I think one of the reasons that Myth, Legend and indeed any manner of what began as a kind of Oral History get lumped together with a connotation of "skewed" if not outright "untruth", we probably all learned in Grade School. The old Gossip Exercise of whispering a sentence to the person next to you and adding "pass it on". It's rarely 180 degrees apart but always corrupted over the passage of both time and "ears". Whether we think of Hatfields and McCoys, The Crusades, or Marc Anthony's supposed position and eulogy for ol' Julius, ideas, concepts and grudges can go on for centuries with "truth" taking a leave of absence in favor of "Tribal Bias" and especially when a "sacred cow" concern gets tied up in the roots of identity.

A case in point is right here, right now, with OP's (sundialsvcs) conviction about the supposed hoax of Apollo Moon Landing. That at 6 years old he formed such a firm belief has high odds that whether in general or specific to the event, sundialsvcs was undoubtedly brought up that way, with heavy influence from adults and peers, the identity tied in with Tribal Bias. I'd wager it is highly unlikely that sundialsvcs will anytime soon, possibly even after it is repeated with more modern technology, accept the 6 Apollo Missions that landed ever did. It is far more likely he will find a way to conclude it is just further trickery so he can keep what has become over decades, his cherished beliefs, and more to the point, his sense of identity.

Throughout the official Apollo audio/video narrative, and including many examples which were embedded into other people's films at the time, we find examples where Mission Control "replied" to the Moon, or vice-versa, "faster than the speed of light."

If "Tranquility Base Here" were actually authentic, there would have been about a five-second pause (or more) between each and every exchange. Because it's supposed to take 1.5 seconds or so for the radio signal to begin to traverse the "vast" distance ... one way. And the exchanges were two way. It takes a slight amount of time for someone to absorb what he has just heard and begin to reply. The broadcasts were supposed to be "live." But, that is simply impossible.

You simply cannot paint over the obvious inconsistencies, even in the very first broadcast which announced that Man had just landed on the Moon. There is no delay between "Tranquility Base here" and "We copy you down." Literally hundreds of other examples have been identified and recorded throughout the record. Although NASA tried to "clean up" some of those delays, now the audio no longer matches the video.

My six-year old self heard it and wondered about it, and so did my Dad.

sundialsvcs, as I've said I doubt it will make any impression on you but you recall at least some of the hostilities of The Cold War, right? You realize the Soviets had experts and plenty of cash to analyze ALL data regarding Apollo, right? Do you really think a 6 year old kid, no matter how precocious, trumps a team of highly motivated Soviet scientists with state of the art gear?

Yes, and they purposely made no pretense of "racing America" towards the Moon. They did not "participate" at all. And now we understand why.

They purportedly did send a probe which went to the moon and brought back moon rocks. So far as I know, none of those rocks consisted of petrified wood.

No pretense? Didn't participate at all? In point of fact, they tried and suffered catastrophic failures (some think from shifting political controls), though they did keep their program secret for a time, (not exactly known for open and honest champions of Free Speech) and here's a decent enough recap and overview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...lunar_programs

Interesting you'd bring up the phony Moon Rock discovered to be petrified wood after the "owner" Prime Minister Willem Drees died in 1988. NASA claims they never gave him any rock, let alone one from the Moon, and the Minister's claim that NASA gave it to him just 3 weeks after it was brought back from the Moon does seem highly suspicious. Additionally what motivation could NASA possible have for giving any rock, again let alone a Moon rock, to a mere politician who just wanted it as a collector's item to inflate his ego. The 800+ pounds of Moon Rock samples are FAR too valuable to Science to be kept in some self-aggrandizing private collection. Once again, sundialsvcs, apply Occam's Razor. What is simpler and more likely?

I don't see any evidence whatsoever that you have ever weighed Pros and Cons but instead reflected you Dad's bias at age 6 and never once considered serious examination and comparison. I seriously wonder just what you imagine might be the cause of the footprint paths visible in Artemis' photos at 4 of the 6 landing sites and nowhere else on the Moon.

I don't think you've yet pointed to a single example of the Moon replying immediately.


You didn't answer my question about the simplified example timeline, but if I extrapolate:

You think ground has to pause for 3 seconds after hearing the moon's message (and vice versa), because ???

The Moon's average distance from Earth is 384,400 km so the average one way delay time is ~1.28 seconds with a round trip time of 2.56 seconds. FWIW, from the transcript...
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11transcript_tec.html
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/main.html

The time stamps there are at the beginning of each message, it's hard to see where the pauses are (because it doesn't show how long it takes to say the message).

I'm not going to repeat myself. "Tranquility" is simply the most well-known example of Houston and the Moon engaging in two-way conversations without the necessary delays. If you try to "explain it away," you just wind up looking foolish. This is simply something that NASA forgot. It isn't possible to go back and re-do them. This very simply is "a smoking gun." The easiest and most obvious proof that what you are seeing and hearing is fake.

The movie, Capricorn One, was a movie-maker's demonstration as they accurately re-created the scenes that you saw on television, using the same cinema techniques.

Since according to your premise and conclusion that the Moon Landings, all 6 of them, were faked, just who do you think would be qualified to "accurately" fake an environment nobody's ever experienced? A Hollywood film director? A photographer? A radio dispatcher? A 6 year old boy?... or perhaps Scientists whose life career study is in Astrophysics?

Consider NASA had and has plenty of astrophysicists in their employ, just how do you think they'd have screwed up so badly laymen or a 6 year old boy could figure the hoax out while Chinese and Soviet Scientists couldn't? This applies to 1970 and even more so to 2022.

It is curiouser and curiouser who you choose to align yourself with in the choice between actual experts in the field and casual, disgruntled Doubting Thomases with an anti "gubmint" agenda, but then one was your Dad, and that can be a powerful influence, especially on an untrained 6 year old boy.

These were highly trained military pilots and where each step was rehearsed many times. I would not expect if everything was working to be pauses in most communications.

The politics of this period were very tense and very strange. In 1963, a much-loved President had been murdered shortly before he had extravagantly promised "success by 1969." This was a time – and, I was there – when "whatever the government said" was conditioned to be believed.

Today, I can't tell you whether the decision that was made was wrong or right. I think that we have ample reason to regret it now, because difficult and so-far unsolvable scientific problems cannot be solved if you cling to the claim that you have already, even effortlessly, solved them. "Radiation doesn't give a damn about 1960's politics."

Given the state of presently-available technology, we cannot (yet!!) venture beyond the magnetosphere: beyond "LEO = Low Earth Orbit." At the moment, we are still on this planet, and we are stuck here. We still have a very long way to go, and many new things yet to discover. Why can't we begin our conversations by admitting that?

For example, "we need an anti-gravity spacecraft." Something that can drive from the surface to orbit and back again. Nikola Tesla – a thoroughly crazy man who should have fried himself – had ideas about that, which were immediately quashed. Where are those files now? Was he, in fact, "on to something?" Could there actually be "flying saucers" which utilize a technology that we do not yet know? Why aren't we looking into that? Why do we "blind ourselves" to possibilities? What are we afraid of? The future belongs to the bold.

Well, there is a 4 second pause before the "04 06 46 16 CDR (TRANQ) Thank you.", you can hear it in the video that enorbet linked (the pause is 15:06 - 15:10 in that video).

At this point, I'm simply going to leave "you apologists" to your respective contrived devices. I have nothing further to say.

"I was there," albeit just six years old, and yet I heard what I heard and saw what I saw. Then, at one point, my father acknowledged that he had questions, too.

I was, and I still am, an eyewitness.

P.S.: The "5-second pause" that you speak of, obviously occurs after(!) the "Tranquility Base here" exchange that I had previously mentioned. Which exchange occurs entirely without pause. The video that you have just posted truly has nothing to do with the "original video" that I referred to. It is not "the original." Therefore, "timings" within it mean absolutely nothing.

If it wasn't so sad this would be hilarious.