Calli Arcale said:

You gotta see the latest LRO images, though. Bad Astronomer has been covering them.

Apollo 11:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/09/one-giant-leap/

Apollo 17:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/10/30/and-the-flag-was-still-there/

Yes, that’s right — the flag was still there! Awesome pics. You can clearly see the lander footpads.

Oh hell yeah. The images keep getting better. Apollo-15 still has not been imaged with the quality of some of the others yet. I saw some great ones from Apollo-14 and Apollo-12. Apollo-12 is interesting because they landed right near the Surveyor probe and you can see the footprints really well, of the astronauts walking over to it and then walking around, inspecting it and then back to the LM and then out to set up the ALSEP

http://www.enjoyspace.com/uploads/news/septembre2009/apollo12_lro/apollo12-lro.jpg

It’ll be cool to see Apollo 15-17 in detail, as they had the rovers and brought more equipment (designated the J-series missions, they had more capacity and brought up higher quality TV equipment, larger experiment packages and the rovers)

Also, there are some great pics of the S-IVB impact sites from apollo.

http://spacefellowship.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/392475main_ap14sivb_full.jpg

You can see that despite the stage being all but obliterated, it’s obviously different from other impact craters, as the thing that hit was not as dense as the meteor impacts, so it left more debris on the surface.

I’d really love to see some images of the Soviet equipment on the moon too.

It’s really fascinating.

I bet it burns conspiracy theorists, though.

Apollo 11:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/09/one-giant-leap/

Apollo 17:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/10/30/and-the-flag-was-still-there/

Yes, that’s right — the flag was still there! Awesome pics. You can clearly see the lander footpads.

These images won’t sway people who are that far off their rocker. Nothing will. Some of the conspiracy theorists have even said that if they get pictures of Apollo equipment on the moon from non-US sources that will not change their minds because they believe that NASA had sent robotic missions to the moon to leave behind flags and rovers and footprints in the surface. Yeah, I am serious.

Some are just beyond all help

        Bruce said:

What disturbed the moon surface millions of years ago? I always here this, that it wasn’t disturbed for so and so many years, but no one ever explains what happened before we got there that disturbed it or when exactly it happened.

At one time, the moon was far more geologically active, and had volcano and along with this things like regular landslides. That was billions of years ago. After that, the lunar surface has been pulverized to the fine dust by meteorite impacts. Some have been large and they pulverize the surface to dust that usually rains back down on the surface.

However, given the size of the moon and the irregularity of impacts, any given spot on the moon’s surface is likely to have gone millions of years since the last time it was hit by anything.

There are other forces that weather the lunar soil. The solar winds and electrostatic effects that are sometimes triggered, but mostly the soil is not disturbed much. The outer layer of the soil changes in reflectivity because as long as it sits undestrubed it bakes in the solar radiation and particles and that changes the chemistry a little.

        Dan78 said:

The astronauts of the time were all educated, accomplished former military officers. At one time, a large portion of civic-minded, socially conservative men in the United States belonged to the Free Masons. It was once the largest general non-denominational civic organization in the US.

It is not that surprising that many belonged to it and it does not imply anything sinister.

Dan I hope you realize that I was being sarcastic in my first post to this thread. I see nothing conspiratorial about Freemasonry, however we both know that many of the paranoid do, and this organization is right up there with the Illuminati in their list of evil dark empires controlling everything.

Thus my post was a poor attempt at humor at their expense.

Also, DV82XL, you’re wrong that all the first astronauts were Freemasons. Many were, but many were not. See here: http://www.freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/spacemason/index.html

“Neil Armstrong, Jr. is not a freemason; his father, Neil Armstrong, Sr. is an active freemason.”

The fact that his father was a Freemason is meaningless. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades! Some people might claim Neil Armstrong is a Freemason, but that’s BS. If he were, why would he hide it? The society may have secrets, but most masons do not make their participation in freemasonry a secret. Buzz Aldrin doesn’t hide it.

All the astronauts were also boyscout. Maybe scouting was involved in the conspiracy.

        DV82XL said:

All of the first astronauts were Freemasons. And remember, that the international flag of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry is the United Nations Flag. And as we know, the United Nations Flag depicts the nations of the world encircled by the laurel of Apollo.

Need I say more?

You forgot to add that the UN flag, which shows the continents of the world from the North Pole, with the Southen hemesphere stretched out as if the earth were a disc, has been pointed to by the flat earth society as an example of the true geography of the earth being hidden in plain sight by the powers that be,

Need I say more?