Did we really land on the Moon?
 

This should be an interesting topic for all the Conspiracy Theory buffs in this forum. We have slightly talked about it here, but not much to start a discussion.

Since nearly everyone in this forum is a tech-fellow, this should be funny to discuss in a civilized way ^_^.

First, let me explain what this topic is about. I am going to show a few videos proving that the whole Moon landing was a big hoax. That NASA had faked the whole Apollo project and that mankind was not even close to the Moon.

This is actually a very old topic, but that does not mean that everything is explained today and that every piece of footage is accurate. On the contrary. First, let's start with a classic video that aired in the Fox channel in 2001:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...35117048624484

it is a very good video, but in my opinion, the following ones are better:

What happened on the Moon, Part 1:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74363747128107

What happened on the Moon, Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...81932896358451

Part 1 and Part 2 together are nearly 4 hours of video, freely available on video.google.com

This video is a press conference of the Apollo 11, with the "3 amigos":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RcKLAo62Ro

It does not show much, except that Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Aldrin was more ashamed and embarrassed than displaying a lot of joy and pride for the centuries biggest accomplishment: Mankind stepping it's foot on the Moon.

Even a few other videos with the supposed "unedited footage" are found on the net:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZdgpN8omSM

The above video is 8 minutes long, colored and very interesting. Wikipedia also has a very interesting article about the "Moon Landing Hoax" found here:

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

Some of the most popular conspiracy theories were:

- Issues with crosshairs (fiducials) that were etched onto the Reseau plate of the cameras
- The quality of the photographs is implausibly high
- The color and angle of shadows and light are inconsistent
- Identical backgrounds in photos are listed as taken miles apart.

Remember that at the time of Apollo, the Soviet Union had five times more manned hours in space than the US. They were the first to achieve (directly copied from Wikipedia's article):

1. First manmade satellite in orbit (October 1957, Sputnik 1).
2. First man in space (April 1961, Vostok 1).
3. First man to orbit the earth (April 1961, Vostok 1).
4. First to have two spacecraft in orbit at the same time (but it was not a rendezvous, as frequently described) (August 1962, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4).
5. First woman in space (June 1963, Vostok 6).
6. First crew of three astronauts onboard one spacecraft (October 1964, Voskhod 1).
7. First spacewalk (EVA) (March 1965, Voskhod 2).

If you never have seen those videos, please take the time to do so before judging whether or not they have a point. Again, this is a very old topic. In fact, hypothesis of men never landing on the Moon started right in 1969, when the "live" footage was first transmited to Australia, edited and sent to the rest of the World. Books started to be written right after (I think the first was published in 1974), been presented in films (James Bond: Diamonds Are Forever) and even games (Duke Nukem 3D, GTA - Vice City and GTA - San Andreas).

So, please, discuss this in a civilized manner. Don't turn this in another anti-American thread. The fact is, if NASA really did go into the trouble of lying to the whole World, I believe the World deserves an apology from US and NASA just like Germany and Japan did after their acts of War.

What I think? Men has never been on the Moon. The risks were far too big, including radiation and technical difficulties for that time. I do, however, think that USA has actually sent things to the Moon, but no men. The whole crew was just orbitating the Earth atmosphere, were it's safe, until they returned back to Earth. The whole thing was filmed inside studios, most likely in Nevada/Area 51.

So, once again Linux fellows... What do you think?

Also, it's important to say that the original videos filmed on the "Moon" were "misplaced" by NASA in 2006 and are still "missing"(<could not find a good link yet about it>).

My opinion is that Conspiracy Theorists give WAY (and I do mean WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY) too much credit to the government. It would be a lot easier to put men on the moon than to do half the crap that it would take to fake the landing.

yeah, and i play play poker with bigfoot at area 51 every other thursday.

the easter bunny drops by now and then

Thanks for the replies and poll voting so far. I know that video.google.com does not work on every country, so if you have more links, feel free to post it here. Not sure how youtube.com works though. I had a cool link about this "theory" with direct links to NASA pictures, but I can't find them either :(. Any collaboration would be nice.

Thanks again!

I am a bit skeptical about the moon landings. I'm not saying that man didn't land on the moon, but I can't figure out why at the moment, its so difficult to go to the moon even though we have better technology than we had during the time of the Apollo moon landings.

That's one thing that I often think reddazz. I mean, 37 years has passed. Have the Russians simply "give up" after having the leading on the US during the Apollo missions? If so, why?

One thing that I'm curious about: Japan had schedule a spacecraft to orbit the Moon in 2003 and take pictures of the Moon's surface. What happened with that project? I can't find anything on the net.

Unfortunately, there's no telescope powerful enough to see the surface of the Moon in detail from Earth. That would shut up all peoples (like me) once and for all.

I've no doubt that US sent a Shuttle to the Moon. Not the smallest. I just highly doubt it was manned at all. Even today, the biggest problem in sending humans to the Moon is basically because of the lethal Van Allen radiation belts. None of the Astronauts sent to the Moon had any problem with radiation. At all. There's a lot to be explained and there are many peoples asking for a descent article about that, but with the "misplacement" of the original footage, that will not happen anytime soon...

the saturn V rocket engineers are dead or in retirement homes.

reinventing the wheel and all that

the van allen belt is _not_ lethal. not good for you, but it's not like it will melt your skin off if you pass through.

I'm sorry, but I don't think that is a reasonable excuse. Even if they are dead, all they have done has to be very well documented and it should be just a matter of "re-using the already invented wheel". There should be no need to start everything from scratch. And given the advances in the today's technology and the information "already gathered" from previous "Moon Landings" there should be no problem at all.

I don't know where I read that the next manned Moon exploration is set to happen sometime in the year 2016. (Please correct me if I'm wrong). So why the delay of half a century?

money. the carter administration wanted the space shuttle.

The picture evidence with the crosshair is easily debunked. The birght light overpowered the thin black line. Light is better then dark :P

Where did the Moon Rocks in the Smithsonian come from? Craters of the Moon, Idaho?
 

We did not go to the moon, but some of the astronauts did! May not be able to see sufficient details of the lunar surface to view the junk they left behind (Lunar Rover?), or the flag waving in the lunar breeze/cosmic wind.
As I recall, telescopes could see the glint of the sun's reflection on the Command module orbiting the Moon. Not in most populated spaces due to pollution/excessive night lighting, but in remote/mountain top observatories.
$ Cost to make more Saturn V, hard to justify. I think the Vietnam war took $$ precedence then. Werner von Braun is not around to direct the project anymore.
Every body that goes there just wants to come back pretty soon, so why send more? I as a taxpayer think other things have higher priority (Unless maybe I get a free ride there). Space station trips ~20 Million$, Moon >>>

Hi all,

My ex-wife's father helped to plot the trajectory that the spacecraft took. When he was alive he spent a few hours talking with me about the project. Basically he was picked by NASA because he was an expert in the field of steller navigation. They used large hunking IBM mainframes, and a whole lot of slide rules and brain power for the computations.

We went, we landed.

oh gawd, slide rules. argh