That's some remarkable first hand experience on that significant project.

I can't help but ask the question how you got from working directly in a space program with first hand experience of how things worked to being a flat earther.

I think that speaks to my point.  I never saw anything of the big picture.  I wrote software that controlled one tiny little apparatus.  Next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.  Outside of that focus, I had precious little idea of what else went on or of the big pictures.  All I knew was that I was writing software to inject gases into a chamber (in various rations) and then evacuate the chamber.

Guess I'll have to ask this again: What is your background in physics?

Just a couple courses, in which I did very well.  It's according to simple and fundamental law of physics (entropy) that ...

1) gas/air pressure cannot exists without there being a container AND
2) a pressurized atmosphere cannot exist adjacent to an (almost infinite) vacuum

Those are very basic conclusions deriving directly from entropy.

But it's just based on me saying it.  There's a (science) Ph.D. Flat Earther who asserts the same thing.

This kind of "argument" betrays desperation, the constant ad hominem attacks and ridicule.

So, I was working at mission control in support of CM-2.  From time to time, we'd get these telemetry windows where we could download data (when they had openings and weren't using the bandwidth for something else).  Every time there was even a 5-minute opening, I was grabbing the window and downloading data from our systems.  I got every last (literal) bit of data down.

So you were directly in mission control?

And you worked there when Columbia had it's tragic disintegration? How well did you know Cane?

Man, it must've been awful being in mission control at that time, only seeing how it happened, without the ability to help once control was lost.

At one point, the project manager poked fun at me for being so zealous about gettinga all the data, reminding me that the hard drive would come back down with the Shuttle.  I said, "Well, you just never know what can happen."

Well you sure had a sixth sense there.

Just a couple courses, in which I did very well.  It's according to simple and fundamental law of physics (entropy) that ...

1) gas/air pressure cannot exists without there being a container AND
2) a pressurized atmosphere cannot exist adjacent to an (almost infinite) vacuum

Those are very basic conclusions deriving directly from entropy.

But it's just based on me saying it.  There's a (science) Ph.D. Flat Earther who asserts the same thing.

This kind of "argument" betrays desperation, the constant ad hominem attacks and ridicule.

1) we could make the distinction of atmospheric pressure there, but that's semantics. Once we establish gravity, and we measure the atmospheric pressure gradient (which I hope you'll agree on), it is evident that at the altitude where you'd probably put a container, there is a hard vacuum.

Simple observations like sending up a balloon and seeing the blue (air/atmosphere) fade to this blackness which is commonly called space is good empirical evidence of the pressure gradient fading from 14.7psi at sea level to almost nothing, even better than what we call an ultra-high vacuum.

1) we could make the distinction of atmospheric pressure there, but that's semantics. Once we establish gravity, and we measure the atmospheric pressure gradient (which I hope you'll agree on), it is evident that at the altitude where you'd probably put a container, there is a hard vacuum.

Simple observations like sending up a balloon and seeing the blue (air/atmosphere) fade to this blackness which is commonly called space is good empirical evidence of the pressure gradient fading from 14.7psi at sea level to almost nothing, even better than what we call an ultra-high vacuum.

Indeed the pressure gradient is a curious question, regardless of the model.  If there's no vacuum of space, and a container, it's explainable by the denser molecules moving down toward the earth and then less dense ones moving upward.  We find the same conditions in the ocean, where the pressure increases as you go lower.  There was even one under-ocean "lake" discovered that consisted of an extremely dense pool of salt water.  Pressure decreases as you move higher.  Then above the oceans you have the far less dense atmosphere.  Question then is what's above the atmosphere.  Traditional science holds there's a vacuum.

"Gravity" would have to hold everything down and resist the force of an infinite vacuum, which I simply can't comprehend.  I've seen vacuum experiments where you had a bowl of water on the bottom with air around it, and then a vacuum at the top.  When the vacuum was "turned on", not only did the air evaculate the chamber, but the water evaporated, turned into gas, and then also evacuated the chamber ... gravity notwithstanding.  So in a sense there was a pressure gradient already.  It be interesting if within a chamber, on a small scale, we could recreate a simulation of the pressure gradient we have in our atmosphere and then give it a shot.  I'm very skeptical that gravity can overcome an infinite vaccuum.

Indeed the pressure gradient is a curious question, regardless of the model.  If there's no vacuum of space, and a container, it's explainable by the denser molecules moving down toward the earth and then less dense ones moving upward.  We find the same conditions in the ocean, where the pressure increases as you go lower.  There was even one under-ocean "lake" discovered that consisted of an extremely dense pool of salt water.  Pressure decreases as you move higher.  Then above the oceans you have the far less dense atmosphere.  Question then is what's above the atmosphere.  Traditional science holds there's a vacuum.

Density is ordered only by gravity, as in itself it's just a quantity, which helps to form a relative ratio between heaver and lighter elements. Gravity is what brings the vertical acceleration into it and acts as a force, so forces like buoyancy can even exist.


density of the fluid times the displaced volume multiplied by the gavitational acceleration constant is how the force of buoyancy is defined.

"Gravity" would have to hold everything down and resist the force of an infinite vacuum, which I simply can't comprehend.  I've seen vacuum experiments where you had a bowl of water on the bottom with air around it, and then a vacuum at the top.  When the vacuum was "turned on", not only did the air evaculate the chamber, but the water evaporated, turned into gas, and then also evacuated the chamber ... gravity notwithstanding.  So in a sense there was a pressure gradient already.  It be interesting if within a chamber, on a small scale, we could recreate a simulation of the pressure gradient we have in our atmosphere and then give it a shot.  I'm very skeptical that gravity can overcome an infinite vaccuum.

I think the problem is that you think a vacuum "sucks" or exerts a force - it's actually always the gas at a specific density which will try to expand into an empty volume (vacuum), it actually pushes outwards into the empty space of the vacuum in a container. Now, the fact that the atmospheric pressure gradient fades to zero shows that there's a key difference between a closed system with a container and the large gas system that is the atmosphere around earth (or other planets where we observe an atmosphere).

So, let's start with a vacuum and have a blob of matter in there. Attracting other masses around it, that blob keeps growing and growing, thus creating an increasingly stronger gravity well. A it attracts more and more matter that's also floating around it, the inner layers get compressed slowly. Heavy elements like metals and minerals will be attracted more strongly (F=ma), while lighter elements like gasses will be attracted more lighlty, letting the heavier elements sink or "push" lower. But with enough gas, even that start to layer around the blob of matter. That's how we get pressure, by layers of gas or liquid all being attracted to a common center, and that's why the pressure gets less as we move away from that common center, because gravity, like many natural phenomena that act over distance, follows the inverse square law.



Electrostatics, same law:


Hope that helps.

This is basically a contemporary worship song about NASA. Hilarious