Moon Landings Real?

[Glyn]

We are getting loads of talk back radio here about the moon landings 40 years ago, what people were doing on the day etc etc. 99% of them are convinced it happened, mainly as a result of the beautiful clear photographs and great TV transmission. Putting all the "conspiracy theories" aside. Who thinks they did or did not make it?

I'd have to say I'm a skeptic, only due to the fact that so many went, the ones that did make it there all got back and with no ill effects. The fact that there have been so many issues with the shuttle program makes me wonder how was that possible 40 years ago? Also the fact that ALL of the original tapes have been erased is just ... Well, I've said enough. Be interested in other thoughts from members.  
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[inanecathode]

Lol, coil in 3...2...1...

Well, if the moon landing never happened, why is there a laser reflector on the surface of the moon?
If the walks were faked, how come theres no dust clouds? On earth, fine dust creates clouds because it becomes suspended in the air, but in the nasa footage it falls right back down to the ground. Yeah, slow motion and wires, but how do you make dust do that? Create a whole studio under hard vacuum?

[Brian Moffet]

http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm

We didn't go back because of politics, and then a bunch of other stuff.  Face it, society today is not in the mood to risk human lives in a moon expedition (or other, look at how bad the shuttle fares when something happens) in the name of science.  The people that risked their lives going to the moon and the shuttle launches put science above their own lives, and I'm in awe of them.

P.S. This is absolute bravery as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81gn2oLeC_U

[funkamongus]

I have to agree with Brians last statement, for sure.. I, too, am in awe of them.. I grew up in Florida and watched it happen from the TV like everyone else and from the roof top we could see the launches after a few seconds (we were about 40 miles away.. Those guys were true pioneers. It was no "disney" ride, either. I have much respect..(Im paraphrasing at least,, combining quotes at worst, the old memory aint what it used to be) It was said about the monkeys they used,, that they could do anything the human could do.. and someone said,, but the monkey doesnt know he's sitting on tons of high explosives and a ship made from thousands of individual parts, all made by the lowest bidder.... damn,, makes ya think. The highlight of my "space envy" happened when I was a musician on a cruise ship that came in and out from Port Canaveral.. As we came in one morning very early,, they shot the shuttle off right over our heads... We were out on the "sundeck" (uppermost deck) with blankets and stuff.. all checking out the show.. Massive. The whole ship shook. and the Water, and our insides. Fully immersed in the experience.. I was impressed. True heros.

[h2olawyer]

It most definitely happened.  Have you looked at any of the LRO photos NASA released today?  They have a great shot of the Apollo 14 landing site (along with all the other landing sites except Apollo 12 - hasn't been imaged yet) which shows the bottom stage of the lunar lander, some scientific instruments left behind & the footpaths between the landing site & the instruments.  Future shots will have more detail, as the LRO hasn't reached it's lowest orbit altitude yet.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

Astronauts are amazing pioneers, going clear back to the Mercury Project.  Buzz Aldrin rented a house near me for a few weeks one winter in the late 1970s to enjoy the skiing in Steamboat.  He struck me as a genuinely nice, humble man.  If you didn't know where he'd been & what he'd done, you would never expect him to have been an astronaut.  He did have the outward confidence of a military pilot (some would say ego) but that's the type of mindset required for that type of mission.  Nice to see him out on news shows lately, reminiscing about the experience.  The time I talked with him, it was all skiing & snow related.

Shuttle is a much more complex set of systems than the Apollo program.  Considering the complexity, the fact that only two have been lost is remarkable.  Apollo operated with less computing power than most of us have available in a laptop today.  Many may have forgotten (or never learned about it), but Apollo 1 had a fire on the launch pad during testing in 1967.  Gus Grissom, Ed White & Roger Chaffee all died in that fire.

Anyone here remember how to use a slide rule?  Anyone here under 35 even heard of a slide rule?  I used to know how to use one, but forgot that skill years ago.  They were still in heavy use while I was in high school because the few calculators that were available cost $200 - $300 back then!

As an aside, modern amateur telescopes aren't able to get details of less than about 1 mile wide on the moon, so those cannot see any of the trash left behind in the Apollo missions.  Even if the Hubble Space Telescope was focused on the landing sites, it could not show any of the stuff.  It's all just too small.

H₂O

[Brian Moffet]

Thanks, those are cool photos.

[Rick G]

I have no doubt it happened. When I was young, we were really short on hero's unless you count baseball players,(I never did)  But, the astronauts were  my hero's. I always wanted to go along , but I didn't have the qualifications and I don't have the money to go with the Russians.
The earth is mans cradle , the future is out there. Just ask Arther C Clark!

[Re-Vision]

Got out of the military in 68 and went to work for the Air National Guard in Houston, watched the astronauts practice for the landing right across the runway from our hangar and one blewup one afternoon.  Some of our Sunday soldiers worked for various contractors involved in the mission.  My point being that there was a tremendous effort being put forth and I never heard one word of doubt from anyone about what was going to happen. George Bush was one of our pilots then, wish we could have sent him to the moon and made Armstrong president.  BDC

[YellowJacket!]

I think the scary thing nowadays - and what makes so many people skeptical - is the technology of the time and the sheer fact that they were able to do it.  The computers they used then were the equivilent of a small calcualtor watch...or less, but they succeeded in their goals.  Fast forward to today and look at what goes into a space shuttle mission and tha amount of computing power, communications etc...ant their error rate seems so much higher.

Simply amazing

David

[h2olawyer]

The computer error rate on the shuttle is pretty low.  The problems are in the fittings, glued on ceramic heat tiles, rubber "O" rings, things like that.  Ballistic trajectories and orbital planning are still just number crunching.  Have you noticed that the checklists they use on the shuttle are in 3 ring binders?  Some things never change.  Yes, I am kind of a NASA TV junkie.  Also, my cousin retired from NASA (as director of mission integration) last November.  He started working there as a college student just at the end of the Apollo era.  His first projects involved some electrical systems on Skylab.  We talked quite a bit about what changes NASA made after the Challenger, then the Columbia accidents.

The really scary thing about the shuttles and the upcoming Orion / Ares rockets is that they use solid propellant (boosters on the shuttle & the entire rocket with Ares).  Once you light those off, they will burn until the fuel is gone.  No stopping them.  The three main engines on the shuttle orbiter and all the Saturn series, as well as Atlas, Centour & Redstone were liquid fueled.  Those can be shut down if a problem occurs at or shortly after ignition.

There's now some private enterprise getting involved in space exploration as well:

http://www.spacex.com/

http://www.virgingalactic.com/flash.html?language=english  

You don't need to pay the Russians multiple millions anymore!   ;D   Let Richard Branson take you into space for about $200K.

H₂O

[Glyn]

I'm getting pretty convinced now. The recent moon photo's look impressive but are in pretty poor detail, be good to have some close up pics, perhaps from a non NASA source. I'd really like to believe it. If anyone has a good knowledge of photography, esp manual photography with the camera's used on the mission, I'd love them to shoot holes in the details shown in this site.

geschichteinchronologie.ch/.../22_moon-fotos-without-moon-photographer-foto-compositions-ENGL.html

Can't get the hyperlink to work, but cut and paste that into Google and you will get to it.

I'm sure it must be a lot of hogwash, but I'm no photographer.

The thing is, these photo's are what most of the general public rely upon as proof of the landings so must stand up to scrutiny.

[funkamongus]

Arthur C Clark,, Did you know he moved to Sri Lanka so he could "enjoy" little boys??? I was floored when I heard that..

[h2olawyer]

For rebuttal to the camera & photo (plus other) claims made on the site referenced above by Glyn:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#

See Also:

http://www3.telus.net/summa/moonshot/nosee.htm  Home page of the site:  http://www3.telus.net/summa/moonshot/index.htm

There are many more sites out there if you want to search for them.

H₂O

[Brian Moffet]

With most of the conspiracy theories, the  methods they use are faults in the evidence.  They pick out details that they believe show that the evidence is incorrect.  Often, these faults are fairly detailed, and to disprove the faults requires a much more intimate understanding of the evidence, physics, optics than most people have or are able to easily understand.  Thus, the conspiracy theory gains converts through ignorance. 

Evolution is a good example, as is the moon landing.  Many people who "disprove" evolution point to Darwin getting something incorrect, even though evolutionary theory did not stop with Darwin writing the ultimate science.  With modern techniques, DNA for example, these "mistakes" actually make sense.

One of the moon examples is why don't the stars show up in the sky when the photos are taken since there is no atmosphere.  The answer to that is that the film does not have enough latitude (the range of light it can register) to see the intensely bright light of the lunar surface and people, as well as the very minute light the stars put out.  Film and digital sensors requires a minimum threshold of light to register, stars don't make it given the short exposures and low ISO used to take images of the astronauts.

Every thing I've mentioned shouldn't be used to blanket all conspiracy theories.  Occasionally one is correct.  But it does say that you need to go in with an open mind, and enough doubt to make a difference in your thinking.  Finding fault in evidence does not, by itself, prove another hypothesis.  You need evidence backing up that hypothesis.  For an amusing book about this topic, read "Search for the planet Vulcan".  It sort of falls into the physics wonky category, but it shows how many people believed one thing, which would imply the existence of another planet.  A slight modification, one that people would almost never see in their daily lives, explained the lack of a planet.

Brian

[Glyn]

That's a nice summary Brian. I always think that all the conspiracy theories have some $$ agenda somewhere, else why would they bother? I think it is  wise council not to accept anything on face value we see or hear. I would say anything backed by Govmt or a political party has more to gain even thatn a mega corporation. There have been lots of events recently that feed fire to conspiracy theorists (WDM, 911, the plane that hit the Pentagon with no wreckage etc). I think conspiracy sites do a good job in the sense that they try to keep our eyes open. I think believing them is as dangerous as  believing everything the media says.

I'm still on the fence on this one.

[Lucky]

My uncle Marshal (we call him Uncle Einstien) worked on the computers for the Gemini, Apollo & Saturn launches, he did data recovery, he was one of the team of guys who took the recorded info off those early drives, & turned it into usable data.  he has so many stories, i have no doubt in my mind they happened, there is just too much to fake...

[Kojo]

The major flaw with conspiracy theories is that we give our government too much credit. Especially with something as large as the moon landings. The difficulty to fake something like this, and keep everyone in an organization like NASA quiet would be too hard. I just have doubts that our government is that smart in that aspect.

[Glyn]

Yes I think it would be a tough act to cover up the real story from all the NASA employees too.
We keep getting more moon stuff over here and attached, usually to the back end of the article is a sarcastic crack at conspiracy theorists. Tonight it was about a chap called Bart Sibrel. I'd never heard of the joker so I did a google to find out.

www.moonmovie.com

Mmm I thought another nutty site, full of cheery picked moments and bad astronomy. However when you look at the logic of some of the  arguements and the rationale behind the Apollo  missions it could have been faked. Take your time, go through all the creedns and DVD palys, it takes over 30 mins. Seriously take a look. My favorite bit is how they keep the moon lander cool in 250 degree  F surface temperatures for a couple of days, with no shadows, using "exide batteries".  I realise that the USA is terribly proud of the accomplishment, but really, if you have time. Take a look.

That's it my last post on this. Keep an open mind.

[joevacc]

I met Neil Armstrong on a show I was doing once...   We went.  (and by "we" I mean the 24 who actually flew there)

There is a great book to read if you are so inclined: The Last Man on the Moon  By Gene Cernan.

8)

[kiawrench]

i vote for real deal . and i still cant grasp the concept of so much data moving through a computer system with less capability than a pocket calculator !

   about a year before my friend passed away ( my after service fishing partner) we talked about what amazed us the most (since we discovered opposite sex) and the simple fact that he helped build the command systems console for the apollo project got my new vote.  to think, everything that did anything was routed through a "computer pack" that had less ability and speed than the average 11.00 calculator (as in one bought today)is just hard to imagine .