Finally, all the Moon Hoaxers can move on, right?

[russ_watters]

Oh I've never really thought it was faked or even researched the subject very much. I just considered that idea as a possibility to explain the hoaxers theories. They mostly revolve around supposedly faked footage and a supposed secret sound stage. I find it a handy alternative explanation for these things to show that even if they are true it does not mean the landing didn't happen. And its not terribly far fetched either.

Yeah, it really is far fetched. It is twisted, convoluted, perverted logic. It would make you be inclined to disbelieve every piece of video/photographic evidence of anything, ever. Good video evidence is a positive thing, not a negative thing. And they put an extrordinary amount of effort into trying to get good video and photos - but ther were plenty of problems.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Yeah, it really is far fetched. It is twisted, convoluted, perverted logic. It would make you be inclined to disbelieve every piece of video/photographic evidence of anything, ever. Good video evidence is a positive thing, not a negative thing. And they put an extrordinary amount of effort into trying to get good video and photos - but ther were plenty of problems.

I don't get what you mean really. The moon landing was extremely expensive and highly politicized. The idea that they may have made back up footage for public consumption just incase is somehow twisted, convoluted, perverted logic?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

At the time I thought that of all reasons the hoaxers gave it may be the only good one.

Of course, it is not. As you may know, Van Allen himself says so.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't get what you mean really. The moon landing was extremely expensive and highly politicized. The idea that they may have made back up footage for public consumption just incase is somehow twisted, convoluted, perverted logic?

The idea is one thing, but we are talking about reality. I have to agree with Russ on this one. Anyone who takes a serious look at this knows that it does require perverted and convoluted logic to justify the claim that the landings were faked. What does justify the claim - the only thing - is ignorance.

Take for example the claim about the shadows. Frankly, even most children could probably understand that not all shadows from a single light source are parallel. It depends entirely on the surface on which the shadow is seen. In fact, it is easy to make shadows at 90 degrees to each other: All we need is a vertical surface, and a horizontal surface. The fact that the people making these claims don't understand this puts them on the intellectual level of a ten-year old - that or they are just dishonest and making the claims to make money. That alone should be sufficient cause for people to quit listening to these nuts.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't get what you mean really. The moon landing was extremely expensive and highly politicized. The idea that they may have made back up footage for public consumption just incase is somehow twisted, convoluted, perverted logic?

Yeah, it's disturbing, actually, so far removed from rational thought it is.

The idea is one thing, but we are talking about reality. I have to agree with Russ on this one. Anyone who takes a serious look at this knows that it does require perverted and convoluted logic to justify the claim that the landing were faked. What does justify the claim - the only thing - is ignorance.

Nah, I'm starting from scratch here - before even looking at the claims and the evidence. The very idea that they'd make backup footage, much less attempt to pull off a huge hoax is ludicrous. The idea itself, before you even start to look at the evidence, just doesn't make sense. It should be obvious why it was never considered:

1. A hoax that requires 100,000 participants isn't possible.
2. The fallout from an unsuccessful hoax would be huge.
3. It wasn't necessary to make a hoax or backup footage. And I don't just mean because the mission succeeded, I mean the type of failures such as the out of tune string quartet - you wouldn't want, much less need to avoid that with the moon landings. Unpolished reality, complete with imperfections, is the best historical record!
4. Heck, even the Russians didn't do such things and they wouldn't announce launches until after they happened for fear of failure!
[edit]5. Odds of failure? Well plenty of rockets blew up on the pad and every one of our astronauts who has died in space died during re-entry (the Russians too, I think). You don't gain a whole lot as far as safety is concerned by faking only the landing on the moon itself.

 

[D H]

The notion is ridiculously far-fetched and incredibly insulting. Too many people were watching. The Russians would have called our bluff if there was any sign it was a fake. So would the uncounted number of ham radio operators who monitored the mission's progress.

Too many people were involved. The planning for the Apollo missions started in 1958 -- before NASA existed. The sheer magnitude of the effort precludes it from being a hoax. The only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. If it were a hoax, why repeat the effort and risk the cover being blown?

Too many people knew how to calculate whether the Saturn rockets and Apollo vehicles had the capability to go to the Moon and come back. Assuming it was a hoax, NASA would still have had to build the vehicles with the capability of sending people to the Moon and bringing them back alive. Why not just use that capability?

To claim that this was a hoax is incredibly insulting to the country and to the tens of thousands who worked on the project. Being incredibly insulting is of course the ultimate intent of most of the hoaxers.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Of course, it is not. As you may know, Van Allen himself says so.

Yes. I found quite a good explanation of the radiation in the van allen belt here. One of the reasons why I stayed.

The idea is one thing, but we are talking about reality. I have to agree with Russ on this one. Anyone who takes a serious look at this knows that it does require perverted and convoluted logic to justify the claim that the landings were faked. What does justify the claim - the only thing - is ignorance.

Take for example the claim about the shadows. Frankly, even most children could probably understand that not all shadows from a single light source are parallel. It depends entirely on the surface on which the shadow is seen. In fact, it is easy to make shadows at 90 degrees to each other: All we need is a vertical surface, and a horizontal surface. The fact that the people making these claims don't understand this puts them on the intellectual level of a ten-year old - that or they are just dishonest and making the claims to make money. That alone should be sufficient cause for people to quit listening to these nuts.

Yeah, it's disturbing, actually, so far removed from rational thought it is.

I think people are misunderstanding. I'm not lending credibility to the idea that the landing was faked. I'm only giving an alternative explanation to why there could have been (not that there was) fake footage and/or a sound studio since a lot of hoaxers seem to think that these are damning evidence. Of course my first inclination about the supposed studio was that it was a staging area where they practiced using the equipment and filmed the practice.

So my only point was: Even if there was fake footage and a secret studio these are no reason to believe that we did not go to the moon. The idea that they made backup footage for publicity/propaganda purposes is more logical and feasible than the whole thing being faked. There is too much evidence outside of the footage, fake or not, to believe that the landing did not happen.

It's coming at the discussion from a "Even if we accept your premise..." angle.

 

[DaveC426913]

Yes, point of order:

They're claiming it is plausible that, in addition to going to the Moon, they also shot some "insurance" footage.

I'm only giving an alternative explanation to why there could have been (not that there was) fake footage and/or a sound studio since a lot of hoaxers seem to think that these are damning evidence.

Sorry but this smacks very strongly of a desparate attempt to trivialize what would in fact be strong evidence (i.e. if there really were faked footage). It is equivalent IMO to the Creationist desparately explaining away actual fossil evidence by claiming God buried it there.

It takes pretty twisted logic to try to turn what is very strong evidence in favour of an argument into an apparent weakness of the argument.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

If this doesn't get this thread locked, nothing will:

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/5593/6pepxjpxuzhzml2.jpg

Edit: I don't see the picture. Can someone link to it correctly?

http://phocks.org/stumble/moon-crane/"

Edit by Ivan: Fixed.

 

[russ_watters]

Dave, tse - there is no such hair to be split. Whether "backup footage" or a hoax from the start, the requirements on the footage and the program and all the hoax risks are functionally identical

 

[mgb_phys]

I always wondered why the government departments that so effectively cover up UFOs, fake moon landings, rig skyscrapers to collapse and all the other conspiracy targets can't be put in charge of things like health care - they seem to be much more effective than any other government dept.

 

[FredGarvin]

I always wondered why the government departments that so effectively cover up UFOs, fake moon landings, rig skyscrapers to collapse and all the other conspiracy targets can't be put in charge of things like health care - they seem to be much more effective than any other government dept.

That's funny. It just brought a vision to me...an office building with a receptionist..."Sorry Sir. The moon landing hoax office is just down the hall from the 9/11 coordination offices on the third floor. If you get to the CIA/Grassy Knoll Office, you went too far."

 

[BobG]

You know the reason I found this site was because I was looking for an explination regarding the claim that the radiation in the van allen belt was too much for the astronauts to survive through with the minimal shielding provided by the shuttle. At the time I thought that of all reasons the hoaxers gave it may be the only good one.

Electromagnetic waves from a solar flare were a bigger hazard (especially in the X-ray, gamma ray range).

There were quite a few who thought sending missions to the Moon so close to solar maximum (about 1967) was a needless risk that could be avoided minimized be delaying the missions until the solar minimum (around 1973).

In this case, Kennedy's commitment to put a man on the Moon within the decade and the pressure of the cold war overrode had a higher priority than minimizing something that was seen as a relatively small risk.

One of the tasks during the mission was to detect solar flares as soon as they happened and return astronauts from the lunar surface to the command module as soon as possible if a solar flare occurred. This wouldn't protect from the electromagnetic radiation, but it would protect from the particles ejected from the Sun since it would take the particles hours to arrive. (The command module offered some protection from high energy ionized particles while the lunar module and space suits offered virtually none whatsoever).

They got lucky during the entire Apollo program with the only really major solar flare occurring between Apollo 16 and Apollo 17.

 

[Cyrus]

........ANYWAYS. Something of actual educational value...

Today is the 40 anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the 1969 mission with former astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. The Newseum held a discussion on "The Apollo Legacy". Yesterday, the Apollo crew spoke at the Smithsonian Nat'l Air & Space Museum on space history.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/07/20/HP/R/21095/40th+Anniversary+of+Apollo+11.aspx

Who cares about what people think concerning the moon hoax? Their idiots. Just pat them on the head and say "goood boyy" "sit...sitttttt" "shake hands".

 

[JaredJames]

Play dead would be better...

 

[Cyrus]

play dead would be better...

BaNG!

 

[DaveC426913]

Dave, tse - there is no such hair to be split. Whether "backup footage" or a hoax from the start, the requirements on the footage and the program and all the hoax risks are functionally identical

Yes.

(In case there was any confusion, I was not agreeing with the hypothesis, I was merely clarifying it.)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Ugh! I just stopped at a store and asked the young girl behind the counter if she knew what happened 40 years ago today.

"Allegedly [air quotes] we landed on the moon", she responded. As you can imagine, I had a few things to say.

This is soooooo sad. I am starting to think the information age is really the disinformation age.

 

[Pengwuino]

Ugh! I just stopped at a store and asked the young girl behind the counter if she knew what happened 40 years ago today.

So you're THAT guy!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I always wondered why the government departments that so effectively cover up UFOs...

Here is the real irony in that one: Some of the best sources for reported UFO encounters [whatever that means] are government files describing military encounters. Some of the best reports come from the National Security Agency's files. The UK's Ministry of Defense is another good source.

 

[AUMathTutor]

I believe more in UFOs than that the moon landing may have been a hoax.

I mean, it could have been a hoax, right? You never know. ;D

 

[russ_watters]

So you're THAT guy!

Any responsible adult should be "that guy". When kids are out of line, they need to be put in their place. To not do it is to condone their idiocy. I think Churchill said that...

Anyway, I hope I made my point - I was posting from a blackberry this afternoon. The point is that this hoax (or backup footage idea) fails the "why would they do that" test that has to be asked before you even start to consider the conspiracy theory. At least with a lot of others, there is plausible logic for why it would have been done.

Take the Kennedy assassination. If there was a conspiracy behind it, then that would be something the govt would want to cover up. The downside of a failed coverup is insignificant compared to the harm to the democracy if the the conspiracy is revealed. So the idea has some sound logic behind why it could have been done.

But for Apollo, the coverup would have to have happened before the failure, making for a dual risk of the mission failing and the coverup failing. In addition, even in the event of failure, the downside of the failure really isn't that big - we saw just about the maximum possible downside with the Apollo 1 failure. And that means the upside of a successful coverup isn't that big either.

The "backup footage" idea is even worse than a flat-out hoax of the whole thing: if a camera breaks and you use "backup footage" as a replacement, you don't gain all that much (and again, plenty of cameras failed and we saw the result of the failures), and you stand to lose an awful lot with the black eye and the real fodder for the hoaxster crowd. So these ideas about an Apollo hoax fail the "why would they do that?" test before they even get out of the gate.

 

[Pengwuino]

Any responsible adult should be "that guy". When kids are out of line, they need to be put in their place. To not do it is to condone their idiocy. I think Churchill said that...

I don't feel its being responsible to go up to random people asking them random trivia questions (as that is what I was joking about, not the response towards the conspiracy theory stuff)! haha! Hell I didn't even know what happened 40 years ago today. I wasn't even ready to be born for 17 years after it.

As far as teaching people who do actually believe in nonsense when you run into them... I don't bother unless I can answer every question they might be able to think up (considering people seem to be capable of holding on to a single unknown to justify their beliefs). Besides that, people seem to believe in conspiracy theories no matter what people tell them in my experience.

On a side note, it's amazing how people my age, for example, can just belief the moon landing hoaxes and JFK assassination conspiracies without... even being part of that generation! I mean I can't remember being taught that JFK was assassinated by the CIA or mafia or whatever in 2nd grade but it sure feels like I've "known" that since 2nd grade. Oh and no, I don't believe in that now-a-days thankfully!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I heard a good one tonight.

Of course the moon landing was a hoax. Everyone knows that you can't get to the moon from a flat earth.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I mean, it could have been a hoax, right?

No. And that is not just a matter of opinion.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't feel its being responsible to go up to random people asking them random trivia questions

I was also the guy sitting in the front center seat of the classroom asking the questions. At one point, in a Chem class, I realized that I had completely derailed the lecture, so, feeling a bit conspicuous, I apologized and said that I would stop interrupting. I swear, the entire class objected! "We like your questions" said a voice from the back of the room.

Wrt to the actual topic here, , I was just curious if someone her age was even aware of the signficance of the day. I didn't expect the conspiracy nonsense to come back at me.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the simple fact that it was and still is impossible to "fake" the video feed from the moon on a stage because you would have needed a GIGANTIC vacuum chamber the likes of which has never been seen. The video had to have been filmed in a vacuum with reduced gravity due to many physical phenomenea seen in the video, mainly that the dust kicked up by the astronauts follows a perfect projectile trajectory consistent with a) no atmosphere and b) Lunar gravity.

All claims from conspiracy theorists are definitively debunked by http://www.clavius.org/ for anyone that is curious what the logical scientific arguments against the moon-hoaxers are.

 

[wrongusername]

Why didn't they continue to send people to the moon though?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Why didn't they continue to send people to the moon though?

Cost. There was really no reason to go back [no scientific or national security reason that could be cost justified]. Also, even before the Apollo missions had ended, the public had lost interest. Public interest helps to determine where money is spent.

The race to the moon was really a macho contest between the US and the Soviet Union.

It was decided that near-earth missions and a space station would prove to be far more valuable investments than moon missions, in terms of both science and national security.

 

[Pengwuino]

No. And that is not just a matter of opinion.

And I think it's one of the few conspiracy theories where the conspiracy isn't just unlikely and quite disagreeable with Ockham's razor, it's actually nearly impossible. I'm sure if you just threw enough money and resources at the problem and probably constructed even more 'engineering wonders of the world' then it took to go to the moon, you could fake it... but I bet it would be easier to actually go to the moon! Funny how, besides the JFK assassination probably, it's probably the most popular conspiracy theory around.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

And I think it's one of the few conspiracy theories where the conspiracy isn't just unlikely and quite disagreeable with Ockham's razor, it's actually nearly impossible.

Also, I think it was mentioned earlier that because it was a race between the US and the USSR - in effect it was seen as a test to prove which system was better - we can all be sure that the Soviets made sure that it was all real ;just as we made sure that all of their claims were true. At the time that the landings occurred, they could see if there was a feed coming from the moon. There is NOTHING that the Soviets would have loved more than the ability to claim the landings were hoaxed.

 

[DaveC426913]

And I think it's one of the few conspiracy theories where the conspiracy isn't just unlikely and quite disagreeable with Ockham's razor, it's actually nearly impossible. I'm sure if you just threw enough money and resources at the problem and probably constructed even more 'engineering wonders of the world' then it took to go to the moon, you could fake it... but I bet it would be easier to actually go to the moon! Funny how, besides the JFK assassination probably, it's probably the most popular conspiracy theory around.

That's what they say:

Creating a perfect conspiracy is a vast, monumental undertaking. But that's OK, NASA can do anything (except go to the Moon).

 

[Proton Soup]

there's a reason they lost the originals

 

[mgb_phys]

It's obviously a hoax - the shadows don't line up

 

[Pengwuino]

Yah that photo is fake. Notice the geological formations to the right of the rover. A celestial body with no atmosphere is unable to form with such large variations in height. The expected layering of lunar dust was described in detail by Hobbes, Calvin, et al. (2003) "Lunar geological formations" Phys. Rep. 424: 303–381.

There's also a cat walking around.