Hi all,
1st time poster here. Its my pleasure to happen upon this BBS . Anyhow, I purchased the 3 volume Time/Life books titled 'A Man on the Moon'. I read them in a week flat and went out on the internet to further my knowledge of the Apollo missions. I was freakin' appalled at all the sites dedicated to debunking NASA's accomplishments regarding the manned Moon missions. I was actually getting ****ed off when (I) was being described as a 'nutter' for believing the science was legit.
I am no expert in space or gov't. conspiricies but I must admit feeling a bit 'taken for a fool' when visiting these websites.
One of the webites I visited that claimed the Apollo missions were faked had photos overlaying text and basically looked like a 5 year old put the webpage together. I responded via e-mail to the site saying something to the effect, 'if you are trying to dislodge the technical achievements of NASA during the manned Apollo missions puts you in a place of technical authority. So, why can't you get something as 'low-tech' as a website formatted properly?
I admit I got a bit of a chuckle when I hit the 'send' button on that one.
I guess my question is, why are there people out there that do not believe men went to the moon? What more do they need to believe it? What is the crux of their disbelief?
I can understand the occasional fringe-element fruit-cake opinion of a 'staged moon landing' -but there seems to be alot of non-believers out there. As for myself, I believe it all really happened.
Thank you in advance for your comments.

Matt

" I guess my question is, why are there people out there that do not believe men went to the moon? "

Because they're lazy uneducated people who want to believe in conspiracies, want to feel that they know a secret, want to feel that they're smart, and so on. Who knows what each single HBers' life story is, but most of the time theyll quiet down once you start proving their 'evidence' wrong.



"What more do they need to believe it? "

Well, once you start offering moon trips to see the LM descent stages and equipment left behind, Ill become a HBer too.

Til then they want hi res hubble images (impossible) or other satellite images, until some poor government has used their money for that, and showed the pictures, they'll say it's faked, US paid them off, etc, and find up 'evidence' to prove this (for example US donated large amounts of grain to the russians to keep quiet during the space race).


" I can understand the occasional fringe-element fruit-cake opinion of a 'staged moon landing' -but there seems to be alot of non-believers out there."

Those are the sheep who dont want to think for themselves, just take the 'evidence' that's served to em, and eat it happily thinking they're so smart that they could see errors the top people of NASA couldnt.

Johnno

I may have seen that site before. Is it this one?

__________________
~AstroMike

Thanks for your replies.
The 'hoax' website with the photos overlaying the text is:

http://www.geocities.com/nasascam/APOLLOSCAM/

too funny.

Matt

Here's my take on the hoax stuff.

I think that for the originators of the moon hoax myth, they had some good questions like: Why aren't the shadows parallel, Why isn't there a blast crater, and How could they survive on the surface when the temperature is several hundred degrees. Instead of doing what most of us would do and find someone who knows, they instantly assume that things must be faked. It doesn't fit what they know or have experienced. Before anyone knows, they write some books, make some movies and rake in a lot of bucks.

At this point, people who know science, engineering, photography, etc, come along and say, what you're saying here is wrong. Now these people who have taken in millions of dollars are stuck. Do they admit they were wrong or do they never admit it and make more cash. Most never admit they were wrong, at this point they just start making up stuff and it just keeps snowballing. Once the money train starts, it's hard to stop it.

Look at the moon rocks. No geologist has ever said that the rocks were fake. The one thing that sticks out in all the scientific documents about the moon rocks is the lack of minerals (none) that form in the presence of water. So now the moon rocks didn't come from Earth, so they must be meteorites. Then it's pointed out that the outer surfaces of the rocks are not melted from high speed passage through the Earth's atmosphere, so now the rocks are made in ovens at NASA. It will soon be pointed out that radioactive dating and solar weathering of the rocks shows that they're billions of years old. Then we will probably hear that NASA has some gamma ray gun that can do this.

When it comes to selling this stuff, most of the people who buy it are probably taken in by the official sounding titles of the people involved. "Former Rockwell employee, they built the Apollo capasule you know" Stuff like that. I don't know of anyone who owns a bit of the moon hoax stuff, but I deal professional people all day long. I think they get people who have little or no education or at least critical thinking skills.

Another thing too, if you listen, read or watch the moon hoax stuff, it all sounds very official, like these people are authorities. My ex-wife use to say, "If you sound like you know what you're doing, people will believe you, even if you don't know what you're doing."

Also, a sucker is born every minute.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-04-24 20:03 ]</font>

Hi C. G.

The "nasascam" web site is notorious. You'll be lucky if you get a reply. It's author is one of the most arrogant and least intelligent people in this debate. And he doesn't usually debate. His thesis is, basically, that you have to be brain damaged in order to believe NASA actually landed a man on the moon, and he'll have no problem telling you to your face that you're hopelessly delusional and that you therefore have no business talking to him.

There are other hoax believers who are at least civil in debate.

I agree with the notion that belief in the hoax is a sort of surrogate for legitimate education and experience. It gives these folks some kind of rush to believe that they have outsmarted NASA. And the whole conspiracy phenomenon seems to cherish the feeling of being "on the inside".

They tend to see society as highly stratified -- a very "us versus them" setup. They believe they are the oppressed masses under the thumb of a corrupt elite which routinely experiments on them without their knowledge. They also believe the governing elite (which may or may not correspond to the visual government) hides a vast amount of "true" knowledge from the public.

That said, I agree in part with Mr. Keller. That is, I agree in the phenomenon he sets forth, where perceived anamalies are not legitimately investigated, but instead amplified for use as supposed empirical support for a purely conjectural conspiracy hypothesis. My disagreement is minor: I don't think conspiracy belief starts with the examination of evidence. I believe it derives from the worldview I outlined above. The empirical evidence is presented to try to make it all sound plausible to the non-conspiracist.

And there is indeed a segment of otherwise reasonable people who do not necessarily subscribe to all the conspiracy theories, or even any of them. But because they too lack the specialized knowledge to see through the conspiracy theorists' poor arguments, they are somewhat convinced by them. These are the people who are most worth talking to, because they will respond to sound arguments and true science.

But people like the Nasascam webmaster are far too deeply entrenched in their beliefs to make good discussion.

Johnno: Because they're lazy uneducated people who want to believe in conspiracies, want to feel that they know a secret, want to feel that they're smart, and so on.

Yeah, dude, you is well right. I don't believe it either, and I am so much smarter than all of you fools. I am in on de' big secret yet you folks haven't a clue.

The world is full of aliens too. I'm tellin' yeah, man. You better watch out!

Jay: There are other hoax believers who are at least civil in debate.

Did you hear that, Johnno?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: karamoon on 2002-04-24 22:17 ]</font>

JayUtah with a Big Hooter?

Ian: JayUtah with a Big Hooter?

May I remind you that name calling will not be tolerated on this disscusion board.

May I point out that Mr Karamoon’s earlier post has clearly been edited in a cynical attempt to remove the slanderous and, quite frankly, unfounded accusations aimed at Mr Utah and his ample nasal appendage. Evidently my post was an attempt to use humour in order to diffuse a potentially volatile situation.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ian R on 2002-04-24 22:44 ]</font>

Ian R: Look, Karamoon, nobody likes you and nobody wants you here. Don't you think you have caused enough damage already? Your pea-brain was always likely to cause you problems and now you are severely embarrassing yourself. Your an utter utter fool and if I were you I'd quit while you're in last place. Idiot.

Gosh. Does everyone else feel the same way?

Evidently, Ian R was previously a member of the Allied forces double-cross committee, or so it would seem. He has led me down the garden path and then, at some point, and unbeknownst to myself, edited his previous message to deflect attention away from his unwarranted and continual outbursts.

However, Ian is correct with his observation that I myself edited an earlier posting, but I would like to point out that was simply because I spelt Johnno's name incorrectly, with only one 'o'. Not wanting to cause offence, upon realising my error, I set about putting this right.

Now, BA, if you would, please escort Ian from this board.

Thank you.

Karamoon, the reason I said "uneducated" regarding hoax believers is because anyone with a high school physics degree can do the calculations necessary when watching film taken on the moon, and conclude that it is in fact 1/6th gravity and vacuum.

On the other hand, if you are to say it isn't, you have to come up with a reasonable explanation on how that was faked.

I havent heard if from you before, so go ahead and explain it.

Whenever I ask a hoax believer how it was faked (after explaining to him the physics involved) they start going on about how the astronauts were attach to wires etc etc. Someone tried to go with the 'slowed down film' explanation, but pretty much stepped on his own tongue when he was going to explain the physics calculations that supported his 'theory'.

I have yet to meet a hoax believer who wasent wrong half the time, did his research in half of the cases, and actually was civil about it when shown beyond doubt that he was wrong.

Johnno

[quote]
On 2002-04-24 18:56, Curious George wrote:
The 'hoax' website with the photos overlaying the text is:

http://www.geocities.com/nasascam/APOLLOSCAM/</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>

Looks OK to me, but then, I'm using Netscape.

I think we went to the Moon, I'm almost certain, 99.999999%. I just have one little nagging doubt. It concerns the LM.

Here was a piece of machinery that worked perfectly (almost, except for a few glithces with radar) every time. It landed OK, that I am OK with, but it took off and met up with the CM perfectly 6 times. This had never been tested before in situation. It was one almighty risk that they took. How did they know it was going to be OK? It is a very complicated operation, man has not usually been good at getting things right first time. So what was the testing procedure?

I love Apollo, to me it was more than science, it was a work of art.

Hi, Moonman, and welcome to the forum.

The LM was carefully and conservatively designed, and that design was put through a very rigorous process of review and improvement before it was finalized. Grumman, NASA, the astronauts, and even other Apollo contractors all had input into its design. In fact, each LM descent engine was actually manufactured by two different contractors; it was begun by Bell (the original contractor), and the partially-assembled engine was sent to Rocketdyne for completion (Rocketdyne solved some combustion instability problems that Bell couldn't resolve). This illustrates that the Apollo program was able to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their hardware would be reliable.

Besides the solid design, the LM was tested in Earth orbit before it went to the Moon, first unmanned (launched on a Saturn I booster), then manned (the Apollo 9 mission), during which they exercised all systems and procedures they'd be using during the landings. Then, Apollo 10 took the LM to the moon and performed further testing in lunar orbit; they did everything but actually land.

Humans don't always get everything right the first time, but when they are careful and do whatever testing they can in advance, they can succeed. Remember: the very first orbital Space Shuttle mission was launched with a crew... they were that confident that it would succeed.

I've read 'Moon Lander' by Thomas J. Kelly. It's an interesting book (a little dry maybe) but I still have the same nagging doubt.

The ascent engine lift-off from a platform on the ground in 1/6th G into Moon orbit was never tested. They should have carried out un-manned tests first but they didn't. Everything is almost 'too perfect'.

Another question! I have seen the video clips of the ascent launch taken from the Lunar Rover. The camera follows the ascent stage as it flys up into orbit. How did it track it. Was the camera motion pre-programmed to coincide with liftoff. It couldn't have been remotely controlled from Earth because of the time delay.

It was indeed remotely controlled from Earth. Others on this forum can give you the name of the tech who did it!

The time delay was indeed a problem, but it was anticipated; the controller practised the procedure. He still didn't get it perfect on the first attempt; the Apollo 15 liftoff was only tracked for a few moments before it was lost. 16 was better and 17 was tracked for a long time.

As to the other issue, it would have been very difficult, expensive, and unnecessary to perform an unmanned lunar landing to test the hardware, when they had already tested it in every possible mode short of an actual landing. Ascent from a hovering descent stage a few miles above the surface is not very different from ascent from the surface... unless you have to deal with clinging Lunarites trying to drag you back down.

Which makes me wonder why no hoax believer has claimed that the landings were faked because the Moon was inhabited... not by alien bases but native Moon folk!

Should I start my own web site?

Thanks for that.

So the technician started moving the camera 4 seconds (?) earlier. I thought it might have been programmed.

I guess am an ultra-cautious type of person. I would have insisted on un-manned trials. Firing the acsent stage above the surface and on the surface are two slightly different things. Above the surface, the descent stage will move away from the ascent. On the ground it can't do that of course. Maybe it's not important.

Actually, in Tom Kelly’s book, he discusses the concerns about firing the ascent engine while the two stages were joined together creating the “Fire in the hole” effect. Based on my memory of that part of the book, it was one of the most important tests of the first unmanned flight, and the engine firing/stage separation was again tested on the two subsequent manned test flights as well.

You posted your previous comment as I was writing this. My guess is that the differences between the two scenarios are minor and only affect the operation of the ascent module for fractions of a