Margaret Atwood and the Moon-landing "hoax"

The standard explanation for the persistence of conspiracy theories is that it explains a complex world to the paranoid and the uneducated. But when Margaret Atwood thinks "the jury is still out" on Apollo 11's success, I am puzzled why this conspiracy theory in particular is attractive.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/23/margaret-atwoods-just-wondering-a...

A mayoral candidate in Montreal last year also expressed "scepticism" over the moon landing, even though there was (one hopes) no votes to be had in doing so.

Can anyone explain why people outside the clueless find the moon landing conspiracy convincing?

Ridiculous! Everyone know that on the tv show "The Big Bang Theory" the characters there proved the Apollo mission happened by putting a green laser on the roof and bouncing if off of the reflector disk left on the moon by the Apollo mission. Their detector & computer used the speed & time to measure the distance. Then there was the obligatory 20 minutes of frustrated sexual overtures that power all sit coms. ;-)

Atwood's strength has always been sociology, not hard science. My guess would be she's simply ignorant. Too bad she talks publicly about stuff she doesn't understand.

The simplistic and lazy politics of The Handmaiden's Tale already suggest a susceptibility to inflated rhetoric and short cuts.

4: Very true, I just finished reading The Handmaid's Tale. I like her writing style, but her plots are not always very well considered, particularly the politics. I spent a while trying to think through how one would overthrow the US gov't after reading it, because her ideas seemed highly unlikely. I think you could get a totalitarian dictatorship out of the current system, but overthrowing from without seems highly unlikely. So, I wouldn't say she is very good at sociology, either. Excellent vocabulary and lovely word use, though.

Atwood also made nasty remarks about science fiction, and given how much I had to suspend my disbelief in order to read her novels, I thought her comments were ill-advised.

As to how they landed on moon with such limited computing ability (see article from OP): slide rules and lots of engineers. The money flowed like water, and I think they were less particular about personal safety.

>2 DugsBooks:
I'll admit to not watching The Big Bang Theory, but that might not be the best TV debunking reference to use. (For one thing, it's a sitcom.)

Anyway, I remember science/documentary series Mythbusters doing an entire episode debunking the moon-landing conspiracy theories. The last test they did was the one you described -- finding a big honking laser and bouncing off that special reflector left on the moon.

Edit: Here's a link to the specific episode.

>>Atwood's strength has always been sociology

This is news to most Canadians, as we think of her as a novelist, and, increasingly, as an uninformed political commentator. You'll notice from the interview that she seems to be under the impression that Apollo 11 was the only module that landed (or was claimed to have landed) on the moon.

The standard sociological explanation for belief in conspiracy theories is as I said above, connected to how the powerless and the uneducated respond to complex phenomena.

I don't know if much sociological work has been done on anti-science views among the powerful and well-educated, although Higher Superstition and Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science were by professional scientists. These books discuss postmodernist claims about science.

The only other explanation I can come up with is that she has some sociological-type views about "power" which are connected to Cold War politics, and she focuses on them rather than on learning about the capacity of circuit boards in the 1960s.

#6 >2 DugsBooks:
"I'll admit to not watching The Big Bang Theory, but that might not be the best TV debunking reference to use. (For one thing, it's a sitcom.)"

Yep, I got that. I was just trying to use the same level of technical expertise in my references as Ms. Atwood did in questioning the lunar landing.

::::edited to add::::::: Bazinga!

> 2, 6

Fair point . . . although (ironically) the non-credibility of The Big Bang Theory as a source might be more of a problem with non-scientists than with scientists. I've been told, by people who have reason to know, that BBT -- for all that it's a sitcom -- does a remarkably good job getting the physics right. (More so, in fact, than many SF series!)

I have also heard that BBT does an excellent job with getting the science correct.

Unfortunately the other topics they sometimes cover - history, linguistics - are not as accurate.

David Saltzberg vets the scripts on TBBT.

>7 Toolroomtrustee: I probably should have said something more like her writing focuses on sociological issues rather than hard science, as that is more what I meant. Her novels explore the consequences of imagined social situations, thus sociology.

I have my doubts about the moon landings as well. I know that will make me look like a nut on my first post here, but who cares?

My doubts have to do with (1) the ability of life to survive the radiation that occurs outside the protective magnetosphere surrounding the earth, (2) what looked like faked videos (to me at least) of the moon landings, (3) the question of why we haven't gone back to the moon since the early 1970s, and (4) why no other country has been able to replicate our performance. I mean, we build a nuclear weapon and we can't stop other countries from doing the same. Why haven't other countries gone to the moon?

I do think we are able to send machine rovers to different planets, but I don't think life would survive the radiation absorbed during the journey for very long. That's probably a good thing if one believes in the existence of aliens who know we are here. Because of the radiation, they can't get here to invade us if they wanted.

>13 FrankHubeny: If the Van Allen radiation belt is what you are referring to, you are correct that it is dangerous to fly through it. However the belt is not uniform and there are places where one can "sneak through" at specific times during the earth's rotation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt for an explanation). That is why there were only specific windows of opportunity when spacecraft could launch and return.

Also, I think we might have better technology now to fake such an event than we had back in the late '60s. It wasn't just a matter of looking like we were landing somewhere. The way the astronauts walked in one-sixth gravity (or whatever it is, I can't remember) would be difficult to replicate. The way dust floated in that atmosphere etc. In addition, as mention in the Atwood interview, there would be no way to keep such a giant undertaking a secret. Too many people were involved, including the astronauts, their wives and children, all the people at Nasa headquarters in Texas and Florida etc. My father worked on the testing equipment for the rockets when he worked for General Electric and took trips to Florida. Whole companies (large ones!) would have to be either in on the secret or totally in the dark.

Frankly, it just doesn't seem possible.

k4k

Another strong argument is that the point of the moon landings was largely to take to the lead in the space race from the USSR. I don't doubt that the soviets took a keen interest in the Apollo programme, but they never cried foul.

Though to be even-handed, there's a convincing argument for fakery here: http://pigeonsnest.co.uk/stuff/nasa-fakes-moon-landing.html
(This might appeal particularly to UK readers of a certain age...).

There are a few problems with the theory of "The moon landings were FAKED".

One is that you can round up the gear and go out tonight and bounce a laser off the mirrors that the Apollo missions left on the moon.

Another problem is that the Apollo stacks traveling to the moon were clearly visible at the time to anyone who looked.

A third problem is that today's lunar probes can plainly see the hardware we left behind on the surface of the moon.

Doubting that the moon landings happened is no more sensible than doubting any other feature of the external world. ("Why, you can't prove that you're not just a brain in a vat: everything might be faked just to fool us!")

It would be both easier and cheaper to just send missions to the moon than it would be to construct the giant conspiracy that would be needed to have faked it.

Well the landings were clearly faked, I present evidence here

krazy4katz: The Van Allen radiation belts are only one source of radiation. Once one has passed them, then there is solar and cosmic radiation that causes concern.

The question of how many people need be involved in the cover-up, if it occurred, is hard to tell. I think the records will become declassified in a dozen years or so. We will find out then. Until then, the question of whether humans actually went to the moon or not raises questions of how we treat evidence.

I think it would be more difficult to fake a moon landing today because of the visibility other countries have today.

martin: I heard a view that the Soviets knew we were faking these landings to keep funding going for such research and they were on board with it.

The inconsistency of the shadows and the lack of a crater, as I recall, were also reasons to consider the photographic evidence faked.

AsYouKnow_Bob: The Laser Ranging Retroreflector could have been positioned by unmanned missions as well as other material. I do not doubt that unmanned missions occurred and these could be tracked.

My main basis for doubting these missions were manned is the radiation the astronauts would have experienced.

Helenliz: Yes, the photographic evidence seems questionable to me.

Just out of curiosity, do you think the explosion aboard Apollo 1 that killed Grissom, White and Chaffee was fake? Also, the explosion on Apollo 13 that prevented it from landing on the moon was fake?

Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, it is just a bit much to swallow.

k4k

The one who introduced me to the "Moon Landing was a Hoax" theory was giving it
just as an extra "for no extra charge" bit of info. His main point was that "(President) Dick Nixon (R, CA) is a 32nd degree Mason, and heʻs true blue: Heʻll declare war on either
the 23rd or the 27th (of this month)." The month was December, 1973, so Nixon was going to "declare war" either 2 days before Christmas, or 2 days after.
Rather than argue with him, I pretended mild surprise, and
asked on whom RN was going to declare war. The answer:
On Russia, of course!" He said one didnʻt have to worry about the Soviet submarine fleet: "Iʻve SEEN that fleet at Murmansk. Itʻs nothing".
The only detail he gave about the "hoax" was that it was photographed on the Mojave Desert.
I would guess he was in his 70s. I had never seen him before in my life, and have never seen him since.

My main basis for doubting these missions were manned is the radiation the astronauts would have experienced.

Radiation is not necessarily lethal; we all receive radiation all the time, from cosmic rays, from radon in the soil, from the potassium in bananas, etc. The radiation risks of space travel are pretty well understood.

The typical dose above the van Allen belts is about a millirem per hour. Even adding the dose in transiting the van Allen belts, the total dose over an entire few-hundred-hour Apollo mission is a couple of REM, much less than the sort of dose that workers at nuclear power plants are allowed: that is to say, no detectable increase in their lifetime cancer risks.

Off the top of my head, I think spending a week above the van Allen belts is about as much 'extra' radiation exposure as spending a year or three in Denver.
I'd guess an Apollo astronaut got a total radiation dose similar to living in Denver for a decade or two.

Lots of people willingly assume that risk.

{Anybody wants to work it out in more detail (...I can't be bothered...), I'd love to get a more exact estimate (and/or be corrected).}

In the summer of 1970, Sky and Telescope ran a photograph somebody took of the gas cloud surrounding the Apollo 13 service module after it blew up, a photograph taken as Apollo 13 neared the moon.

Think about how you'd begin to fake THAT - - THAT requires a far-reaching conspiracy...

It would be easier to land men on the moon than to fake an accident in trans-lunar space.

"The inconsistency of the shadows and the lack of a crater. . ."

Are easily explained if you know any amount of physics and engineering.

Why there is no blast crater.

Why the shadows in the pictures are not parallel.

The amount of radiation experienced by astronauts going to the moon was almost trivial.

I once spent an hour or so at the UNC Chapel HIll Library one day looking through photos made from the original negatives that were taken by the astronauts on the moon. They were in one of those huge metal file cabinets with horizontal drawers about 4 to 5 feet wide and 4 inches or so in storage depth. Very sharp focused with a lot of detail & resolution in I guess over a couple of hundred 8" x 6" or so photos, mostly of rocks. They weren't in a sealed off area or anything, that was many years ago & not sure if they are still there. Probably had to make more prints because of pilfering by this time. Would have been quite a chore to fake those in the 1970's.

Thanks for that last link, SR. That article links to an actual paper on space radiation.

(I didn't work this out in detail at #23 because
a) I knew that a paper like that must exist; and
b) I learned most of what I know about radiation back in the days of "REMs", and translating my back-of-the-envelope figurin' into the current SI units ("Sieverts") makes my brain hurt. I always think I've dropped a decimal point someplace....)

StormRaven: The data from the Chandrayaan-1 suggest that radiation may not be as much of an issue as I originally thought. I don't know enough about the blast crater or direction of the shadows to comment.

krazy4katz: The Apollo 1 explosion occurred on earth. I don't see any reason to doubt it occurred. I am also not doubting that astronauts have gone to the space station which is in low earth orbit.

I am wondering about my concern about radiation based on some of the other links. I will have to look into that further.

I guess my point was that those astronauts died in a program that was planned to put people on the moon. Otherwise why were we spending all that money and risking/sacrificing their lives? What an outrage that would be! Why did NASA make changes to the cabin atmosphere to prevent it from happening again if the program was fake? Why did we risk the lives of valuable test pilots? Apollo 13 actually orbited the moon before limping home using the lunar module.

There was no space station at that time, although there were plans for one. But those rockets were not built for going to near Earth orbit.

As far as the radiation goes, I have heard of what these other people have mentioned but didn't feel as though I was competent to discuss it.

I suppose my perspective comes from living through that era in the US and paying close attention (which I did). There is absolutely no way it could be fake. There were too many challenges, advances, failures etc. No government could possibly have the budget to fake all that in the 60s.

Best wishes,

k4k

I find it interesting that things like this are always considered on-offs. But there is a consistent anti-authority, conspiracy theory strain in left thinking. It shows up in vaccines, GMOs—and in stuff like this. I get that it's not as monolithic or self-enclosed as right-wing conspiracy thinking, about evolution, birtherism and so forth. But it's not entirely dissimilar. When you think the world is fundamentally screwed up, and controlled by powerful forces that are hostile to you, you can end up in intellectual cul-de-sacs like this.

krazy4katz: I think they were intending to have a manned flight to the moon during Apollo 1. It would have been only later that it was stopped, if the theory is correct and we did not actually go to the moon.

Considering the radiation questions brought up here, I'm now undecided about whether we went or not.

But there is a consistent anti-authority, conspiracy theory strain in left thinking.

Huh. I'd hadn't really thought of the left/right axis as being pertinent to the various flavors of conspiracy theory; I had them all lumped together as different manifestations of the stock American anti-authority/anti-expert thinking.

I suppose there are distinct cultural differences between adherents of the various theories; so I suppose it's possible that the particular theory that attracts a particular adherent correlates with other (more obviously) political attitudes....

>33 AsYouKnow_Bob: Huh. I'd hadn't really thought of the left/right axis as being pertinent to the various flavors of conspiracy theory; I had them all lumped together as different manifestations of the stock American anti-authority/anti-expert thinking.

Me either. I've always thought the mindset was there before the message, and the manifestations -- from aliens in Roswell to Lunar landing hoaxes to who shot Kennedy to Elvis really is alive -- are, as you say, the cultural aspect of a particular kind of anti-authority impulse.

I think it is healthy to have an anti-authority perspective. We should get in the habit of expecting authorities to prove their points with evidence.

The more I am looking at the various claims, from what I happen to find on the internet, I'm not sure anymore. The radiation issue is key for me. That means i will have to learn more than I care to know about radiation to resolve my doubts.

What strikes me is that I find myself wondering to what extent I can trust what is being said on either side. One of the things I've noticed about my own reaction is as soon as an authority drifts into satire, they lose credibility for me. I think that's a positive thing although I do enjoy satire.

In the case of the moon landings, it doesn't matter much today what happened. What matters is, could we have been fooled?

>35 FrankHubeny: We should get in the habit of expecting authorities to prove their points with evidence.

I'm in favor of anyone making a claim being able to prove their points with evidence.

One thing I do notice about conspiracy theories in general is that they tend to rely more on negative evidence than on positive evidence. The classic example of this would be the Shakespeare-didn't-write-Shakespeare theories, which focus on the many ways that William Shakespeare could not have been the person to write all the plays, rather than providing a single solid piece of positive evidence that someone else did.

Although I can't remember the name, I did see the movie casting doubt on whether Shakespeare wrote the works he is credited with writing. It is similar to doubting whether there were moon landings.

The radiation issue is key for me. That means i will have to learn more than I care to know about radiation to resolve my doubts.

Read the link about radiation I provided in #25, and if you really want to go in depth, read the paper linked to that. The amount of radiation an astronaut would be subjected to on a 10 day lunar trip is 1,200 millirems, or just a tiny bit more than the 1,000 millirems you'd experience in a full body CT scan.

34: I recall reading that the primary predictor for whether someone would subscribe to a conspiracy theory was not political leanings, but rather whether the individual in question subscribed to another conspiracy theory. It seems that once you go down the rabbit hole, all of the conspiracy theories start to look attractive.

Huh. I'd hadn't really thought of the left/right axis as being pertinent to the various flavors of conspiracy theory; I had them all lumped together as different manifestations of the stock American anti-authority/anti-expert thinking.

I think they're both. But conspiracy theories do line up along left-right lines. That is, they guy who thinks social security numbers are a plot to take away his guns, or that UN "world heritage" designation is part of a conspiracy to put the world government in charge of Montana, is not the same as the guy who thinks the government created AIDS, that GMOs are poisoning our food supply, or that the US staged 9/11 in order to seize Afghanistan's natural gas. Extreme politics is a decent predictor of whether or not you subscribe to conspiracy theories, and an EXCELLENT predictor of which ones you may fall victim to, and which you never would.

I don't know where the moon landing fits—probably across the spectrum. But conspiracy theories are more prominent at the margins--moderates aren't conspiracy theorists in the same numbers. Atwood is quite far left, and distrusts the US government so thoroughly she is apparently willing to believe the US stages moon landings.

Do you think the idea that a specific GMO, or rather some of the consequences of using it, is seriously endangering the monarch butterfly as a conspiracy theory?

There are always going to be shades. Do I think the US government tilted its information about the moon landings in any way? Sure. Do I think genetic modification is ipso facto safe? No. The conspiracy theory comes in somewhere farther on, and requires a fundamental reorientation toward conspiracy.

>40 timspalding: Extreme politics is a decent predictor of whether or not you subscribe to conspiracy theories

That suggests that extreme political views are somehow inherently irrational. I don't think I can make that leap.

Rather than linking the process to politics, one could link it to one's approach to puzzles, say jigsaw puzzles. I tend to find them fascinating although a waste of time. They involve setting up hypotheses and testing them. Does this piece fit here? Perform an experiment: try to make the piece fit. Then either it does (theory is confirmed) or doesn't (theory is falsified) and one moves on.

In the case of conspiracy theories the puzzle is more complicated, but it doesn't matter much if it ever gets solved, much like the jigsaw puzzle.

That suggests that extreme political views are somehow inherently irrational. I don't think I can make that leap.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they are a predictor. I think the basic dynamic is one of extreme alienation. An extreme of the left or the right is deeply alienated from the mainstream of life and indeed of power. The world, the government, the church--whatever--are not just wrong, and correctable, they are flipped over. At the same time, the more extreme your views they more they tend to become "you," not merely "what you believe." Once you believe the government is fundamentally wrong and intrinsically hostile to your beliefs and person, the distance to believing it's against you in conspiratorial ways is much less.

>45 timspalding: Once you believe the government is fundamentally wrong and intrinsically hostile to your beliefs and person, the distance to believing it's against you in conspiratorial ways is much less.

Okay, maybe. But I get stuck on the fact that you can arrive at an extreme political position by logic, whereas conspiracy theories seem to demand a rejection of logic.

I don't know. I find they often involve very rigid applications of logic. It's very good logic to notice inconsistencies. There are "inconsistencies" in the moon stuff, the JFK stuff, 9/11, etc. It's takes a wider lens to understand that big, complex news events are not smooth things. There will be holes. There will be coincidences. There will be angles and opinions.

I find it difficult to reject conspiracy theories in a world where the Tuskegee Experiment really happened.

The problem with the vast majority of conspiracy theories is that they require a large number of people to work, and the majority of those who would have to be involved gain nothing by remaining silent.

The Tuskegee Experiments were well known and documented; it's just (just!) that the subjects were not informed of what was going on.

Conspiracies that DO work do so because everyone involved has a vested interest in making them work and not telling anyone. That's a pretty high bar, and usually only works with a small group.

It's very good logic to notice inconsistencies. There are "inconsistencies" in the moon stuff, the JFK stuff, 9/11, etc.

Except that in almost all of the cases the alleged inconsistencies are the result of the conspiracy theorist's lack of understanding of things like basic physics or are even based upon completely made up "facts" (Kennedy conspiracy theorists seem especially prone to this).

Except that in almost all of the cases the alleged inconsistencies are the result of the conspiracy theorist's lack of understanding of things like basic physics or are even based upon completely made up "facts" (Kennedy conspiracy theorists seem especially prone to this).

Well, yes and no. In the case of the JFK shooting, it is anomalous that his head snapped as it did, and witnesses heard all manner of gunshots coming. But shots do weird things, and crowds aren't scientific instruments. Or, to take 9/11, it's odd that the building that was hit first fell second. Big, complex events will generate questions. So you look at the questions, do the math and assess the probabilities. None of these things are inexplicable, if you get to it and do the work.

In the case of the JFK shooting in particular, there were some aspects that contemporaries rightly focused on, especially Lee Harvey Oswald's extensive contacts with the Soviet Union, and the fact that Oswald was assassinated himself almost immediately after! The US government brought a lot of resources to the table to look into it, and researchers have been doing so ever since.

In the case of the JFK shooting, it is anomalous that his head snapped as it did, and witnesses heard all manner of gunshots coming.

It isn't anomalous that his head snapped back. It is just that people don't know what gunshot injuries to the head look like. As I said, this is one of those things where the "inconsistency" is the result of the conspiracy theorists not having a basic understanding of the subject matter.

In the case of the JFK shooting in particular, there were some aspects that contemporaries rightly focused on, especially Lee Harvey Oswald's extensive contacts with the Soviet Union, and the fact that Oswald was assassinated himself almost immediately after!

But those aren't inconsistencies. Those are coincidences.

>53 StormRaven:

We don't really disagree, I don't think. But you're taking an overly severe line. Most of the time when someone is shot on one side of the head, the head does not snap in that direction. On balance, that's surprising. It's not merely surprising for people who don't know physics, it's unusual—but obviously not impossible, or even THAT unusual—overall. My point is that in a big complex event, unusual things will happen. That's the odds.

Me: In the case of the JFK shooting in particular, there were some aspects that contemporaries rightly focused on, especially Lee Harvey Oswald's extensive contacts with the Soviet Union, and the fact that Oswald was assassinated himself almost immediately after!

SR: But those aren't inconsistencies. Those are coincidences.

That is quite wrong, and really quite surprising. Perhaps you don't know what "coincidence" means.

It's not a coincidence that Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, changed his mind and so forth. He didn't find himself in Russia because a bus he was on went the wrong direction, or something. The various investigations had every reason in the world to worry that what he did was in some way connected to his defections back and forth. And indeed, they were related. Oswald does indeed seem to have been motivated to kill Kennedy—and before that Edwin Walker—on political grounds, mixed up to an uncertain (but apparently very considerable) degree with an overall mental instability, which, frankly is also indicated by his defections and so forth. Researchers do not, however, believe the Soviets were involved.

As for Ruby shooting Oswald, I'm not sure that's a coincidence either. Are you of the opinion Ruby's gun went off accidentally?

#13: (3) the question of why we haven't gone back to the moon since the early 1970s, and

That's irrelevant. If we had faked it, why didn't we continue to fake it?

(4) why no other country has been able to replicate our performance. I mean, we build a nuclear weapon and we can't stop other countries from doing the same.

Nuclear bombs are pretty trivial once you know how and have the uranium or plutonium. It's a plutonium sphere just under 10 kg that is compressed with high explosives with timers that while complex for the 1940s, are pocket change today. And being a nuclear nation gives you power over other nations.

Going to the moon is a lot more complex then building a nuclear weapon, and who cares? That's the reason we haven't been back since the 1970s; it's very expensive for photos of people driving around the moon. The main reason NASA would want to send a manned mission back to the moon would be PR; even if you tossing money at them, there's still better science to be done spending that on unmanned missions or manned missions to orbit.

There could be some interesting things done with low gravity research on a moonbase, but research barely gets funded on earth, so I'd have to agree that nobody really cares enough to go back.

>55 prosfilaes: I am also wondering why the Soviets stopped their space program during the same time.

The radiation issue is the one that interests me the most about the question of whether we went to the moon or not. I haven't had a chance to research it fully enough.

There seems to be evidence that we could go through the Van Allen radiation belts and be able to spend a few days subjected to cosmic and solar radiation outside the protective magnetosphere the earth has and survive as long as the astronauts have, but I need to know more about radiation. I know one could say it is easy to get that information, but it takes time to digest it and then one just stops (as I have done, but I will be walking to the local library shortly so maybe they have something).

I worked in the space radiation field for about 20 years up until 2007, mostly worrying about radiation effects in robotic spacecraft electronics. But I also spent some time working on high energy neutron production in materials from cosmic rays - worrying about neutron exposure of astronauts from cosmic rays interacting with structures around the astronauts, even eventually getting a PhD in it.

So I thought I'd spend some time to write up a description of the basic problem, expected exposure and possible health effects from radiation in space. But on looking at Wikipedia, they have a pretty darn good write-up already. I'd start here and follow links as needed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays

Bottom line: it's possible to manage astronaut exposure so that the risk of cancer due to space radiation is no worse than the risk to terrestrial radiation workers for lunar missions of days duration or low Earth orbit missions such as the ISS of months duration. A trip to Mars or an asteroid would incur significantly higher risk, and may include health effects other than cancer, given the much longer duration. It's an active research area for NASA and the scientific community right now. I encourage those interested to look up some of the references attached to the Wikipedia pages.

The radiation issue is the one that interests me the most about the question of whether we went to the moon or not. I haven't had a chance to research it fully enough.

Consider your thought process here. You admit that you don't know much of anything about radiation in space, and yet this is the foundation of your doubts. How is it that you can both not know anything about a subject and use that subject to fuel doubts about what is asserted to be a historical incident? That's a little like saying that because you haven't ever seen anyone ride a horse across Asia, you don't think the Mongols did it.

>58 drneutron: Thank you for that interesting link. Also, I now know why you call yourself drneutron.

;-)

k4k

>58 drneutron: I enjoyed the link. It is better than Gale and Lax's "Radiation What It Is, What You Need to Know" that I found in the library today.

>59 StormRaven: Actually people who believe the moon landings occur do the same thing. They don't know and yet they believe. I don't know and I doubt.

>60 krazy4katz: yup. :)

Saying that one doesn't know that the moon landings occurred while true isn't very helpful. Do you also question if Obama exists? If not, why not? Have you ever met him in person? Why would you trust anyone else's word on the matter, especially the media?

Actually people who believe the moon landings occur do the same thing. They don't know and yet they believe. I don't know and I doubt.

The difference is, they don't know, and believe because there is overwhelming evidence that it occurred and zero evidence that it is a hoax. They might have questions, but they then go and see if those questions hold water, and almost immediately discover that they don't. You, on the other hand, don't seem to know anything about it, and seem to have little inclination to find out.

Do you believe that Abraham Lincoln existed? Do you believe that the United States went to war against itself in the 1860s? Why do you believe those things? They are less well supported than the Apollo moon landings.

Sorry to be a bit off topic but speaking of hoaxes:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/26/the_grave_of_jesus_in_shingo...

Not that I have any data one way or the other.

#57: I am also wondering why the Soviets stopped their space program during the same time.

They lost. After they blew up a huge rocket and killed a couple hundred people, probably including people they needed, how much more money and many people was it worth throwing at the problem, just to secure the silver? And the Soviet Union of the 1970s was not a terribly affluent place.

I think we can safely assume that the Soviets was keeping a very close eye on the US Space program, and they would have made a lot of noise if they suspected foul play.

>64 StormRaven: The difference is, they don't know, and believe because there is overwhelming evidence that it occurred and zero evidence that it is a hoax.

When I say that I don't know if the moon landings occurred, it is simply that--I don't know and this comes after I hear doubts expressed by others. If those others had not expressed their doubts, I probably wouldn't have any.

This is not to say that I know the moon landings did not occur. They might have.

That there is "zero evidence that it is a hoax" is not true. You may not be convinced by the evidence presented, or the arguments, but it still exists.

My grandfather went to his grave believing it was hoax. A big government plot.

That there is "zero evidence that it is a hoax" is not true.

Actually, it is true. All of the supposed moon landing hoax evidence has been thoroughly and completely debunked. Every claim advanced by moon landing hoax supporters has been shown to be the result of fundamental misunderstandings of things like basic physics - like your worries about radiation exposure. Multiple people have given you multiple resources to educate yourself about this, and you still say "you have doubts". Apparently, you don't feel the need to educate yourself on the subject, and your doubts aren't actually rooted in the issue of radiation exposure because if they were, you'd have read what was given to you and realized your concerns are not based on reality.

>69 markhagner: "My grandfather went to his grave believing it was hoax. A big government plot."

I only heard about this less than a year ago when someone asked me to listen to a youtube video, "What Happened on the Moon": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79mIGx9Ib4.

I don't really care about what happened on the moon, but I find the way one responds to evidence interesting.

Strange, a new member > 71 makes many provocative claims about science et. al. Not just on this thread only! And even about Evolution, which I would have thought was a non-controversial topic.

and peoples respond to him

Yet when I Heroically suggest, "...the Moon is made of green cheese..."

You all laugh at me.

Guido.

I find the way one responds to evidence interesting.

Maybe you should start by referring to some. Thus far, you've done nothing but make evidence-free claims.

#71: I don't really care about what happened on the moon, but I find the way one responds to evidence interesting.

I'm getting a little tired of a lot of skepticism in practice, because no one seems to want to actually work out a logical skeptical system and deal with the fact that proper skepticism means not accepting a lot of things, not just denying things that are popular to deny. Nor is it throwing some questions out and smirking because they're claiming that reality doesn't work the way you think it does, even though you've never actually studied it all that deeply and they have.

>72 guido47:

Guido, I believe you! The reason we didn't know it was green cheese is that all the photographs, movies and TVs were in black and white in those days. Also, with those silly helmets, the astronauts couldn't smell it. Perfectly obvious.

k4k

>74 prosfilaes: It is OK to be tired of skepticism. That is one position. I happen to like skepticism.

What I find interesting is how people respond to others who do not believe the same things that they believe. They are now challenged to defend their own positions, whatever they may be. Some typical defenses that don't work, but are still tried, are the following:

1) Claiming there is something wrong with the person holding the differing belief.
2) Claiming the other person has no evidence whatsoever.
3) Claiming the opponent is too stupid or lazy to accept their evidence.
4) Appealing to the authorities from whom they got their evidence.

At some point one just has to tolerate those with different viewpoints.

>76 FrankHubeny: 2) Claiming the other person has no evidence whatsoever.

The usual problem with skepticism is that it can't provide valid evidence, since it has no systematic criteria by which it can judge the validity of evidence.

>77 southernbooklady:

The way I look at evidence is the way a juror would be instructed to look at evidence in the US courts. As a juror, I don't have to accept the evidence. It is my responsibility whether I accept it or not and I would only have to discuss it with the other jurors in a closed room. So evidence is broad.

Often "valid" evidence is simply evidence that fits the mindset, or "systematic criteria", of one of the parties. Since the opponent has a different mindset, that evidence would not be valid.

>78 FrankHubeny: The way I look at evidence is the way a juror would be instructed to look at evidence in the US courts

Well that's fine as far as it goes. But it is not how science looks at evidence.

The way I look at evidence is the way a juror would be instructed to look at evidence in the US courts.

From your posts, no, you don't. And I say that as a lawyer who has actually worked in courtrooms in the U.S.

#76: I happen to like skepticism.

I don't really believe that; I think you like to doubt things it's cool to doubt, even if they're more amply established then things you don't doubt. If we dismiss the Moon landing, why should we believe in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

At some point one just has to tolerate those with different viewpoints.

No, people don't. People can argue it every time the dissenter brings it up, and make it clear that this is not a supported position.

>79 southernbooklady: "Well that's fine as far as it goes. But it is not how science looks at evidence."

"Science" can't look at anything. Only people can.

If one puts a nihil obstat or some other censorship label such as "valid" upon evidence, one is bowing down to an authority who does the labeling.

>81 prosfilaes: Is there something to doubt about the Cuban Missile Crisis? I don't know much about it.

I only realized less than a year ago that people actually existed who doubted we went to the moon. After looking at the documentary, "What Happened on the Moon", I can see why there might be doubts.

81: Having looked at YesNoMaybe's posts over several threads, I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't one of skepticism or lack thereof, but rather of education in the subjects he is opining upon.

This shows up even when YesNoMaybe is grazing by an example like his "looks at evidence like a juror" statement. Here's the problem with his claim: The kinds of evidence we are talking about here is evidence that no juror would ever be asked to decide upon. The sort of evidence being discussed would be classified as expert testimony, and would be vetted by the judge, using some fairly strict rules, before it ever got to a jury. Under the applicable standards, everything that has been referred to on this thread purporting to be evidence of a moon landing hoax would have been tossed out already - none of it even comes close to the standards used for expert testimony. Contrary to YesNoMaybe's assertion, evidence is not nearly as broad as he thinks it is when it comes to what juries are allowed to deal with.

But this goes to YesNoMaybe's education on these subjects. The problem isn't that YesNoMaybe isn't understanding the arguments made by posters like you and southernbooklady and you just need to explain things better. The problem is, I think, that YesNoMaybe doesn't even have sufficient foundational knowledge on these subjects that he would be able to understand you even if you gave him a perfect explanation.

After looking at the documentary, "What Happened on the Moon", I can see why there might be doubts.

Here's the problem: All of the claims made in that "documentary" were debunked decades ago. None of them hold up to any kind of scrutiny. David Percy's claims concerning the lunar photographs, for example, are laughable at best.

#83: Is there something to doubt about the Cuban Missile Crisis? I don't know much about it.

Exactly. You're doubting the Apollo landing because someone told you to. Without stretching the truth at all, the concept that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a "crisis" at all comes down to JFK and Khrushchev actually being at odds instead of planning this before hand, to, say, (a) allow the US to pull its missiles out of Turkey without losing face, or (b) (more conspiratorial) to heat up the Cold War to cement the dictatorial power of both leaders (or in Khrushchev's case, a failed attempt to get Brezhnev and co. off his case) or (c) because it served the goals of the Masons/Illuminati/Trilateral Commission. (Of course the Trilateral Commission was around then; what, you going to believe the Trilateral Commission when they say otherwise?) With a little work, I could make a pretty convincing argument that the Cuban Missile Crisis was stage drama, with far less twisting of the evidence then it would take to ignore the moon landings. But you refuse to doubt the Cuban Missile Crisis unless someone spoon-feeds it to you.

>82 FrankHubeny: "Science" can't look at anything. Only people can.

Many of those people being scientists.

If one puts a nihil obstat or some other censorship label such as "valid" upon evidence, one is bowing down to an authority who does the labeling.

I'm all for questioning authority but it's not like "art for art's sake." A person must have a reason for doubt, and have evidence to show that the doubt is justified.

As an aside, I'll confess that I find pure philosophical skepticism (which I haven't seen on LT, anwway) a somewhat unsustainable philosophical stance. I've been wondering in my mind if there is a parallel between the idea of the skeptic and my personal philosophy of moral relativism. The moral realists tend to accuse me of having an unsustainable morality...meaning, I guess, I have no authority for my determination of what is or isn't good.

I'm wondering if a pure skepticism finds itself facing the same objections vis a vis empirical reality.

>82 FrankHubeny:
Now that's not fair. Of course you know southernbooklady meant scientists and that was just a short cut to get at the point. I get the feeling you are playing now rather than really interested in a discussion.

>86 prosfilaes: "You're doubting the Apollo landing because someone told you to. Without stretching the truth at all, the concept that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a "crisis" at all comes down to JFK and Khrushchev actually being at odds instead of planning this before hand"

Rather than look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, perhaps a better analogy with regard to evidence is the more recent Iraq war.

A decade ago the US argued before the United Nations that Iraq should be invaded claiming there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. On the ground, the inspectors sent by the United Nations could not find any evidence of WMD.

An invasion occurred, without UN involvement, and no weapons of mass destruction were found.

Assuming you were old enough to understand what was going on, how did you respond to that situation? Did you accept the UN evidence, that was more first hand, or did you accept the satellite evidence that required a theory to make it look like Iraq had WMD?

Specifically, how did you treat those who took a minority view that there were no WMD in Iraq?

Let's bring this back to whether we went to the moon. There is evidence from both sides. What I don't understand is why today, 40 years later, no one has gone back to the moon or even crossed the Van Allen radiation belts. Others claim, more theoretically, that it would be too hard to fake the event.

Just like WMDs in Iraq there is evidence on both sides. Unlike them, we don't have to take a stand one way or the other because today the question of whether we went to the moon or not doesn't matter much anymore. We can use this as an example, or even practice, of how we treat evidence and how we treat those who take a minority position.

>87 southernbooklady: "As an aside, I'll confess that I find pure philosophical skepticism (which I haven't seen on LT, anwway) a somewhat unsustainable philosophical stance. I've been wondering in my mind if there is a parallel between the idea of the skeptic and my personal philosophy of moral relativism. The moral realists tend to accuse me of having an unsustainable morality...meaning, I guess, I have no authority for my determination of what is or isn't good."

I'm not playing devil's advocate for its own sake or being skeptical as a philosophical prank just to keep an argument going. For this particular issue, I happen to doubt that we went to the moon. I am either right or not. We may find out once the information is declassified a decade or so from now.

I don't know if there is an authority or not for making moral decisions. However, I suspect there is, and we access that authority through our consciousness when we make moral decisions, but that authority would acknowledge that there are a lot of grey areas.

>89 FrankHubeny: What I don't understand is why today, 40 years later, no one has gone back to the moon

Because we've been busy exploring Mars?

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/curiosity-20140227/#.UxXbEfmwJnA

For this particular issue, I happen to doubt that we went to the moon. I am either right or not.

You're not, for the simple reason that your "doubts" are based upon complete ignorance.

There is evidence from both sides.

No, there isn't. You mistake claims for evidence. All of the evidence is on the side of "we went to the moon". The claims that we didn't go to the moon are based upon faulty understandings or complete ignorance. It has been pointed out several times that the radiation issue you are obsessed with is not actually an issue, and you have been referred to actual scientific studies that have been done on this exact topic which show conclusively that there is not an issue. And yet based on nothing but fondling your own balls you continue to talk about this like there is some controversy. There isn't.

>89 FrankHubeny: And how long did it take the truth to come out? It just isn't credible that such a secret as a fake Moon landing could be kept by the number of people who had to have been in on it for such a long time.

> 89 What I don't understand is why today, 40 years later, no one has gone back to the moon

The short* version:

The decision to go to the Moon, made in 1960-61, was conceived in very narrow political terms. In effect, JFK looked at NASA and said: "What really impressive thing can we do in space before the Soviets can do it?" The answer was "Land a man on the Moon, and bring him home, by the end of the decade."

The hardware, and the mission plans, used in Project Apollo were created to achieve that specific, very limited result in that specific, very short time frame. They were a technological solution to the problem of creating a "flags-and-footprints" photo opportunity, and a chance for whoever was president in 1968 to have that phone call with two Americans standing un the dust of another world.

There were -- and are -- other reasons to go to the moon (science, resource extraction, learning to live on other worlds). We could, in 1961, have planned to go there for those reasons (instead or too). We could, if we wanted to, decide to do so today. Then or now, however, going for those reasons would have required a different kind of technological solution (Heywood Floyd's trip to the Moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey is an Apollo-era sketch of one possibility). The solution -- whatever the details looked like -- would have been scalable and sustainable, but it would have taken longer and cost more than Project Apollo.

The Cold War atmosphere of 1961-1962 (think Castro, Berlin Wall, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis) made it just barely possible to create a consensus for spending the modest-by-comparison amounts of time and money we did spend for a program like Project Apollo, with a finite goal (go, and come back, once) and a definite time horizon. Public interest in and Congressional support lasted exactly as long as it took for Project Apollo to deliver on JFK's challenge . . . and then utterly collapsed.

Then and since, the majority of Americans and the vast majority of national-level politicians, haven't believed that going back is worth the expenditure of time and treasure that would be necessary to do it.

------------

*For the long version, see Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon; Francis French and Colin Burgess's excellent "People's History of Spaceflight" series, starting with Into That Silent Sea; or, if you really want to, the relevant chapters of my Imagining Flight or Rockets and Missiles: The Life Story of a Technology.

>89 FrankHubeny: An invasion occurred, without UN involvement, and no weapons of mass destruction were found.

So the same people who allegedly put a man on the moon said. And absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; there are some people who claim that under the vast sands of Iraq we will yet find some chemical weapons that Saddam hastily buried at some point.

Did you accept the UN evidence, that was more first hand, or did you accept the satellite evidence that required a theory to make it look like Iraq had WMD?

Huh? The UN evidence requires a theory to come to a conclusion: i.e. that the UN inspectors had looked in all the places where chemical weapons might be found.

Let's bring this back to whether we went to the moon. There is evidence from both sides.

As I said, you doubt it because someone told you to. Do you believe in Bigfoot, Nessie, the Cottingley Fairies? Do you believe in Charlemagne? No, really, Heribert Illig has explained why he never existed, along with the years 614-911. It's not rationally skeptical to say "there is evidence from both sides" and accept them as equal, and then swallow whole events that you just happen to have not read the counter evidence.

>90 FrankHubeny: We may find out once the information is declassified a decade or so from now.

What could they possibly release, claiming they're actual declassified documents, that would make you change your mind? You believe they can fake a moon landing, but not some more documents?

Talk about a wandering thread...

First: there's no reason to believe that the moon landings 'didn't happen'. You can certainly believe they were faked, but that fails a lot of logic tests, as well as flies in the face of all the evidence. Just because Capricorn One gave us a cool aerial duel between helicopters and a biplane isn't enough. Not even with Telly Savalas.

The assassination of JFK is a bit more complicated. Family of Secrets is a well-researched book that poses a lot of questions about the event, and what people were doing at the time. It also fits that IF such a conspiracy happened, the conspirators would have considerable incentive to remain very, very quiet about their roles in the event. (Unlike the moon landings, where quite a few of the interested parties had no reason not to prove fraud, if they could.) (Note that Baker does not say there was a conspiracy; he merely documents inconsistencies in the currently-accepted stories, which is what journalism is all about. Conspiracy is certainly a possibility, but there are other answers as well.)

Conspiracies, as I mentioned before, only stay secret when all parties have an incentive to remain silent. The moon landings simply don't provide that incentive to every single person who would have had to been involved.

Compare to the 'Kenyan' hypothesis of President Obama's birth, which would have required numerous low-level employees to particpate and remain silent, without any reason for them to do so.

>96 prosfilaes: "So the same people who allegedly put a man on the moon said. And absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; there are some people who claim that under the vast sands of Iraq we will yet find some chemical weapons that Saddam hastily buried at some point."

So, do you believe that the Iraqis had WMD?

I agree with you that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is basically why one should be an agnostic rather than an atheist if one doubts in the existence of any gods.

And regarding whether we went to the moon or not, I an agnostic.

#98: So, do you believe that the Iraqis had WMD?

Irrelevant. We're talking about your epistemology, not yours. If you don't believe the Iraqis had WMD in 2001, why?

And regarding whether we went to the moon or not, I an agnostic.

Then why aren't you agnostic on so many other things? Do you believe the French BEA when they issued a report about why Air France Flight 447 crashed? Have you ever suspected that the attackers of Rodney King were in the pay of a foreign government (or our own, depending on which way you lean)? Doubting one of the most documented events in human history should demand that you also doubt most accounts of contemporary and historical fact.

What could they possibly release, claiming they're actual declassified documents, that would make you change your mind? You believe they can fake a moon landing, but not some more documents?

You're looking at this the wrong way. YesNoMaybe isn't expecting declassified documents to emerge that support the "official" story. He's expecting that the declassified documents will show that the Moon landings didn't happen and he'll be able to say "Aha! I knew it!".

Effectively, like with all threads he has participated in so far, YesNoMaybe is simply assuming he is correct and expects the evidence supporting his position to emerge at some later date.

>99 prosfilaes: "Then why aren't you agnostic on so many other things? Do you believe the French BEA when they issued a report about why Air France Flight 447 crashed? Have you ever suspected that the attackers of Rodney King were in the pay of a foreign government (or our own, depending on which way you lean)? Doubting one of the most documented events in human history should demand that you also doubt most accounts of contemporary and historical fact."

What makes you think I don't doubt other things as well?

It looks like there are four general, somewhat overlapping, ways one can approach a topic and the reason one picks one or the other as dominant is because one feels the need to take a position:

1) Believer.
2) Unbeliever (atheist).
3) Doubter (agnostic).
4) Indifferent. (This circles back to 1) believer.)

Prior to being shown the documentary about the moon landing, I was in the first and fourth category. I didn't even know when the moon landings occurred. That is where I am now with Flight 447 or Rodney King or many other topics one might bring up.

Now that I saw the documentary, I am in the third category. What I learned from this thread is that it may be physically possible for an astronaut to reach the moon because the radiation is not that high although potentially damaging. That doesn't mean we went there.

With regards to WMDs in Iraq, I am in the Unbeliever (atheist) category. After the UN inspectors showed there were no WMDs in Iraq, that should have settled the issue. Unfortunately, it didn't. In this particular case since I lived through the events as an adult at the time and was repeatedly asked for my stand on the issue, I had to come up with one.

After the UN inspectors showed there were no WMDs in Iraq, that should have settled the issue

But the UN inspectors didn't show that there were no WMD's in Iraq. They simply didn't find the ones that were there.

Now that I saw the documentary, I am in the third category.

Almost every historical event has a "doubter" with as credible a story as the "documentary" you linked to. Why aren't you agnostic on, for example, the existence of Charlemange and the 6th-9th centuries? The phantom time hypothesis is at least as well-supported as the moon landing hoax theories.

#103

The phantom time hypothesis can easily be explained and supported, c.f.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

104: Has anyone considered whether YesNoMaybe is actually Otis Eugene Ray? I think that is the case here.

This all reminds me of the Robert Heinlein quote, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

But I really, really don't understand why this is happening. The moon landings were in plain sight. Why can't this be communicated from one human being who watched ALL of them obsessively (that would be me) to another human being who didn't but speaks the same language?

>102 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "But the UN inspectors didn't show that there were no WMD's in Iraq. They simply didn't find the ones that were there."

I'm curious whether you thought there were WMD in Iraq even after the UN inspectors looked for them and did not find them a decade ago?

>107 krazy4katz: "But I really, really don't understand why this is happening. The moon landings were in plain sight. Why can't this be communicated from one human being who watched ALL of them obsessively (that would be me) to another human being who didn't but speaks the same language?"

They weren't actually in plain sight. They were a show on TV for people to watch.

And they faked lift off at Kennedy and the monitoring from Mission Control in Texas and they faked the wives watching and they faked the stages of the rockets separating from the command module and the time it took to get there and the moon rocks and the ability to jump in one-sixth gravity in ways you cannot do on earth kicking up dust in slow motion and the splashdowns and the burning of the heat shields upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere and the communication blackout during re-entry and the communication blackout on the other side of the moon and the views of earth from the lunar surface and…and…etc. In addition no one ever found any place they could have filmed something so elaborate on earth.

There is no way the lunar lander could take off from earth without a much larger gas tank because of the difference in gravity.
We saw them docking with the command module. We have maybe 10 astronauts (not exactly sure) still alive who say they went to the moon, wrote books about it etc. No inconsistencies in their stories, nothing!

Your hypothesis has zero facts behind it and so many strikes against it no scientist would ever believe it.

I'm curious whether you thought there were WMD in Iraq even after the UN inspectors looked for them and did not find them a decade ago?

No, I was actually inclined to think that there were no WMD's in Iraq before we invaded.

Unfortunately, the analogy to your poor thinking still holds.

#109: They weren't actually in plain sight. They were a show on TV for people to watch.

Funny enough, I don't believe the UN inspections made CSPAN.

They weren't actually in plain sight. They were a show on TV for people to watch.

Actually, no, they were in plain sight. With a reasonably powerful amateur telescope, you could (and still can) see the landing sites on the Moon. Once again, your lack of knowledge concerning the subject you are discussing trips you up.

>110 krazy4katz:

I'm pretty sure they sent up the rockets and even brought back lunar samples or dropped off instruments to reflect signals back to earth.

The only part of the event I doubt is whether the missions were manned.

>111 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "No, I was actually inclined to think that there were no WMD's in Iraq before we invaded."

So was I. In any case, one looks at what evidence one can find and makes a decision.

There were many people who thought Iraq had WMDs even after the UN inspections effectively falsified the idea. In their defense, although their position was shown to be wrong after the military search on the ground also came up with no WMDs, they had competing evidence from their governments (especially the US) to try to discredit what the UN inspectors had to offer.

In their defense, although their position was shown to be wrong after the military search on the ground also came up with no WMDs, they had competing evidence from their governments (especially the US) to try to discredit what the UN inspectors had to offer.

That was just a television show. According to your metrics, you have no real evidence that this was actually the case.

The 2 situations are not even close.

The "WMDs in Iraq" rested on one unreliable secret source (whether the US government realized that and covered it up, or they were just plain stupid, is another story) and Saddam Hussein's refusal to provide clarity by preventing UN inspectors from entering the suspected sites. Ultimately there was no evidence to support the existence of WMDs. The moon landing hoax scenario would require hundreds of perfectly normal people lying for over 30 years. Not to mention the documentation of the "cover-up" that would have to be hidden.

Not even close.

>114 FrankHubeny:
Unmanned sample return missions are extremely difficult. Around the time of Apollo the Soviets managed to bring back less than 1 pound of lunar soil with their robotic missions. In contrast, the Apollo missions brought back over 800 pounds of rocks which have been studied in many labs around the world. Even today, we don't have the capability to bring back samples from Mars. They are planning a sample return mission but it is still years away.

So what about Apollo 13? I mean, these were unmanned missions, so they sent up a tape recorder with the first one so the world could hear the astronauts. So did they deliberately sabotage the second moon mission? I mean, it had to be deliberate, since otherwise the tape would have been talking about the successful mission while their ship disintegrated. Sans manned help, how did Apollo 13 ever get back to Earth? Did they have any plans on what to do if it hit the moon real hard--just shoot James A. Lovell and crew?

>119 prosfilaes:

I can't remember what the manned moon landing hoax explanation for Apollo 13 was. I'd probably have to review the documentary again. They could have been in low earth orbit and had problems.

There need not have been a tape, but a conversion between people on earth or in earth orbit.

>118 RabidGerbil:

Yes, the Soviets returned material from the moon. That shows it can be done. If I understand your argument, is it mainly quantity of material that requires human attendance in gathering lunar samples?

>117 krazy4katz:

The only reason I brought up WMDs in Iraq was because someone asked what I thought of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I actually don't think much about it, but i do remember the Iraq war and so discussed the issue of evidence with respect to that event.

They could have been in low earth orbit and had problems.

Why did they keep them in space for an extra four days after they had a malfunction?

How did they fake the time lag for communications? How did they fake the photos taken of the Service Module explosion?

>120 FrankHubeny: I can help answer your question about the US vs. Soviet quantity.

Yes, humans would have to be involved for the amount and size of rocks returned to the earth. I have had the good fortune to see first hand some of the thin sections made from lunar rocks under a microscope. Our professor was well contacted,

For some perspective if you are very careful a rock the size of an orange or a grapefruit yields a thin section that fits a standard slide. We know these were made in the 60's and 70's because they were mounted with a cyanide based resin that turns blue with age, they were bright blue to the naked eye. We also know they are lunar rocks because they were compositionally identical to lunar meteorites but don't show signs having every been exposed to the Earth's atmosphere. To construct a thin section of this size and quality, would require a master craftsman but also at minimum a rock the size of a football (maybe three good sections, our class had a dozen to look at). This single rock would weigh about 8 to 10 lbs. With most current technology and advance engineering of the 21st century we have managed to build and equip a 1-ton rover that can collect a sample of rock no bigger then your pinky and that's not even coming home. Yet with 1960's basic transistor technology NASA not only launched a rover to the moon that could not only out collect modern day rovers but then could send the material back home not once but hundreds of times? Or is it hundreds of rovers that collected the wide ranging samples we have today in our museums? Humans are the only things in the late 1960's to early 70's that could not only pick the rocks from the many diverse locations but could also pick the damn things up.

I think you missed the on-ramp to skepticism a few miles back and have detoured willful ignorance.

Yeah, as I wait up for a kid to come home, I'm giving this a minute's thought, much more than it deserves...

- first off, the Apollo program was not just a TV show: several million people saw the launches, in person. There were something like a quarter million official guests. So we know as well as we know anything that we at least built and launched lunar-capable rockets. Thousand of sailors saw the Command Modules return and splash down, right on time. Hundreds of thousands of people worked on various aspects of Apollo, and successfully cashed the paychecks they got for their work. The money was spent to go to the moon; is there ANY evidence, ANY audit trail that would have paid for the fakery?

- OK, what about the amateur astronomers who have since seen various Saturn third stages out in trans-lunar space? There's one that's in a complicated dance through the L1 point; it does a few orbits relatively close to earth before getting tossed back out. Why would we bother to launch multiple Saturn Vs to lunar space if we weren't going to the moon? Heck, there's at least one late S-IVB that we crashed onto the moon, to listen for the seismic shock.

- I would expect that amateurs monitored the telemetry from that impact. How would you begin to fake that?

- If the Apollo missions were faked, then they're also faking the current LRO mission - you know, the one that photographed the landing sites -- including paths tramped out in the lunar dust?

So you're now talking a half-century-long conspiracy: for this to be true, then you're postulating that several generations of conspirators have been hired, gone to work for a full career, trained their replacements, and are now retired from the conspiracy program.

- The Apollo command modules are all on public exhibit - - and I'm willing to bet that the capsules from the lunar missions show more a LOT more ablation than do the two earth-orbiting capsules. Just as if they came in at 24,000 miles an hour, rather than at 18,000 mph.

#120: There need not have been a tape, but a conversion between people on earth or in earth orbit.

We have recordings from non-NASA actors on the ground recording the Apollo missions. Just from when the audio was available, you could tell the difference between a moon mission and earth orbit.

the Cuban Missile Crisis. I actually don't think much about it,

And as I've said, if you doubt the Moon mission, your default position on the Cuban Missile Crisis should not be simple trust. The question of a disputed issue from a contemporary perspective is nothing like an issue nigh-universally agreed-upon that's 50 years old.

>125 prosfilaes: It's worst than that. Why believe anything that you see on TV or read in a book?

126: If you take it to its logical conclusion, why believe a hack job "documentary" on YouTube?

>125 prosfilaes: Yeah,that's occurred to me too: the speed-of-light comm lag would be a real pain to fake; the lag would need to increase slightly for each outward-bound message, and then decrease again on the inward trip.

Hard to fake in the pre-digital age. Not impossible, but a real headache when added on top of all the other details that would need to be faked.

>126 jjwilson61: >127 StormRaven:
It's worse than that: why believe in anything?

How do you know that you're not simply a brain in a vat, being fed direct neural stimuli that persuade you that there's an external world out there? Maybe it's all simply an illusion. What if EVERYTHING is fake??

At some point, the consensus reality becomes easier to believe than the conspiracy theory.

>120 FrankHubeny: re Apollo 13:
They could have been in low earth orbit and had problems.

As I pointed out up at #23 - two weeks ago - there were photos taken of the cloud of gases surrounding the CSM in lunar space. The photos would need to be faked, the amateurs who were watching this happen (by looking near the moon) would need to have been suborned.

Check out http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/space/apollo.html - and start counting the names of amateur and professional astronomers who saw the various Apollo missions where they were supposed to be. (Each Trans-Lunar Injection was a naked-eye event, seen across various continents.)

Each eyewitness would need to be in on the conspiracy, for the rest of their lives.

>120 FrankHubeny: There need not have been a tape, but a conversion between people on earth or in earth orbit.

Variable comm lag. Are you seriously proposing that during the emergency, somebody was adding a varying time lag to their communications? Around the clock? That's three shifts of audio techs, plus backups.

#128: How do you know that you're not simply a brain in a vat, being fed direct neural stimuli that persuade you that there's an external world out there? Maybe it's all simply an illusion. What if EVERYTHING is fake??

There's degrees of skepticism. It's not unreasonable to accept the stories of your senses and basically distrust anything you haven't detected yourself. I think there's factual flaws in a conspiratorial worldview, but I can see believing that basically everything we're told is propaganda, maybe interpret 1984 as basically accurate. My problem is in this case that it's the skepticism of the cool, it's applying different rules to the Moon landing then they would to anything else.

>122 AsYouKnow_Bob: "How did they fake the time lag for communications?"

For some of the things I heard, I didn't think the time lag was long enough. As far as faking a time lag, I think that would be easy to do.

I don't have time at the moment to answer more because I have to leave for a trip, but I was looking for a better explanation for the Apollo 13 incident than I had in my mind and found this link:

http://one-vibration.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2127676:BlogPost:700730&xgs=1...

I haven't had time to check much of it, but it contained things I hadn't heard of before. In particular the sole marks on the boots the astronauts wore didn't match the footprints.

>131 FrankHubeny: As far as faking a time lag, I think that would be easy to do.

Yes, setting up *A* time lag is trivial to do; setting up a varying time lag would be a pain in the ass to set up, and trivially easy to have go wrong. Especially if the schedule has gone out the window, as with Apollo 13.

However, suborning every single person who looked for the Apollo missions in lunar space - - and then keeping them bought off for the rest of their lives - would be a lot harder to do.

No one has ever come forward to say, "Ya know, it's funny - - but I looked for the Apollo stack, and it wasn't there. Couldn't find it."

So...somebody has gotten to Every.Single.Person who owned or had access to a serious telescope, to ensure their lifelong silence? To discourage them from even looking at the moon during the time of the missions? And nobody's ever even mentioned being contacted?

And then - 40-some years later - the entire staff of the LRO mission would ALSO have to be brought in on the conspiracy, so that their confirmation of the Apollo missions could ALSO be faked.

Every single person who worked at NASA in 1968-74 has since retired.

Who exactly has been the trustee of the conspiracy over the intervening generations? What's their motivation for suborning the LRO mission?



You're proposing either

- that the Secret Conspiracy is self-perpetuating; or
- that there's a Hidden Race of long-lived Beings secretly controlling our society.

Which of these ideas that you're advocating sounds nuttier to you?

Or: maybe Apollo happened pretty much as it was presented to us.

How Facts Backfire
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

"In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger. "

Scientists Depressing New Discovery About the Brain
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/17/the_most_depressing_discovery_about_the_brain_ev...

"Nyan and his collaborators have been running experiments trying to answer this terrifying question about American voters: Do facts matter?

The answer, basically, is no. When people are misinformed, giving them facts to correct those errors only makes them cling to their beliefs more tenaciously."

Thanks for those, Morphidae.

What I love about a good conspiracy theory is that - like any other religious belief - they are incapable of refutation. Bring actual evidence to the conversation and it's just waved away by building another set of epicycles on TOP of the belief. It doesn't take long before the conspiracy would be harder to bring off than the actual moon shot.

Just a couple rounds of these epicycles, and, whaddaya know, suddenly we really ARE living in Philip K. Dick's world, where our reality is being secretly controlled by the Lizard People.

In particular the sole marks on the boots the astronauts wore didn't match the footprints.

No, the sole marks on the boots of the astronauts match the footprints. Once again, people with non understanding of what they are seeing are saying stupid things about the evidence.

None of the "hoax" claims stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. For example, if the Apollo crews were in low-Earth orbit, their craft would have been visible to the naked eye, and would have been easily examined with an amateur telescope.

As AYKB pointed out, conspiracy theory is an interesting phenomenon, not because people come up with or adhere to insane claims, as YesNoMaybe is doing here, but when presented with evidence showing their claims concerning, for example, radiation exposure, to be completely baseless, they shift and say "they were in low-Earth orbit the whole time!", and when you show that claim doesn't hold up, they shift again and say "well what about the boot prints, huh?" One would think that eventually being shown to be wrong on all of their claims would cause them to maybe rethink their position. But no. They cling to it like a drowning man clinging to an iron bar pulling them deeper into a watery grave of ignorance and stupidity.

>133 Morphidae:

I understand being emotionally invested in certain interpretations of reality, but frankly, not to the extent that you deny the existence of anything that counters your particular version. It's not like reality is going to bend to your belief.

>136 southernbooklady: But it seems people do it anyway.

>133 Morphidae:

Joe Keohane's article, "How Facts Backfire", that you linked to confirms Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Once someone is invested in a set of beliefs it is difficult to change that person's mind. It is usually not worth trying, however, people with different views do give each other a way to clarify the positions they believe in and that is the benefit of discussions. Change does occur, but not directly when confronting facts.

So when it comes to the "facts" or the "evidence" about the moon landings, who is right: conspiracy theories or government true believers? Any position that involves an emotional exchange can be chalked up to cognitive dissonance. There is no need to get emotional about this issue anymore. All it does is allow us to understand how we look at evidence.

>135 StormRaven: "No, the sole marks on the boots of the astronauts match the footprints. Once again, people with non understanding of what they are seeing are saying stupid things about the evidence."

That's just an assertion. I need more compelling information than that.

>134 AsYouKnow_Bob: "What I love about a good conspiracy theory is that - like any other religious belief - they are incapable of refutation."

The same could be said about government true believers. In the research Joe Keohane reported on, he found both Republicans and Democrats guilty of failing to change in the face of facts.

Now with these moon landings, it doesn't really matter. We are not asked to decide whether we believe there are WMDs in Iraq. It is just an exercise in how we approach evidence.

>139 FrankHubeny: That's just an assertion.

I don't understand how you distinguish between "an assertion," "just an assertion," "a statement of fact," and "evidence." Your criteria for assigning a statement into any one of these categories appears entirely arbitrary.

>132 AsYouKnow_Bob: "However, suborning every single person who looked for the Apollo missions in lunar space - - and then keeping them bought off for the rest of their lives - would be a lot harder to do. "

I don't know how many people needed to know about the hoax for it to work. As the author of the blog I quoted noted (and I think correctly), most of the people actually involved didn't have to know it was fake. The author estimated only 100 people were involved. They would know only enough to get their jobs completed.

Just consider your own role in the company you work for: do you know everything the CEO knows about what is going on? Does the CEO know everything someone else might be plotting in the company?

139: Perhaps if you followed the many links that have been provided and actually read them, you might have noticed the evidence. But since you seem incapable of absorbing information via reading, that might be a bit much to ask.

And you seem to ignore those things that make the Moon hoax conspiracies ridiculous - you completely ignored the fact that any crew carrying craft in low-Earth orbit would have been visible to the naked eye, and easily subjected to much closer scrutiny by the thousands of people with telescopes in the world, which makes the "they were in low-earth orbit sending their signals" claim completely untenable.

The debate isn't between conspiracy theorists and "government true believers". It is between conspiracy theorists and people who understand how things like physics work. None of the hoax theories stand up to any scrutiny at all. And the evidence against the hoax theories keeps getting stronger - for example, we have recent photographs of the landing sites showing footprint trails.

>141 southernbooklady: "I don't understand how you distinguish between "an assertion," "just an assertion," "a statement of fact," and "evidence." Your criteria for assigning a statement into any one of these categories appears entirely arbitrary."

It may be very arbitrary, but I am the one who has been asked to accept the argument or not. I chose not to accept it. When I say I was not given enough evidence for my acceptance of something, then I have not been given enough evidence.

>144 FrankHubeny: When I say I was not given enough evidence for my acceptance of something, then I have not been given enough evidence.

But since you can't say what would constitute acceptable evidence, your position is somewhat futile.

>130 prosfilaes: "There's degrees of skepticism. It's not unreasonable to accept the stories of your senses and basically distrust anything you haven't detected yourself. I think there's factual flaws in a conspiratorial worldview, but I can see believing that basically everything we're told is propaganda, maybe interpret 1984 as basically accurate. My problem is in this case that it's the skepticism of the cool, it's applying different rules to the Moon landing then they would to anything else."

There may also be factual flaws in the position of the government true believers.

I think most of us accept what we are told. Propaganda tends to work. Just consider how many people needed a war in Iraq to be convinced that there were, indeed, no WMDs there even though adequate evidence was already available.

What different rules?

Less than a year ago, I assumed we went to the moon. Now, whatever we did, I don't think what was shown on TV at the time was authentic. That seemed faked to me.

Now, whatever we did, I don't think what was shown on TV at the time was authentic. That seemed faked to me.

This is what I was saying earlier about conspiracy theorists shifting the arguments as their initial tries fail to gain any traction and are shown to be founded upon baseless assumptions and faulty understandings of basic science. First you claimed that the radiation exposure was too great. That was shown to be incorrect. You talked about how they could have just been in low-Earth orbit and no one would have known. That was shown to be incorrect. You said they weren't in plain sight, but rather just on television. That was also shown to be incorrect. It was shown that it would have been implausible for an unmanned mission to return with the volume of samples that have been recovered. Your claim about footprints not matching has been shown not to hold up.

So, having been shown to be wrong on every single claim you've made in support of your hoax theory, you don't stop and consider that you might be wrong. Instead you make a hand-wavy claim about how the televised material "looks fake". Of course, you don't really know what video made on a lunar mission in a low gravity, no atmosphere environment would actually look like. You just have a hunch. Given your track record of absolute failure in following your hunches concerning the lunar missions, how likely do you think it is that this one will prove to be true?

>142 FrankHubeny: Just consider your own role in the company you work for: do you know everything the CEO knows about what is going on? Does the CEO know everything someone else might be plotting in the company?

This is actually an argument for why a multi-generation, nation-wide conspiracy can't work. Just on basic principles of bureaucratic organization.

Every time an important employee has left my organization, there has been a loss of continuity. The institution 'forgets' procedures and has to re-invent them. Key information is lost, and has to be worked around.

We're over 45 years since Apollo 8 reached the moon, coming up on 45 years since Apollo 11. And yet you think that it's plausible that people have recently gone to work for the LRO mission to fake up NEW photography to exactly confirm the earlier fakery???

Who hired these people? Who gave them their instructions? How and why has the conspiracy maintained its mission down through the generations? Who trained the new hires in painstakingly confirming the appearance of the lunar landing sites? How is the FAKED data substituted for the "no evidence of landing sites" data without everyone in the LRO mission being party to the deception? How are they all sworn to secrecy?

The last Apollo mission left the moon in 1972. You think that it's entirely reasonable to believe that the cover-up conspirators went to sleep for thirty+ years and then reawoke in time to subvert the LRO mission?

If not, what have the conspirators been doing with themselves in the interim?

Either the original cover-up conspirators have all retired - in which case, they must have trained sleeper replacements in the bureaucracy to suborn any future discoveries (such as LRO) that might expose the conspiracy; or we're actually dealing with long-lived, possibly non-human conspirators controlling human history. Which is it?

Personally I vote for the "long-lived, possibly non-human conspirators controlling human history," but what do I know.

I think you are ALL in on it.

>150 LolaWalser: I think you are ALL in on it.

Sooo....not the evil plan of grey-skinned skull-like aliens manipulating the human race to their own ends secure in the knowledge we can't ever remember they exist, then?

Can anyone prove they are grey-skinned? I'm sceptical on that point. VERY sceptical.

I chose not to accept it.

Game. Set. Match.

>146 FrankHubeny: What different rules?

there were, indeed, no WMDs there even though adequate evidence was already available.

You've told us that conspiracies easily exist. Once you say that, you can't blithely accept the word of the UN inspectors, like a UN true believer. Prewar, you should have considered the possibility that the UN and the Bush administration was making up everything. If fairly applied, your standards for "adequate evidence" must go up well beyond what was available at that time.

(I can imagine agents of whatever nation suits your fancy on emergency missions to destroy WMDs that the Bush administration was smuggling in. Conspiracies get ugly on evidence.)

>148 AsYouKnow_Bob: "Who hired these people? Who gave them their instructions? How and why has the conspiracy maintained its mission down through the generations? Who trained the new hires in painstakingly confirming the appearance of the lunar landing sites? How is the FAKED data substituted for the "no evidence of landing sites" data without everyone in the LRO mission being party to the deception? How are they all sworn to secrecy?"

There are different views on what actually happened. My particular view, and it changes as I hear more information, is that there were missions to the moon. They just weren't manned. That the LRO data snows existence of landing sites is not the issue. We need to see footprints on the moon at those landing sites.

We need to see footprints on the moon at those landing sites.

As was pointed out before, we do. But for you to notice that would have required that you actually read an article rather than wallow in ignorance.

>154 prosfilaes: "You've told us that conspiracies easily exist. Once you say that, you can't blithely accept the word of the UN inspectors, like a UN true believer. Prewar, you should have considered the possibility that the UN and the Bush administration was making up everything. If fairly applied, your standards for "adequate evidence" must go up well beyond what was available at that time. "

You are touching on the crucial issue here. Basically, we don't know. In many of these situations, we don't have much information on which to make a choice. It is not just an issue of siding with or against the government.

In the case of these moon landings, it doesn't really matter. This is just an exercise or role play. In the case of WMDs in 2001, the decisions, at least by some people, did matter and thousands of others lost their lives. The government in 2001 did not need many people to deliberately lie about evidence for WMDs. They could rely on patriotic gullibility once the lies were disseminated. However, in that case, the time frame to ultimate falsification was short.

Other cases would be whether we accept speculations such as "many worlds" or whether we consider these things "fairy tale physics" appropriate only for movies like Men in Black. Or do we accept evidence for psychic phenomena or do we reject it? Or do we accept belief in a deity or do we reject it? The debates about these topics take the same course. Evidence is ignored and time is wasted on ad hominem arguments or distracting pseudo-intellectual arguments.

In general, how should we respond to evidence? I think we should stay focused on the evidence especially when there is something at stake.

>157 FrankHubeny: In general, how should we respond to evidence?

You don't seem to be able to respond to evidence. You have no consistent criteria for evaluating it.

>156 StormRaven: "As was pointed out before, we do. But for you to notice that would have required that you actually read an article rather than wallow in ignorance."

I looked at the photo. I don't see any footprints there.

>158 southernbooklady: "You don't seem to be able to respond to evidence. You have no consistent criteria for evaluating it."

Again you are simply making an assertion. You lack an argument.

I don't see any footprints there.

Then you aren't even able to evaluate photographic evidence that is before your eyes. You aren't "responding to evidence". You're ignoring anything that doesn't correspond to your chosen fantasy.

Again you are simply making an assertion. You lack an argument.

Your posts are the evidence supporting her assertion. Thus far, you have demonstrated no consistent criteria for evaluating evidence.

>159 FrankHubeny: I looked at the photo. I don't see any footprints there.

No? Why not? Because you distrust the source of the photo? The website that posted it? Because your eyes were shut? Because the picture does show what you are expecting to see? What would you expect to see?

>160 FrankHubeny: Again you are simply making an assertion. You lack an argument.

Right back at ya, sweetie.

>157 FrankHubeny: Then you're backing off on "adequate evidence"? You're saying that it was a reasonable conclusion to believe there were WMDs in Iraq prewar? Because unless by "an exercise or role play", you mean that you don't really disbelieve the moon landing, you've asserting that a conspiracy the size of the UN inspectors would be very conceivable.

However, in that case, the time frame to ultimate falsification was short.

Ultimate falsification, huh? Again, the conspiracy to remove WMDs from Iraq to embarrass GWB would be far smaller then the moon landing.

speculations such as "many worlds"

Let's not go afield when we can't even agree on what standards we're using for normal, Earth phenomena.

ad hominem arguments ... In general, how should we respond to evidence?

You are asserting that "large conspiracies exist and go undetected". That has consequences; it drops the probability of of basically anything believed to be true in human history. Full-board conspiracy theory is relatively internally consistent, but your theory isn't. That's my point; you can either respond to history as if major conspiracy was a thing to consider, or you can respond to history as if it were not, but if you do choose to accept major conspiracy, you should rationally accept that those who accepted that there were WMDs in Iraq weren't patriotically gullible; they were beset with completely untrustworthy sources of evidence and chose to accept different sources from you.

I think we should stay focused on the evidence especially when there is something at stake.

A standard attack of conspiracy theorists is to do a Gish-gallop. Someone doing a Gish gallop tosses evidence out there that his opponents take a lot of time to refute until they have no more time left to refute it. It doesn't matter if the evidence is correct, it doesn't matter if the evidence is relevant, and it doesn't even matter if the evidence helps the galloper's case. Like the boots: if we accept the page at face value (I mean, that boot picture is completely unsourced...) NASA displayed a suit with different boots than the ones that left the boot marks on the moon. Either way, it means someone at NASA screwed up. I'd almost argue that that's more likely if the moon landing was real, because if it wasn't, people would have more concern about catching every detail, but either way, big whoop.

The disadvantage of the defenders of the standard line is they have a theory. You haven't put forward a clear theory, and I think it's pretty clear if you did, it would get holes ripped in it. What we should do is try and find the theory that best fits the evidence, but that would make you vulnerable.

>161 StormRaven: "Then you aren't even able to evaluate photographic evidence that is before your eyes."

The resolution of the image in the link should not show something as small as a footprint. In other sources, I can see what look like rover tracks. I'm not doubting these missions occurred. I am doubting they were manned. So I need to see a footprint.

>163 prosfilaes: "Then you're backing off on "adequate evidence"? You're saying that it was a reasonable conclusion to believe there were WMDs in Iraq prewar? Because unless by "an exercise or role play", you mean that you don't really disbelieve the moon landing, you've asserting that a conspiracy the size of the UN inspectors would be very conceivable."

What I mean by the role play is that this event doesn't (or shouldn't) matter anymore and yet there are still doubts which makes this an interesting exercise to consider and people who take this issue too personally. Issues like the WMDs in Iraq bother me more, to this day.

Let me make sure my positions are clear. I do think there was adequate evidence prior to the Iraq war to say that Iraq had no WMDs. That war was inexcusable on the basis of the evidence. I also doubt that the Apollo missions were manned.

>163 prosfilaes: "You haven't put forward a clear theory"

I cited a theory that I think makes sense. I will cite it again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79mIGx9Ib4

>164 FrankHubeny: So I need to see a footprint.

Why? Why would a footprint be more convincing to you? If you think the iconic images were faked what criteria are you using to decide that any other image is real?

The resolution of the image in the link should not show something as small as a footprint. In other sources, I can see what look like rover tracks. I'm not doubting these missions occurred. I am doubting they were manned.

So you think they used an unmanned rover with capabilities that could not have been built with then available technology? You're not only unable to evaluate evidence that is before your eyes, you're just making shit up to fit your fantasies.

I cited a theory that I think makes sense. I will cite it again:

You cited a poorly produced "documentary" whose claims have been soundly debunked many times over. Thus far, your track record for evaluating evidence isn't very good.

The documentary was based on a book called Dark Moon, which is assessed here:

http://www.clavius.org/bibaulis2003.html

Full disclosure: that link goes to a website dedicated to countering Moon Landing hoax claims. But what is interesting about the review of the book is that it analyzes the authors' methodology (and sometimes lack thereof). In effect, they fault the book for limiting itself to negative evidence:

one need not respond consistently in order to refute the indirect proof that the Authors have provided. In fact, the scientific method works best when several hypotheses -- possibly incompatible ones -- are considered as explanations for a single observation. The question is not why the Authors' critics have considered so many different hypotheses. The question is why the Authors have considered so few.

Bennett and Percy are attempting the age-old propaganda technique: "Something is wrong, therefore I am right."

>166 southernbooklady: "Why? Why would a footprint be more convincing to you? If you think the iconic images were faked what criteria are you using to decide that any other image is real?"

It may not be. The image could be faked as well. It is best if an independent party shows the footprint.

Let's consider that the lunar missions were unmanned. How did they land? We can see the bottom half of the LEM from photographs taken of the Moon now, so they had to get there, find a suitably flat landing space, pilot to it, and land upright. How did they do that with the technology available in 1969-1972?

It could not have been done remotely - any remote pilot would have a 1.2 second delay between the image he is seeing being sent and his ability to send commands to the lander, and then 1.2 seconds delay between his sending commands and the lander receiving them. This delay came up every now and then in the actual lunar landings - to film the lander taking off, a NASA employee had to do it remotely, anticipating when the lander would launch and panning up at the rate he thought that it would ascend. They missed this a couple of times. If they were piloting the lander remotely any flub of this sort almost certainly would have caused the lander to crash.

It could not have been done with an on-board computer, because computers were feeble. The Apollo Guidance Computer had 4 kilobytes of RAM, which would have been insufficient for any kind of independent guidance program to be run on it - and it was the most sophisticated on-board computer of the era. Quite simply, there is no way a LEM could have been landed upright on the Moon without humans on board.

165: I do think there was adequate evidence prior to the Iraq war to say that Iraq had no WMDs.

And why? You're telling me that large multiyear multiperson conspiracies exist. Given that, I don't see how you can put much trust in the UN inspectors. I said this in the part you quoted; please respond to that.

I will cite it again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79mIGx9Ib4

A three hour documentary, most of it devoted to negative evidence. Can you give me a paragraph that tells me what you think happened? Was there a launch? Were there people on it? Did something land on the moon? Did something return from the moon? Make a positive claim of what did happen, so we can check it against the evidence and see if it holds up better then the standard claim.

>171 StormRaven: "How did they do that with the technology available in 1969-1972?"

The same argument you are making could be used to claim that we could not have gone there at all.

The Luna 17 was a lander rover that the LRO photographed. It did all this in 1970 without needing to be manned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_17

>170 FrankHubeny: It is best if an independent party shows the footprint.

You mean, someone who sent up their own space probe to take pictures of foot prints on the moon? Or is the problem that NASA didn't include embedded journalists on the Apollo missions as independent observers? Perhaps some other non-governmental agency needs to send a man to the moon to corroborate it can be done? Can you define what constitutes an "independent party" with any more clarity than you have been able to define what makes a piece of evidence acceptable?

>172 prosfilaes: "And why? You're telling me that large multiyear multiperson conspiracies exist. Given that, I don't see how you can put much trust in the UN inspectors. I said this in the part you quoted; please respond to that."

Regarding why I think one could trust the UN inspectors: they were on the ground and independent of the warmongering from the US. Their assessment should have settled the issue.

>172 prosfilaes: " Can you give me a paragraph that tells me what you think happened?"

Check the first 15 minutes of the documentary for the kind of evidence that bothers me about the Apollo mission.

>174 southernbooklady: " Or is the problem that NASA didn't include embedded journalists on the Apollo missions as independent observers?"

The only reason this is being questioned is because of what appears to be tampered photographic evidence by NASA of the Apollo missions.

When the evidence looks faked, one asks why.

>176 FrankHubeny: When the evidence looks faked, one asks why.

But apparently one does not ask "Do I even know what fake evidence would look like?"

The same argument you are making could be used to claim that we could not have gone there at all.

No, actually it couldn't, but since you have no ability to actually understand evidence, your claim that it could is understandably rooted in your ignorance. You see, an astronaut on board would not have a 2.4 second delay between what he saw and when his commands would be implemented. An astronaut on board is a far more sophisticated guidance program than a 4 kilobyte computer.

The Luna 17 was a lander rover that the LRO photographed. It did all this in 1970 without needing to be manned.

Between 1959 and 1976, the Soviets attempted thirty-six unmanned lunar missions. Nine landed - two of those being "hard" landings that simply crashed into the Moon. By contrast, all of the Apollo missions that attempted landings managed to land upright with "soft" landings. The rate of success for unmanned missions to the Moon was simply ridiculously low.

I'll also point out that the tracks left by the Lunokhod look very different from the astronaut tracks in the pictures of the Apollo landing sites.

And the Lunokhod's that landed (the first didn't make it to the Moon, as like so many other unmanned missions, the mission failed) did far less during their sojourn on the Moon than the Apollo crews did in their much shorter stays. They returned no samples. They performed no experiments. They placed no mirrors. They recovered no crashed equipment. The Apollo program accomplished, in a handful of days of time on the Moon, vastly more than the two Lunokhod rovers that managed to make it did, and those accomplishments were of a range far greater than any remote vehicle of the era could have done - far greater than any remote vehicle could do now.

But apparently one does not ask "Do I even know what fake evidence would look like?"

Or even, "what would actual unfaked photographs look like". Because the Apollo mission photographs look exactly like that. Go look at the Lunokhod photos: Almost all of the things that conspiracy theorists point to as evidence that the Apollo photos are fake - the lack of a starfield, the highlighting of certain objects, the non-parallel shadows, and so on - are present in the Lunokhod photos as well. Did the Russians fake their unmanned landings?

You do all realise that any discussion ended at the point that "I chose not to accept it" was posted, no?

180: Oh sure. There is clearly nothing that could change YNM's mind, because any evidence that is produced will be explained away as yet more evidence of a conspiracy. That's the way it is for conspiracy theorists - evidence doesn't matter. Only what they want to believe matters. And that's clearly exactly where YNM is sitting.

The only thing we are really doing now is needling YNM for adhering to an idiotic position. To be fair though, YNM is adhering to idiotic positions in almost every other thread he has participated in as well, so it isn't like this is unusual for him.

>175 FrankHubeny: Regarding why I think one could trust the UN inspectors: they were on the ground and independent of the warmongering from the US.

For one, the instant you say "the warmongering from the US" and define as the only type of independence important, you're no longer taking a stand on the evidence, you're taking a stand with your side. Secondly, you're basically telling me that they are immune to being bought off, immune to any form of corruption or lying. Why?

Check the first 15 minutes of the documentary for the kind of evidence that bothers me about the Apollo mission.

I did not ask you for that. I asked you for your theory. In science you pick the theory that most fits the evidence. It's always easy to pick nits in any complex enough event, but the catch is showing that there's a better alternative. What happened?

Normal words are being used in fundamentally different ways between "us" and YNM. You folks are very diligent. I am now quite tired, though I fought hard for a while. It is discouraging to try so hard to bring people to common sense and then fail.

My last word on this is:
Just because WMDs turned out NOT to be where they were claimed to be does not mean that the moon landing was a hoax. As I have said before in this thread (117), the 2 situations are not remotely comparable.

Yeah, I'm about done here, too.

Normally I'm quite sympathetic to a general attitude of being extremely cynical and skeptical of government {And: That said, there's a difference between skepticism about politicians and political claims, and skepticism about engineers and engineering accomplishments};

However, YesNoMaybe has just exhausted my patience.

at >173 FrankHubeny: The Luna 17 was a lander rover that the LRO photographed.

They're now actually citing the LRO photography as evidence that the Russians soft-landed on the moon - - at the same time as they're deprecating the same LRO photography as evidence that Apollo landed on the moon.

It makes one weary.

The "argument" seems to be

Soft-landing on the moon = possible
and
manned space flight = possible

Therefore:
manned space flights + landing on the moon = IMPOSSIBLE

...apparently because they once saw a TV show.

The part that gets me: why don't conspiracy theorists ever apply any skepticism to insane claims about reality?

>184 AsYouKnow_Bob: Why should that part get you? A conspiracy theory is a loose idea tightly held and loose ideas require a very firm grasp if one is to continue to hold them. Since there are physical limitations to the number of things a human can grasp firmly choices have to be made with respect to what to hold and what to release. If you are a conspiracy buff the choice is obvious – you hold on to the loose idea and you let go of reality.

Yeah.

Here's a point: we were in a Space Race with our Cold War enemies, the USSR. Apollo 8 was rushed specifically to beat a potential Soviet N-1 flight.

So the question becomes: Why did the Soviet Union never question the fact that we beat them to the moon?

If it's so easy to detect the fakery, why did a rival superpower - with plenty of interest in embarrassing the US - accept the cover story?

{Edited a day later to add:
>15 mart1n: AND >67 Ardagor: above BOTH mentioned this angle. Sorry, I had forgotten, because those mentions were more than a week ago....}

#186:

That's easy. The Soviets faked all their missions too, and they didn't want to invite the scrutiny.

The "argument" seems to be

Soft-landing on the moon = possible
and
manned space flight = possible

Therefore:
manned space flights + landing on the moon = IMPOSSIBLE

No, the argument is simply "I choose to accept evidence that supports what I already believe/want to believe."

One wonders why one bothers with the evidence at all at this point, but...

>188 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "I choose to accept evidence that supports what I already believe/want to believe."

Which brings us back nicely to >133 Morphidae:

But I still get stuck on the notion that people take the idea that we all interpret our reality as carte blanche to ignore parts of reality we don't wan't to deal with.

I'd respond to that, but I don't want to think about such things.

#189

It's accurate to say that we interpret what we see (hear, read, etc.) in the light of our own knowledge and experiences. And it's true that many people chose to ignore realities that are unpleasant, uncomfortable, or simply conflict with what they wish to believe is true.

But it's not 'carte blanche'; it's simply what happens. Some people struggle with their impulses to ignore reality when it conflicts with their ideas; others embrace those impulses.

>175 FrankHubeny: they were on the ground

How do you know the UN weapons inspectors were on the ground? Were you there to witness them being on the ground? Or are you willing to accept TV footage, their own claims that they were there, third party reports, etc that they were on the ground? Because, you know, there were some blokes on the ground on the moon too...

>191 BruceCoulson: it's true that many people chose to ignore realities that are unpleasant, uncomfortable, or simply conflict with what they wish to believe is true.

This strikes me as a failure of adaptability, or of resilience.

192: That has been pointed out before. YNM is, shall we say, randomly selective about what news reports he takes as evidence and what news reports he "chooses not to accept".

Perhaps. But it's a fact of human existence. This is part of what we are; the ability (or flaw) of being able to ignore uncomfortable truths. Of course, it may well be the same flaw (or ability) that lets humans (particularly younger ones) to ignore conventional wisdom and statements such as 'It can't be done; and even if it could be done, no one would want to do it."

I think you're still missing the idea that some people embrace those tendencies, whilst others do their best to work against them.

>195 BruceCoulson: "Of course, it may well be the same flaw (or ability) that lets humans (particularly younger ones) to ignore conventional wisdom and statements such as 'It can't be done; and even if it could be done, no one would want to do it.'"

Yes, I think you are right, which makes it ironic that YNM uses a 1950s video saying that man is not capable of going to the moon to counter the fact that we actually did go in the 1960s and 70s.

>197 krazy4katz: "Yes, I think you are right, which makes it ironic that YNM uses a 1950s video saying that man is not capable of going to the moon to counter the fact that we actually did go in the 1960s and 70s."

Which video are you referring to? I think Dark Moon appeared around 2000.

Actually, I am not saying we are not capable to going to the moon. We are. I am only saying that I doubt the Apollo missions were manned. However, they may have been.

Why doubt this? Well, based on the documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79mIGx9Ib4) the photographic evidence appears to have been faked. That introduces the doubt. The supposed "debunking" of this evidence did not remove for me those doubts.

The video you refer to is the I was thinking about. I thought somewhere in there is a part where he shows people from the 1950s saying it was impossible to go to the moon because of the radiation issue.

198: Were the Lunokhod photos faked? Because all of the claims about the Apollo photographs being faked apply just as equally to the Lunokhod pictures.

Also, what do you think unfaked photographs would look like?

We could go to the moon and take some REAL pictures! Then we could compare them to the ones that are accused of being fake.

No matter what we would find, we'd have gone to the Moon! (...again, almost certainly. But hey, it's an excuse to go back, then!)

>201 BruceCoulson: We could go to the moon and take some REAL pictures!

We could invite every moon landing doubter on the spaceship to take their own pictures! And then "accidentally" put an error in the nav program so that they overshoot the moon and head out into deep space. Problem solved. :)

But that would prove that we can't get people to the moon even with current technology, so it would validate their beliefs.

I'm still amused by the notion that NASA designed and launched a fully automated mission to the moon in complete secrecy, because they thought -- in the 60s -- that putting robots on the moon would have been bad PR.

#202, 203

Amtep is right; better that the doubters should be landed safely on the Moon. Drop supplies to them every now and then. Maybe we could get Moon Base Alpha built.

>205 BruceCoulson: Maybe we could get Moon Base Alpha built

May I recommend The Martian?

205: If From the Earth to the Moon is to be believed, this was an actual proposal pitched to NASA.

#206

That looks very good; thanks for the recommendation.

OK, I'm still trying to get my head around how or WHY somebody would/could fake a series of moonshots. It's simpler to just go to the moon.

So, according to the denialists, our story thus far:

- Humans CAN ride rockets to 18,000 mph and achieve low-earth-orbit.
- They CAN live in a tin can in LEO for up to a year or so.
- Unmanned rovers CAN soft-land on the moon.
- Unmanned rovers CAN gather lunar samples and successfully return them to earth.

(I'm genuinely not clear if the coverup includes the idea that men can fly at 24,000mph and reach lunar orbit. But apparently - despite having been seen on its way TO THE MOON - at least Apollo 13 never left LEO, because $COVERUP. I'm not clear if Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 were actually supposed to have gone to the moon. The famous 'earthrise' pictures? Musta been fakes.)

Anyway, according to the denialists, the space program is real, launching stuff to the moon is real.

What's obviously faked, though, is man walking on the moon.
Because there was a show on TV.

It's just such an odd place to draw the line.

This all reminds me of a story that Conan O'Brien tells. Fifteen years after he graduated, he went back to Harvard to give a speech:

A lot has happened in 15 years though. When you think about it, {your generation and mine} come from completely different worlds.... In 1985 we drove cars with driver’s-side air bags. But if you had told us that one day there would be passenger-side air bags, we’d have burned you for witchcraft.

Men can fly at 18,000mph, everybody knows that. But flying at 24,000mph? THAT can only be a hoax.

Mitchell and Webb explain it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw

>210 mart1n: HA!

>200 StormRaven: "Were the Lunokhod photos faked? Because all of the claims about the Apollo photographs being faked apply just as equally to the Lunokhod pictures."

I don't know.

NASA claims that the Apollo missions in the early 70s put astronauts on the moon. A large part of the evidence was in the photographs. Dark Moon showed that there are problems with this photographic record. Since then no one has gone outside the earth's magnetosphere, let alone gone back to the moon.

The evidence Dark Moon provided looks convincing enough to me.

Here's a link to the photographic evidence from the Aulis site which might be easier to review than the documentary film and also contains commentary that is more recent that the documentary.

http://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_index1.html

>210 mart1n: Brilliant!

>212 FrankHubeny: There's sufficient evidence that man landed on the moon without the photographs.

For, what, the third or fourth time, I want to see your theory--absent any reference to the current theory and why it doesn't work. Tell me what really happened, and then we can compare theories to find the best one.

Your newest site has people actively changing the archives of photos of Apollo missions 40 years after the event. That's a hell of a conspiracy, but very convenient that random people on the Internet can't be mistaken or part of a conspiracy themselves.

What about just asking the astronauts? Do you really believe these fine test pilots were lying??

http://www.amazon.com/Magnificent-Desolation-Long-Journey-Home/dp/030746346X/ref...

Or the space flight director:
http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp/1439148813/ref=sr_1_...

These are first-person accounts. Do you really think they lied??

>215 krazy4katz: What about just asking the astronauts?

Well, that can be risky.

Tell Buzz Aldrin he's a liar, and he's liable to punch you in the face.

Edited to add: thanks for >210 mart1n:

oops. Well I'd be mad too. I guess everyone handles these hoax claims differently.
>210 mart1n:
Add me to the list of people who loved this!

>214 prosfilaes: "For, what, the third or fourth time, I want to see your theory--absent any reference to the current theory and why it doesn't work. Tell me what really happened, and then we can compare theories to find the best one."

Well, my theory is that the photographic evidence was created on the earth and not on the moon because it looks faked.

That brings into doubt what actually happened. I think the simplest solution is to say that the Apollo missions were unmanned. Why? Because NASA was not ready for a manned flight, but had to deliver before the end of the decade. It still continued its testing and actually did send unmanned missions to the moon.

That is all there is to my theory. I only heard that there were people who doubted the moon landings less than a year ago. So my theory on what actually happened is still forming.

--------------------------

I was looking at the following from the Aulis site about the relative size of the earth and sun called "Why is the Sun So Big?" I wonder why is the earth so small?

http://www.aulis.com/sunsize.htm

One can find all these photos on the NASA site so one does not have to rely on Aulis or the Dark Moon for this data.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/

>218 FrankHubeny:

I haven't bothered following links to the hoax argument sites. I did for this one, just for the hell of it, and have confirmed my prejudices. I mean really? Is this the quality of the arguments? It's comparing the relative sizes of sun and earth in photos, but ignores that the photos are reproduced at different sizes! The cross hairs are a rather conspicuous clue. Show me other photos of the sun taken in space. Show me photos of the sun taken with a similar camera. In general, try a bit harder, cos otherwise I'll suspect that contradictory evidence is being ignored.

I don't know.

No, you can't do that. You've touted the Lunokhod missions as evidence that unmanned missions can be sent to the moon. You can't then throw out or simply duck the evidence from the Lunokhod missions because it doesn't fit your lame theory.

NASA claims that the Apollo missions in the early 70s put astronauts on the moon. A large part of the evidence was in the photographs. Dark Moon showed that there are problems with this photographic record. Since then no one has gone outside the earth's magnetosphere, let alone gone back to the moon.

Except Lunokhod 3, which landed after every Apollo mission had been completed. And the Lunokhod's photographs look amazingly similar to the Apollo photographs.

Dark Moon didn't show problems with the photographic record. Dark Moon showed that people who don't understand physics can misunderstand what they are looking at.

>220 StormRaven: I don't know.

No, you can't do that. You've touted the Lunokhod missions as evidence that unmanned missions can be sent to the moon. You can't then throw out or simply duck the evidence from the Lunokhod missions because it doesn't fit your lame theory.

Following the internal logic of @YesNoMaybe's objections, "I don't know" is synonymous with "I don't want to know."

>212 FrankHubeny: A large part of the evidence was in the photographs. Dark Moon showed that there are problems with this photographic record.

No, it didn't. Not to anyone with any background in optics or photography.

What Dark Moon actually showed is that there are people woefully uniformed about how the world works, to the point that some people give credence to any gobbledegook that they think sounds plausible.

>219 mart1n: "I haven't bothered following links to the hoax argument sites. I did for this one, just for the hell of it, and have confirmed my prejudices. I mean really? Is this the quality of the arguments? It's comparing the relative sizes of sun and earth in photos, but ignores that the photos are reproduced at different sizes! The cross hairs are a rather conspicuous clue. Show me other photos of the sun taken in space. Show me photos of the sun taken with a similar camera. In general, try a bit harder, cos otherwise I'll suspect that contradictory evidence is being ignored."

Here is the photo of the sun from the NASA source:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20410HR.jpg

Here is the photo of the earth from the NASA source:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20384HR.jpg

They were taken on the same roll of film with the same camera. I don't know how to confirm this but the Aulis site says, and I have no reason to doubt, "These images were taken on the same roll (magazine 134/B) by a Hasselblad Lunar Surface Camera, fitted with a 60mm Carl Zeiss Biogon lens, photographed onto 70mm color film."

What I find about the earth is that it looks smaller than the moon would look on earth with reference to the size of the astronaut. the earth should be over 3 times bigger on the moon than the moon is on the earth. The sun also looks like a studio light.

Just thinking about this on my own, it seems that the mission was planned in lunar morning so that the studio light would not have to be too high in the sky in order to simulate this. A lunar day would last about 2 weeks. Staging this at lunar noon would have been more difficult.

Also, I wonder if the part lighted on the earth is too much for a lunar morning. I would expect no more than half of the earth should be visible. I don't know, but I suspect the sun should still be below the lunar horizon based on the sun's light on the earth. (This is just my own speculation. It is nothing I found on the Aulis site.)

>220 StormRaven: "No, you can't do that. You've touted the Lunokhod missions as evidence that unmanned missions can be sent to the moon. You can't then throw out or simply duck the evidence from the Lunokhod missions because it doesn't fit your lame theory."

I found an article from a Russian perspective by Alexander Onoprienko on the Aulis site that filled in some details about the history of the time that I wasn't aware of:

http://www.aulis.com/illusion.htm

What I think is lacking is a reasonable theory from those believing in the manned Apollo missions that explains why we don't have bases on the moon today. Why divert resources to LEO missions? The moon is the perfect space station--unless of course it is not as easy to get to as those Apollo missions made us think.

>223 FrankHubeny: I don't know how to confirm this... Just thinking about this on my own, it seems... I wonder... I would expect... I don't know, but I suspect...

But over several decades there have been hundreds of thousands of scientists, astronomers, engineers, technicians, observers, experts, analysts, etc from all over the world, people who have nothing to do with NASA and the US government, who do know, who can confirm, even apparently the Russians who would have had plenty of incentive to expose it if is were a hoax.

>224 FrankHubeny:, Well, I guess you would have to read the discussions back when the space station was started but my memory is that in planning for longer trips (e.g. to Mars), there was an idea that it would be good to train humans to live in 0G for long periods of time. Also it was a good way to include different countries in a collaborative effort. Establishing bases on the moon could turn in to territorial disputes.

HOWEVER, all speculation aside, there is a difference between being irrational (from your point of view - NOT going back to the moon) and actually lying by saying we went to the moon but really didn't. And truth is, we went back several times. The fact that we didn't establish a permanent base there is not an argument that supports us never having gone.

>223 FrankHubeny:

Here is the photo of the sun from the NASA source:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20410HR.jpg

Here is the photo of the earth from the NASA source:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20384HR.jpg

Yup, those are the ones on the site. The ones that are reproduced at different sizes, which presumably you think isn't relevant.

What I find about the earth is that it looks smaller than the moon would look on earth with reference to the size of the astronaut.

Perhaps Father Ted can help us here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh5kZ4uIUC0

The sun also looks like a studio light.

Well, to me it looks like a big round bright thing (which has a less bright ring around it). Let's call it no score on that one. My point was that, not being an expert on this sort of thing, I want to know what a photo of the sun looks like when taken with this sort of camera in these circs, i.e. do you get this bright centre/less bright surround type effect.

Also, I wonder if the part lighted on the earth is too much for a lunar morning. I would expect no more than half of the earth should be visible. I don't know, but I suspect the sun should still be below the lunar horizon based on the sun's light on the earth.

I'm impressed how your wondering, suspecting and not knowing leads to support of your position. How about you think it through properly, i.e. the relative positions of sun, earth and moon, which might lead to a conclusion that the astronaut should be in sunlight. Which funnily enough, he is.

>224 FrankHubeny:

The moon is the perfect space station--unless of course it is not as easy to get to as those Apollo missions made us think.

In what way is it perfect? It's more difficult to get to and from than LEO. It doesn't have the microgravity that LEO does. There were scientific reasons for going to the moon - much knowledge has been gleaned from the samples brought back. The scientific purposes of the ISS are very different.

>227 mart1n: Father Ted

I've recently been re-watching some of those episodes. Well spotted to bring in that particular clip!

#223: the Aulis site says, and I have no reason to doubt,

Lo and behold, the skepticism of a conspiracy theorist, who have every reason to doubt NASA, but no reason to doubt a random website.

What I think is lacking is a reasonable theory from those believing in the manned Apollo missions that explains why we don't have bases on the moon today.

Because the moon is far away.

Why divert resources to LEO missions?

Because low Earth orbit is much closer and because the missions that have been slated for LEO are better done in microgravity.

The moon is the perfect space station--unless of course it is not as easy to get to as those Apollo missions made us think.

Exactly why do you think going to the Moon was "easy"? It wasn't. It was one of the more difficult undertakings ever done. Your initial question answers itself - why don't we have bases on the Moon? Because going to LEO is a lot easier.

I found an article from a Russian perspective by Alexander Onoprienko on the Aulis site that filled in some details about the history of the time that I wasn't aware of

None of that addresses your dismissal of the Lunokhod photographs after you touted the Lunokhod missions as supporting your claims that the Apollo missions were faked. You claim that the Apollo photographs "look faked". And yet the Lunokhod photographs look amazingly like the Apollo photographs.

What I think is lacking is a reasonable theory from those believing in the manned Apollo missions that explains why we don't have bases on the moon today.

Because it's damned expensive and nobody can make a sufficiently good case for spending that kind of money on it.

>223 FrankHubeny:

Most of what you see of the "sun" is internal reflections/flare in the lens.
Are you ALSO worried that the image clearly shows multiple suns???

(The 60mm Biogon on 70mm is a distinctly wide-angle lens - roughly comparable to a 28mm on 35mm film. Here are the specs: 8 elements in 5 groups; so, ten glass surfaces, so, yeah, it'll flare when you point it up-sun. They were more interested in building it low-distortion, so they don't actually say if the glass is multicoated, but, for this job, it probably was.)

Go out tonight take a picture of the moon (it's full tonight...) with ANY random camera with a more-or-less 'normal' - or better, with a distinctly 'wide-angle' - lens.

The image of the earth on the NASA site WILL look about three times larger than that. But you'd have to recognize what the moon actually looks like in photos (hint: it's only about 1/2 of a degree) to recognize that fact.

Sheesh. This stuff doesn't even rise to the level of "evidence".

>233 drneutron: Yeah, I don't understand that argument at all. The official numbers are that the whole Apollo program cost $170 billion (2005 dollars), that is, over $30 billion a landing. The International Space Station has run $150 billion. You really think that Congress, then or now, is looking to spend hundreds of billions on a moon base?

>233 drneutron:, >235 prosfilaes:

Not just $30 billion per landing - the cost of the Apollo project per surface time on the moon was (....not the marginal cost, but still...) in today's money, on-the-order-of $280,000,000 per person-hour.

(The six landings spent just under 300 hours on the moon, 600 person-hours.)

And THAT is why we don't have a full-time base on the moon.

edited to fix my arithmetic

The moon is the perfect space station--unless of course it is not as easy to get to as those Apollo missions made us think.

I must admit this is news to me. From 4 October 1957 on I read everything I could get with respect to space exploration and the manned space effort. The Apollo (and the Mercury and Gemini) efforts were called many things but no one ever called or suggested these efforts were easy. They were extremely difficult, the chance for catastrophic failure was ever present and the tone of the reporting at the time reflected this. I can't find the reference but I do know that on the eve of the first moon landing the president of the U.S. had two speeches prepared - one to celebrate success and one to offer condolences in the event of a crash landing on the lunar surface. One does not take precautions like this for things that are perceived to be "easy".

>227 mart1n: My point was that, not being an expert on this sort of thing, I want to know what a photo of the sun looks like when taken with this sort of camera in these circs...

First off, if it were taken outdoors on earth, the sun would look, you know, surrounded by blue sky. So either these photos were taken on the moon, or at minimum, on a really big soundstage. One with 0.16g. And vacuum , too.

>238 AsYouKnow_Bob:

I think one could have faked the dark sky and used a wire to similar the lower gravity with movie making abilities around 1970, but you make a good point and it makes me wonder: is there anything in the Apollo photos that could not have been done on a movie set?

>232 StormRaven: "None of that addresses your dismissal of the Lunokhod photographs after you touted the Lunokhod missions as supporting your claims that the Apollo missions were faked. You claim that the Apollo photographs "look faked". And yet the Lunokhod photographs look amazingly like the Apollo photographs."

I used the Lunokhod (Luna 16) as an example that in 1970 humans were able to send an unmanned rover to the moon. As I recall, you claimed we weren't. I am using evidence that I assumed you would accept including LRO evidence to counter a claim that you made. That is all.

Don't forget. You were insisting that I should be able to see footprints on the moon in LRO photos even though those photos did not have the resolution ability to see a footprint. That reminded me of those tailors in the "Emperor's New Clothes".

Luna 16 wasn't a rover, it didn't move. So StormRaven was correct.

I used the Lunokhod (Luna 16) as an example that in 1970 humans were able to send an unmanned rover to the moon.

So, you're contending the Soviets sent a rover to the moon, for what? So it could not take pictures? You still haven't provided any rationale for dismissing the Lunokhod photos after you touted it as an example of an unmanned mission to the Moon. The only argument you seem to have is that the Lunokhod photos look like the Apollo photos and therefore might have been faked. But why would anyone go to the trouble of putting a rover on the Moon and not use it to take photographs? Explain that. If you can't, then I will take your non-explanation as an admission that you're completely wrong about everything concerning the Apollo missions.

Your "theory" gets loopier and loopier with every post you make.

Don't forget. You were insisting that I should be able to see footprints on the moon in LRO photos even though those photos did not have the resolution ability to see a footprint.

Only those who are complete idiots can't see the footprint trails. What category of observer are you?

>239 FrankHubeny: it makes me wonder: is there anything in the Apollo photos that could not have been done on a movie set?

There's probably nothing in, say, the current Russian incursion in Crimea, or the US incursion in Afghanistan, or the search for the missing Malaysian airliner, or anything else going on at the moment, which could not have been done on a movie set. But that doesn't provide one iota of evidence that it actually has been done on a movie set.

>227 mart1n: "Yup, those are the ones on the site. The ones that are reproduced at different sizes, which presumably you think isn't relevant."

Father Ted doesn't resolve the issue.

Take a look at the earth again:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20384HR.jpg

I would expect it to occupy a larger part of the sky showing evidence of continents even better than we can see evidence of surface structure on the moon more like this one:

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/6550.jpg

>241 jjwilson61: "Luna 16 wasn't a rover, it didn't move. So StormRaven was correct."

It was Luna 17, not Luna 16 as I mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_17

>242 StormRaven: "Only those who are complete idiots can't see the footprint trails. What category of observer are you?"

That's how those tailors would have argued in the Emperor's New Clothes.

I would expect it to occupy a larger part of the sky showing evidence of continents even better than we can see evidence of surface structure on the moon more like this one.

What is the magnification in the first picture? What is the magnification in the second? Do you know? You can see the curvature of the Moon's surface in the first one. That's a lot of magnification. Have you ever taken a picture focused on a nearby object? How sharp was the focus on faraway objects? You keep saying you "expect" to see certain things. Based on what? Your complete ignorance of the subject matter?

246: I notice you ignored the rest of my post. As I stated before I will take your non-explanation as your admission that your claims about the Apollo program landings being faked are complete bullshit.

So, from now on, this is the line that will be quoted: "YesNoMaybe admitted that his claims about the Apollo program being faked are complete bullshit."

Or "YesNoMaybe admitted that his claims about the Apollo program being faked were complete fabrications."

>246 FrankHubeny: That's how those tailors would have argued in the Emperor's New Clothes

IIRC they knew the emperor was naked but were pretending/colluding because they thought it was in their own best interest. The vast majority of people in the world (including all those independent experts who have nothing to gain from colluding with NASA) are not pretending; they genuinely can see the evidence and they genuinely fail to see any persuasive counter-evidence. So there is no comparison with the folk tale.

>237 alco261: "The Apollo (and the Mercury and Gemini) efforts were called many things but no one ever called or suggested these efforts were easy."

They should have been difficult, but it seems that we could send manned missions to the moon seven times between 1969 and 1972, six of which actually landed on the moon using 1970's technology. It looks like we figured out how to do this routinely.

Another issue is the color of the lunar surface. The Chinese showed a browner color in their recent photos.

Another issue is the color of the lunar surface. The Chinese showed a browner color in their recent photos.

Yeah, its not like a place with the land area of Africa could have different color soils or anything. Oh wait:





Also, really? The color was browner? A Chinese photo:



An Apollo photo:



Now you're just making claims that are complete bullshit. And are easily seen to be bullshit.

Also note that the shadows in the Chinese photo don't "line-up", which is one of the criticisms of the Apollo photos. The Chinese photo doesn't have a star field either, which is another of the elements of the Apollo photo that is used as "evidence" that they are faked. Did the Chinese fake their photos too?

Every time photos are sent back from the Moon, they look remarkably like the Apollo photos. The Lunokhod photos. The Chinese photos. Is every government pretending to send missions to the Moon and faking the photographs? Or is it more likely that people like YesNoMaybe don't know what they are talking about and don't know what actual photographs from the surface of the Moon would look like?

>249 John5918: "IIRC they knew the emperor was naked but were pretending/colluding because they thought it was in their own best interest. The vast majority of people in the world (including all those independent experts who have nothing to gain from colluding with NASA) are not pretending; they genuinely can see the evidence and they genuinely fail to see any persuasive counter-evidence. So there is no comparison with the folk tale."

I am only referring to the claim that I should be able to see footprints on the moon. At best one can see rover markings which I don't doubt are there.

What makes it fit the Emperor's New Clothes is the "complete idiot" characterization of those who refuse to say that they see what they can't see.

>250 FrankHubeny: Another issue is the color of the lunar surface. The Chinese showed a browner color in their recent photos.

We were veering towards the territory of the absurd with "The sun also looks like a studio light."

But I think we're there now.

They should have been difficult, but it seems that we could send manned missions to the moon seven times between 1969 and 1972, six of which actually landed on the moon using 1970's technology.

And a large part of their success was that they were actually manned. In the same time frame, Soviet unmanned missions had a failure rate of over half.

Why do you all continue to feed this person's insanity? It's remarkably similar to feeding a troll.

At best one can see rover markings which I don't doubt are there.

Who built the rover? All U.S. government projects are contracted out. What company built this secret rover that you claim exists? How have they kept it secret for the last forty years? The CIA wanted the Glomar Explorer to be kept secret, and they were only able to do so for a handful of months. How has NASA kept every employee at the company who built the secret (and incredibly technically advanced - far beyond the Lunokhod rover's capabilities) lunar rover quiet?

Once again, your theory gets loopier and loopier with every post you make.

>255 Morphidae: Given the level of the hoax proof and the participation of many of the members in good standing of LibraryThing’s Permanent Floating Recreational Debating Society I assumed the whole point of this thread was an exercise in troll feeding.

How about we turn this on it's head. YesNoMaybe, what would it take to convince you that the Apollo astronauts really did land on the Moon? That is, given your profound level of skepticism, what does it take to convince you that anything is real?

YNM wants to see a footprint. The problem is, whose image of the footprint and at what resolution and size would be acceptable?

>255 Morphidae:, >257 alco261: Yes, I got sucked into it without really realising it. Mea culpa.

>255 Morphidae: >257 alco261: >260 John5918:

I just can't seem to let it go. I wish I could, but it is just so wrong. It demeans a magnificent, brave accomplishment that opened the door to space travel, even though we might not see the result of that progress in our lifetimes. It demeans the courage of those who succeeded, those who didn't and those who died trying. I am frustrated and if that is YNM's intention (which I actually don't think it is), this thread has been a success.

And that's the truth. k4k

>261 krazy4katz: I do appreciate your feelings and it helps to keep in mind that a kook being a kook can't demean anything. No more than a kook saying the moon is made of green cheese makes it so. All you can do is feel sorry for the poor person and carry on with your day.

But then, you know, I'm not much better. I keep reading this train wreck. ;)

>261 krazy4katz: It demeans a magnificent, brave accomplishment that opened the door to space travel, even though we might not see the result of that progress in our lifetimes. It demeans the courage of those who succeeded, those who didn't and those who died trying.

I can empathize. I have similar feelings about Holocaust deniers.

>263 southernbooklady: Thanks. Although Holocaust deniers are just evil. The moon landing hoax theory does not rise to anywhere near that level.

I've been following this thread in the optimistic hope of finding an answer to the question "why do people believe this kind of stuff?". People being persuaded of things that aren't true has lead to some truly awful things in this world, though in most cases they've believed it because it's been stated by someone in a position of authority. I'm still in the dark as to why some nobody with a mad idea and internet access can persuade in the same way. I find it genuinely disturbing.

>244 FrankHubeny: I would expect it to occupy a larger part of the sky showing evidence of continents even better than we can see evidence of surface structure on the moon more like this one

Oh, good grief. Of COURSE the two photos look different:

THE FIRST WAS TAKEN WITH A WIDE ANGLE LENS (60mm); "Earthrise" was taken with A TELEPHOTO LENS (250mm).

I mean, really: this sort of thing is why they took along a fancy interchangeable-lens camera.

And it's also why they comprehensively documented everything they did, in records open to the public: so that people could look at the photos AND the documentation and understand exactly how they were made.

>266 AsYouKnow_Bob:
Interesting! How did you find that information?

Bob is one of them stargazers. Not a character to be trusted.

>267 krazy4katz: How did you find that information?

Uh, it's on the internet now, gimme a minute and I can track it down (or just Google for stuff like "Apollo Hasselblad") - but it was generally known at the time (...and I'm old enough to have always known...) that:

- each Command Module had two (basically-stock) Hasselblad 500s with 70mm magazine backs and the stock 80mm normal lens; the two cabin cameras shared a spare 250mm telephoto between them;

- and for the lunar surface, each astronaut had a custom-built Hasselblad, with a 70mm back and a new 60mm lens.

(>Edited to insert: This is why the view of Earth taken from the surface of the moon looks SMALLER than the view of Earth taken from the cabin - where they had access to the long lens....)

Each camera had some finite number (maybe seven?) of pre-loaded 70mm film backs, each with 150-200 shots (depending on the thickness of the film stock).

The 12 lunar-surface cameras were left behind on the moon; only the exposed film backs were brought home. (These are probably THE most collectible vintage cameras in the universe.) Replica cameras were built, and show up on eBay every now and then.

{Department of Full Disclosure: I'm so old that I shot B&W stills off my home TV screen of the Apollo 11 EVA. And I can remember that in the summer of 1970, Sky & Telescope published telescope photos of Apollo 13 on its lunar trajectory, surrounded by a cloud of gas after its SM blew up. }

Edited to add: Here we go: one of the links upstream {>218 FrankHubeny:, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/ } in this very thread leads to a pretty comprehensive "Apollo photography" website: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html

>269 AsYouKnow_Bob:
I shot black and white stills off my TV too!! Will have to look for them -- I think I know where they are. I am pretty sure I have one of Armstrong coming down the ladder. You can barely see the squared-off edge of his backpack. If I can find it, I may scan it and post.

Thanks for the information.

>265 mart1n: "I've been following this thread in the optimistic hope of finding an answer to the question "why do people believe this kind of stuff?". People being persuaded of things that aren't true has lead to some truly awful things in this world, though in most cases they've believed it because it's been stated by someone in a position of authority. I'm still in the dark as to why some nobody with a mad idea and internet access can persuade in the same way. I find it genuinely disturbing."

I find it interesting that some seem to think I have to agree with them. Why does it matter so much that I don't agree?

The issue of persuasion is important. I have my own concerns about that.

The discussion has got me looking for other evidence, so I am glad all of you participated. Here are two more points:

1) Moon Rocks: http://www.jameslavin.com/articles/2010/08/09/are-some-apollo-moon-rocks-really-...

James Lavin describes the discovery that one moon rock was a fake and then presents evidence that has puzzled me as well about whether the moon had water or not.

2) Apollo 11 Horizon: http://www.aulis.com/tranquility.htm

Andreas Märki presented evidence that the horizon in the photographs of Apollo 11 was not out far enough.

>269 AsYouKnow_Bob: a pretty comprehensive "Apollo photography" website: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html

Thanks for this! I think I'm the last generation that remembers taking pictures with film cameras. I still have my old Miranda kicking around somewhere, although at this point it is worth more as a paperweight.

I think I'm the last generation that remembers taking pictures with film cameras

I've got a few friends that are actually getting back into it.

Heh. Pretty soon daguerreotypes will be back in fashion.

The hip kids have the mustaches for it already.

>271 FrankHubeny: You know who I consider experts in the field of geology?

Economist turned computer programmers. Because you know they stay up to date with the latest and greatest research.

Like for instance this. One paper does not make a scientific fact, especially since it's a mischaracterization for what Sharp actually said.

>272 southernbooklady: And I still have my old Praktica in storage somewhere.

>272 southernbooklady:, >277 John5918: - Amateurs! :-)

I still have my 1965 Pentax Spotmatic and my 1971 4x5" Linhof view camera...and from time to time I put them to use (of course the majority of my recent efforts are 100% digital).

Andreas Märki presented evidence that the horizon in the photographs of Apollo 11 was not out far enough.

That's not evidence. That's a collection of complete speculation. The distance to the horizon is hard to tell in the photos because there's nothing to give a frame of reference and without an atmosphere, things look clear all the way to the horizon.

>271 FrankHubeny: The discussion has got me looking for other evidence,

By evidence, you mean stuff that backs up your case, not evidence. Again, you don't have a model of what happened, you have a bunch of nitpicks. It really doesn't mean crap until you can present a model of us not going to the moon that explains the data better than our model.

>276 stretch: "Like for instance this. One paper does not make a scientific fact, especially since it's a mischaracterization for what Sharp actually said."

What I think Lavin was referring to is the possibility that the Apollo samples that showed water came from earth. That would also explain the "heterogenous" nature of the evidence from the moon rocks. I assume some samples actually did come from the moon.

>280 prosfilaes: "By evidence, you mean stuff that backs up your case, not evidence. Again, you don't have a model of what happened, you have a bunch of nitpicks. It really doesn't mean crap until you can present a model of us not going to the moon that explains the data better than our model."

It is nice to find evidence that confirms one's theories, but that goes for all sides in a discussion.

For a model of what happened, I think Alexander Onoprienko's comments make the most sense to me at the moment: http://www.aulis.com/illusion.htm

When I first heard there were people who didn't think we went to the moon, which was about 10 months ago, someone mentioned a Mythbusters TV episode that apparently "debunked" something about shadows going in different directions by simulating that this could be made to happen in their TV studio.

It surprised me that this was the level of evidence the debunkers were using--a TV show to show that some other TV show was real.

I found another Mythbusters show discussed on the Aulis site. In this case the question was whether the regolith on the moon could reflect enough light onto an astronaut to show as much of the detail as the NASA photos showed. The mythbusters claimed, and apparently showed in their experiment, that it could.

Other researchers, however, repeated the mythbusters' experiment and showed it could not.

Here is a link containing the original Mythbuster show and the repeat of the experiment that busted the mythbusters since it did not confirm the mythbusters' results:

http://www.aulis.com/mythbusters.htm

My main take on this is just because some people making a TV show say they've busted some myth, that doesn't mean they have.

For a model of what happened, I think Alexander Onoprienko's comments make the most sense to me at the moment:

That's not a model of what happened. That's a collection of nitpicks and speculation. As prosfilaes said, you don't have a model, which means that you don't have anything but crap.

Here is a link containing the original Mythbuster show and the repeat of the experiment that busted the mythbusters since it did not confirm the mythbusters' results:

Oh good, let's rely on some Russian "cinematographers" who can't even manage to take a picture that is actually in focus. That's a reliable source.

When I first heard there were people who didn't think we went to the moon, which was about 10 months ago, someone mentioned a Mythbusters TV episode that apparently "debunked" something about shadows going in different directions by simulating that this could be made to happen in their TV studio.

You don't have to do anything other than look at pictures taken during the day on Earth to debunk the claim that the shadows going different directions is a "problem" in the Apollo pictures.

>282 FrankHubeny: that this was the level of evidence the debunkers were using

This is not the level of evidence those who know that the manned moon landings happened are using. It's the level of evidence which an entertaining commercial TV show is using.

The link you give seems to base its theory on the idea that scientific and technical advances can only happen slowly. I think much of the last century has debunked that. Recently I've seen documentaries on how the tank (in World War I) and the Mosquito bomber (in World War II), both considered rather novel ideas at the time, each moved from concept to battlefield deployment in only a year. It's amazing what can happen when there is the political and financial will to back an idea, and when risk-taking is deemed acceptable.

You and your ilk fall into the error of many conspiracy theorists in that almost any theory can be made to fit a carefully selected set of facts (especially when some of them are not even facts but just lack of understanding of the facts, plus innuendo and suspicion). I think you would like Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods.

>286 John5918: the level of evidence

I think I've finally grasped the method YNM uses to vet his evidence. It's the spaghetti method: throw it against the wall to see what sticks. Unfortunately he must have overcooked his pasta because it is ALL sticking.

>282 FrankHubeny: My main take on this is just because some people making a TV show say they've busted some {myth}, that doesn't mean they have.

And that's every bit as true for the ridiculous show that started all of this nonsense.

>282 FrankHubeny:
You have absolutely no evidence of any location where such a fake moon landing could be filmed. There is no place on earth where such an event could happen in complete secrecy. There is far more evidence for a moon landing than against it. Real time monitoring being one of them. People with telescopes saw the command module circling the moon and coming back to Earth at the right time. How can you possibly believe that this was going on concurrently with the largest and longest cover-up ever (not) recorded? It defies common sense.

>281 FrankHubeny: And Lavin's conclusions are still wrong. The Sharp chlorine ratio of 745 ppm that would indicate water is still only half of the bottom of the range we find in terrestrial rocks of the same type range from ~1,400 to 45,000 ppm. Besides the only thing the Sharp paper concluded was that the interior of the Moon was dryer than the surface. Moon rocks are remarkably anhydrous. Most of the minerals that make up the rocks of the moon contain the group OH- and some extra Hydrogen, so water be present in the melt that formed the moon is not a shocker in the 1st place. The only the "heterogenous" of the samples indicate is that the magma that formed the rocks was of the same composition, which fits with our current understanding of the moon, so no surprise there.

I would really like to meet the folks that faked this cause they did a phenomenal job of it.

>285 StormRaven: "You don't have to do anything other than look at pictures taken during the day on Earth to debunk the claim that the shadows going different directions is a "problem" in the Apollo pictures."

What you are able to show are shadows on ground that is not flat. Here is some of Aulis evidence regarding shadows going in the wrong directions or even not existing where one would expect a shadow to be:

http://www.aulis.com/nasa4.htm

There is more in this summary than the shadows. Here are some things that stand out for me related to shadows.

1) Note that the flag does not have a shadow in the "Photo compositing" section.

2) Note the shadows going in opposite directions in the "Serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources" section.

3) Note the inconsistency of the LM shadow in the same section. Here the ground is flat based on evidence of the rock shadows.

What you are able to show are shadows on ground that is not flat.

No, what is shown is that shadows on flat ground are not parallel in pictures. A 2D representation of a 3D world doesn't line up the way you think it should:



1) Note that the flag does not have a shadow in the "Photo compositing" section.

Actually it does. It is just very faint, which is what one would expect.

Note the shadows going in opposite directions in the "Serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources" section.

You really need to learn about how perspective works, because those shadows line up exactly how one would expect them to. The "evidence" you have referenced concerning the Apollo photos is only evidence of the ignorance of the people claiming they were hoaxed.

>290 stretch: "And Lavin's conclusions are still wrong. The Sharp chlorine ratio of 745 ppm that would indicate water is still only half of the bottom of the range we find in terrestrial rocks of the same type range from ~1,400 to 45,000 ppm. Besides the only thing the Sharp paper concluded was that the interior of the Moon was dryer than the surface. Moon rocks are remarkably anhydrous. Most of the minerals that make up the rocks of the moon contain the group OH- and some extra Hydrogen, so water be present in the melt that formed the moon is not a shocker in the 1st place. The only the "heterogenous" of the samples indicate is that the magma that formed the rocks was of the same composition, which fits with our current understanding of the moon, so no surprise there.

I would really like to meet the folks that faked this cause they did a phenomenal job of it."

I do think we have rocks and regolith from the moon. These would have been returned by unmanned missions (in my view).

However, I doubt that all the rocks that are claimed to be moon rocks actually are moon rocks. Getting different results from different samples would lead me to believe that is true.

>292 StormRaven: "Actually it does. It is just very faint, which is what one would expect."

Even the poles in the photo you presented show a shadow. I don't see any in the NASA photo.

294: I notice you abandoned the "only shadows on uneven ground aren't parallel" argument, since that has been shown to be completely wrong. How many of your pieces of "evidence" need to be shown to be completely wrong for you to doubt your sources?

Once again, the Apollo pictures show the shadows of the poles. They are just faint, which is exactly what one would expect. The flags show definite shadows:



See that squarish shadow in the upper right of the left-hand photo? That's the shadow of the flag. The shadow of the pole is too thin to see in this picture.



And this picture clearly shows the shadow of the pole. Notice how faint it is? Now think about what would happen to it if it was photographed from a different angle.

The only thing you are doing now is demonstrating that you don't actually pay much attention when you are looking at photographs.

>293 FrankHubeny: However, I doubt that all the rocks that are claimed to be moon rocks actually are moon rocks. Getting different results from different samples would lead me to believe that is true.

Look up the concept of Fractional Crystallization and read it very carefully, then come back. I doubt you'll understand how rocks from the same melt composition can vary as it cools, but whatever. It's pretty clear that your not going to go to any great lengths to absolve your own ignorance of your conclusions.

>295 StormRaven: "I notice you abandoned the "only shadows on uneven ground aren't parallel" argument, since that has been shown to be completely wrong. How many of your pieces of "evidence" need to be shown to be completely wrong for you to doubt your sources?

Once again, the Apollo pictures show the shadows of the poles. They are just faint, which is exactly what one would expect. The flags show definite shadows:"

I still don't see a shadow in the one where it is supposed to be. The other photo shows that the shadow should be visible. My conclusion is the same as the Aulis site: the flag was added to the photo as part of a composite.

Regarding the parallel shadows on flat ground, I assume you are referring to the picture you presented of the two shadows of the poles joining.

What those two shadows show is that the poles are not parallel. You can simulate that with two brooms held up to the sun and watch how their shadows join when you move the tops of the handles closer together. The shadows are as parallel as the poles.

However, consider the shadows in the picture under the heading "Serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources".

http://www.aulis.com/nasa4.htm

The light source is coming from the left and the right and from the back based on the shadow of the astronaut's head on the bottom of the picture.

Supposedly on the moon the camera is affixed to the front of the astronaut's suit, there is only one light source, the sun, and all of this is occurring in lunar morning.

These shadows show this picture could not have been taken on the moon under those conditions.

>296 stretch: "Look up the concept of Fractional Crystallization and read it very carefully, then come back. I doubt you'll understand how rocks from the same melt composition can vary as it cools, but whatever. It's pretty clear that your not going to go to any great lengths to absolve your own ignorance of your conclusions."

Before someone uses moon rocks from an Apollo mission in an experiment those samples should be tested to make sure they came from the moon.

I still don't see a shadow in the one where it is supposed to be.

The problem is that you don't actually know where shadows are "supposed to be". I could go outside during the day and take pictures of street signs that show the shadows looking exactly like the shadows of the flags in the Apollo pictures.

What those two shadows show is that the poles are not parallel. You can simulate that with two brooms held up to the sun and watch how their shadows join when you move the tops of the handles closer together. The shadows are as parallel as the poles.

So now you are simply reduced to making shit up and demonstrating that you have no concept of how perspective works in 2D pictures. The poles are parallel. The shadows are not. This is how perspective works.

However, consider the shadows in the picture under the heading "Serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources".

Once again, you lack an understanding of perspective. Shadows in pictures are never parallel, and always look like the shadows in the picture under that heading.



Look at the shadow of the lightpost on the near side of the street, close to the photographer. Now compare it to the shadow of the lightpost on the far side of the street, far away. They are angled differently in the photo, and exactly like the different angles of the rocks and the LEM in the "serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources" picture. This is fairly conclusive evidence that the guys at the aulis site have no clue what actual shadows look like in actual pictures, and since you see to think they know something, neither do you.



The shadows in this Apollo picture are angled just like the ones in the street picture. Your source simply doesn't know what it is talking about when it comes to photos and shadows.

>298 FrankHubeny: Before someone uses moon rocks from an Apollo mission in an experiment those samples should be tested to make sure they came from the moon.

Which is to say: They should run experiments on them before they run experiments on them.

300: One wonders how YNM proposes that the samples be tested.

That's easy. Just take some pictures of them and see if the shadows line up.

>297 FrankHubeny: I still don't see a shadow in the one where it is supposed to be. The other photo shows that the shadow should be visible. My conclusion is the same as the Aulis site: the flag was added to the photo as part of a composite.

How does that make sense? If you're doing the filming/photography on Earth, there's no reason you should be forced to insert a flag into a photograph. It would be hard to explain why they had to do it with a picture from the moon, but it seems more likely that someone would need to insert a flag in a photograph taken a long distance away then one taken in a photo studio.

Again, what's your model and what evidence do you have to support it, not how you can you throw crap at the established theory.

>299 StormRaven: "So now you are simply reduced to making shit up and demonstrating that you have no concept of how perspective works in 2D pictures. The poles are parallel. The shadows are not. This is how perspective works."

The shadows show that the poles are leaning in toward each other. As I suggested take two brooms, or something with handles on them, and see what sorts of shadows you get outside from these two objects.

What I am interested in is whether you can explain the photo in http://www.aulis.com/nasa4.htm under the heading "Serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources".

>303 prosfilaes: "How does that make sense? If you're doing the filming/photography on Earth, there's no reason you should be forced to insert a flag into a photograph. It would be hard to explain why they had to do it with a picture from the moon, but it seems more likely that someone would need to insert a flag in a photograph taken a long distance away then one taken in a photo studio.

Again, what's your model and what evidence do you have to support it, not how you can you throw crap at the established theory."

I think one would put the flag in for special effects. Besides the shadow, they also argued that the concavity of the folds of the flag are the same whether the picture is taken from the front or the back. That is another sign the flag was inserted into the photo.

I think I have already answered the "model" question and I am presenting the evidence, most of which comes from the Aulis site, with each post.

Here's some other evidence about those photos since you mentioned "taken a long distance away". This evidence attempts to determine how far the distance mountains are based on parallax. They show that those mountains are quite near contradicting the claim that these objects were far away.

This article is by OLEG OLEYNIK: http://www.aulis.com/stereoparallax.htm

The shadows show that the poles are leaning in toward each other.

No, the poles are parallel. You simply don't understand how perspective works. Shadows don't run parallel, they converge towards a vanishing point. This is basic stuff, and your inability to grasp it seriously calls your capabilities in this area into question.

Look at these parallel poles with non-parallel shadows:



What I am interested in is whether you can explain the photo in http://www.aulis.com/nasa4.htm under the heading "Serious shadow anomalies: multiple light sources".

I did, with this photo:



Did you miss that? Or are you simply unable to understand what you are looking at?

The other thing that shows the aulis guys don't know what they are talking about is that multiple light sources wouldn't produce shadows going "different directions". Multiple light sources would produce multiple shadows - each object would have multiple shadows trailing off of it.

>300 AsYouKnow_Bob: "Which is to say: They should run experiments on them before they run experiments on them."

I don't see anything wrong with running multiple experiments on something. Each experiment asks a different question.

>306 StormRaven: "I did, with this photo:

Did you miss that? Or are you simply unable to understand what you are looking at?"

How does this photo illustrate anything? Look at the lamp post in the distance where the yellow marks cross. It is in the same direction as the one in the foreground. That is not what we are seeing in the photo I am referring to.

Now show me how I can construct an example of a photo taken in the morning with one light source and shadows in the same directions as those in the photo illustrating the problem.

Besides the shadow, they also argued that the concavity of the folds of the flag are the same whether the picture is taken from the front or the back.

This also shows that they have no idea what they are talking about. Here is a flag photographed front and back at the exact same time, notice how the flag seems to billow "out" at the same place in both direction? That's because in a 2D image it is very hard to tell if cloth is folded "out" or "in".

How does this photo illustrate anything? Look at the lamp post in the distance where the yellow marks cross. It is in the same direction as the one in the foreground.

You aren't even able to understand the sources you cite. Their claim that the shadows are "anomalous" has to do with the LEM shadow, which is at exactly the same angle as the lamp post across the street.

>298 FrankHubeny:, >300 AsYouKnow_Bob:, and >307 FrankHubeny: Your statement doesn't make sense on multiple levels, but first and foremost fractional crystallization is a concept based on thousand of individual experiments. These experiments have be done since the beginning of geology and continue today. It is not a single experiment that is done for a unique rock. It is a tool to see how the original melt mix can derive "heterogeneous" samples as it cools and solidifies. Moon rocks by the way of every type have been subjected too thin section microscopy, x-ray diffraction, melt compositional tests, countless geochemical tests, electron microsopy, etc. Everything in the geology toolkit has been thrown at these rocks in the last 45 years and it all has confirmed that these rocks are not from this Earth, and indeed fit quite nicely in composition of the moon, verified by missions from multiple countries conducted long after the apollo missions ended.

Look your evidence is shaky at best leave geology to people who understand it.

>309 StormRaven: "You aren't even able to understand the sources you cite. Their claim that the shadows are "anomalous" has to do with the LEM shadow, which is at exactly the same angle as the lamp post across the street."

I don't see the shadows that are supposed to contradict my position. Perhaps if you take out the yellow line it will help. However, in the image you mention, I do see parallel shadows as I would expect.

The image I am interested in is this one from the NASA site that Aulis references:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17-145-22172HR.jpg

I see shadows on the left, on the right and from the back. This is supposedly lunar morning.

I don't see the shadows that are supposed to contradict my position.

Look at the shadow of the lamp post across the street, on the right of the picture. The shadow that is in line with the "due east" yellow line. I think the problem you are having is that you don't understand any of this, and are just wallowing in ignorance.

I see shadows on the left, on the right and from the back.

You mean like this?



Or this?



The claims made by the aulis site aren't just wrong, they are stupidly, laughably wrong.

>305 FrankHubeny: You have the art of being nonresponsive down. I conceded for the sake of argument that the flag was inserted. The question was why does that help your case; why is it more likely that they would have added the flag if the photo was taken on Earth then if the photo was taken on the moon?

I think I have already answered the "model" question

No, you haven't. What, if anything, was launched? Where was the radio signal coming from that was relayed by Australia? I could get a long ways arguing that Queen Elizabeth isn't human as I long as dodge the question of "what is she?" Where was the moon landings filmed, and what exactly did we launch? How and why was Apollo 13 orchestrated? All you want to do is toss up negative questions.

>315 prosfilaes: "You have the art of being nonresponsive down. I conceded for the sake of argument that the flag was inserted. The question was why does that help your case; why is it more likely that they would have added the flag if the photo was taken on Earth then if the photo was taken on the moon?"

If you accept that the flag was inserted then the photographic evidence was altered. That is all I am trying to establish with the photographic evidence. You really don't want to concede that point.

Why would they want to add the flag if the picture were taken on earth? There could be many reasons any one of which would work for my argument. Perhaps they wanted to stimulate patriotism. Perhaps they forgot the flag in their initial shoot and now wanted it in that particular scene. Ideally they should have had the flag in the picture when they took the picture on earth to begin with, but since they were faking the evidence they likely made some mistakes. There may have been whistle-blowers who put this in (as those on the Aulis site conjecture) to show that the photos were faked.

>314 StormRaven: "The claims made by the aulis site aren't just wrong, they are stupidly, laughably wrong."

The first photo shows a light source form the left and the second photo shows a light source from the right.

Neither of these address the issue.

Here is the challenge. Forget photographs. Take two rock-like objects, say paint cans, that you can carry. With your back against the morning sun and without any other light source show that the shadow of one rock comes from the left and the shadow of the other comes from the right and your shadow goes between them. Show me how to reproduce that experiment in my driveway so I will be convinced.

Another thing about that photo is that it looks like it was taken closer to noon rather than morning because the lengths of the shadows are not very long. Since lunar morning would last a few earth days, this picture could not have been taken on the moon because the lengths of the shadows are too short.

>316 FrankHubeny: Why... There could be... Perhaps... Perhaps... they likely... There may have been...

But where is your actual evidence for any of this, which is pure conjecture?

It goes back to the question which people keep asking you but you fail to answer, about what actually happened in your opinion. There is a huge amount of solid evidence which supports a narrative that the moon landings took place. You cast doubts on a couple of fragments of that evidence, doubts which in fact generally show your lack of understanding of the evidence. However even if your doubts about these particular small fragments of evidence turned out to be true, where is the evidence that supports an alternative theory and what is the alternative theory?

It would be interesting to hear your theory, in detail please, at least as much detail as is available for the actual moon landings; not just "it was a hoax". How was it done? Why? When? Where? By whom? How was it covered up so effectively over so many decades? How come the KGB never found out about it and blew the whistle? Why did so many of the participants keep quiet about it, even long after the space race and the Cold War were just history?

The first photo shows a light source form the left and the second photo shows a light source from the right.

And they both show shadows on the left, right, and front of the rocks, just like in the Apollo picture. That's why the aulis site is stupidly, laughably wrong.

Forget photographs.

Why? Because they inconveniently show that the people who made the aulis site don't know anything about how perspective works for shadows? The remainder of your post is, as always, drivel. At this point, with the photographic evidence in front of you, you have decided to ignore what is visible in the photos in favor of your delusional views. But now, since everyone can see the photos, and the fact that they don't show anything like what you or aulis claim they show, the only thing that is happening now is that you are being justifiably laughed at.

Explain this picture from the Dallas Morning News:



Why are the shadows of the trees on the left of the picture pointing left and the shadows of the trees on the right of the picture pointing right? What sorcery is this?



Why is the shadow of the man in the upper left corner of the picture not parallel with the shadows of the men in the lower right? How is this possible ?



How is the shadow of the column to the left pointing left, the shadow of the column to the right pointing right, all with the shadow of the man in between them. How can this be?



Shadows on the left of the rocks, shadows on the right of the rocks, and in the middle, the shadow of the photographer. ZOMG! How could this happen?

>316 FrankHubeny: If you accept that the flag was inserted then the photographic evidence was altered. That is all I am trying to establish with the photographic evidence. You really don't want to concede that point.

For the sake of argument, sure I do.

Why would they want to add the flag if the picture were taken on earth? There could be many reasons any one of which would work for my argument.

I don't see that an added flag makes going to the moon less likely. And anything that doesn't change P(moon trip) is irrelevant. If it could work either way, it doesn't matter.

There may have been whistle-blowers who put this in (as those on the Aulis site conjecture) to show that the photos were faked.

Really. And they've done nothing else to reveal anything in the 40 years since.

>318 John5918: "It would be interesting to hear your theory, in detail please, at least as much detail as is available for the actual moon landings; not just "it was a hoax". How was it done? Why? When? Where? By whom? How was it covered up so effectively over so many decades? How come the KGB never found out about it and blew the whistle? Why did so many of the participants keep quiet about it, even long after the space race and the Cold War were just history?"

I think the theory presented by Alexander Onoprienko addresses most of your questions: http://www.aulis.com/illusion.htm

>320 prosfilaes: "I don't see that an added flag makes going to the moon less likely. And anything that doesn't change P(moon trip) is irrelevant. If it could work either way, it doesn't matter."

If the photographic evidence has been faked, then one has to ask, why?

If you are willing to concede that the evidence has been tampered with, why do you think that occurred?

>319 StormRaven: "And they both show shadows on the left, right, and front of the rocks, just like in the Apollo picture. That's why the aulis site is stupidly, laughably wrong."

Here's something else from the Aulis site that I found interesting. It looks like the rover was a remote controlled model:

http://www.aulis.com/rc_model.htm

The parts that stand out for me are the following:

1) The arm of the astronaut is not moving.

2) The camera was not pointed toward the astronaut as evidence from the reflection in the visor.

Here is another video analyzing the same rover/astronaut film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4al2z9_cgA4

Here's something else from the Aulis site that I found interesting.

Ah, now that the nitpicks that you have brought up regarding the photographs have been eviscerated, you scramble to a completely different claim.

Of course, the claims in the video are just as full of crap as everything else you've posted. First he claims he can tell the lunar rover is close to the LM because they are the same height. Then he says that the fact they are the same height is evidence that the LM is a fake. The reality - that the lunar rover is closer to the camera than the LM, never seems to occur to him.

He also makes a big deal about the camera "not pointed towards the astronaut". Except that the angle that the astronaut is seen at is exactly the angle one would expect from a camera mounted on the center of the rover. That's why you only see the front portion of the astronaut in profile - that is exactly what one would expect to see. His "diagrams" of what he thinks the angle should be are as laughably wrong as the photograph claims.

About half of the video featuring the Russian special effects cameraman could have simply been him saying "I don't know how pressurized suits work in a vacuum".

>321 FrankHubeny: I'm obviously not making myself clear. My apologies for that. I'd already looked at that link as you have mentioned it before, I think. It does not tell me what it claims happened. All it does is point out a few things which it claims are discrepancies, and explains why it thinks the USA might have perpetrated a hoax. It does not tell me what actually happened. I ask again for (positive) evidence of what actually happened rather than just the (negative) mention of a few supposed discrepancies in the actual evidence and the continued assertion that it must be a hoax. I ask again, where was the hoax footage taken? Who by? How? How was it covered up? Take us through the whole narrative from day 1, the President's announcement that the USA would land men on the moon within a decade and presumably soon after that a meeting of senior officials to decide that the hoax was necessary (who were they? when did they meet? where? any witnesses or tapes?), through the actual hoax (camera crews, stage sets, etc, as well as the real space launches which had to take place even though they didn't go to the moon), through the cover up process, right up to today where it is still being kept secret, presumably by a second or third generation by now. I want to know how it happened, and what (positive) evidence there is that it happened in this way.

>325 John5918: I ask again for (positive) evidence of what actually happened rather than just the (negative) mention of a few supposed discrepancies

Conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories precisely because there is no positive evidence. If there was, it would no longer be a conspiracy theory, but just a theory.

#325:

I'm particularly interested in the decision to pull scientists and engineers off the high priority manned missions in order to use them for the ultra-secret fully automated missions. How was that justified? What was the cover story? When did this happen? Why did none of those scientists and engineers ever come forward, especially when most of their work was duplicated for the Mars missions?

>322 FrankHubeny: If the photographic evidence has been faked, then one has to ask, why?

You're playing with two different standards. To quote #316, "Perhaps they wanted to stimulate patriotism. Perhaps they forgot the flag in their initial shoot and now wanted it in that particular scene." Those work even better if you're talking about a moon landing.

>325 John5918: Agreed.

>322 FrankHubeny: YesNoMaybe: If the photographic evidence has been faked, then one has to ask, why?

One also needs to ask: HOW?
(Or more precisely: HOW THE HELL????)

Is it even worth mentioning that the Apollo photography was shot on (a version of) High Speed Ektachrome - and that in those days, "photo retouching" was an art form practiced on color negatives - an art form that meant hand painting on each frame?

So presumably the argument is that all of this was shot on a sound stage on color negatives, then each frame (of 5- or 6 thousand) was cunningly and undetectably re-touched by Hollywood artists - none of whom have ever come forward - and then reshot onto 70mm Ektachrome???

(I have no idea at all how you'd sustain the contrast range when you copied the retouched originals....)

Once again, I should point out that it would be easier to just go to the moon.

It used to be that NASA would send (probably sell?) a good copy of any of their photos to anybody who asked; and that all 5- or 6 thousand Apollo photos are cataloged someplace; but I'm not in the mood to track down the archive.

Edited to add: Yeah, no longer for free; in fact, they've mostly outsourced distribution of their photography.

The NASA Public Affairs office has a selection of the lunar photography: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/

Still photographs may be downloaded from the Web at http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/ or be purchased from the Johnson Space Center's Media Resource Center at 281-483-4231.

(Maybe I'll dig around for prices, the complete archive, etc.)

>325 John5918: "I'm obviously not making myself clear. My apologies for that. I'd already looked at that link as you have mentioned it before, I think. It does not tell me what it claims happened. All it does is point out a few things which it claims are discrepancies, and explains why it thinks the USA might have perpetrated a hoax. It does not tell me what actually happened. I ask again for (positive) evidence of what actually happened rather than just the (negative) mention of a few supposed discrepancies in the actual evidence and the continued assertion that it must be a hoax. I ask again, where was the hoax footage taken? Who by? How? How was it covered up? Take us through the whole narrative from day 1, the President's announcement that the USA would land men on the moon within a decade and presumably soon after that a meeting of senior officials to decide that the hoax was necessary (who were they? when did they meet? where? any witnesses or tapes?), through the actual hoax (camera crews, stage sets, etc, as well as the real space launches which had to take place even though they didn't go to the moon), through the cover up process, right up to today where it is still being kept secret, presumably by a second or third generation by now. I want to know how it happened, and what (positive) evidence there is that it happened in this way."

I don't know the positive details of how it happened. In could have happened in many ways. I do think there are scenarios that would allow a hoax to not be a logical or empirical contradiction. That is all I need.

What I am interested in is whether the evidence has been faked or not. My suspicion is that is has been faked. If it has been faked, the question is why? That would lead to conjectures of what happened. Since more than one person was involved that would lead to a "conspiracy".

I suspect that we sent unmanned missions to the moon. They dropped off retroreflectors and brought back lunar samples. The reason for not thinking the missions were manned is because of the faked photographic evidence and the fact that no one else has sent any human to the moon before or since.

Now it is possible, as Dark Moon suggested, that we did send astronauts to the moon but they were not the same astronauts that were photographed. I don't think that happened, but it might have.

Now if the photographic evidence contained no anomalies and if travel to the moon continued throughout the past 40 years, there would be no question that we actually went there between 1969 and 1973.

I don't know the positive details of how it happened. In could have happened in many ways. I do think there are scenarios that would allow a hoax to not be a logical or empirical contradiction. That is all I need.

So you don't actually have a theory of what happened.

I suspect that we sent unmanned missions to the moon.

Who built the unmanned rover? As I said before, the U.S. procures everything via government contract. What contractor built the secret lunar lander and secret lunar rover? These would have been significant technological accomplishments of the time, and would have been incredibly expensive. What part of NASA's budget was used to pay for this? NASA's budget is public record. You should be able to identify the money used to build your imagined lunar rover.

>329 AsYouKnow_Bob: "Once again, I should point out that it would be easier to just go to the moon."

I think it would be easier to fake it. Why? Because if it were that easy we would have gone back and had a base there by now.

I have seen the photographs on http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/

>330 FrankHubeny: I do think there are scenarios that would allow a hoax to not be a logical or empirical contradiction. That is all I need... I suspect that we sent unmanned missions to the moon. They dropped off retroreflectors and brought back lunar samples. The reason for not thinking the missions were manned is because of the faked photographic evidence and the fact that no one else has sent any human to the moon before or since.

First of all, if all you need is other realistic scenarios to prove that we didn't go to the moon, you are setting a very low standard. Second, you have not come up with any realistic scenarios. There is no way we could send unmanned missions to the moon without anyone knowing it. As others have said, the success rate for unmanned missions was much lower in those days. What we have is positive proof that we did go to the moon. The photographs were not faked. You can quibble with odd shadows etc. in the photographs but you could do that with many photographs of many different objects. Also, why would there be "whistleblowers" that insert fake objects so that they can be found later? As said above, remember the technology in the '60s and '70s. You really have proposed no realistic scenarios. The most realistic scenario is the one that occurred. We went to the moon – not once, but several times, remember. Then we didn't have the money and a strong justification to return. Simple.

Just ask the astronauts who went there! These people spent years in training. Their activities in preparation for moon landings are well documented. Also, why do you think we would send astronauts that we would not photograph and then photograph fake ones on earth?

k4k

>330 FrankHubeny: I give up!

>326 southernbooklady: "Conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories precisely because there is no positive evidence. If there was, it would no longer be a conspiracy theory, but just a theory.

A conspiracy theory is what you get when more than one person is involved in the coverup. It has nothing to do with evidence.

>332 FrankHubeny: I think it would be easier to fake it. Why? Because if it were that easy we would have gone back and had a base there by now.

Really? Building a base is at least an order of magnitude harder than just going there. Plus there just hasn't been the public support to spend that kind of money on space research since we beat the Russians.

>333 krazy4katz: "The photographs were not faked."

They look faked to me.

>333 krazy4katz: "There is no way we could send unmanned missions to the moon without anyone knowing it."

I think those missions actually went to the moon. They were just unmanned. It is how I make sense out of the photographic evidence. Something else might have happened.

As far as being technologically able to put a retroreflector on the moon or pick up regolith, the Soviets confirmed that that could be done with the technology at the time by doing it. So I have no reason to doubt we didn't do something similar.

>335 FrankHubeny: A conspiracy theory is what you get when more than one person is involved in the coverup.

Actually, that would just be a straight conspiracy.

It has nothing to do with evidence.

That there is no evidence is what makes it a conspiracy theory.

But others have pointed all this out with more diligence than I have felt bothered to summon, and more patience than I possess. The sum total of your position has been to trot out whatever is posted on aulis.com. But since your method of evaluation seems founded on the statement "it doesn't look like that to me," you aren't demonstrating a grasp of the realities involved in space travel (or, for that matter, photography). So your faith in aulis does not do much to convince others of the site's credibility.

>332 FrankHubeny: In 2009, NASA used CBO data to estimate the cost of the Apollo program in 2005 dollars as $170 billion for 6 landings. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has estimated that establishing a lunar base in the early 2020's would cost about $35 billion plus a commitment of about $7.35 billion per year to keep it running (all in 2009 dollars). It's not that we can't do it - we know how. It's that no one can make a convincing case to spend that kind of money, especially when budgets are the way they are these days. Assuming that because we're not doing it now means we didn't do it then is naive, to say the least.

>339 drneutron: "It's that no one can make a convincing case to spend that kind of money, especially when budgets are the way they are these days. Assuming that because we're not doing it now means we didn't do it then is naive, to say the least."

It's not only that we aren't doing it now, but no one else has claimed to have done it since. I look at it as an experiment that no one else has been able to reproduce.

Budgets are an excuse for not going back to the moon. If the photographic evidence did not look faked, that excuse would be a good explanation. With the photographic evidence in question, that excuse loses weight.

>340 FrankHubeny: *sigh* Done.

With the photographic evidence in question, that excuse loses weight.

Not only is the photographic evidence not in question, your attempts to show that it is have been dismal failures. It has been shown over and over again that neither you nor the authors of the aulis site actually have any real understanding of photographs in general, and especially with how shadows work in photographs.

I think those missions actually went to the moon. They were just unmanned.

Once again, what contractor built the unmanned lander and unmanned rover? Where in NASA's budget was the money to pay for such a thing? NASA's budget was and is public record. Show where in the budget that project was paid for.

>330 FrankHubeny: I don't know the positive details of how it happened. In could have happened in many ways. I do think there are scenarios that would allow a hoax to not be a logical or empirical contradiction. That is all I need.

This applies to just about everything. I don't believe there was an American Civil War; I don't have to know the positive details of how it happened. I don't believe JFK was assassinated. I don't believe Tenerife really exists; the CIA hid those two airplanes and their passengers. That is all I need.

>343 StormRaven:: Once again, what contractor built the unmanned lander and unmanned rover? Where in NASA's budget was the money to pay for such a thing? NASA's budget was and is public record. Show where in the budget that project was paid for.

Heck, show us who launched these hypothetical lunar landers. We're talking at least the launch of a big-stack Titan III - if not a Saturn I or even a Saturn V - for each of these imaginary unmanned lunar rovers.

Those are hard to hide.

How could you roll out and launch a payload to the moon and not have anybody notice?
("Hey, watcha workin' on?" "Oh, nuthin....")

And this was done six times?

Well, I learned something from all of this:

At least ONE (and possibly three?) of the Lunar Surface Hasselblads WAS returned to earth: it's in the news because it just got auctioned for close to a million dollars:

http://www.dailytech.com/Camera+Used+by+Astronauts+on+Moon+Pulls+940+Gs+at+Aucti...

>345 AsYouKnow_Bob: I believe that YNM believes that the Saturn V launches took place, just that there were rovers and not people aboard them.

>347 jjwilson61:

So...they had another movie set where they faked the climb-in to the Command Module?
What did they DO with the LMs which - despite the photographic and eyewitness evidence - they never loaded into the stacks? (Which, by the way, the LMs were made with a LOT of gold foil - somebody woulda been tempted to try to scrap that....)

And they sent an entire aircraft-carrier task force out to the Pacific to recover WHO, exactly?

Where did they hide the Apollo crew until the CM descended from the stratosphere on parachutes? (From WHERE, exactly? Did they convert a C-5 to airdrop a toasted CM? How big a blowtorch would you need to melt the ablation off a CM?)

And how did the return modules of these hypothetical lunar rovers get recovered?
Was there another (secret) Navy task force sent out to recover those?

(Six times, and none of the thousands of sailors involved ever mentioned it?)

It would be easier to send them to the moon than to fake the launch.
It would be easier to send them to the moon than to fake the lunar EVAs.
It would be easier to send them to the moon than to fake the reentry.

We're being trolled.

>We're being trolled.

Yep, and YesNoMaybe is laughing his/her butt off. 348 posts!

#349

Positively over the moon about it!

#346 AsYouKnow_Bob "At least ONE (and possibly three?) of the Lunar Surface Hasselblads WAS returned to earth: "

70mm film? Pretty neat. The astronauts trained at UNC Chapel Hill's planetarium on many occasions so the library got a bunch of photos taken on the moon which were printed directly from the original negatives - couple of pounds of approx. 6" x 9" or so photos. {mentioned the photos earlier in the thread}. They were available for anyone to look at in a big drawer. At 70mm the photos were probably only enlarged 3x at most from the negatives.

Yeah, medium format film was a Thing.
120 film gives you a 56mm by 56mm image, fully 3.6 times the size of a 35mm negative; I'm pretty sure that 70mm gave the same image size, as it used the 10mm extra width for the sprocket holes.

(I think I heard that Kodak stopped production of 70mm film, I don't know if there's ANYTHING available in that size anymore.)

We're being trolled.

Yep, and YesNoMaybe is laughing his/her butt off. 348 posts!

I'd never underestimate the power of sheer redacted to stay within the TOS

>349 Morphidae:, >353 Jesse_wiedinmyer: troll or not I have found this thread to be of interest. From time to time I've wondered about the "proof" concerning the supposed faking of a manned landing on the Moon so it was interesting to see that, in the end, all it amounts to is “verum est ipse dixit” which, in turn, is based on nothing more than a complete lack of understanding of photography and perspective.

I do find it sad to think, particularly in this day of cell phone photography and easy image uploads, that a person would be unwilling to take the short amount of time needed to demonstrate to themselves the basic photo interpretation mistakes made on sites such as the ones cited in this thread as providing proof of fraud.

A tip of the hat to the usual suspects and members in good standing of the LTPFRDS for providing cogent counterpoints to the proffered “evidence”.

>353 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I was thinking of that as well.

Two possibilities: #1 It's being done to get a rise out of people or #2 The person is that "redacted to stay within the TOS."

Either way it's still feeding a troll.

Personally, from what I've heard of this person's activities on other threads, I think it's the first. I think the person comes to LT just to stir the pot.

>354 alco261: I had to Google verum est ipse dixit. Basically, "he said it, therefore it is true"?

>345 AsYouKnow_Bob: "How could you roll out and launch a payload to the moon and not have anybody notice?
("Hey, watcha workin' on?" "Oh, nuthin....")

And this was done six times?"

Just to make sure you understand what my position is, those missions occurred. I don't see any reason not to think we landed on the moon. Those missions just weren't manned.

So there is no issue with nobody noticing anything.

Now why do I think they were not manned? Well, the photographic evidence looks faked to me. Looking back at the history it looks like we weren't ready to successfully land someone on the moon and yet we had a 1969 political deadline. In an attempt to doubt the minimum possible, given the faked evidence, I only assume that the missions were not manned.

>348 AsYouKnow_Bob: "And they sent an entire aircraft-carrier task force out to the Pacific to recover WHO, exactly?

Where did they hide the Apollo crew until the CM descended from the stratosphere on parachutes? (From WHERE, exactly? Did they convert a C-5 to airdrop a toasted CM? How big a blowtorch would you need to melt the ablation off a CM?)

And how did the return modules of these hypothetical lunar rovers get recovered?
Was there another (secret) Navy task force sent out to recover those?

I first found out about the Aulis site after searching based on discussions in this thread. I am grateful to all who have responded.

I'm trying to find information about your questions. If they did not go to the moon, then the reentry would have to be faked as well. I agree.

The re-entry has been examined on the Aulis site and here is the link I am checking out now, but I haven't finished it.

http://www.aulis.com/apollo_fake_reentry.htm

#353 definitely a troll

>357 FrankHubeny: So there is no issue with nobody noticing anything.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/ap10-S69-17807HR.jpg

I count seventeen people in the shot - plus the photographer - here visibly installing LM "Snoopy" to the Saturn V stack for Apollo 10.

Your position is that sometime before the launch, somebody snuck in and swapped an imaginary (and undocumented) unmanned lunar rover for the 17-ton LM. (Of course, there are plenty of pictures of each one.)

This was done six or eight times.

And nobody ever noticed.

Wow it's done up like a Christmas tree :)

>359 AsYouKnow_Bob: Look at that thing! There's no way that would work! You can just tell! It looks totally fake. Steampunk without the steam.

I think that whole module was some kid's science-project added in after the fact.

ETA: I count 18 people.

Well, clearly, one of those people snuck an unmanned lander up the gantry under their coat - made the switch - and then took the LM out (again, under their coat) and then quietly stashed it in their garage....

Six or eight times.

As I've said above a couple of times now: the conspiracy theory is just such a nutty, arbitrary place to draw the line.

Yes we launched a crewed capsule to the moon; but that last couple kilometers-per-second of delta-v to get down to the surface? - THAT part is just impossible to believe.

Because somebody doesn't understand how photography works. And they saw a website.

Because it's just so much simpler to invent a totally crazy, world-spanning, generations-long conspiracy than it is to reconsider the fact that one doesn't understand how to evaluate evidence.

>359 AsYouKnow_Bob: I count seventeen people in the shot, >361 southernbooklady: I count 18 people

And surely that discrepancy alone proves that it is a fake!

The re-entry has been examined on the Aulis site and here is the link I am checking out now, but I haven't finished it.

Translated YNM: "I don't understand how any of this could work, but let me consult a website run by people who have demonstrated they don't understand physics or photography to see what they have to say."

>356 FrankHubeny: Now why do I think they were not manned? Well, the photographic evidence looks faked to me.

and up at >244 FrankHubeny: I would expect it to occupy a larger part of the sky showing evidence of continents even better than we can see evidence of surface structure on the moon more like this one

And at >266 AsYouKnow_Bob: - - I carefully explained that the two images of the Earth looked different because they were taken with quite different lenses.

The proper reaction to having something explained by a stranger on the internet is to say " OH! Thank you. I didn't know that."

But even after having a simple question explained, some people prove impervious to evidence.

Because apparently it's much easier for them to construct world-spanning, multi- generation conspiracies involving secret moon rovers than it is to learn the simple fact that there are cameras that have different lenses that give different image sizes.

"I don't understand it, even after it was explained to me: therefore it must have been faked."

The larger lesson here - and the reason that I (for one) am still part of this conversation - is that it's useful to learn that there are people walking around who are completely impervious to evidence. It's educational and instructive to encounter them; this is one of the gifts that we got with the birth of the internet.

For some people, once an idea is lodged in their head, they are forever incapable of discarding or even revising that idea in the light of new evidence.

That's interesting to know.

>365 AsYouKnow_Bob: people walking around who are completely impervious to evidence. It's educational and instructive to encounter them

I don't understand why being impervious to evidence is a workable strategy, though.

>365 AsYouKnow_Bob: The larger lesson here - and the reason that I (for one) am still part of this conversation - is that it's useful to learn that there are people walking around who are completely impervious to evidence.

Or much more likely, is that they are a troll.

I'd rather think someone is a troll than that they believe something that stupid. Unless they have an IQ of 70 or lower. Then they just don't know any better.

>366 southernbooklady: >367 Morphidae:

Eh, it's an approach to knowledge (and an approach to life) more than a question of intelligence. It certainly seems to work for lots of people.

There are people whose ideas are completely bound up with their identity: they can no more easily change an idea than they could change their name; and there are people for whom "ideas" are something distinct from their identity: ideas are more like toys to play with.

For the first group, once an idea has taken root, it's impossible to abandon or even modify; for the second group, the fun is in picking up an idea and seeing where it leads.

Some people feel free to abandon an idea in favor of another, better idea; some people simply can't.

Holding on to the ideas you were born with (or the ideas you first encounter) is probably as successful a strategy as any IF you live in a static society. It's only even detectable as a strategy when something comes along to challenge the idea.

Keynes was criticized for changing his mind - as if that were somehow a bad thing:

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

>368 AsYouKnow_Bob: it's an approach to knowledge (and an approach to life) more than a question of intelligence.

No, I get that. I get the value of identity. And I get defying consensus when you think you have a better understanding of knowledge. But I don't get denying knowledge. It's not like your refusal to acknowledge a thing will make it disappear. Reality isn't interested in accommodating our personal priorities and agendas.

There do seem to be people who simply can't do it, cannot acknowledge contradictory evidence.

For them, when evidence contradicts a belief, it's the evidence that must change, not the belief. Easier to build epicycles upon epicycles to explain away the evidence than it is to change the closely-held idea.

(Or the evidence can simply be ignored - - and the discussion is then switched to some OTHER topic....)

>370 AsYouKnow_Bob: when evidence contradicts a belief, it's the evidence that must change, not the belief

In my experience knowledge opens doors, it does not close them. And my understanding of people who hold beliefs, or have faith, or live by an ideal, is that the same is true...their belief opens doors to greater understanding, it does not shut them.

So I suspect that if you find yourself in the position where you have to deny or ignore knowledge to maintain your world view, it is strong, uh, evidence that your world-view is in need of re-assessment.

>372 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Interesting article, thanks!

ETA: Interesting also that I'm usually the one telling a friend that the article that s/he just posted is a hoax/untrue. I'm a bit of a cynic and research claims.

De rien.

>373 Morphidae: Interesting also that I'm usually the one telling a friend that the article that s/he just posted is a hoax/untrue. I'm a bit of a cynic and research claims.

I think all conspiracy theories are kept alive by the government (and Monsato) so that people will waste time worrying about Area 51 and not pay attention to what else is going on. :-)

>375 southernbooklady: Heh. Now that's one conspiracy theory I can buy into.

That's what the government wants you to believe, SBL. It's the old double-reverse-pump-fake-hide-it-in-plain-hidden-sight-trick.

A friend of a cousin of mine is really into the Illuminati and that sort of thing...

And I can never help but think "Ok, so there's this all-controlling secret sect that wraps their nefarious tentacles around every aspect of our daily existence. And we're completely powerless against them. Now why should I care about this? Knowing this changes my life in what way? What am I supposed to do about it anyway? And would I even be privy to this knowledge if they hadn't decided to let me know?"

For some conspiracy theories (I'm thinking, say, "JFK assassination") and their adherents, the idea that somebody is in control of events is more comforting than the idea that things are sometimes just random and meaningless.

I looked into the reentry issue and whether it was faked or not. Here is another article from Aulis which makes me think that it was faked:

http://www.aulis.com/command_module.htm

The part that interests me is at the end of the article with the table showing the improbably accuracy of the splashdown locations. It is the sort of accuracy one would get from dropping the CM from an airplane.

The part that interests me is at the end of the article with the table showing the improbably accuracy of the splashdown locations.

Or, one could do even a few seconds worth of research and realize that each U.S. mission had six to twelve ships assigned for recovery covering a wide area (plus numerous other tracking ships) and so the fact that the actual splashdowns were near to one of them is not really that surprising. But that would require you to do something other than parrot the aulis site, so it probably didn't occur to you.

>380 FrankHubeny: Has it ever occurred to you that taking all of your "evidence" and theories from a single website and ignoring the hundreds of thousands of other resources, many of them peer-reviewed, is a trifle unreliable?

>379 AsYouKnow_Bob: the idea that somebody is in control of events is more comforting than the idea that things are sometimes just random and meaningless

Somehow, I find that thought far less comforting than a general acceptance that shit happens.

But you can't do anything about shit that happens. People that make shit happen? They're a target for your anger.

>384 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Yeah, well. Somehow "they're all out to get me" doesn't strike me as a comforting way to live. :)

Just because you're comfortable, doesn't mean they're not out to get you...

>380 FrankHubeny:

The part that interests me is at the end of the article with the table showing the improbably accuracy of the splashdown locations. It is the sort of accuracy one would get from dropping the CM from an airplane.

Why do you believe we couldn't hit the target? Gemini did miss the target a couple times, but they improved their accuracy. How does the aulis site "know" that was impossible? How do they "know" what happened?

…and they burned the CM so it looked like it was coming in from outer space? …and the videos of the CM coming in through the atmosphere with the flames shooting around it were fake?… The pilots of the cargo planes were sworn to secrecy? Yeah, another unlikely and, quite frankly, difficult to prove, hypothesis. That's the problem. These hypotheses are impossible to prove unlike what really happened for which there is plenty of data.

We saw the astronauts get into the CM (yes I know…for us it was only on TV but there were people there who helped strap them in and we can't trust them to ever tell the truth even 40 years later).
We the people saw the Saturn V lift off.
We the people saw the rockets fire and detach.
We have videos of them floating inside the CM.
We have videos of two astronauts going in the lunar module.
We have videos of only 1 astronaut left in the CM.
We have videos of the lunar explorers coming back.
etc.
etc.

>387 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Another fabulous article. Thanks!

>380 FrankHubeny: The part that interests me is at the end of the article with the table showing the improbably accuracy of the splashdown locations.

Again, this such a weird place to draw the line: Pete Conrad - (or, in crazyland: the secret-undocumented-lunar-rover-with-prehensile-thumbs-that-was-secretly-swapped-for-the-manned-lander) - hit a spot on the moon
within 500 feet of Surveyor 3, walked over and collected the TV camera and brought it back to earth. (The Surveyor pieces are here, they have wear consistent of a couple years on the lunar surface.)

If we - Pete Conrad OR secret rover - can hit an exact spot on the moon, why, then, should it be at all hard to believe that we could return within sight of an aircraft carrier on the earth?

Edited to add: As long as we're here, take a good look at the best unmanned lander that we could build in 1966-68. Take special note of the scissor-jack that some of Hughes' best mechanical engineers were able to design and build to poke at the dirt.

But by 1969, we were supposedly able to build a rover sophisticated enough to harvest parts off of 1967's best, roll the parts back to an ascent stage, and fly them back (undetected) to earth. The recovered parts would be shown in museums; the returning rovers would never be publicly acknowledged.

Oh, and each of the five (one-way) Surveyor landers cost about $100 million in 1960s-dollars, roughly a half-billion dollars (each) in today's money.

Re: the accuracy of the splashdowns: It's possible the "target" was simply calculated from the parameters of the incoming capsule; and the splashdown error is simply the residual of the precision of the "target" calculation.

Anyway, in wondering about the recovery accuracy, I found this lovely table of the splashdowns of the Apollo missions:

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-40_Entry_Splashdown_and_Recovery.htm

Things Learned While Looking Up Other Things:

- Apollo 13 - with its navigation done by sextant and dead reckoning, and with the TEI completely improvised - made as accurate a return as any other mission. (Of course, the target itself had to be moved thousands of miles, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean - but Lovell managed to hit it. Now I'm wondering if that's the best flying in history, or whether the "target" was simply redefined as the parameters became known. Whichever way it was, the Navy managed to get a carrier underneath them in time.)

- It's interesting to note that by the last couple missions, they were sending out just a single unescorted CV to the recovery target (with a couple of other ships covering possible secondary targets).

You find the best stuff on the Internet, Jesse.

Irrationality is sort of my pet interest. Something about growing up in a physically abusive alcoholic environment coupled with burying most of my family by the time I was 24 (and watching people run like hell so they could pretend it wasn't really happening) forced me to start looking at the crazy ways in which people refuse to deal with reality and the attempts to force narrative and structure on our lives.

>392 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Thanks so much for this! Now at least I know where to go when I need to straighten out my conspiracies. I wouldn't want to make a mistake.

I finally had a bit of time to get caught up with this thread, then I saw this a few days ago!


of course if there was no moon landing, this theory is out the window.

>396 NorthernStar: Unless, of course, they faked his killing? Maybe he's alive and well living on the moon with Elvis and Hitler? Of course that begs the question of how they got there given that humankind doesn't have the ability to get to the moon...

>397 John5918:
Well, duh; they hitched a lift with the aliens in Area 51 of course. Do keep up!

>398 mart1n:. Of course! Sorry, we get out of touch with these things over here!

I wanted to punish the person who re-started this thread with a thousand lashes with a wet noodle.

But it was oh-so-worth-it.

*snickers*

>396 NorthernStar: Brilliant!

http://blog.secularactivism.org/?p=216

Chris Mooney will be doing an online course about the science of why people don't believe in science.

Trust a comedian to explain most conspiracy theories...

Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs.
-- Woody Allen

My issue is not whether we went to the Moon; it's why we stopped.

#403 "My issue is not whether we went to the Moon; it's why we stopped."

Think of an alternate reality where there was no "War in Vietnam" and all that time, money and resources were vested in the space program.

Why would we continue sending men to the moon to collect rocks indefinitely? And probably creating a space station was the logical next step.

If the choice was space station or returning to the moon, then sure, the station is more important. But why couldn't we do both?

Actually, the choice at the time was one of three things - space station, return to the Moon with the idea of having a base, or a trip to Mars. According to the articles I read at the time (I kept them for some time but they were discarded in a long ago house cleaning) the space station was the cheapest of the three and it won.

>406 BruceCoulson: But what would be the scientific purpose of going back to the moon again? Add to our rock collection?

Coincidently, I recently finished a library book about a different type of moon walk conspiracy. The Cassandra Project was an interesting read, and made me think of this thread!

#408

Because you can always learn more; unless you decide that you already know everything worth knowing. Which is the attitude taken to justify not looking any further.

My recollection is that the space station was important because (1) we had to learn to cooperate with other nations to get to Mars and this was a good first step; and (2) we had to learn what the effects of living in space for long periods of time would be, which is what we have been learning on the space station. This took precedence over building a a base on the moon, which might be regarded politically as kind of an invasion, and collecting more rocks, for which there was no defined purpose.

Also, NASA's budget and mission came under scrutiny after we had been to the moon several times with no obvious improvement in scientific knowledge. Remember that politics enters into the equation with these types of decisions. It doesn't always look rational in hindsight. The space station has been funded by multiple nations, making it cheaper for the US.

I was reminded of this thread when, for some odd reason, this book showed up in my kindle recommendations: For The Moon Is Hollow And Aliens Rule The Sky by Rob Shelsky (sorry, no touchstone for the book, apparently). After reading the blurb, I'm still not clear whether this is a serious book or a parody, although it is tagged as nonfiction...!!! :)

A South African friend sent me a quote today which is purported to come from David Letterman...

America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.