Let's lay this 'No moon landing' conspiracy to rest for all time

[TrogL]

Here's why the moon landings could not have been faked.

NASA didn't have the technology to do it, and others had the technology that would have immediately caught them trying.

1. Radio

There were geeks back then too. Back in those days, they could be found in a shed out back of the house surrounded by a bunch of shiny radios with a bazillion knobs on them with thick cables leading to a forest of antennas. Their battle cry?

"If your antenna farm didn't blow down last winter it isn't big enough".

They were all over the world, talking to each other 24 hours a day. I'd listen to them on a little short-wave receiver I had in my bedroom, dreaming of the day when I'd have an antenna farm of my own. I never got around to it. The best I had was 40-foot turnable CB antenna that didn't blow down because the guy who bought my house tore it down the week before a tornado would have blown it into the next county.

2. Encyption

There wasn't any. All radio traffic was in the free and clear, including the telemetry. It didn't take long for hackers to figure out the algorythm and follow along at home.

3. Directional Antennas

As noted above, NASA wasn't the only one with big directional antennas. Anyone who wanted to talk around the world without relying upon the heavyside layer needed a bigass antenna that could be pointed where the signal was, not where you wanted it to be. While NASA's dishes were big and pretty looking, amateurs could still make a fairly impressive antenna out of sticks and bailing wire. Working together, it wouldn't be hard to figure out exactly where a spacecraft was, and they'd sure notice if it wasn't where it was supposed to be.

4. Kids with binoculors and telescopes

I WAS THERE!

I was one of those kids obsessed with astronomy and the space program and I'd followed every satellite launch ever and knew about damn near everything in the sky. And remember, back then there wasn't an awful lot of stuff up there, not like today. Also, there was a LOT less light pollution so you actually COULD see the sky from your backyard. One time something went over I wasn't expecting and reported it to the Ottawa Observatory, they checked with NASA and confirmed that I'd spotted Explorer II, which they thought had long since de-orbitted. So if NASA launches something, some little kid like me would notice it was there (or conversely if it wasn't). Millions of people saw the launch of Apollo 11 live. Little kids tracked its orbit. Little (and big) kids noted when it left orbit and when it got back.

5. What about that damn rock?

I've touched a moon rock. It was at the Ontario Science Centre on open display. Anybody who wanted to could walk up and touch it. It's been examined by geologists and it ain't from earth.

[Silent3]

1. You can never put this kind of thinking to rest, unfortunately...

...but I'm happy to see people make a good effort to chip away at it a little at least.

[tabatha]

2. And it would be FAR more difficult to set up a hoax.

[TrogL]

14. It would be less expensive and technically less challenging to land on the moon

...than to fake it convincingly enough to fool the ham radio operators, little kids and technicians of various sorts. NASA had to rely upon a lot of public carriers for some of their data and voice transmissions. One time an operator broke in on a transmission.

[Posteritatis]

17. That and the whole thing about the Soviets not challenging it. (nt)

[ProfessorGAC]

42. I've Said That For Years

It would cost more and be much harder to pay for the silence of all those people to continue the fakery than to just go there.

I'm with you completely, on this.
GAC

[misanthrope]

54. Occam's Razor works again!**nm

**

[qazplm]

3. ah what you dont understand

is they simply sent up a relay device, not actual humans, who would have died, DIED I TELL YOU, in the Van Allen Belts.

Easily explained! Sheesh!

;)

[DJ13]

4. 6. My father was in charge of the team at TRW that designed the cameras for the moon landing

I grew up with the camera prototypes around our house.

I still have his journal of still photos of the camera equipment they designed for the moon landings.

Oh it was real.

[TrogL]

10. I saw an interview on TV with the guy who designed the TV camera

Was that him?

[DJ13]

12. My dad was the team leader, not the actual designer

He died back in 1993.

[reflection]

80. I wish I could have met him.

It must have been really special to grow up with a guy who was at the top of his field during that time. I bet he was a real interesting fellow.

[MercutioATC]

15. My grandmother soldered circuit boards for the Apollo missions.

It was all kept very hush-hush. They didn't know what they were building until afterward.

[BlooInBloo]

5. I'm never sure who's more insane: The deniers, or those who talk to the deniers...

as if they're rational people, to whom facts and logic matter.

[chrisa]

74. Pretty much.

I don't know. It's kind of interesting, even though when proven wrong, they'll either call you a CIA agent / pawn of the system, or a sheep who has been lulled to sleep by government propaganda. They spew their garbage everywhere, but never expect people to call them out on it.

[joeybee12]

6. But American Dad exposed this as a fraud!

Good enough for me.

[HopeHoops]

7. Yeah, but they didn't get any pictures of little green men, so they couldn't have been there.

Besides, if God wanted man to walk on the moon, he wouldn't have let cows know how to jump over it.

[Curtland1015]

8. +1! The mythbusters knocked down every wacko "it was staged" theory one by one.

If the Mythbusters believe it, so do I!

:P

I think some people just NEED everything to be a big conspiracy.

[rd_kent]

9. Mythbusters busted that myth too!

They took all of the so-called evidence and reproduced it here, explaining why the landings were real.

[Evoman]

11. It doesn't matter. None of your rational reasons matter worth shit.

Because the fact of the matter is, moon landing deniers can't be reasoned with. Once you accept something as stupid as that, then there is no way to be convinced otherwise. It's an intellectual black hole.

[greguganus]

Can we call them moonbats? n/t

[Taverner]

13. To me they occupy the same place as flat Earthers

[Codeine]

16. You cannot rationalize a person out of a position

that they didn't enter into via rational thought in the first place. Dumbfucks are dumbfucks, and are incapable of ever being anything else.

[Maru Kitteh]

68. Truer words are seldom spoken.

Expecting a CT'er to respond to reason, science and evidence is like expecting a fish to ride the bicycle you just bought for it.

[2Design]

18. look at CNN poll - there are a lot of ignorant people

http://www.cnn.com/

[cloudbase]

25. Some of 'em in powerful positions.

From Sheila Jackson Lee's Wikipedia page:



Prior to the 110th Congress, Jackson-Lee served on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees space policy and NASA. She once asked, during a visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whether the Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted on Mars in 1969 by Neil Armstrong, failing to know the flag was in fact planted on the Moon.

[Bill_Henebrie]

19. I was there also, IT WAS FAKE!

I remember in 1969 thinking how fake it felt!
It was a Billion dollar swindle and still is.

Gee how convenient they lost the original video tape.
Can you imagine the analysis that today's computers
could do with that fake crap!

We went to the moon in 1969. Hell we were still listening to
8 track tapes then and computers were the size of your house.

Do you still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth fairy also?
It was a well done P.R. Hoax...

[ShortnFiery]

30. After all I've read and researched since 9-11, I will not ever automatically believe what ...

Our Government TELLS us is "The Truth."

I'm rethinking much of our "history" to include The Moon Landing on July 20th, 1969. I haven't done any thoughtful research on this topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hoax.

That's what ALL governments do well ====> LIE to their people. :(

[Maru Kitteh]

72. Perusing whacko conspiracy websites on the intertubes

Perusing whacko conspiracy websites on the intertubes "research."

[ProfessorGAC]

43. Is That You Mr. Ludd?

GAC

[Aristus]

70. If it was fake, why did they do it six times? Wouldn't once have been enough?

"See everybody? We did it!"

Boom! The Apollo Program would have ended with 11.

on edit: If the whole thing was fake, what about Apollo 13? Why fake a failure?

[rockymountaindem]

81. Why fake a failure?

Because that's the last thing you'd expect them to do. Wheels within wheels, broseph, wheels between wheels :smoke:

:eyes:

[Polly Hennessey]

20. Landing on the Moon - hot or not?

You can't talk to me. I am a "Moon-Landing Denier" and I live in an intellectual black hole. Quick, I've got to take that CNN poll to show how ignorant I am. Oh, I just did take the poll; now if only I could touch that moon rock and know for sure it did not come from Earth. Ahhhh, the power of touch.

[ProfessorGAC]

46. Oh, The Power Of Ignorance.

And you should know. Of course, you wouldn't know, but you should.
GAC

[lunatica]

21. I'd rather lay the hoax believers' arguments to rest once and for all

So who really gives a fuck about what some backwards unimaginative people who want to spend their lives under a bed shivering out of fear that someone is coming to get their beautiful minds think?

Just ignore them. They won't go away but you can pretend they do.

Or ask them why anyone would go to any trouble to fool people about it. What was the nefarious secret purpose of making it all up? If they're going to fucken claim something is a hoax then they should explain why the hoax is perpetrated in the first place. Was it just an elaborate story to promote Tang?

[Posteritatis]

22. Belief in the hoax is one thing

The pervasive, deep and strongly-held anti-thought that is needed to maintain that belief is another. When a sizable chunk of people here are fervently holding to such a ridiculous, false belief, it bothers me at least as much as young-Earth creationists or people who think vitamin C cures cancer. Anyone holding either view is not just stupid, but they're probably approaching other areas of life with about the same level of reason, and that's a Bad Thing.

[Maru Kitteh]

76. and velcro. n/t

[azmouse]

33. I'd rather point at them and laugh.

[Rick Myers]

23. NASA has managed to keep one secret for 40 years...

Turns out, it REALLY is made of cheese!!!

Then there is this: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

[lunatica]

37. And the Old Man in The Moon doesn't exist!

That is so sad...

[anonymous171]

24. The Moon "landing" was simply a Capitalist hoax designed to one-up the glorious Soviet republic. nt

[lunatica]

26. What if the Soviet space program was a hoax?

This argument can go on forever, all the way back to the first humanoids in their caves. All those painting at Lascaux? Why it had to have been the first hoax ever perpetrated! And we're still falling for it! No one painted these figures at all!

[rug]

27. Bullshit. There's no cheese at the Ontario Science Centre on open display.

[dysfunctional press]

28. just because the rocket went up- it doesn't mean that there were people on it.

5. What about that damn rock?

I've touched a moon rock. It was at the Ontario Science Centre on open display. Anybody who wanted to could walk up and touch it. It's been examined by geologists and it ain't from earth.

rocks from mars have been found in anarctica, and meteorites hit the planet every day.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

29. You will never convince conspiracy theorist of anything

The more you try the more they push back and claim it can't be true. So I am not sure why you try in the first place.

[lesliewhitebird]

31. What about the Van Allen belt, hmm? So hot that no aircraft could go beyond its boundaries

supposedly. And I saw that thing on Fox back some years and it made me think. They mentioned that the flag waved as if a breeze had moved it and in space that's impossible and other fun factoids.

[S_E_Fudd]

32. Easy...

Astronauts passed through the Van Allen belt very quickly...plus the space craft was shielded...

The flag had a wire through the top to keep it extended...

[lesliewhitebird]

38. LOL- "very quickly..." So if something is, like, a jillion degrees,

if you just go faster, you'll be able to pass through? And I heard that it is so hot that even the rocket would have melted.

[Posteritatis]

45. You heard entirely wrong

Vaccuum can't be hot in any tangible sense. The individual one-every-meter-or-so atoms might be, but that's meaningless in terms of heating up something passing through it.

[lesliewhitebird]

47. LOL--I am not really able to comprehend scientific talk, but that impressed me!

I just am skeptical about what is told to me by our government. At the time of our "moon landing," we were still in a cold war with the Ruskies and so it would not surprise me to learn that this was done as a PR thing. But I could be wrong...

[Posteritatis]

52. Why would the Russians not say anything, then?

They were no fools when it came to spaceflight, however much we might want to look down our noses at them these days (one guy on my personal-hero list was a Russian self-taught engineer and astronautic scientist who more or less came up with the idea of manned spaceflight as we'd recognize it). They'd stand to gain quite a lot by proving the Americans to be liars on the world stage, especially since they were still stinging from getting humiliated by the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If the whole thing was something that hobbyists in the Apollo denialist field today could easily 'prove' as a hoax, why couldn't the combined, profoundly capable intelligence apparatus of one of the most powerful states the world has ever seen have caught it?

[lesliewhitebird]

56. You know, I am not sure they didn't question the whole thing.

In any case, I also believe that we control our media, as well. Like this 'uprising' in Iran. All of a sudden, have you heard anything about it? It just sort of 'went away' and yet, they were breathlessly reporting a couple of weeks ago about police attacking with machetes in the streets! WTF? And everytime a Western journalist filed a report, there was the disclaimer that they were not able to see things firsthand. Well, why not? How come the Iranian students were roaming the streets and using their cell phone cameras and posting on Twitter?

[Posteritatis]

60. And nobody in the entire world heard them questioning?

Let's assume for the purposes of discussion that the US was blocking every electron, every shred of paper with any ink on it, any voice or radio transmission from entering American territory during the Apollo program. Obviously that's not the case, but the extreme example wouldn't hurt here. We both know that the reality, however much people talk about US control of the media, is going to be way, way, way, way leakier.

How would that prevent the Soviets from telling their own people, or the Chinese, or the Warsaw Pact members, that it was all a fraud? How would it stop western European nations from "knowing" it? How come nobody in the Middle East, about as prickly then as now, questioned it? What about Canada, which could catch the occasional Soviet radio broadcast bounced off the upper atmosphere? All those countries that don't have the US government controlling every last syllable they utter, and none of them said anything claiming it didn't happen that anybody can remember over the forty years since the first landing?

I could - well, assuming I had the money, which I don't right now - hop on a plane and fly to Britain, or France, or a reunited Germany, or Poland or Ukraine or Russia or China or just about anyplace that isn't North Korea these days, and I wouldn't hear a single person who was in any kind of position of authority in the 1960s or 1970s denying that this happened. None anywhere in the world. Perfect, unanimous conspiratorial agreement held by people who were often profound enemies with each other, and likewise through the generations which followed, down to the present day.

The United States is five percent of the world's population. Most of the rest of us are quite able to hear things that might not be heard there, and the government is nowhere near that effective at controlling even what its own people hear and say.

Is that somehow supposed to be the simpler solution to the alternative of the landings having actually happened? That's simpler than believing the "it just didn't happen because it didn't!" crowd is wrong? What possible gain would the entire rest of the planet have in quietly going along with something if they "knew" it to be false?

[muriel_volestrangler]

69. You need to keep up with the news

Yes, Iran is indeed in the headlines today:

http://news.google.co.uk/news/more?pz=1&ned=uk&ncl=dZPmmL4-B4WCstMikcXrwke-hxuaM&topic=w

557 related articles, at the moment. "Rafsanjani calls on Iran to release protesters", "Clashes in Tehran as Hashemi Rafsanjani warns regime", "US welcomes call for end to Iran foreign media ban" and many more.

[anigbrowl]

73. I grew up in Europe, and I've visited Soviet Russia

It has never been a subject of debate. In fact I never even heard of people denying the moon landins until I moved to the USA.

[DireStrike]

79. It wasn't really "all of a sudden" IMO

After a week of covering an event when nothing happens, the media can't keep it up. Frankly I'm surprised they followed it that long. If there's any control it was probably to encourage a focus on the situation, not to hide it.

[14thColony]

61. Oh Jesus Christ...

Words escape me.

[S_E_Fudd]

50. You heard wrong...nt

[S_E_Fudd]

51. You heard wrong...nt

[S_E_Fudd]

53. Traversed in 30 minutes

The Moon is ten times higher than the Van Allen radiation belts. The spacecraft moved through the belts in just 30 minutes, and the astronauts were protected from the ionizing radiation by the aluminium hulls of the spacecraft. In addition, the orbital transfer trajectory from the Earth to the Moon through the belts was selected to minimize radiation exposure. Even Dr. James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, rebutted the claims that radiation levels were too dangerous for the Apollo missions. Dosimeters carried by the crews showed they received about the same cumulative dosage as a chest X-ray or about 1 milligray. Plait cited an average dose of less than 1 rem, which is equivalent to the ambient radiation received by living at sea level for three years. The spacecraft passed through the intense inner belt in a matter of minutes and the low-energy outer belt in about an hour and half. The astronauts were mostly shielded from the radiation by the spacecraft. The total radiation received on the trip was about the same as allowed for workers in the nuclear energy field for a year.

The radiation is actually evidence that the astronauts went to the Moon. Irene Schneider reports that thirty-three of the thirty-six Apollo astronauts involved in the nine Apollo missions to leave Earth orbit have developed early stage cataracts that have been shown to be caused by radiation exposure to cosmic rays during their trip. However, only twenty-four astronauts left earth orbit. At least thirty-nine former astronauts have developed cataracts. Thirty-six of those were involved in high-radiation missions such as the Apollo lunar missions.

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

[DireStrike]

75. Actually yes

Though it depends on how dense the material is also.

But that's talking about heat, not radiation.

[Greg K]

65. "I saw that thing on Fox back some years and it made me think. "

:o

[MicaelS]

34. You forgot #6 the Lunar Laser Ranging RetroReflectors

How did these retroreflectors, which are still being used to this very day, get placed on the moon, right where NASA stated men walked on the moon?

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings#Retroreflectors

As far as I'm concerned people who deny the moon landings are the same mentality of people who deny the Holocaust.

[ShortnFiery]

36. Your last statement was total hyperbole.

But don't hold your breath or throw a tantrum just because other thoughtful people do not agree with you.

Instead, accuse them of being ignorant ... that's the mature thing to do. :eyes:

[MicaelS]

40. Not a bit of hyperbole

Plenty of scientific evidence then and now to both. Plenty of eyewitnesses then and now to both. People who refuse to accept evidence aren't ignorant, ignorance is a lack of education. People who refuse to accept the evidence are stupid.

[ShortnFiery]

59. I rest my case. n/t

[Palin delenda est]

39. Yes, same mentality. Not as ugly but every bit as nuts.

:-)

[14thColony]

64. I thought that too for the longest time

"Go on morons, explain how the reflectors got there."

But the Lunokhod-2 rover carried a reflector which is also still in use, and clearly the USSR never landed humans on the Moon. So the counter-argument is that we placed reflectors there remotely when each unmanned LEM landed.

That's the crazy part - to deny the reflectors were placed by astronauts, the deniers have to claim that we landed at least 3 LEMs on the Moon, yet never bothered to send a crew in any of them.

But I find they're pretty immune to things like reason and logic.

[AllenVanAllen]

35. A few don't believe

in the moon landing no matter how much evidence exists, but that doesn't bother me compared to the findings of the Gallup poll showing that only 39 percent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution. Now that, I find troublesome.

[nonsequitur]

41. consiracy theorists, you can't change the minds of insane peeps

9/11, the crazy birthers, the moon landing, people that want to find a conspiracy will find it and there's no way to talk them out of it, why try?

[Gold Metal Flake]

44. Moon Landing Conspiracy Advocates make money from fools.

The profit motive is the key to the perpetuation of the myth.

[stuball111]

48. I think the MOON is fake!

It's not really there seriously! It's a weather balloon or some big GE lightbulb orbiting the planet

[dmbell]

49. spacelab, shuttle

Seeing the relative technological simplicity in these near space vehicles, despite their advanced technology, I doubt we could do anything so spectacular as a moon landing decades earlier.

[14thColony]

67. Then explain these pics of the Apollo landing sites

taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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

Be sure to scroll down to the close-up of the Apollo 14 landing site, where you can see the path the astronauts made in the dust when they hiked out to set up some instruments a couple hundred meters from the lander.

We apparently went to so much effort to fake the landings, we had to actually land there to create fake evidence that we landed there!

[ContinentalOp]

55. Moon landing deniers should be banned IMO.

I'm all for conspiracy theories but this isn't one. This is anti-scientific B.S. on the level of intelligent design and global warming denial.

[ShortnFiery]

57. Perfect. That's the way to stave-off any disagreement.

:thumbsdown:

[rockymountaindem]

62. There's a huge gulf between "disagreement" and being totally wrong

I'm not saying we should ban people, but saying the moon landing was a hoax goes a bit beyond "disagreement" IMHO. What is it these days with people making crazy statements and then trying to hide behind the "honest disagreement" facade? Could we say the earth is flat and then just say it's "honest disagreement"? I think not.

[ProfessorGAC]

63. The Earth Is Flat!

Honest disagreement. Geez, what do you know? You were right, i guess "honest disagreement" can just about rationalize any silly thing. Wow, is that ever easy. I little too easy, huh Rocky?

:hi: (Great post, RMD)
GAC

[rockymountaindem]

66. How do we *know* Magellan ever *really* existed?

Have we seen his birth certificate? I think not. You're all pawns in the system! The Spanish Empire is mocking all of you, but I alone know the truth!

[chrisa]

71. Fake! Fake!

Magellan was created by the US government in 1992. Why? We don't know.

Must have something to do with the mindcontrol brainwaves being fed through our TVs.

[backscatter712]

58. And the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter just took pictures of the Apollo landing sites.

http://www.space.com/news/090717-lro-apollo11-images.html

The descent stages of the lunar landers are still there, and the LRO caught them on camera!

[DefenseLawyer]

77. From what I can tell, they have an answer

I have never really paid any attention to the fake moon landing people until it has been discussed here in the last few days. In my cursory look at the conspiracy school of thought in those last few days, the prevailing view seems to be that they sent the astronauts up, but only into low earth orbit, which they could do (and which the shuttle is doing right now I believe)and orbited around while broadcasting the fake moon footage to the world, then came back. Thus they would dismiss your evidence of radio transmissions and such as only being evidence of a launch, not a landing. Then again, a good conspiracy has an answer for just about anything.

[ControlledDemolition]

84. "Then again, a good conspiracy has an answer for just about anything." Very true...

Correct me if I'm wrong, the outcome of legal proceedings can be influenced to a great degree by the amount of money behind pushing the cause.

Who has more resources to establish, maintain, troubleshoot their version of events, 'the government', or whistleblowers and those who support them?

[fishbulb703]

78. my pops was in the pentagon at the time...

everyone in the military thought they would never make it back, for real. thank your nearest engineer

[Manifestor_of_Light]

82. But watch the press conference. Why are they so cowed and scared?

Three highly educated guys pull off the greatest technical achievement in the history of mankind, and are they happy? Gleeful? Proud???

Hell NO. They are sad, scared, afraid, cowed........ :wtf:

WHY? Did they see too much stuff they couldn't talk about???

Just wondering. :shrug:

[cherokeeprogressive]

83. The question I want a "denier" to answer: How could JFK and then LBJ have benefited from a hoax?

JFK proposed it. LBJ oversaw it. Forget Nixon; he was hardly involved, having only been president for 180 days on the day Apollo 11 "allegedly" landed.

So, deniers, riddle me this: Why would JFK propose an impossibile task, why did LBJ play along, and to what end?

[leftstreet]

85. Wow. This moon landing stuff gets people pretty upset

:rofl:

So what difference would it make if it HAD been a hoax?

:shrug: