I recently finished reading the latest hoax book, Moon Landings, Did NASA Lie? by Philippe Lheureux. You can find it here. As far as moon hoax books go it is pretty good. He doesn't fall for the no stars in pictures or the converging shadows ideas. He does fall for the identical backgrounds, the LM is unstable ideas. He also believes that NASA doctored the photos and the whole life on the moon, Hoaglund garbage. Of course it is all opinion and no engineering or scientific analysis.

The good side of the books is that he presents opposings point of view and if you can believe it, he provides the BA website as a anti-hoax website. The writting is good too.

My dilema is this. I'm about to write a review for amazon.com and I'm not sure if I should give this book one or two stars. Since its definately better than any other hoax book, with good writing and oppossing points of view, I'm leaning towards two stars. I like one star, because I don't want to give any support to any HB and there isn't any engineering or scientific analysis.

Sounds to me like he's earned that second star. If nothing else, to distinguish his book from completly lopsided garbage. I haven't read it so this from what you wrote about it.

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Since he still claims the landings were faked, and uses bad evidence that is known to be bad, I would rate it low. Going on what you said, I would write that it was not badly written, but the entire premise is still wrong.

Mind you, I haven't read it, so I cannot say. I am commenting on your comments.

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As for the number of stars, I'd leave that to your own conscience and scoring scheme. I'd probably give it one star, but I'm a harsh grader. (Unlike most Amazon reviewers, who seem to give five stars to any book they halfway like, I reserve that mark for books that are truly outstanding.)

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One star. You don't rate it against the other conspiracy theory books. You rate it against the other books, many of which actually make sense.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Instead of a star, why not just give it one "Planet X" and let the Amazon customers figure out what that means? :wink:

Man, I hope the author isn't a relative of an old buddy of mine back in Connecticut, one of the most rational people I ever knew. Time for a phone call.

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Jay makes an excellent point as usual. If Amazon were a site dedicated to conspiracist literature, then yes, it would deserve a higher rating, but it's still a conspiracist book.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Isn't the lowest possible score zero stars? [insert photography on the moon joke here]

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Unfortunately, we're down to about 17 ounces of the highly unstable stuff that does.

Unfortunately one is the lowest score.

Well, its getting one star. I did a little researching on some of the topics in the book.

For example, in this photo, he claims that there should be a wire from canister to the thing that looks like a radar dish. There sort of looks like there might be one. Since its not there, it must be a hoax. Of course if you go to high resolution scan, its there. Of course the reproduction in the book is even worse. Again another deceptive HB.

Don't you love all these "photographic analysts" who draw conclusions based on poor-quality JPEGs?

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yes, and then use them in there book and proof.

I just read Richard Underwood interview on the JSC oral history project. He made the comment that print paper has a resolution of 200 lines/mm, while the photo obtained off the internet have only a resolution of 15 lines/mm. I'm not sure what he means by that.

He probably that the resolution of the internet pic has dropped by a factor of more than 13.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

These kinds of claims really irritate me. If it were impossible for the picture to be real without the presence of a wire, then wouldn't it likewise be impossible to fake without a wire? The HBs find something they claim is impossible and then conclude the picture is fraudulent without explaining how the supposedly impossible thing could have been faked.

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After his comment, he said something like the scanned photos don't show things like the wakes of ships and other tiny features.

In the high resolution scan, what's that little white smudge above the astronaut's head (about halfway between his head and the top of the picture)? A star? ops: Or perhaps a smudge on the scanner?

Actually, looking more closely, it looks like the tip of an antenna that is coming up from his suit.

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Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

He made the comment that print paper has a resolution of 200 lines/mm, while the photo obtained off the internet have only a resolution of 15 lines/mm. I'm not sure what he means by that.

In the film world, "lines/mm" are line-pairs-per-millimeter. A line pair is a one black line and one white line, or in other words, 2 pixels in the computer-based imaging world.

The resolution of print paper is much lower than 200 lp/mm in practice. It is more like 8 or so (which equates to around 400 DPI). That is about the limit of the human eye for a photo held at a typical viewing distance.

That's the VHF antenna.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

If you go to page 55 of the interview, he states 200 lines/mm. Whether or not he's right, I can't say.