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Only to loons who are willing to believe any absurd conspiracy theory.
There's nothing absurd about that masonm. Let's just backup for a moment: The Apollo missions really were a little too much successful. I mean, NASA did not land on the moon only once, but six times. All very successful with wonderful pictures. Apollo 13, the only Apollo that did not land on the Moon, was still somehow successful, by orbiting the Moon and coming back safely.
What was the whole point of all the Apollo missions anyway? To win the Cold War? Fine. But why did they have to "land on the Moon" so many times in relatively close locations?
I think the "absurd" here is to actually ignore those theories just because your government told that those astronauts landed on the Moon. Six times. All successfully, even though Neil almost died trying to control the Moon lander on Earth during training. Still, the same Moon lander was managed to land on the Moon six times. Successfully.
There are a lot of good points made in those videos I linked above. You are welcome to watch and point all the "absurds" you find and show to us "loons", instead of simply saying that everything is an absurd...
The whole thing with Apollo is that way too many peoples working on that project. It is a big thing for the whole World and NASA put USA above all countries, from a technological point of view, for this achievement. Proving or trying to prove that something that big was a hoax is difficult to accept. But just because it is difficult to accept does not make it invalid. There are many questions around the "Moon Landings" that has to be answered, but NASA has "misplaced" the original videos this year.
Last edited by Mega Man X; 09-07-2006 at 12:09 AM.
Let us continue to believe, then, that the technology of the 1960's could "hit the moon" not only once but half-a-dozen times; that the intense radiation that still fries sattelites today could not penetrate the paper-thin walls of an Apollo capsule. Let's not look too critically at what is reflected in the faceplate of that astronaut. Let's not bother to calculate how much oxygen the astronauts would need to consume during their "long" mission.
It does not make sense now. It's essentially provable now that it did not happen. But what is to be gained by breaking apart a cherished national illusion? Until mankind does really reach the Moon, it's all we have.
The only people it doesn't make sense to are the ignorant, the uniformed or the paranoid. Having worked for the US government for a bit I can honestly state that there is absolutely, positively NO WAY that it could keep a secret this big for this long. Someone would have leaked in an undeniable fashion.
Also, claiming that 1960's technology was insufficient to get men to the moon is absolutely ridiculous. A huge amount of the technology we use today isn't all that different from what was available in the 1960's.
If you can prove that we didn't go to the moon, go right ahead and do so. As I said before, my belief is that it is a lot easier to go to the moon than to do half the garbage the conspiracy kooks think is happening.
Ok, I won't waste a bunch of bandwidth here addressing every absurd/incorrect point, I'll just point out how two of them are totally wrong.
1. The claim that the fact that there are no stars visible in the pictures taken on the moon. This is one of the biggest claims of "proof" and one of the easiest to debunk.
Anyone who knows anything at all about photography would understand why there are no stars visible in the backgrounds of those pictures. The objects being photographed (astronauts, etc...) were brightly lit. This means the aperature and exposure settings of the camera were set to capture an image of brightly lit objects. These setting would naturally not allow an exposure time needed to capture the less bright stars in the background.
2. Behavior of dust. The claim that dust should have hung in the "air" a lot longer than it did.
This one shows the real lack of thought of the comspiracy theorists. Dust, like every other object composed of matter, is subject to the laws of gravity. The only thing that would suspend dust particles would be air. Without a dense atmosphere to suspend it, the dust would fall back to the ground just as a rock would do. The fact that the dust in the videos doesn't float but instead falls back to the ground, but at a slower rate than in an Earth based vacuum, is actually very strong evidence that these videos were indeed shot in an evironment that lacked a thick atmosphere and had a lesser gravity than the Earth.
Space exploration is a threat to the political aristocracy's security. I mean, if we escape fortress Earth how are our governments going to spy on us and keep us in line? It'll be anarchy! Space terrorism would surely follow next. We can't have that now, can we.
Be happy in your gilded cage. It's for your own protection and the protection of society.
I don't believe up to now we've had anything on any subject worth speaking of proven or disproven in the history of online forum debating...
or at least I don't remember seeing a single instance of one side agreeing on the "proof" supplied by the other.
Takes me back some time...
Amen to that Harishankar . The coolest thing to start this kind of things in an online forum are the answers we get. So far, it's easier to believe in "Space Terrorism" and "Alien civilization" than a big hoax pulled by NASA... Strangely enough, noone mentioned anything about UFOs yet ^_^;;
The part about the Space Terrorism mentioned here earlier is ratter interesting actually. When Soviet Union sent the Sputnik 1 to the space in 1957, NY Times had to publish an article to "calm peoples down" explaining that there was no dangerous of Soviet Union to throw bombs in the US by that distance... As you can see, little has changed (mentality-wise) in half a century...
And the most interesting thing in a public forum is that there will always be at least one who claims to have some experience or contact with the subject, regardless how big or small the forum is. Here we have peoples who actually worked for the US Government. If this was about donuts, a few would claims a huge experience with Donuts. (Mega Man X points to this brilliant thread started by Tinkster.
Quote:
Originally Posted by masonm
Ok, I won't waste a bunch of bandwidth here addressing every absurd/incorrect point, I'll just point out how two of them are totally wrong.
1. The claim that the fact that there are no stars visible in the pictures taken on the moon. This is one of the biggest claims of "proof" and one of the easiest to debunk.
Anyone who knows anything at all about photography would understand why there are no stars visible in the backgrounds of those pictures. The objects being photographed (astronauts, etc...) were brightly lit. This means the aperature and exposure settings of the camera were set to capture an image of brightly lit objects. These setting would naturally not allow an exposure time needed to capture the less bright stars in the background.
2. Behavior of dust. The claim that dust should have hung in the "air" a lot longer than it did.
This one shows the real lack of thought of the comspiracy theorists. Dust, like every other object composed of matter, is subject to the laws of gravity. The only thing that would suspend dust particles would be air. Without a dense atmosphere to suspend it, the dust would fall back to the ground just as a rock would do. The fact that the dust in the videos doesn't float but instead falls back to the ground, but at a slower rate than in an Earth based vacuum, is actually very strong evidence that these videos were indeed shot in an evironment that lacked a thick atmosphere and had a lesser gravity than the Earth.
While I totally agree with you on "1" (though, I've heard different explanations for the lack of stars), I can't say anything about your second observation. The thing I've heard about the dust was that while landing, the Lunar lander was supposed to create a crater under it, since it pull a lot of dust. Yet, it didn't, even though it had a powerful engine under it. Still, footsteps under the Lunar lander are very visible (maybe even too visible). I'm not saying that when landing or taking off, the Lunar lander should throw a lot of fire or anything like that. But I do believe that the dust pulled by the Lunar should descent back after a while. However, no dust is found over the Lunar lander or the Lander's foot.
There are even NASA ex-Astronauts (as Brian O' Leary) who is not totally sure that the men went to the moon.
<note: the following is not directed to masonm>
What is even more interesting in this thread is that some believe that NASA had filmed some shots in a indoor studio (and are apparently fine with that) to use in the case the Apollo would fail. If you really believe in this(and this is true), the whole Apollo thing should be put into question. If the government was actually thinking in fake something like this in the case of fail, how far would the government really go then?
Personally, I can't wait until we can analyze the Moon's surface in detail from here. I'm not buying NASA's version... sorry.
Last edited by Mega Man X; 09-07-2006 at 02:00 PM.
Thanks Crito!. I guess we now have everything in this thread(that I can think of). I've "googled" for what you wrote and it was ratter interesting actually:
They fired the rocket hard to slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3,000 pounds of thrust.
The engine nozzle was about 54 inches across which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch. Not exactly enough to create a crater, is it? Combine that with the fact that in a near vacuum, the exhaust from a rocket spreads out very rapidly as opposed to in an atmosphere where the air constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. 3,000 pounds of thrust sounds like a lot, but it was so spread out it was actually rather gentle.
Hense no crater, exactly as would would expect under those conditions.
Thanks masonm!. I've already read an explanation for that here. What intrigues me, however, is that NASA did not know that either. In illustrations made before the Apollo missions, NASA illustrations released to the public of the Lunar lander did make craters and it also expelled a lot of fire when taking off the Moon's surface. This is strange. I mean, if even NASA was "expecting" that, the answer given afterwards could be made up. Still, it's way out of my league to understand such a well thought answer:
Quote:
* No crater should be expected. The Descent Propulsion System was throttled very far down during the final stages of landing. The Lunar Module was no longer rapidly decelerating, so the descent engine only had to support the module's own weight, which by then was greatly diminished by the near exhaustion of the descent propellants, and the Moon's lower gravity. At the time of landing, the engine's thrust divided by the cross-sectional area of the engine bell is only about 1.5 PSI (Plait 2002:164), and that is reduced by the fact that the engine was in a vacuum, causing the exhaust to spread out. (By contrast, the thrust of the first stage of the Saturn V was 459 PSI, over the area of the engine bell.) Rocket exhaust gases expand much more rapidly after leaving the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an atmosphere on rocket plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth; as the rocket rises through the thinning atmosphere, the exhaust plumes broaden very noticeably. Rocket engines designed for vacuum operation have longer bells than those designed for use at the earth's surface, but they still cannot prevent this spreading. The lunar module's exhaust gases therefore expanded rapidly well beyond the landing site. Even if they hadn't, a simple calculation will show that the pressure at the end of the descent engine bell was much too low to carve out a crater. However, the descent engines did scatter a considerable amount of very fine surface dust as seen in 16mm movies of each landing, and as Neil Armstrong said as the landing neared ("...kicking up some dust..."). This significantly impaired visibility in the final stages of landing, and many mission commanders commented on it. Photographs do show slightly disturbed dust beneath the descent engine. And finally, the landers were generally moving horizontally as well as vertically until right before landing, so the exhaust would not be focused on any one surface spot for very long, and the compactness of the lunar soil below a thin surface layer of dust also make it virtually impossible for the descent engine to blast out a "crater". (Plait 2002:163-65)
Anyway, another thing: How much the Lunar lander weight? Why is there no well defined marks of the Lunars Foot on the ground, when the foot steps are so well defined? Look at this:
Could they really land such a "clumsy" machine that nearly killed Armstrong two years before the Apollo 11 expedition? Look now at this image from Apollo 17:
This is what I believe all the landings from the Lander should look like. Why only Apollo 17 made those marks? Was it because NASA realized that a big and clumsy machine should make them when landing on the Moon?
In this picture, why is the astronaut so well lit when climbing into the dark of a shadow?
Please note that in the official NASA docs, the astronauts did not have any extra lights with them. No flashes or anything. I understand how difficult it is to analyze shadows, since the Moon reflect light, the Earth and the Sun (technically, the only source of light used by the astronauts). However, if you look into rocks on the ground, they cast totally dark shadows, meaning the the surface of the Moon reflects nearly no light. At least, not enough to lit themselves, leave it alone the whole astronaut.
Can you please explain me why the Lander is so well lit, nicely showing the work "United States", when it should be totally dark, since the Sun (remember, only light source for the astronauts) is right behind the lander. If you ever took pictures in those conditions (with the Sun behind and no flashes), the side of the Lander where "United States" is shown should be totally dark. The Moon's ground can't reflect that much light, as shown in the dark shadows of even the smallest rocks.
And what about the Earth size seen from the Moon? Compare those two images:
The shadow being cast by the astronaut is straight on the ground. However, that thing at the right of the astronaut that I can't identify is casting a diagonal shadow. The lander on the back is casting a shadow in yet another direction and so is the crater. I found this very difficult to accomplish when only one source of light is available. For me, the "Moon landing" was something more like this:
The moon's surface is highly reflective and reflects a tremendous amount of light. Any fool can verify this by simply looking into the sky at night.
The so-called variences in the size of the Earth as seen from the lunar surface are nothing more than a matter of viewing angle. Have you ever watched a sunrise? The sun looks a great deal larger near the horizon than it does at it's zenith. It's a very common optical illusion. The very same thing can be observed by viewing the Planet Venus at different points in the sky.
The simple fact is that while all of these nutty conspiracy theories may well be fun, but that's all they are.
The moon rock samples brought back from the missions have been studied by scientists in many countries, most of whom would have no reason at all to go along with any sort of fakery and the origin of these unique rocks has never been questioned and serve as the most concrete evidence that men did indeed visit our moon.
The so-called variences in the size of the Earth as seen from the lunar surface are nothing more than a matter of viewing angle.
In that photo -- no. There is an obvious "fisheye" effect from the wide angle lens from the camera with the astronaut and flag and Earth, and the other is obviously a much different focal length with a narrow field of view (basically zoomed in), which magnifies the view. The distortion is extremely obvious to me, but then I work with lenses all the time.
Regarding "missing" stars: the iris and exposure were optimised for bright light. If you take your digital camera with manual controls (an SLR will be ideal for this but higher-end consumer cameras can be put into manual mode as well) and adjust the exposure such that a bright sunny day is balanced properly for that environment, then try taking pictures at night, or even a cloudy day, the picture will show almost nothing. This is true of film cameras as well - if you, for example, use ISO 100 film and close the aperture to limit the light coming in, you will NOT be able to capture starlight.
Regarding presence of light in shadows and the moon's surface not reflecting light: How the hell do you think you can see the moon from the rock we're on? The moon's surface, although charcoal-like in color, is extremely reflective. Take a diamond for example; it's crystalline, translucent or clear. It is almost colorless, or dark, depending on the angle, but if you catch the light just right, it will look like it is luminus. OK, take basalt, crystalize it, crush it into trillions of faceted pieces, and spread it around. Depending on the angle of the lighting relative to you, it may look black, brown, charcoal, or blindingly white.
Regarding the lack of a blast crater and NASA's pre-mission conceptual artwork, and the "snowshoe" type design of the landing pads/shoes: The moon was expected to be 4.6 billion or so years old and was expected to have captured several meters' worth of dust over the years, but there it is only a few millimeters deep. Either there is a hell of a lot less dust in space for the moon to pick up, or the Creationists are right and the Universe is only a few thousand years old. Either way, the moon's surface was totally unexpected. With a dust depth of only a few millimeters, there is not going to be a blast crater because the rocket was not powerful enough to blast a hole in solid basalt beneath the dust. If they wanted to fake it they'd have made sure the "studio" had several meters' worth of dust, or at least half a meter just for show. They were very concerned that the lander would settle "too much" into the lunar soil, making navigation on the moon's surface extremely difficult.
Regarding the lack of an exhaust plume: the fuel was what. LOX and hydrogen? There isn't going to be much a plume without an atmosphere. The flame will probably be nearly invisible most of the time due to a combination of factors, two of which are: 1) camera settings (same reason you do not see the stars in the photos, see above) and 2) lack of an atmosphere to react with incompletely burned fuel. Most of the combustion is going to take place inside the nozzle. There IS a small plume when the module first takes off, very briefly, but that would be expected due to the initial pressure buildup, where enough water vapor would have had a chance to form to be visible before it dissipates.
Another picture "inconsistency:" the "backdrop." All I have to say about that is this: Look at the backdrop, more specifically, the field of view. One is closer ("further" from the picture viewer), "behind" the module, one is "farther" from the backdrop ("closer" to the picture viewer), "in front of" the module.
Logic, folks. The simplest explanation is very likely the correct one. If there were a coverup, it would have fallen apart years ago. They cannot even keep top-secret projects hidden even TODAY. Exhibit A: Aurora (The SR-71's replacement).
So, please, discuss this in a civilized manner. Don't turn this in another anti-American thread.
YOU'RE the one that made this an anti-American thread.
I totally agree with Hangdog42's very first response to all you nutcase, looney toons, conspiracy theorists:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hangdog42
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.
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. The coolest thing to start this kind of things in an online forum are the answers we get. So far, it's easier to believe in "Space Terrorism" and "Alien civilization" than a big hoax pulled by NASA... Strangely enough, noone mentioned anything about UFOs yet ^_^;;
