Why do people make videos about things they know nothing about?
November 18th, 2009
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I came across this video online. I’m not sure whether to be humored or irritated by these kind of videos, but I suppose it’s both. Like most conspiracy theory videos, the creator speaks in a very authoritative tone, like he knows everything and is schooling the public on the “Truth.” Yet like in so many cases, this self-proclaimed expert on the truth seems to have no clue about the fundamentals of radio communications.
It’s not even like these are things that you need a Ph.D. in communications systems engineering to see this either. Most of these errors are so fundamental that anyone with a ham radio technicians license (the lowest level) should know better. It’s amazing anyone could be so sure of something based on evidence that they are so ignorant about. Then again, conspiracy theorists tend to start off with a conclusion and only try to make the evidence fit as an afterthought.
Actually, this guy has made over a dozen videos on the moon landing “hoax” – all of which appear to contain similar basic errors. He must have a lot of time on his hands.
A few glaring errors:
Error Number 1: It was not Australia and only Australia that received television from the moon. It was received at Goldstone in California and in Guam. Anyone who had a suitable receiver and was on the portion of the earth facing the moon could receive it. Other portions of the mission, as well as other Apollo missions transmitted television and/or data that was received at Ascension Island, Madrid, Goldstone CA, Madagascar, Guam, Hawaii, Carnarvon Australia and elsewhere. There were also tracking ships.
Of course, there were other stations in the world that were capable of receiving the transmissions, even if they did not do so in any official capacity.
Error Number 2: NASA does not and did not own the Parkes Observatory in Australia. It was made avaliable by the gracious cooperation of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Error Number 3: A whole bunch of mistakes regarding the transmission capabilities of the Luna probes and the use of the Lovell Telescope.
Error Number 4: The 50 foot azimuth-altitude dish at the Jodrell Bank Observatory was not locked to only receiving 2300 mhz, on the dot. Like most radio telescopes, it had a reasonably large tunable bandwidth. The receiver being used at the time was the S-band feed-horn and receiver. The confusion about the frequency comes from a lack of understanding how radio systems work and the terminology used.
The Apollo Unified S-band system was NOT transmitting at exactly 2000 mhz during apollo 11. In fact, it was tuned to the carrier frequency of 2282.5 mhz – making it actually closer to 2300 mhz than 2000 mhz. The Apollo S-band system wasn’t locked to one frequency to the exclusion of others. Like many transmitters, it could be tuned to different channels, thus allowing for it to work properly if one of the channels had interference and to allow for both the CSM and the LM to communicate with earth without interfering with each other.
It seems that this person does not understand the use of the terminology. When you buy a cordless phone that is said to be “900 mhz” or “2.4 ghz” it does not mean that it operates on that frequency right on the dot, but rather that it operates on the “900mhz band” or “2.4 ghz band,” meaning the area of the radio spectrum around that frequency. Wifi networking is often said to be 2.4 ghz, but in reality the signals occupy a series of channels 2.412 ghz and 2.462 ghz.The term “S-band” refers to an area of microwave frequencies from about 2ghz to 4ghz. The use of the term “two gigahertz” just means that the system operated in the lower part of the S-band between two and three gigahertz.
Therefore, when technicians say that the antenna was receiving “two gigahertz” they were just talking about the operating band and when they say “twenty three hundred megahertz” they were giving an approximation of the region of the band which was being monitored.
Error Number 5: “What they fail to list are the frequencies these stations used” – referring to the Soviet era tracking stations. The down-link frequency doesn’t really matter. Any decently equipped ratio telescope would have multiple receivers for different bands and the same dish could easily be used for any frequency in the microwave band. The only modification that a 5 ghz dish would need in order to receive s-band signals would be the addition of an s-band feed-horn – a trivial modification. If the tracking stations received down-links in both the L-band (UHF signals up to about 1 ghz) and the C-band (around 5 ghz) then they should have been capable of also tuning in the s-band, between the two, without any modification at all.
It should be noted that by the late 1960’s the Soviet Union had a very extensive and well-equipped network of tracking stations. The fact that Jodrell Bank continued to track their spacecraft is probably simply because they had the largest antenna in the world, at the time, and would therefore have the best chance of getting clear reception even under unfavorable conditions. At the time, data was often transmitted in an analog form, so even if an antenna was sufficient to receive something like slow-scan pictures, it might not be sufficient to receive them with absolute clarity. Having Jodrell Bank receiving the signals insured that the best signal could be acquired, even if other receivers did not have optimal reception.
Error Number 6: “Just like the radio hams, Russia lacked the ability to tune into the 2ghz frequencies used by the Apollo Astronauts” – No they didn’t. Again, this is trivial. I have a spectrum analyzer in my basement that can tune in the 2ghz range. All I would have needed to track the Apollo missions would be a decently large dish. They had spectrum analyzers like mine in the 1960’s. Receiving 2 ghz does not require any exotic or complex equipment.
Error Number 7: “There was neither the interest nor the possibility of following Apollo 11″ – The reason there wasn’t a lot of interest was that the Jodrell Bank staff was already busy with the Soviet Luna 15 probe and they didn’t need to track the Apollo spacecraft. They could just watch and listen to the audio on the BBC. For that reason, the Apollo tracking was being done as a secondary task, using otherwise unneeded equipment and on the off-time of staff members who were only doing it for fun and out of their own interest. (Although, if they really wanted the pointing data, they could have calculated it themselves based on the known orbital parameters, but this was an era before handheld calculators, and that kind of math was not something anyone would do for “fun”)
“Tracking” Apollo while in flight would have required pointing data, or at least, would have been made easier with it. Without the pointing data, the station would have had to manually find the spacecraft and home in on the signal until they got the best reception. However, once the spacecraft landed, this would no longer be any problem. For one thing, it was no longer moving relative to the moon and for another, they knew the approximate location of the spacecraft – the Southern portion of the Sea of Tranquility. With a 5/8 degree antenna beam, this would have been more than enough information to find the spacecraft.Tracking Apollo during the transit would have been possible, but more difficult than tracking it near the moon. The official stations did so using computers that were programed with the flight path.
Doing so manually would be a bit more difficult, but not impossible. I have personally tracked satellites with a handheld, directional antenna, where I only knew the general direction that the satellite would be located. To do so, you just have to sweep the area until you get a descent idea of where the strongest signal is and then, as the satellite moves, you need to keep tweaking the antenna position. You may lose it for a minute every once in a while, but it’s not terribly difficult to keep it reasonably well centered in the beam.
Of course, doing so with an automated tracking system with the flight path data is much easier and assures consistent good reception, but it is not absolutely required. Tracking a spacecraft in lunar orbit would require a bit more precision than a satellite in low earth orbit, but they also had better equipment that was adjusted by turning knobs, not by physically holding the antenna. In both cases, the same principle applies.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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November 18th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Well put. I always get upset seeing these “authorities” making statements that show they have NO understanding of the basics.
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November 18th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
There are a lot of amateur efforts to receive space probes. If you want to see a fascinating site about it go here: http://www.uhf-satcom.com
There are advanced amateur efforts that have received deep space probes. Some even received from the Mars probes. They primarily use surplus television satellite dishes (the c-band ones that were common in the 1980’s) for the deep space probes and smaller antennas for nearer spacecraft. Here is a page on receiving the LRO: http://www.uhf-satcom.com/amateurdsn/lro/
I know the first thing some people are going to ask is how you can possibly receive it with a backyard dish when NASA uses big arrays of huge antennas. The answer is that you don’t need that much gain to just detect the signal and maybe even get a couple of fragments of data from it. However, the signal to noise ratio will be too high to do much more than tell the signal is there, and even detecting it at all will be intermittent. It will just be a small peak in the noise. The big antennas are needed to receive it with enough fidelity to receive the instrument data. Also, they need to transmit back.
It would not have been hard for anyone with a real desire to receive the Apollo transmissions. They would need to be a little more sophisticated to actually get the audio and video off of it, but certainly the Soviets could. Any reasonably well setup station surely could. Of course, that is assuming that it was pointed at the moon, which is not always the case. As this jackass seems to forget, you can’t track the moon continuously from a single point on earth, because sometimes it is on the other side.
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November 19th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Yeah, I love the guy’s tone. It’s like he’s angry that they fooled everyone and he’s there to school everyone on the truth. He is so confident and ****y, even as he spews mistake after mistake.
Hell, even I know that a freakin radio observatory can monitor more than a single frequency at once! What? You think Jodrell bank has a single receiver that only tunes in one station? Dip****.
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November 19th, 2009 at 4:31 am
I wouldn’t say his tone is authoritative. He may be attempting that but it comes of as condescending and patronising.
He also sounds whiney and almost out of breath. Perhaps he’s afraid that if he speaks too slowly his brain, such as it is, will catch up with him and berate him for being a moron. I couldn’t listen more than half-way through.
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November 19th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Does nobody find several things suspicious?
The only pictures of the Apollo spacecraft that actually show them on the moon are from an AMERICAN spacecraft.
The only thing other spacecraft from other countries can see is blotchy spots that might or might not be caused by the landings, but probably are not.
The one probe that could take pictures to disprove the landings was from India. It only took a picture of a spot before it mysteriously failed working, just before going in for a closer look.
Apollo 11 was the one that got the most attention and was looked at closely by most. THey only broadcast it with a crappy black and white camera but the later ones, once they were more confident that they fooled people and people didn’t take as much notice, they used color for, but why not the first? They even had a color camera on the capsul that they only used when inside and never took on the landing. NASA never explains why.
They never asked any other countries to prove that they landed. if they really went and wanted the world to know, why didn’t they ask the astronomy place in England or even the Russians to confirm it by homing in on their radio transmissions? They could have proved it all easily just saying to the russians “Okay, we went to the moon and in case you doubt it, here’s the location and the frequency, so please go and check this out to show we’re honest”
There are no stars in any of the pics on the moon. I know this is supposedly because it is bright. Well, then if that’s the fact of the matter, why not wait until night to take some photos of stars? That would have proven it perfectly to everyone.
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November 19th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Probably 2 reasons: first, taking pictures of stars to prove some idiots wrong 40 years later probably wasn’t high on their list.
Second, and more importantly, a lunar day takes about 29 days…so unless they landed right at dusk, they’d probably have to wait days (as in earth days) for it to become night on the moon.
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November 19th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Jason said:
The Apollo missions used a retrograde orbit around the moon. This means as they landed, the LM fas flying from east to west. Mission times were chosen partially based on lighting conditions at the time of landing. They landed with the sun behind them with a relatively low sun angle (10deg or so above the horizon). This was chosen so that rockes, bumps, etc would stand out better due to long shadows. Since the sun was low on the easern horizon, all the landings occured shortly after lunar dawn. They would have had to wait about 2-weeks for darkness, far beyond the capacity of the LM. As for stars being difficult to see, the astronaughts used a telescope to take star sightings for navigation. Whenever possible, the tried to do this in darkness (in the shadow of the earth or moon) since this made the stars much more visible (although they could make sightings in full sun).
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November 19th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Oh Bloody Hell said:
No. Sending a probe to orbit the moon is not an easy task. There are only a few space agencies in the world with the capability of doing so at all.
Oh Bloody Hell said:
They also have seen shadows of objects and other indications, but none of these probes were sent to the moon to verify the Apollo program. The fact that they saw evidence of Apollo was coincidental. If the purpose of the probes sent had been to find Apollo equipment, they would have been sent with a very high resolution camera at the expense of other instruments. Instead, they were sent with a combination of different types of cameras, laser altimeters, radiation detectors, spectrometers etc.
If you are sending a 500 kg of instruments on probe to photograph Apollo sites, you would send a probe containing about 500 kg worth of camera, as opposed to 80 kg worth of camera, 100 kg worth of lidar, 150 kg worth of spectrometers, 150 worth of radar etc etc
Oh Bloody Hell said:
No. The reason for the failure was due to problems with the power supply that was not sufficiently radiation hardened for the enviornment. The probe was planned for a two year mission, but it only lasted about a year. That’s not that unusual – space is a hostile enviornment. Probes sometimes last longer than planned and they sometimes last shorter. All and all, the mission was generally a success. Probes don’t last forever.
It was a little disappointing that it didn’t last for the full estimated lifetime, but it’s only an estimate. All probes fail eventually.
Also, I don’t know that it was ever planned to take “a closer look” as the mission was never to image Apollo sites. That was just a secondary thing, not a mission objective.
Oh Bloody Hell said:
It’s no secret. The communications systems onboard the LM did not have the bandwidth to send back full color conventional tv. They used a slow-scan, limited resolution black and white camera to allow the signal to fit within very limited bandwifth.
Later missions used a seperate transmitter dedicated to television, but Apollo-11 omitted that because it was the first mission and they wanted to keep it simple. Also, to get the “first steps” the TV needed to be transmitted through the LM transmitter. The seperate systems required the astronauts to set them up before they could transit back.
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Well, if the mountain of proof is not enough for you..
yeah, sure, they could have done more to “prove” it. They could have invited independent international observers to inspect all aspects of the control procedures. They could have had the British, Australians, Candians, Japanese, French and a dozen other countries independently iniate two-way communications with the astronauts on the surface of the moon. They could have set off explosives on the moon or laid down huge mylar reflectors while the telescopes of the world were trained on the area.
Yeah… they could have done stuff like that to “prove” it, but they didn’t forsee that in 40 years, a bunch of ignorant assclowns would go around with their stupid conspiracy theories. Besides, even if they did all those things, would it really have changed anything for the various assclowns?
Hell, they set up laser reflectors and that never seems to shut up anyone.
Oh Bloody Hell said:
As mentioned above – the lunar day is about 29 earth days. It would not have been a simple issue of waiting a few hours – they would have had to land at night. None of the Apollo missions were done at lunar night. It would have compromised safety and complicated the whole thing, because they would have had to haul up flood lights and batteries etc to do it. It’s near pitch dark. Also, with no sun, they may have needed heat sources for the suits and the spacecraft. Again, this would complicate the whole thing and add weight.
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November 20th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I watched this and two other videos by the same guy. It’s just sad how poor his understanding of things is, especially speaking in such a condescending, pompous tone.
The guy has clearly never even owned a radio scanner or anything, because he has no idea how this stuff works. In one he says that radio hams would not be able to receive the signals because 2 ghz is not a ham frequency, and that the only way they could would be if some illegally hacked equipment to receive it.
What an idiot. He doesn’t even realize that a ham radio license is for transmitting. You can receive unencrypted communications on any frequency you want perfectly legally and you don’t even need a license. It was not a “ham radio” activity, just a reception one, and the only reason they mention hams is that hams are the kind of people who would do that kind of thing.
Such a doofus.
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November 20th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I can’t resist. I have to also respond to “Oh Bloody Hell”.
The only pictures of the Apollo spacecraft that actually show them on the moon are from an AMERICAN spacecraft.
Naturally. Nobody has ever landed probes near the Apollo sites. There was one mission which attempted to make a soft-landing during Apollo 11: the aforementioned Luna 15, which Jodrell Bank had agreed to track, and which was Soviet. It was aimed well away from Mare Tranquilitatis, for the simple reason that if you’re going to spend an ungodly amount of money putting a spacecraft on the Moon, you want to give it the maximum chance of success. Avoiding approach to other spacecraft (particularly spacecraft belonging to a hostile foreign power) is prudent. Therefore, who could possibly have the *opportunity* to take a picture of the Apollo astronauts actually on the Moon?
So, why hasn’t anyone landed a probe near the Apollo sites since then? Sure, they wouldn’t see the astronauts (since they’ve all long since gone home) but the stuff is still there. The reason is simple: why bother? All the space agencies know the Apollo missions happened; they have no need to prove it to themselves or anyone else. Landing at the Apollo sites would mean they would gather data very similar to what had already been gathered — in other words, those sites are already studied, so you would get more scientific return from landing somewhere else. That’s not to say nobody ever will. There is a certain “cool factor” to landing near an Apollo site, and you could possibly justify the mission on the basis of studying how the spacecraft’s components had fared during the long exposure.
To date, only one spacecraft has ever attempted to land on another world anywhere near another spacecraft: Apollo 12, which landed very near the Surveyor 3 probe. This was intentional, and done specifically for the purpose of analyzing materials which had been left on the Moon for an extended period. The TV camera mounted on Surveyor 3 was recovered and returned to Earth; it’s on display at the National Air & Space Museum today. It’s not likely that such a thing will be done again anytime soon, especially since some folks have become rather protective of the Apollo sites, arguing that they should be preserved intact as historical monuments.
But there aren’t any police on the Moon, and the Google Xprize may encourage someone to actually land near an Apollo site. The Google Xprize awaits anyone who manages to land a probe on the Moon. I believe bonus points are given for photographing Apollo hardware, but it is not mandatory. If anyone collects it (and there are teams working on potential solutions), it will mark the first time a private enterprise traveled to another world.
The only thing other spacecraft from other countries can see is blotchy spots that might or might not be caused by the landings, but probably are not.
What’s your basis for “probably are not” besides wanting to confirm your own preference? Just so you know, that’s the reverse of scientific, and a sign of a closed mind.
The reason no probe besides LRO has imaged the landers directly is that no other probe has had the capability to do so. LRO is cutting edge. If this doesn’t satisfy you, just wait. It’s only a matter of time before other countries launch probes of similar capability.
The one probe that could take pictures to disprove the landings was from India. It only took a picture of a spot before it mysteriously failed working, just before going in for a closer look.
That would be Chandrayaan-1. Would it make you feel any better (probably not) to know that it was very much an international effort, with some of the instruments provided by NASA? Also, it took pictures of a great deal more than one spot on the Moon. There is more to the Moon than the Apollo sites, you know. However, it did not have the resolution of LRO, and would not have produced such good images. (Oh, and it was in its final mapping orbit when it failed.)
Apollo 11 was the one that got the most attention and was looked at closely by most. THey only broadcast it with a crappy black and white camera but the later ones, once they were more confident that they fooled people and people didn’t take as much notice, they used color for, but why not the first? They even had a color camera on the capsul that they only used when inside and never took on the landing. NASA never explains why.
NASA does explain why; it’s not their fault people don’t always listen. The first two missions had the lowest payload capacity, and the focus was more on making sure it could be done safely than on maximizing the scientific return. Apollo 11’s return is miniscule next to Apollo 17, and I’m not just talking about rocks.
The first mission, they carried 35mm color still cameras (made by Hassleblad; these are high-end cameras) identical to those carried on later missions, a black-and-white TV camera, and an 8mm film video camera. To maximize the amount of footage they could obtain with the film camera, it was set to operate at 15 frames per second. (Standard for film is 24 fps; NTSC television is 30 fps. This is why, on playback, Apollo 11 films look a bit like the Keystone Cops.)
As engineering data accumulated and some mods were made to the vehicles, they were able to bring along better, heavier equipment. Starting with Apollo 15, they were able to bring REALLY awesome stuff along, including the lunar rovers. This was because the J-series lunar modules had better engines *and* were much lighter, allowing more payload mass to be brought along. The color TV cameras of the last three missions were actually mounted on the rovers and remotely operated by controllers on Earth.
So, now you know why.
They never asked any other countries to prove that they landed. if they really went and wanted the world to know, why didn’t they ask the astronomy place in England or even the Russians to confirm it by homing in on their radio transmissions? They could have proved it all easily just saying to the russians “Okay, we went to the moon and in case you doubt it, here’s the location and the frequency, so please go and check this out to show we’re honest”
“The astronomy place in England.” *sigh* You can’t expect to be taken seriously when you can’t even be bothered to read the OP and see that a) “the astronomy place” is Jodrell Bank (actually, there are several, but that’s the biggest radio observatory in England, and one of the biggest on Earth), b) it actually did receive signals from Apollo 11, and c) what are the Australians, chopped liver? They not only tracked Apollo 11, but provided the data to NASA and the general public. As an interesting aside, this is why the Australians got to see the landing slightly before (and in better quality) than the Americans did.
Besides all that, why would they bother asking people to prove what was already obviously true to anyone who isn’t busy trying to convince themselves it was a fake?
There are no stars in any of the pics on the moon. I know this is supposedly because it is bright. Well, then if that’s the fact of the matter, why not wait until night to take some photos of stars? That would have proven it perfectly to everyone.
As noted by others, they would have to wait two weeks to take nighttime pictures, by which time they would have been dead. Day and night are slow on the Moon; as you may have noticed by looking in the sky occasionally, the Moon rotates synchronously (it always shows the same face to Earth), so it’s day is the same length as its orbital period. And you may have noticed that it takes nearly a month (hence the word “month”, actually) for the Moon to go through all of its phases, which means the entire day/night cycle lasts nearly a month. (Well, 29 and a half Earth days.)
The reason you can’t see stars is simple: it’s because the lunar surface is very bright, and so to avoid that being a hopelessly smudged mess, they reduced their exposure settings. Stars won’t show up in short exposures, no matter what time you take the picture. Try taking a picture at night on Earth while using a camera set for daylight exposure and see what happens.
But it turns out, it’s not entirely true that they didn’t take any pictures of stars. They did take a few. This is one of the more interesting. It’s an ultraviolet image of the Earth, and although it is noisy, you can see a couple of bright stars. It was taken through a telescope set up on the surface of the Moon by the Apollo 16 astronauts.
APOD for July 1, 2000: Ultraviolet Earth from the Moon
Quote Comment
November 20th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Oh Bloody Hell said:
The sheer boneheaded ignorance of this statement beggers belief. Trying to tell us that we are wrong in our interpretation of the Apollo landings, and yet not bothering to look up the most basic facts (alledged or otherwise) of the missions, such as the landings all occuring shortly after the local lunar dawn, and seeming to be ignorant of basic facts about the moon which every schoolchild should know, specifically its rotation rate shows you up as the clown you are. Or perhaps you knew them, but never thought to integrate them into a coherent whole to give your contention a basic critical once-over before posting here. Incredible.
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November 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I don’t see how having pictures of stars would convince anyone who still hangs onto those hoax theories. What would it prove? The stars on the moon are the same as the ones on the earth. The earth and moon are not far enough apart for there to be any parallax detectable to different stars in photographs. Yes, you could determine position by the stars, but to do so accurately, you’d have to know things like the time the photograph is taken, the orientation of the camera etc. I suppose if they had a photo with the lunar horizon in it and a plumb line and an accurate clock, then maybe you could verify the location on the moon.
Besides, even if the photos are real, it could still be taken from a location on the earth with the same orientation to the horizon. Given that both are roughly spherical, if you’re standing on the point on the earth that is tangent to the same angle as the area of the moon, the stars would be the same.
Not that you would actually have to go there to take photos like that. If NASA could fake all the other evidence, it would be comparatively easy to fake star photos. Hell, you could just take some star images, orient them in the positions you’d expect on the moon and superimpose them on a blank sky.
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November 21st, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Calli Arcale said:
“b) it actually did receive signals from Apollo 11, and c) what are the Australians, chopped liver? They not only tracked Apollo 11, but provided the data to NASA and the general public. As an interesting aside, this is why the Australians got to see the landing slightly before (and in better quality) than the Americans did.”
Yea, the Australians are chopped liver if they were being paid by NASA and were working with NASA-owned equipment which was most probably rigged to make them think they were receiving it, when who knows, there could have been a tape player hidden in the machine that was really playing it back when they thought it was coming in the antenna.
Plus, the English could have been fooled too by any number of ways or maybe they were just paid to look the other way, otherwise, who knows? maybe a satellite? Or maybe you should just realize that at the time the US was the allies of the English and the English needed them to protect them from the Russians so the US could have said “Look, you better tell the world that you confirmed we landed on the moon or we’ll drop a nuke on London”
How do I know? I’m just saying it’s suspicious. If they wanted the world to believe them then they should have invited a whole bunch of countries to confirm it. It’s to show they didn’t fake anything. They want us to think they’re so honest, why hide it?
Why not prove it by having a whole bunch of countries do it themselves?
Calli Arcale said:
“But it turns out, it’s not entirely true that they didn’t take any pictures of stars. They did take a few. This is one of the more interesting. It’s an ultraviolet image of the Earth, and although it is noisy, you can see a couple of bright stars. It was taken through a telescope set up on the surface of the Moon by the Apollo 16 astronauts.”
So then you admit that they could take pics of stars on the moon, but they decided only to take a few small ones that don’t show the whole sky or a big part of it and don’t show what else you need to prove anything?
If they could take pictures of the stars, then why didn’t they take lots of them and plus have the stuff the othr guy says you would need, like the horizon and a clock and stuff. If they did, then nobody would doubt them. They decided not to because they thought everyone would take their word????
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November 21st, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Exactly what would satisfy you Oh Bloody Hell? Please tell us.
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November 21st, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Oh Bloody Hell said:
That is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a LONG time. If there is one thing that would have been idiotic to do during the middle of the Cold War, it would have been to threaten the second largest military member of NATO and completely destroy the alliance that was balancing the Warsaw pact.
Not to mention that the Brits had their own nukes and would have nuked us back. But seriously… what? the hell kind of logic is this?
Aside from that, the Australians were not such idiots that they couldn’t tell a tape playing back from a real signal. They didn’t just press the on button on the equipment. They knew it inside and out and were skilled technicians who had to troubleshoot problems, set up the equipment and repair it. And once again: Parkes was not a NASA facility. It was owned by Australia and it was due to the generous cooperation of their government that the US was allowed to use it.
(And by the way: as an American citizen, let me offer a thanks, yet again, to Australia and the Australian Government, for their generous cooperation, support and dedication to the United States Space Program and their continued contributions to NASA and to the international science community through the Canberra Deep Space Communications Center. The Center has been a vital component of programs by NASA, the ESA and others to communicate with deep space probes.)
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November 21st, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Look idiot, if the Americans had faked the moon landings, the Soviets (who monitored the US effort closely) would have delighted in proving this to the world as soon as they could assemble the evidence. The Russians do not doubt that the Americans reached the moon.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 1:55 am
Seems a little insulting to the Australians to think they were so stupid that the US could send them a VCR disguised as a radio receiver and they couldn’t tell the difference. Come to think of it, it seems pretty insulting to the Spanish and the Canary Islanders and everyone else who received the broadcasts from one mission or another (remember, Australia received the transmissions from the Apollo 11 Lunar EVA, but there were other broadcasts and other missions and other countries hosted the sites for those.)
If you’re going to have missions to the moon, you need a lot of stations around the world to be able to track them, since the moon does not hover over the US. It seems “Oh Bloody Hell” thinks all the countries where one of the stations was located were made up of morons.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 2:41 am
According to Vasily Mishin, the Russian’s version of Warner Von Braun, all US Space Missions in the 1960’s and 1970’s were tracked and received by the Soviet Union’s Space Communications Corps as a matter of routine and that included the Apollo flights, Apollo-11 and all the others.
He also said in one of his books, that even though the missions were all tracked, the Apollo missions were not of that great an interest to the Soviet Union. They were most interested in the Mercury and Gemini missions and the others that used the smaller rockets, because those were the same ones used for ICBM’s and they wanted to assess their launch characteristics, accuracy, reliability and so on.
Also, they were always concerned about the use of spy satellites and military use of space. They were aware that the USAF had plans to use the Gemini capsules for manned spy satellites and so that was a big issue.
One other thing is that they had concerns that manned launches or other scientific launches might be used as cover for military programs. There was worry that a mission like Apollo might secretively deploy a spy satellite before continuing to the moon or that other aspects of the mission would be cover for military operations.
For a while, they were worried about US satellites with nuclear weapons on board and Khrushchev was afraid the US planned to build a nuclear missile base on the moon, but they figured that was not a likely threat.
I don’t think they actually did anything in terms of monitoring to verify that the US actually went to the moon. That was obvious and they never really suspected it was a hoax. What they did suspect was that there could be some kind of covert military or spy aspects hidden and that was their big concern with all space missions.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 10:42 am
I would guess “Oh Bloody Hell” is too young to remember the Soviet Union or the sheer lack of trust and the suspicion between East and West at the time. Every object launched into space by the Soviet Union was tracked by Norad and given a number in a catalog with the precise orbital perimeters. Every piece of technical information on Soviet rockets, aircraft, ships, satellites and any other technology was analyzed to death. Of course, they did the same on their own end.
In addition to this, it was only after the end of the Cold War that we came to learn how extensively the Soviets had infiltrated government and industry. They had various informants and spies at all levels and a complex network of contacts and handlers.
That is not even to mention the sheer size of something like the Apollo program. So many involved from so many countries, the idea that it could be kept secret is absurd. Australia tracked the spacecraft, as did others. They were so complex and had so many contractors, there were cameras from West Germany, electronics from Japan, sensors from Britain and France etc etc. Projects of that size mushroom in terms of contractors and subcontractors and the supply chain. It’s difficult enough to manage as is, without throwing in a giant conspiracy.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
The Rusians had no reason to doubt the Apollo missions because the russians were already on the moon when Neal Armstrong landed. The soviet lunar base was established in 1963 and remained a manned outpost until 1987. It was staffed by a small group of dedicated cosmonauts assisted by trained chimpanzees and even some dogs (assigned to the blind cosmonaut). The secret meeting between Neal Armstrong and the soviets was taped but russia never released the tape (it is an eighteen minute tape – coincidence? I don’t think so). Why didn’t the russians ever tell the story? They are afraid of the Chinese, whom they never learned to understand. Also, the Brits would have retailiated had London been nuked. Oh, wait a minute, Have you ever been to London? I think maybe it was nuked after all. They killed Walter Kronkite to keep the secret.
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November 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Even without the monitoring that was done by the superpowers, the Russians never objected to the moon landings on the grounds that they were not possible given the technology of the day or the physics and biology of it.
One of the most common claims is that humans couldn’t go to the moon because of the radiation they would encounter, especially through the Van Allen belts. (James Van Allen, who died just a couple of years ago always said this was nonsense and a short time in the belts in a spacecraft would do little harm)
The Russians by the late 1960’s had sent many probes to orbit, to the moon and beyond and had their own independent measurements. They certainly would have known if it were possible. If the radiation were really that high, the Russians would have realized something was afoot and called it “Hey, you can’t do that! You would get four times the fatal dose if you went through the Van Allen belts”
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November 24th, 2009 at 4:10 am
I don’t see why anyone who understood this stuff would really see any reason to take the moon landing. Getting to the moon is a straight forward problem, the technology may be complex, but you really just need a rocket system with the capacity to send a payload there and the ability to do the landing, lift off, docking etc.
It is true that it is not a simple or cheap matter of getting that kind of capability, but the Saturn-V could clearly do it. It was big enough, the engines were powerful enough, it had enough stages and everything else. The lander could clearly do it. Why not? Do the calculations for the payload it carried, the amount of fuel, the engine thrust and it checks out. There is nothing about the trip that exceeds the systems.
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November 24th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Ah, round two!
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Yea, the Australians are chopped liver if they were being paid by NASA and were working with NASA-owned equipment which was most probably rigged to make them think they were receiving it, when who knows, there could have been a tape player hidden in the machine that was really playing it back when they thought it was coming in the antenna.
I hope, for your sake, that you don’t ever meet an Australian radio astronomer. I’m sure they’d take exception to your low opinion of their expertise. Fact is, they would know, because they had to slew the dish to track Apollo 11. If it were a tape player, the signal would seem oddly universal, playing back independent of where they pointed the dish. I would think they’d get a mite suspicious at that point. (Incidentally, did you know they accidentally lost track of Apollo 11 at one point, and had to manually reacquire it before the Americans cottoned on, since they didn’t want to ‘fess up to their own oops? They pulled it off, and the story came out later.)
Also, if it was on a tape playback, who was changing the tapes? (They could track Apollo 11 for 12 hours straight, before it set due to the Earth’s rotation. No tapes lasted that long in 1969.) Are you seriously suggesting that NASA could fool with their equipment so precisely without their noticing? Especially to cover for the break in signal when they accidentally lost contact with Apollo 11?
Plus, the English could have been fooled too by any number of ways or maybe they were just paid to look the other way, otherwise, who knows? maybe a satellite?
I’d be interested to learn if you are aware of any ways to fool the very experienced satellite trackers and radio astronomers in England (and elsewhere; you may have noticed that the world consists of more than the US, Russia, England, and Australia). I’m not.
A satellite? Well, one could put a beacon on a satellite. But the satellite would have to be traveling on precisely the same trajectory as a Moon spacecraft, would have to deploy a lander with another beacon, and that lander would have to take off and fly back to rendezvous with the original satellite, which would then have to leave lunar orbit and return to the Earth. In short, it would have to carry out the entire Apollo mission profile. At which point, why *not* put humans on board? It’d actually be easier than faking it.
Or maybe you should just realize that at the time the US was the allies of the English and the English needed them to protect them from the Russians so the US could have said “Look, you better tell the world that you confirmed we landed on the moon or we’ll drop a nuke on London”
Okay — so, you’re saying I should realize that we were allies of the English, and this means we would have threatened them with nuclear annihilation. Interesting. (By the way, “was” is not the correct tense. We are still allies of the English, or more properly, the British.) Also perfectly absurd. Are you seriously suggesting that we had similar threats in place with the Australians, the French, the Spanish, the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Canadians, etc? And that’s why nobody spoke up? If so, that’s an awfully big claim to make with no basis whatsoever than your personal desire to come up with a reason why your opinion should be true (which, again, is the sign of a closed mind).
How do I know? I’m just saying it’s suspicious. If they wanted the world to believe them then they should have invited a whole bunch of countries to confirm it. It’s to show they didn’t fake anything. They want us to think they’re so honest, why hide it?
Why are you so obsessed with the idea that NASA tried to hide it? They didn’t. They *did* invite the world to get involved in Apollo. The lunar samples were sent around the world. Even to the Soviet Union. They’ve been studied by thousands of scientists from all over the world. Tracking stations around the world assisted directly. Others observed for scientific purposes. Others observed for purposes of military intelligence or training. Some even observed purely for the fun of it.
Your claim that NASA tried to hide the moon landings is absurd, given the remarkably open spirit of the missions. NASA blazed a trail that even today, few other space agencies can match in terms of openness.
So then you admit that they could take pics of stars on the moon, but they decided only to take a few small ones that don’t show the whole sky or a big part of it and don’t show what else you need to prove anything?
Why bother? They were spending billions of dollars to study the Moon. Why waste valuable time looking at stars? You can see them from Earth, and study them in far more detail than the Apollo astronauts could do. The only reason they did the UV observations (which weren’t just that one image of Earth; that’s just the one I could find most readily on the Internet) was because the Earth’s ozone layer blocks out a lot of UV light, and at the time a space telescope was not really practical. When the next astronauts go to the Moon, I have no doubt at all that they’ll leave the telescopes behind this time. There’s no point, since now we have space telescopes able to do the same job at vastly better resolution.
If they could take pictures of the stars, then why didn’t they take lots of them and plus have the stuff the othr guy says you would need, like the horizon and a clock and stuff. If they did, then nobody would doubt them.
Ah, no, you’ve pretty well demonstrated that you would still doubt them. All you’d do is claim the stars were added afterwards. And what good would a horizon do? If the lunar limb is visible in the shot, it’s going to severely overexpose the image.
They decided not to because they thought everyone would take their word????
Their word, tons of tracking data, a mountain of scientific data, the obvious evidence of the launch, data on the performance of the spacecraft . . . oh, and several hundred pounds of Moon rocks.
Why didn’t they do anything special to prove that they’d done it? What the hell could they do that they hadn’t already done? I mean jeez, spending billions of dollars in 1969 to put people on the moon isn’t enough for you? NASA doesn’t exist just to satisfy the demented ravings of conspiracy theorists. It exists to advance the state of the art in aeronautics and astronautics, and to further the goals of scientific exploration above our atmosphere. They boldly go where no one has gone before. If a few people are too blind to see it, that is unfortunate. But it is you who lose out, not NASA.
And just what are you losing out on? Have you *seen* the kind of stuff they’re seeing out there? It’s awesome. Truly awesome.
BTW, would you have doubted that Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay had summited Everest? Did Shackleton do enough to prove to *you* that he really went where he did? Do you suspect that Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh were faking their trip down the Challenger Deep aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste? Is it some failing on their parts that they pursued exploration for specific goals that didn’t happen to involve “impressing Oh Bloody Hell”?
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November 24th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Calli Arcale said:
There is a very good movie out about that exact incident, called ‘The Dish’. Being an Australian film, I don’t know how much coverage it got in the US, but if you can track down a copy, I highly recomend it.
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November 25th, 2009 at 10:27 am
My mom bought the DVD, and I had the opportunity to borrow it. It was *awesome*. I highly recommend it as well. It’s got a good combination of drama and comedy.
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November 25th, 2009 at 11:11 am
It is a pretty good movie, but it’s not really the true story. It’s “inspired by a true story”
Here is some information on what is and isn’t real in it:
http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/visiting/parkes/looselybased.html
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/
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November 29th, 2009 at 1:51 am
I figured out how to do quoting where the thing is separated.
Doogus said:
It could clearly do it? How do you know this? Sure, it could do it if you believe NASA’s numbers and everything else they say. Do you actually know it could do what they said it could do? No, you just assume it.
Calli Arcale said:
Okay, I guess you’re not smart enough to understand so I’ll explain it to you! the equipment was owned and built by NASA so they could have made it a thing to make it seem like the signals were coming from the moon, by having tape players that were playing tapes, only when the antennas was pointed the right way, and when it started to not be in the right spot, the tape would not come in as clear and then stop coming in. It’s like an automatic fake thing, like a video game, for example. It would have it so that the controls look like they tune in a signal or whatever, but it would be a tape playing.
You know with pilots they put them in a flight simulator and it has all buttons and knobs that seem like they control airplane things, like if they flip the switch to make the wheels come down, the light goes on that says they came down, and they hear a noise like the wheels coming down and maybe even feel it in the planes movements, even though they are not. Same basic thing. The worker might do all the things that seem like it tunes in a signal, and all the lights and screens and sounds come on like it did, but it’s really just a tape player and a lot of fakery.
Remember, it is all nasa equipment, and nasa probably had one or two guys on their tab to make sure it worked.
Calli Arcale said:
Yeah, except apparently nobody was listening. I don’t see any news stories about the Russians saying they heard the signals or anyone else. Everyone assumes they must have, but why didn’t they say it? Why did nobody? Why is it so few countries were actually able to hear or see anything? Where is all the information that everyone confirmed it?
If the US had nothing to hide, why didn’t they give all the info to everyone to listen in?
Calli Arcale said:
So maybe they did send a non-man flight to the moon. No radiation to kill the astronauts that way and plus, we know it’s not as hard to send a satellite to the moon as people, because plenty of others did. I bet nasa could have sent a satellite there, but not with people because of several reasons, it would have to go through a lot of radiation and also come back, which is the harder part then getting there. Plus, it would not have to actually land either.
Calli Arcale said:
yea, you don’t get it. The English needed the US to be on their side to help with Russia and they could have just said that they won’t be their allie anymore and might even do something like that.
“Hey England, you want us to keep being on your side, you better say we went to the moon, otherwise we’ll start being your enemy and I bet you don’t want that, esp with the Russians too”
Calli Arcale said:
Have you seen there video from the moon? So many you can tell easily that it was just slowed down or used wires or both and pics which look very suspicious, same background for example, as it was a backdrop that they were too lazy to change. Also, in some, the astronauts slip up and admit that they were faking. Plus, things seen on rocks and other things that nobody ever talks about.
Look at the video and the pics. It is so obvious you must be a dumbass to still believe the government spoonfed lies.
Calli Arcale said:
Yea, I would if it were full of so many cheezy and easy to spot special effects.
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November 29th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Are you seriously suggesting that the US would risk splitting the NATO alliance at the height of the Cold War, rather than finding an easier way to save face?
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November 29th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Finrod said:
I believe he is, but it’s not necessarily any more or less ridiculous than any of the other idiotic semi-literate things that “oh bloody hell” has asserted. They seem to get even worse as he defends them against attack by arguments based in fact. I wouldn’t have thought things could get more idiotic, but he keeps proving me wrong.
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November 29th, 2009 at 4:06 am
drbuzz0 said:
I understand that. I was feeling lazy, so I just took issue with one loony statement. I’ll leave the rest of these exquisite idiocies for others to play with, if anyone else can be bothered.
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November 30th, 2009 at 3:20 am
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Okay, there are a number of problems here. First, as it was mentioned, the whole mission would never have fit on a tape. (remember, we’re not even talking about the EVA alone, but days of telemetry, video broadcasts, voice). There would have had to be many tapes, each seemlessly playing out and switching to the next in perfect sync without the slightest bump.
Not to mention the elaborate technical problems of a whole simulator that was so smart, it knew exactly how much to attenuate the signal when the dish moved. These tapes would have had to be replaced covertly for all the missions. Remember, we went to the moon more than once.
They would also need to be PERFECTLY synced, to within a fraction of a second between Honeysuckle Creek, Parkes, Tidbinbilla, Carnavon etc. In Sydney during Apollo 11, for example, they had two video monitors showing the feeds from Honeysuckle Creek and Sydney.
On top of that, you’re assuming that the equipment operated like black boxes. It didn’t. The techs there knew their stuff and had to troubleshoot problems, and problems did happen. These guys didn’t just push a button, they were the ones who crawled under the cabinets with a soldering iron to fix problems with this stuff. They knew their equipment inside and out.
Actually, at Tidinbilla, someone accidentally crossed wires by not realizing that US and Australian conventions for what is a “hot” and “neutral” wire are reversed. They blew out the scan converter and the Aussies had to tear the thing apart and rebuild all the major components with days to spare! So… no, there is no chance there was a complex hidden simulation system.
Also, not all the equipment was American. The Parkes observatory, as mentioned, is Australian. NASA sent in some recorders and scan converters, but the telescope, amplifiers and primary receivers were (and are) all Australian owned and operated. Again, the use of Parkes for the Apollo missions, and its continued use as part of Deep Space Network communications for NASA was due to the gracious cooperation and generous allowance of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia.
And again: as an American, I continue to express my gratitude to Australia for unwavering cooperation in the pursuit of space exploration and the advancement of science. The use of Parkes for this important mission and others was entirely due to the generosity and common cause of Australia and their scientific facilities. As a supporter of Apollo, Australia has, if nothing else, gone above and beyond the call of duty and of any reasonable request to provide support by tracking and providing world class facilities. Thanks.
The Parkes Observatory was built in 1961 and had been used before Apollo for radio astronomy and other spacecraft. The operators of Parks as well as Honeysuckle Creek and other locations in Australia were not dumb button pushers. These guys were the best and brightest in the world at doing what they did. The same goes for Jodrell Bank. Jodrell Bank was literally the number one place in the world for the best minds and best technology in radio astronomy.
A lot of the parties that were supposedly “fooled” were actually more experienced than NASA in the areas in question. Jodrell Bank basically invented radio astronomy. They had been at it since 1945, when the first equipment was put together from surplus World War II hardware. By the 1950’s they had the world’s first large dish radio telescope and by the mid 1960’s there were a number of enormous steerable radio telescopes on the grounds, including the massive Lovell (mark 1A) telescope, which was the largest in the world in the late 1960’s and is still one of the largest.
They also supposedly fooled the Soviets, who by this time had more spaceflight experience than the US, in terms of launches and human missions and who had sent several probes to the moon and into lunar orbit, including some which had high resolution cameras and a variety of instruments.
Jodrell Bank, the Soviet Space program, the Parkes Observatory – these are creme of the crop, world-class, highly experienced organizations who wrote the book on this stuff. Seriously, if anyone could see through a hoax, they could.
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November 30th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Actually, it’s quite possible to work it out for yourself, though it does involve actually doing a bit of math. Figuring out how fast you have to go isn’t some NASA secret. NASA didn’t even originate those figures themselves; the basic math actually goes back a couple hundred years. It’s classical physics, and before everybody got all wound up about relativity and nuclear physics, celestial mechanics was the place to make your name in science. Work out how much energy the Apollo trajectories required, and then all that’s left is to work out whether the Saturn V/Apollo complex would’ve had the performance necessary to achieve that. You can cheat and just look up the numbers, of course (which, BTW, don’t come from NASA but rather from the contractors who built the things). But why? The evidence of the Saturn V’s performance is plainly visible. The single most expensive component of the entire system, the Saturn V rocket launches were witnessed by tens of thousands of civilians in person, and by millions over television broadcasts. I don’t think any rocket can boast more extensive independent film coverage. It certainly had more thrust than any other rocket, apart from the N-1, which never had a successful flight. (The N-1 has a complicated story, and I urge you to read up about it. Not enough people know about it, which strikes me as kind of sad. It would have placed the first Soviets on the Moon.)
Except the equipment was *not* owned by NASA, nor was it even built by NASA. Nor was NASA even operating the equipment. Parkes Observatory was cooperating with NASA for tracking purposes, but Jodrell Bank was not; they were only observing out of scientific interest. It would not have been possible for NASA to have fooled all of the radio observers on Earth, unless all of those observers were complete incompetents and also had completely incompetent security.
Just because nobody spoonfed you news stories does not mean it didn’t happen. Even *amateurs* tracked the missions, and there is print evidence of that.
Here’s a wonderful webpage about optical tracking of the Apollo missions, including non-US sites:
http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/space/apollo.html
The page includes images of wastewater dumps, and jettisoned SLA panels. (These panels protected the LM from aerodynamic forces during ascent.)
Here’s a page about radio tracking by a Swedish amateur radio astronomer, who tracked the mission from Florida with the help of some friends (he did it from Florida because he had wanted to see the last Apollo launch in person):
http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm
While lacking in detail (because it’s more oriented to modern-day satellite radio tracking), this page mentions amateur tracking of Apollo missions:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/Radio/radio2.html
See above. Just because you don’t bother to look doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
They did.
No, it had to land, because otherwise how would they get lunar samples? And we know they got those.
Those of us who care enough to actually work at learning the truth know, from doing the math I alluded to earlier, that the LM had enough payload capacity to carry along humans, and that the Apollo-Saturn system could get it there. If it didn’t, then it had to have brought a robot, in order to collect all those samples. But robot technology *today* isn’t that good, much less the robotics of 1969. The first robotic sample return mission was being attempted in July of 1969, but failed. Luna 16 finally managed it in 1970, though the sample size was very small and amounted to a soil sample. Moondust. (Which, notably, was entirely consistent with the moondust samples the Apollo program returned. Both the Americans and the Soviets allowed their samples to be studied by independent scientists around the world.)
So, why *not* bring along people, really?
You alluded to the radiation. First of all, radiation is actually hard on robotic spacecraft as well. It can overload their circuits, or simply flip bits, triggering unexpected behavior, corrupting software, and doing other fun things. Consequently, spacecraft are built with lots of redundancy. The Galileo spacecraft, which had to operate in a punishingly high radiation environment, had an 8 bit data word — but a 32-bit bus. The remaining 24 bits were used for error checking. And it still reset itself frequently due to corruptions.
Even today, satellites avoid the Van Allen Belts. They’re not good. Long exposure can damage the circuits. Short exposures can cause data corruption. But the human brain isn’t vulnerable to data corruption in this way. As long as its a short exposure, it’s not a very big problem. It will increase your cancer risk, so it’s not to be undertaken lightly. But that was a price they were willing to pay.
You really desperately need to learn some more history. You do not understand at all.
Lots of people talk about them. Mainly, they are people who claim it was faked. Nobody else does because the claims are preposterous.
* Slowed down video? Wires? Are you joking? It is definitely not slowed down, and anybody with an open mind can see it. (Your mind is clearly closed, like that of most conspiracy theorists. You will not see evidence which contradicts your preconceived notions, which is probably why you haven’t bothered to look for the evidence you claim does not exist.) If you want a more detailed explanation, please look for the Mythbuster’s episode in which they tried duplicating several of the methods proposed for faking moon footage, including wires and high-speed video. None are effective.
* Same background? Absurd. I’ve seen the pictures claimed to have the same background. You get the same effect if you go, say, Bozeman, MT. Mountains in the distance don’t move much relative to the foreground. This is because they are far away. I realize this may be a complicated thing for you to understand, but please try. Also, you might want to look at those pictures more carefully; the background does shift slightly, although you have to look *very* closely to tell, because those mountains are very far away. (They are also a lot taller than you might expect; tall Moon mountains look very different from tall Earth mountains, because of the lack of things like wind and rain.)
* Astronauts admitting to fakery? I’ve never seen evidence of that, but I have seen it claimed. This despite the fact that the actual mission transcripts and audio recordings are available to the public, so it would be easy to prove if it were actually true.
* Things on the rocks — are you referring to the “C” rock? This one is particularly silly. It’s only present in some prints of the image. It’s dust on the film. That sort of thing was quite common back in the days before digital photography.
You see, I’m more familiar with the no-moonie claims than you realize. In fact, I’m probably more familiar with the claims than you are, because I’ve actually taken the time to think about them. I’ve scrutinized them. I’ve taken them seriously. You have not. I think I know why….
I have looked at the video and the pics, and more besides. This is something which I do not believe you have done. I submit that it is *you* who have been spoonfed lies, by other conspiracy theorists who like to think that Apollo was faked. You have seen snippets and images provided by no-moonies, and very little else. For your own reasons, you like the idea of it being faked. Thus, you do not like to explore very much anything which might contradict that view. Your mind is utterly closed. I find that very sad indeed.
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November 30th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Calli Arcale said:
There are some video clips which a bunch of conspiracy theorists have posted that they claim have the astronauts admitting to things, but it’s always taken out of context.
here for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM_qeck_47Q
If you read the transcript it is clear Al Bean is actually saying “Once we learn the trick here, I think we can do it each time. That may do it; that may do it right there; Houston”
What he was referring to is that he thought he may have gotten the TV camera working by tightening the connector but they then tell hum the picture is still no good.
They spent several minutes trying to troubleshoot the TV camera and figure out if the problem might be caused by something lose or otherwise fixable, but of course, it wasn’t.
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December 1st, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Exactly. All the hoax-proponents will give is something taken out of context. It proves nothing, because in context, it’s obvious that’s not what they’re talking about. But they think it does, because they refuse to look at any context which fails to validate their preconceived notion.
And thus, to Oh Bloody Hell, I must quote my favorite TV show, Doctor Who:
“Allow me to congratulate you, sir. You have the most totally closed mind I have ever encountered.”
(Though in fairness, I must point out that I have met people even more locked into their own conclusions.)
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December 1st, 2009 at 4:18 pm
There are a few examples of this, if you look, there are videos that conspiracy theorists have found that they say astronauts are admitting or referencing a hoax. One I saw was from one of the later Apollo missions where one of the astronauts mentioned the phrase “playing tricks” and “lighting” it was something (and I’m paraphrasing) like “Some of those depressions are hard to judge the depth of, until you get close, the lighting plays tricks” It was an obvious reference to not having good depth perception at distance because the shadow effect makes it difficult to tell the bottom of a depression, but this was again pointed to as an admission of studio lighting and “playing tricks” on the public.
Of course, there’s something here that just doesn’t make sense – if the conspiracy theorists claim that the video was pre-recorded and edited in a studio (and it certainly could not have been live if, as they claim, portions are slowed down), then why would such errors or misstatements be in the final cut? You don’t see actors mess up lines and fall out of character in movies. It’s not that they *don’t* do that from time to time, it’s that those takes are not used. And yet NASA allows this to be in their videos?
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December 6th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Oh Bloody Hell said:
No, you don’t have to assume anything. You can do all the math yourself. Lets take the question of sending a spacecraft to the moon. You calculate the weight of the lander and command module and then you figure out a straight forward problem from a Newtonian perspective: what does it take to send these spacecraft into orbit of the moon? How much force, energy etc will be needed?
You can figure that out and then apply it to a rocket. You would need a multistage rocket, and you need to figure out how big, based on some constants. You know the mass of hydrogen and oxygen and kerosene, those were the fuels of the Saturn-V. You can look up the numbers for the energy content of those fuels and figure out the weight of a tank large enough to hold them and work it all out to determine roughly how large a rocket is required.
Guess what: The Saturn V turns out to be the right size to have enough fuel and enough power to do it. In fact, you’ll find it’s a little larger than the minimum needed, because they had to have some reserve in case they needed a course correction or even if one of the engines failed, they could continue the mission.
You can work the whole thing out. Actually, it would be a great problem to assign a college level physics class. If you refuse to take NASA’s word for anything, you can derive the whole goddamned thing out by using the geometry of the rocket and the weight of aluminum to figure how much it weighed. You can use the engine dimensions and fuel flow rate and combine that with the mass of hydrogen and get an approximation of the LSP.
All of it checks out.
Now you can turn around and do this for every part of the system. Like, for example, the lunar module. You can figure out how much energy and what kind of forcce application is needed to decelerate from lunar orbit to touch down on the moon. Did the descent stage have enough fuel and have enough power to do this? Yes, it did. How about the ascent stage? How much would it take to lunar orbit to meet the CSM? Yes, it would have had enough. Did the CSM have the necessary power to put it back into an earth return orbit? Yep.
You can do this for all parts of the system and determine if it is possible that a spacecraft of the dimensions and masses that NASA said could have done it. Guess what, it could have and it did!
Going to the moon is technically complex because of all the support and subsystems from communications to life support, but NOTHING IS TECHNICALLY UNDOABLE. Even with 1960’s technology. What you need is a really big rocket and a suitable space capsule and a suitable lander. You know what? Nasa had those, so why the hell not go to the moon???
Oh Bloody Hell said:
Google the words “honeysuckle creek” The trackers on the missions were not just idiots who pushed a button, they were real top notch and the equipment was not as automated as you might think. They operated everything and much of it was done manually. There’s no way they could have been faked by a hidden video tape player or something like that.
Seriously, read the pages on honeysuckle creek. It is fascinating.
Oh Bloody Hell said:
The big superpower in the world that the US was concerned about was the Soviet Union. One of the biggest concerns was that it would come to dominate Europe. The Soviets had puppet governments all the way to East the UK or even a just made a few small gains, that would be horrible. That would mean they would have gotten more power and come to dominate the world. The US would have been left almost standing alone against the Soviets. The big concern was “containment” meaning, keeping their influence from spreading.
The US had a problem: A big ocean is in the way of direct access to the area. The UK was CRITICAL. It was the most important ally of the US in the Cold War, the second most powerful single member of NATO, the most friendly and closely allied country in Europe. The UK was vital to air power, to signals intelligence, to diplomacy. If the US and the UK had become unfriendly, the concequences would have been a complete collapse of NATO. If NATO failed, that would shifted power completely to the Warsaw Pact.
There is NO WAY the US would have done something so foolish during the height of the Cold War. NO WAY!
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December 9th, 2009 at 5:28 am
I tried, but all the people here are just sheep bought into the government propaganda and will defend it no matter how much you try to make them see the very obvious truth and the evidence for it. It’s sad. You all are such apologists and so desperate to believe your government loves you and is nothing but good and honest. Every point you have some apologist kind of statement to respond to and you’re just so blind.
You say you can calculate it all out to prove that it is real with the numbers? HA! That only proves it could have been done if they had the equipment to do it (DUH!) Which they SAY they did, but did they? They still don’t have it now, so it seems they did not, huh? If you think you can prove it with math, then go ahead and do it and go prove it with math. Stop talking about proof and start showing it.
Oh, that’s right you can’t! You’re such stupid sheep. Walk through life with eyes closed. Uncle Sam loves you and will always be good to you! Uncle Sam will not lie!
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December 9th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Oh Bloody Hell said:
OBH, would you indulge us in outlining which parts of the various space programs of the world you consider to be valid, and which parts have been faked? Is it just the US which has faked major space programs, or have other nations done it as well? If other nations have also done this, which programs or missions have been faked? If it is only the US, is it only Apollo we need be suspicious of, or did the fraud extend to other programs/projects as well?
What are the limits of the grand conspiricy? Where does the border of reliable information lay? Are satellites real? What about Viking, Voyager, Cassini, Magellen? How trustworthy is the data from the Mars Exploration rovers? Where do you see the boundaries of the fraud delineated?
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December 9th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I don’t know. I know the space program of the US is a sham and probably most other countries are hiding a thing or two. (after all don’t they work with the US on space a lot anyway)??
How much is a sham is the big question. Once you find someone is cheating you then have to find out how much they are cheating and I don’t know yet. We need to keep digging. No man ever walked on the moon 100% sure. Did they really send robots to mars? Maybe maybe not. They’re special effects are probably better now.
Keep digging and keep demanding accountability. We peal the layers off the onion. You know what it will take though, is not just a few who ask the hard questions. We need to start getting everyone to see the light and demand the answers. What I want is them to come clean and admit it. Admit that they fooled us with the moon, but I want them to come totally clean. I want them to say where the studio was and how they did all the effects and whose decision it was to do it.
I bet there is a lot of dirty laundry. The best explanation why others didn’t call NASa is that they have their own dirty secrets and would get outed just as bad. Governments all lie. I bet you’d believe the Russians lied, right? Well, they probably did too. NASA is the biggest liar of all the the moon mission is the biggest lie, but there are other lies.
Don’t believe anything they say until the day they come clean about the whole thing and that will not happen until finally everyone waks up and demands it. I think they will some day, because the facts are too great for everyone to ignore forever. I bet they will wait much longer years though, because anyone who was involved could go to jail, so when the astronauts from it and the others involved in the tricks are all dead, then maybe the people working there might feel freedom to tell it like it is and maybe they’ll feel tired of living a lie that their previous people made for them.
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December 9th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
So OBH, are satellites real, or are they fake?
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December 9th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Finrod said:
Of course they are! And furthermore, every person who owns a satellite dish and set top TV box is either being paid off to lie and say that it does work at receiving tv from space or they might have a box that is full of video tape and simulates live television, somehow doing so for many years.
This is proof, the conspiracy is ENORMOUS!
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December 14th, 2009 at 6:01 am
I have gotten together a lot of evidence, with the help of other investigators online and we’re working to soon put it all out and show the facts of this and hopefully eventually it will be enough NASA will have no choice but admit it after 40 years.
One person I know found that an astronaut slipped up and said some things he should not have in an interview. He found the words in a book in a library and here they are.
Stuart Roosa ws the name of an astronaut who died mysteriously when he was only 61 years old, which seems a bit suspicious because he also said some things that ended up being printed that he could not take back.
“We had basically the same camera as 12 had used and we were very careful with it. Nobody wanted to inadvertently point it somewhere you didn’t want it pointed, which could even just be a reflection that you might not notice, so when we moved the camera, we were very aware of how we moved it, and when handling it, just tried to keep it pointed right at the ground to be safe.”
Does that seem suspicious? What is he afraid of? The camera would give it all away if someone moved it wrong and it showed the lights or the backdrop, so they pointed it at the ground.
Apollo-14 seems the rosetta stone of the apollo trickery, because it is the only apollo project that both of three men who said they went to the moon are now dead. There are clues that they were both having trouble keeping the seceret to themselves.
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December 14th, 2009 at 7:05 am
NotFooled said:
He’s talking about not pointing the camera at the sun you jackass. On Apollo 12, the video camera was acedently pointed at the sun and it ruined the camera only a few minutes into the first EVA. He doesn’t want the same thing to happen on the next landing. If you’re interested in actually learning something about it you can read the transcript:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/a12.html
This is really the best you comlud come up with? How much time did you waste finding this “rosetta stone?”
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December 14th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Not
NotFooled said:
Uh, I think you have some errors there. Stuart Roosa was the command module pilot for Apollo-14 and so he would not have been operating the camera on the lunar surface. So either he’s relating a story of the other astronauts or something or it’s attributed to the wrong astronaut.
In any case, his death was not mysterious. He died at 61, which was a bit young, but it was due to pancreatitis. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t have longer life because of the condition, but not mysterious. Alan Sheperd lived to his 70’s and died of leukemia in the late 1990’s – again, not really mysterious. Edgar Mitchell is the other astronaut to land on the moon during Apollo-14 and still is very much alive.
He’s also gotten pretty nutty with his age. He never claimed Apollo-14 was a hoax, but he has been nutty about some other things, like an interest in “remote healing” and some statements about UFO’s.
In any case, the quote you posted, regardless of who may have said it, is very clearly a reference to the Apollo-12 camera incident and the fact that subsequently, the crew was careful because they didn’t want to make the same mistake. Chuck P beat me to it, but if you actually know the first thing about the Apollo program you’d see straight through that.
After Apollo-12, they made a few changes in the cameras. The same camera type was flown again, but they included a lens cap that could be easily placed on it if needed. Apollo 13 and 14 also carried the Westinghouse Lunar Camera, the same one used on Apollo-11. It was a backup and never used during the mission, but after Apollo-12, they didn’t want to take chances of having no video again.
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July 14th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
The guy who made this video has made (at last count) 391 videos claiming to disprove the moon landing. He’s very very nutty.
Also, he showed up at TAM-8 and heckled Adam Savage and tried to get all up in his face and to confront Phil Plait. Phil, as you might imagine, was quite civil to a point. After he got a too nutty and started calling Phil a lair and a shrill for the government, Phil finally told him he was not interested in conversing any further.
He came all the way from Australia – obviously he is committed (and also should be committed)
I first recognized his voice when he tried to heckle Adam about the Mythbusters Moon Landing Special. I couldn’t believe he was there! I’m just glad he did not get violent, because honestly, this guy is very off balance.
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July 14th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Merde. It’s one thing when these nutbars show up in threads like this on the web, another altogether when they show up in the flesh. Were I American, I would try and see if I could have this guy put on your ‘no-fly list’ as a potential terrorist before he show up some place with a gun or a dynamite vest. No country should have to put up with foreign agitators showing up on their shore calling everyone in the nation a fraud.
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July 14th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Honestly, it was a little scary. The dude didn’t cause any trouble besides just heckling and eventually after he tried for about the 10th time to get up in Phil Plait’s face, the other attendees did a good job of getting between him and discretely keeping him back. We just talked like he wasn’t there as he whined in the background.
I could not believe when he arrived. I knew his nasal, whiny Australian voice as soon as I heard him.
My fear was that he would try to cause more physical problems or do something nutty like rush the stage refuse to shut up. These guys have a history of that, getting punched after physically blocking Buzz Aldrin from leaving a hotel to go back to his car or trying to shove Alan Bean or Neil Armstrong. (classy, you know, it really proves how brave you are when you can start trying to assault an 86 year old man with arthritis who is just trying to attend a space-exploration dinner or something)
The fact that he came from Australia also made me a little worried. I figured, if you come that far and spend that much, you won’t want to leave without a good story to tell or some dramatic event on film.
When I recognized him I informed two of the staff members I was near about his history and let them know to tell security to keep a close eye on him. Luckily, no further measures were needed and he didn’t get too physical or crazy.
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July 16th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
[...] Adam Savage. That snooty, nasal, sharp whine with an Australian accent was hard not to recognize, especially as I’ve seen plenty of his videos before. Apparently he came all the way from Australia to try to get up in the face of those who he [...]
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