.

So, if you are serious, do some research, and come back and explain to us the difference between the tiny omnidrectional antenna, and the kind of high gain antenna used for Apollo communications. That would be a start to you understanding that your 'gothchas' are not.

Hint: The Apollo mission land based antennas will not fit in your pocket. It's like saying that since a John Deere garden tractor can only go 5 mph, that the Bugatti Chiron can't possibly exist. They are just very different things, with different design goals and budgets.

I'll await your reply.

And you didn't address a single point I made.

I'll have some small satisfaction for my IL State income tax this tax year.

IL does not tax retirement income (yet), and pension, SS, and IRA w/d cover most of our spending. The rest is dividends and some LTCG if I need to sell some stocks. This year, I offset that with 529 contribution to our 5 grand-kids, so IL should be a net zero after all credits/deductions.

Of course, we still pay a ridiculous property tax and high sales tax, but it's something.

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FWIW we did have total negative net migration this year

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Even the MSM admits this (sort of buried in their mish-mash of data and very weird collage graphic at the open):

LINK <<<< nbcnews

Looks like ~ 10K 'encounters' / month recently, and ~ 15K deportations. Not sure if that includes self-deportations (I guess no record of that?).

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The post highlights Germany's Catholic membership crisis, where roughly 322,000 people left in 2024 (one every 98 seconds per official data)

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98 seconds??? I'd have left after 9 point 8 seconds.

Also weird that they zoom into a park in Chicago:

LINK

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Okay, apart from the aqueduct and the sanitation, which, I'll give you.

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Numerals? Never mind, the only thing they're good for is fancy clocks, and Super Bowls, and not even Super Bowls.

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You realize this is mostly due to the fact that the earth is spherical, right? RIGHT?!

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I have heard that , obviously. The logical question would be. … why would the amount of power affect the distance. ? You would just be blasting it off the surface . Any size transmitter would get you miles . But the bigger the transmitter … the more the curvature of the earth doesn’t matter .
And a signal from the surface of the moon. ? 240000 miles ? That’s thirty earths away. But no problem. A deep cycle marine battery can handle that distance

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This is why we don't take you deniers seriously - you don't take yourself seriously. If you were serious, you'd do a bit of research to understand what you are questioning.

Some points to educate yourself about:

A) Radio waves (somewhat depending on frequency) are "line of sight". Yes, curvature of the Earth matters.

B) A distance of 240,000 miles is do-able. It's in a near vacuum, very little attenuation. And on Earth, they were using large directional antennas (usually parabolic dishes), pointed directly at the moon. Makes a huge difference compared to a typical TV antenna.

Here's a discussion among same ham radio guys that were around at the time. Note that it was not too difficult for amateurs to pick up the signals from the moon. It was much harder, near impossible, to pick up the signals from the ground station. Because they didn't have a direct line-of-site to the ground station, but they had direct line-of-site to the moon. Being 240,000 miles away was not the issue, line-of-site was.

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leads to: LINK

LINK