There were several points made on the show that needed better answers than NASA was able to provide. Why must we rely on sites like this to disprove the conspiracy theorists? They had the world watching and their spokesperson resorted to "just trust me, we were there and to believe otherwise is crazy". These allegations are very serious. I myself hate the idea that we staged the landings to stay 1 up on Russia. What I hate even more is the idea that my government might have lied to me to save face.

I assume the "show" you are refering to is the Fox hoax program. The answer is simple. There is a big difference between what NASA said and what the producers put on the air.They edited out anything that seriously questioned the show's premise, leaving just enough to:
1) Look like they asked for rebuttal.
2) Make NASA look like buffons.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

There were several points made on the show that needed better answers than NASA was able to provide.

The show was produced and edited by conspiracy theorists. Do you really think they would present strong evidence that told a different story than what they were trying to say? I spoke with Dr. Brian O'Leary, who was the astronaut interviewed for the program. He said he spoke to the producers for half an hour, and told them he thought it was very unlikely that NASA had hoaxed the moon landings. Why didn't the producers include that very important statement? Why did they only include the part that made it sound like he believed it might have been hoaxed?

The answer is clear. The NASA spokesman was included only to give the illusion that the producers were presenting both sides of the story. They weren't. If they wanted to, they could have talked to any number of other NASA experts, or other experts outside of NASA. They could have consulted textbooks or college professors. But they didn't.

Why must we rely on sites like this to disprove the conspiracy theorists?

This is what's called a "complex question". That is, the conspiracy theorists want you to believe that NASA is primarily responsible for defending its version of history. The conspiracy theorists have shifted the burden of proof away from themselves and onto NASA. Unfortunately it's not NASA's -- or anyone else's -- responsibility to disprove the arguments of the hoax believers. It is, in fact, the responsibility of the conspiracy theorists to show that their hypotheses are more than just "might have been" and "what if".

NASA, in general, doesn't pay much attention to conspiracy theorists, except when specifically asked. That's because conspiracy theorists don't really care what NASA says. If NASA disproves their claim, they just say NASA is lying. There's really nothing NASA can say that will be taken seriously by the conspiracy theorists. If everything you said was just twisted around by malicious people, wouldn't you tend you keep your mouth shut too?

The fallacious premise behind the complex question is that only NASA can provide the answers. In fact, the principles of space travel, photography, etc., are well known to people outside of NASA. They can be found in college classes, textbooks, learned from practicing engineers and scientists.

If the conspiracy theorists were actually interested in the answers, they could find them in any number of places. But they aren't generally interested in the answers -- they're interested only in doing damage by asking the questions.

Some people at NASA have written web pages talking about the hoax theories. And the education department has a whole slew of materials that give the correct facts about Apollo. It's just that they aren't explicitly labeled, "To be used to dispute hoax claims."

But that's as may be. NASA's version of history isn't in any danger of being seriously undermined. We talk about it here because we like talking about Apollo history and technology. Some of us participated in building it. Some of us study it in retrospect. Some of us like solving these kinds of problems. Some of us like pointing out the flaws in other people's lines of reasoning.

The conspiracy theorists are upset at NASA's relative silence because they rely on NASA's acknowledgement to validate their theories. They want NASA to recognize them so that they can get some free publicity from NASA.

It has nothing to do with whether NASA can provide answers. The answers are out there for anyone to see. It's all about the posturing of the conspiracy theorists to maintain the illusion that their arguments have no answers.

These allegations are very serious.

They would be if there were any real evidence behind them. Because most people don't understand a lot about rocket science they don't understand how silly the conspiracy theorists' arguments sound. But NASA knows, and that's why NASA doesn't generally take them seriously.

What I hate even more is the idea that my government might have lied to me to save face.

What you might hate even more than that is the idea that the producers of the Fox program deliberately lied to you in order to get you to believe them, buy their books, and think they were hot stuff. They seem to be people who hate government just for the fun of it, not because they have any real evidence that anything was done wrong.

The conspiracy theorists believe in government corruption and deception as if it were there religion.

No amount of editing can disguise the fact that NASA made some really dumb statements. Saying that a conspiracy would require 3/4 million people is one. And calling your opponents crazy (namecalling)is a pretty good sign of not having a good argument. And you can't hide the generalised answers that would not go into specifics about photos etc. The answers were a bit patronising and an insult to alot of people's intelligence.

The spokesman for NASA on the FOX show, incidentally, is dead. I heard that he had been disatisfied with the generalised answers he had given and decided to do his own internal investigation to get some more specific facts and suddenly had a fatal heart attack. He was only 42 and had no previous heart problems as I understand it.

Has the CIA struck yet again?

_________________
Behind every conspiracy is another conspiracy.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Rusty Lander on 2002-05-13 22:33 ]</font>

What was the guy's name?

A conspiracy like that would require the cooperation of a lot of people.

Some examples of the people who would have to be in on the conspiracy:

1) The governments of every country (friend and foe) with the capability to track the Apollo spacecraft using radar or radio receivers;

2) The astronauts (approximately 55 were selected by NASA during that period, 24 of whom went to the moon);

3) Mission control members;

4) Scientists (how do they stop scientists from revealing the truth about the Van Allen Belt or the faked moon rocks?);

5) Rocket engineers (if the rockets weren't capable of going to the moon the engineers would know it);

6) HAM radio operators;

7) Any communications or television company who has a satellite in geosyncronous orbit (which is inside the Van Allen Belt so they must know a thing or two about the radiation);

Those are just SOME of the people who would have to be in on the secret. Some of those people will die eventually, taking the secret with them to their graves... but universities will continue to pump out new scientists. How will the government keep scientists from revealing the secret for the rest of time?

The government simply cannot control every person on Earth FOREVER... if the moon landings were faked the hoax was doomed to fail from the start. A failed hoax would be so embarrassing to the United States that I can't imagine why they would even bother to fake the landings in the first place. It would be less embarrassing to admit going to the moon isn't possible if that were the case.

It just doesn't make sense.

Whatever. Please tell me you're joking.

__________________
" We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." - John F. Kennedy
TheSpaceRace.com

Rusty Lander said:

"No amount of editing can disguise the fact that NASA made some really dumb statements. Saying that a conspiracy would require 3/4 million people is one."

Why is that crazy? How would *you* compartmentalise such a conspiracy? Which people at the major contracting companies would need to know, and which wouldn't?

"And calling your opponents crazy (namecalling)is a pretty good sign of not having a good argument."

Even though most of the hoax believers' arguments are crazy? Either these people believe their crazy arguments, in which case you might consider using that word to describe them, or they don't, in which case they're liars.

"And you can't hide the generalised answers that would not go into specifics about photos etc. The answers were a bit patronising and an insult to alot of people's intelligence."

Well, maybe they asked questions outside the field of expertise of these people.

"The spokesman for NASA on the FOX show, incidentally, is dead. I heard that he had been disatisfied with the generalised answers he had given-"

Where did you hear this?

"-and decided to do his own internal investigation to get some more specific facts and suddenly had a fatal heart attack. He was only 42 and had no previous heart problems as I understand it.

"Has the CIA struck yet again?"

What? Don't young people die of heart attacks? Maybe I should investigate the possibility that the local intelligence community was responsible for my sister-in-law's fatal heart attack at 39.

This sort of talk makes me angry. Rusty Lander, do you believe the landings took place? And if not, what evidence do you have that hasn't been comprehensively debunked by sites like this or Clavius?

No amount of editing can disguise the fact that NASA made some really dumb statements.

But people make dumb statements all the time. What if Brian Welch made 15 brilliant statements and one dumb one, and all the producers decide to keep was the dumb one?

You can't get around the fact that you're seeing only as much as the producers wanted you to see. And they want you to draw the conclusion that that's all there was. You seem to have uncritically fallen for it. However, I know in some cases what these producers left out, and it was material and it did constitute a different picture of that person's testimony than what was left in. I'm not just handwaving here. I know for a fact that these very producers left out material that they collected, which contradicts their findings and representations. Therefore when I say I believe they may have left out material information that Welch gave them, I'm not just wishfully thinking.

Besides, "dumb" is subjective. What if the assertions you dismiss as dumb are supportable?

Saying that a conspiracy would require 3/4 million people is one.

Why? Every time I mention a problem with the prevailing conspiracy theory, the theory is simply expanded to incorporate additional conjectural elements and additional conspirators. I'm really not the one piling hordes of alleged conspirators on the heap.

500,000 or so people worked on the Apollo project, including NASA employees, contractors, subcontractors, and other support personnel. According to conspiracy theorists, these people were just working on an elaborate cover story. That doesn't even count the number of people working entirely behind the scenes on the hoax elements. Is it so farfetched to claim that for every two people working on the cover story, there was one person working on the actual hoax?

Put your money where your mouth is. How many people had knowledge of the alleged conspiracy? Show your work.

And calling your opponents crazy (namecalling)is a pretty good sign of not having a good argument.

No. That someone chooses to employ a poor argument is not proof that it's the only argument that exists, or that it's the only argument he could employ.

Further, I don't recall Welch specifically calling conspiracy theorists crazy. But he did point out that their statements are illogical and seem to be based on a kind of paranoia. I happen to agree. I can point to all manner of logical flaws in the conspiracy theorist reasoning. Their books read like an encyclopedia of fallacy. Further, I have plenty of evidence to support an opinion that they are paranoid against government.

Your objection is based on the notion that a blatantly illogical argument needs a formal refutation. A blatantly illogical argument needs only to be identified as blatantly illogical. That can be done with surprising brevity.

You seem to want to give a lot of benefit of the doubt to the conspiracy theorists. To most of us there just isn't much doubt. It's pretty obvious what they're trying to do. If they tried to bring this kind of evidence to a court, or to any other kind of formal forum, they'd be laughed soundly out of it. They really have nothing. Just a lot of misrepresentation, bogus science, and heaps and heaps of conjecture. It's quite proper in that case to throw it back in their faces and say, "Sorry, you need more."

And you can't hide the generalised answers that would not go into specifics about photos etc.

Why do you assume Welch was asked about specific photos? He may have been, but see below.

When you are interviewed for a television program you don't know if your statements will be used in their entirety. You don't know where the editor will place your remarks. You don't know what shots will precede and follow your statements. You can't foresee all the possible ways your statements may be used or misused.

This kind of juxtaposition happens all the time in polemic presentations. You show a scene, then you show a clip from an interview. The viewer assumes the interviewee knows he's responding specifically to the content of the prior scene, which is almost never true.

That may or may not have happened in this case. Welch specifically says it would be fruitless to respond to individual photographs, so he may have been shown individual photographs and declined to comment on them individually. The point is not whether he was given that opportunity or not, but whether you assume he was given that opportunity. When you watch polemical documentaries you cannot make those kinds of assumptions.

After having spent more than a year responding to individual photographs, I agree fully: it's essentially fruitless to respond to each and every photograph. Most of the dozens upon dozens of photographs cited as evidence of anomaly are simply the same few mistakes made over and over again: perspective, reflectance, parallax, etc. How many different ways can you say, "The conspiracy theorist doesn't understand perspective"?

If one doesn't understand the basic principles that apply to the photographs, one is likely to believe that every photograph is anomalous -- and in fact that's what David Percy says. There are 20,000 Apollo photographs. Conspiracy theorists could conceivably show me every single one of them and say it's "anomalous". And my response would be, again, "You don't understand perspective or lighting or parallax or whatever." And I would be right every time.

Now when you realize that the conspiracy theorists profit by perpetuating the argument, then you realize why they insist on discussing every single photo, even if they're just making the same old mistakes. The point you're missing is that the "generalized" answers are, in fact, the only correct answers.

The spokesman for NASA on the FOX show, incidentally, is dead. I heard that he had been disatisfied with the generalised answers he had given and decided to do his own internal investigation to get some more specific facts and suddenly had a fatal heart attack.

Well, that's the embellishment that has arisen among conspiracy theorists. This story gets better every time I hear it. Unfortunately this is a lot like the conspiracy theories -- a lot of rumor and speculation. And it's quite proper to refute it by identifying at as rumor and speculation and leave it at that.

Has the CIA struck yet again?

Oh, please.

The astronauts (approximately 55 were selected by NASA during that period, 24 of whom went to the moon

Astronaut Brian O'Leary told me bluntly, "If there were a conspiracy, Ed Mitchell would have told me about it. No question."

Rocket engineers (if the rockets weren't capable of going to the moon the engineers would know it);

And we would know it today. We learn how to make rockets today by studying how rockets were made for the Apollo program. Proving, for example, that the F-1 engine produces the claimed amount of thrust is a textbook exercise, due Wednesday, show your work.

Any communications or television company who has a satellite in geosyncronous orbit (which is inside the Van Allen Belt so they must know a thing or two about the radiation)

I used to work with these people. Trust me, they'd know if Apollo's information was wrong. There are indeed people today whose job is to design and build spacecraft. They like to think they're very good at it. They like to boast that their spacecraft will last upwards of 15 years in the harshest parts of cislunar space.

Either they're all in on the conspiracy -- all those companies around the world -- or the Apollo data is sound.

He died two and a half months before the Fox show, so we will never know what his real feelings were.

http://www.space.com/news/spaceagenc...it_001127.html



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-05-14 01:22 ]</font>

That's the point. Since Welch died never having seen his contribution in the Fox program, it makes no sense to claim he was upset by it and undertook additional research. Further, the conspiracy theorists seem to think the Fox program was Welch's only onscreen interview. Welch gave interviews to David Percy for What Happened On the Moon? in which he does go into specifics on some of the supposedly anomalous features in Apollo photos. The premises on which the conspiracy theorists' Welch fantasy is based simply aren't there.

I suppose the next embellishment to this story will be that Welch allegedly called up Bart Sibrel just before he died and offered to blow the whistle on the whole hoax thing.

Besides, if NASA was going to make anyone die it would be someone like David Percy or Bart Sibrel, not Brian Welch. But they're still alive, and NASA hasn't even pressed charges against Sibrel for stealing their "top secret" footage and revealing it to the public.

I'm making my prediction now: when Percy or Sibrel die (it doesn't matter when, where, or how) the HB's will claim NASA killed them. They could be struck by lightning or killed in an earthquake and the conspiracy theorists will blame it on the government.

My second prediction is that Percy and Sibrel will live long lives and die of old age (which will still be blamed on the government).

__________________
" We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." - John F. Kennedy
TheSpaceRace.com

Well, since my ESPN was working fine last night I think it's safe to assume that the Apollo data was sound. Unless, of course, the network people are in on it too and there's really no such thing as live satellite TV since their satellites really can't exist. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Of course there is no such thing as satellite TV. How can that little dish work when EVERYONE knows that you need really BIG dishes – like those at all of our government buildings!

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Aha! So the next time I see Christiane Amanpour on CNN with the caption "Live via satellite from Pago Pago" she's really on a secret soundstage somewhere and the report was taped earlier, eh? Wow, I guess this means that any professional sports team that's ever appeared "live" is in on it, too! I always knew there was something suspicious about the Yankees... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

You never recognized that you never see stars when they play at night under floodlights and the camera catches part of the sky above the stadium?
Of course, I mean the stars in the sky, not on the field or the Stars and Strips... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kucharek on 2002-05-15 04:46 ]</font>

And, I just noticed that if you look at any closeup picture of a Yankees player taken at a night game they're all casting more then one shadow at different angles! Obviously staged! I bet Billy Martin was about to go public and that's why he was "removed".
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Getting back to the original question of "Why didn't NASA offer the same explanations as this site?".

Well, its only more recently that the hoax theories have become well-known but in the meantime there has been plenty of time to create a mock-science techno-babble of theories to explain away the anomalies and inconsistencies. However, if the original premise of these explanations is wrong, then the whole house of card comes falling down.

For instance, where is there the empirical evidence that light behaves differently on the moon than anywhere else. This could be a very convenient excuse to explain away many photo anomalies. "Oh but you don't understand, light works differently on the moon blah blah blah". If, however, light actually functions the same throughout the universe, then everything said over the years based on this false assumption is a lie and there's one heavy pack of hards to fall down for a start. I wouldn't like to be under it when it does.

_________________
Behind every conspiracy is another conspiracy.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Rusty Lander on 2002-05-17 23:40 ]</font>

has been plenty of time to create a mock-science techno-babble of theories to explain away the anomalies and inconsistencies.

What "techno-babble" are you talking about? What "mock science" are you talking about? Do you think the principles of, say, optics were fabricated solely for the purpose of lying to the public about the Apollo landings?

For instance, where is there the empiri