Just a note: the National Geographic channel will be airing the Hoax debunking show (featuring our own JayUtah) on Sunday, January 2 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern (US) time.

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Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

I saw this show last summer. It's very good. They do give the HBs a lot of airtime, but in my opinion, it was just enough rope to hang themselves.

I thought the HBs (Kaysing & Rene) came off poorly -- someone here likened them to "grumpy old men." I know the arguments, so I can readily see that they don't know what they're talking about. But I wonder how they appear to someone who is coming to the topic for the first time or who has been indoctrinated by the Fox show.

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Interviewing Kaysing in front of his mobile home is a nice touch. It gives him that "alien abductee" look.

So far Jim O and Jay are doing a great job explaining everything. The show is pretty devestating to the HB point of view.

I'm just finished watching the show. Kaysing and Rene made all their usual silly claims. What they get right about science, engineering, and photography couldn't fill a thimble for a gnat.

Still, several things about the show bugged me:

Rene made his claim that the gloves could not be used because the pressure differential between the inside and outside of the suit would have made delicate tasks (like using a camera) impossible. This claim was made, and they went to commercial without debunking it.

Also, the idea of slowing down film shot on Earth to mimic walking on the Moon wasn't debunked terribly well. They should have talked about how speeding up the film makes non-gravitational motion (like waving arms) look sped up.

I wasn't satisfied with the shadows argument. Jay is of course right in what he said, but the show never mentions perspective, which is a (if not the) major culprit in non-parallel shadows. Later, around 35 minutes in, Jay shows a great shot of the film crew with non-parallel shadows, though it's not explained why the shadows converge. The terrain argument was well-done, though. It's hard to find Apollo images with such dramatic divergence of shadows due to terrain, though the shot of Armstrong and Aldrin near the flag taken with the 16mm on-board camera is a good one.

The idea of dust not getting blown around by the descent engine wasn't satisfying either. This is due to the low pressure of the engine, not the total force. 2500 pounds of thrust was spread out over 2300 square inches, so the pressure was very low. Rene's example of a leaf blower is misleading, because the pressure is counterintuitively much higher than that of the lunar descent module's engine! All the show talked about was how a fine layer of dust was moved, but that is a very unsatisfying explanation, especially to someone not familiar with this argument.

In the end, they did a fair job debunking the HBs, but as usual I think shows like this need to be a lot more firm. Why oh why won't they just come down and say "These guys are full of it?" I think it would still make for good enough drama, without having to pay lip service to "fairness".

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Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Just finished watching the show. Just a couple of thoughts:

The professionalism and knowledge shown by Buzz, Jay, Mr. Oberg et. al. vs. the apperance and "crankiness" of Rene and Kaysling was maybe unintentional but subconsciously powerful.

I wish they had answered the Radiation and "Hole caused by landing" a little better (different types of radiation need different protection/explain the force per sq inch difference between landing engine and leaf blower).

Also the glove box and vacuum wasn't addressed in the refutation.

The last five minutes of the program was a clincher for the Moon landings and the visit to the Laser site and the mention 'that they would love to see the HB's visit so they could show off' was great.

Never had heard the "slowed down movie" one before, but probably because it's not a very good one, as Jay and Co. demonstrated.

I bet Bart Stibel is Green with envy that he didn't get interviewed!

Edited to add--I see the BA has beaten me by 2 minutes--but I am gratified to see we saw much the same thing--maybe this old brain has a few cells left.

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JayUtah wrote:
The marketplace of ideas ensures that each item is put on display, but does not compel its purchase.

Oh my! Kaysing and Renee struck me as seriously weird eccentrics. Jim Oberg and Jay were great. BTW, Jay is so young for someone who knows so much about Apollo!

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

thanks for the heads up on the show, phil.

i thought it was a bit short on the science, overall. the glove box that other posters mentioned here could have been quickly debunked; i wonder why they left it out.

although my tivo cut off the last little bit of the show (curse you, time-shifting networks), it looked like they invoked occam's razor at the end, which is really the most compelling argument against the hoax people.

-tim lloyd

Rene's demostration was also misleading in that he only blew around lose surface material. This takes much less force than it does to excavate material that is tightly packed. For instance, it takes little force at all to kick around a rock laying on the surface, but bury it half in the ground and might take several good blows before you dislodge it.

Rene made his claim that the gloves could not be used because the pressure differential between the inside and outside of the suit would have made delicate tasks (like using a camera) impossible.

Had I been told Rene was going to make that argument I would have debunked it. I gather the producers didn't want to make it the Jay Windley Show, but I wish they had told me more about what the other interviewees had said. At the time we went out to the desert they had interviewed Rene but had not yet interviewed Kaysing. I was asked mostly to debunk Allen and Percy.

They should have talked about how speeding up the film makes non-gravitational motion (like waving arms) look sped up.

I agree. I was actually doing something else when they were filming the slo-mo stuff. Otherwise I might have said something. The producers

Later, around 35 minutes in, Jay shows a great shot of the film crew with non-parallel shadows, though it's not explained why the shadows converge.

Mea culpa, perhaps. I don't know if I said "perspective" and it was edited out, or whether I just fumbled it. I was working on about 3 hours' sleep after a 20-hour day when we shot the photo lab stuff. I'm surprised I was able to form complete sentences.

2500 pounds of thrust was spread out over 2300 square inches, so the pressure was very low.

And the 2,500 lbf over 2,300 square inches is the outside estimate; it assumes the gas flow remains essentually columnar as it leaves the nozzle. We know from rocket science in a vacuum that it doesn't. In fact, the plume disperses quite a lot. I believe jrkeller stated the thrust at that point was nearly half pressure thrust and thus not much momentum thrust. If we consider that 40% of the thrust at that point was momentum thrust, then the force of the plume would only be around 1,000 lbf on the surface.

Rene's example of a leaf blower is misleading, because the pressure is counterintuitively much higher than that of the lunar descent module's engine!

Exactly. The narrator said, "According to Rene's calculations..." but didn't elaborate. I would like to see Rene's calculations because that's what supposedly validates the experiment.

All the show talked about was how a fine layer of dust was moved, but that is a very unsatisfying explanation, especially to someone not familiar with this argument.

True; it was not well-debunked. Another thing that bothers me in general about this argument is the presumption that not much surface was removed. Good heaves, the moon is regolith for several meters down. If you excavate that by any means, even for several centimeters, what do you get? More regolith. How is that going to look different in a photograph?

In the end, they did a fair job debunking the HBs, but as usual I think shows like this need to be a lot more firm.

So when do you want to start writing the script for our own? :-)

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

BTW, Jay is so young for someone who knows so much about Apollo!

You're very kind; I have a baby face and a high squeaky voice which allows me to convincingly look about 10 years younger than I really am.

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

It was a good show and refreshing to see something take a realistic outlook on any conspiracy. It covered the main charges that the hoax believers make. While in one respect I would have liked to see Rene and Kaysig shown to be just cranky buffoons, I guess it really is better to let them tell their own story without slanting the tone of the show to discredit them. After all they just made silly claims with no evidence to back them up. And the garden blower scene was just a hoot.

The show could have been better if they had not covered such a broad range of topics but focused on just a few main points. Asking the CTs to explain in detail why they were right then demonstrating that they were wrong. As it was, the final assertion of the accuracy of the Apollo record seemed to be because the producers said it was so rather than because they showed the evidence. A particular example is the photos of disturbance under the LM. Despite having seen the JPGs of these photos, I couldn’t really identify what the narrator was referring to. An expert discussion and closer view of the photos might have helped. Although it’s possible that my computer's monitor (on which I was watching TV) is dimming and I just couldn’t see clearly.

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I was happy to see it was at least fairly balanced. I guess it's the nature of the filming business having to crunch so much nonsense and it's rebuttle into an hour of programming. While I was watching the reenactment in the desert, I kept thinking I would love to see a "Mythbusters" special where they put a lot of the HB theories to the test.

*Edit to add* I too was suprised to see how young Jay was. No offense Jay, but I pictured you much older considering your wealth of knowledge. Interestingly enough I pictured Kaysing and Rene younger #-o .

Probably because I always thought with age comes wisdom.

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The funniest part is when Kaysing says NASA could have "easily" faked the rocks, because they have a "ceramics lab...with a 'radiation oven.'" Unfortunately, many people may not perceive that he's just handwaving.

ooh... i hope they show it here in Asia too... better go check the schedule.

hehe... i also have a 'ceramics lab' (several pounds of clay in the hobby room) and a 'radiation oven' (our microwave)...

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

For the benefit of Aussies, this show will be screening on Channel Nine, Sunday 9 January, 7.30pm.

Be there or be square!

I missed it since I was too lazy to set up the VCR but it's on again Wednesday at 2pm EST so now it's set up, hopefully correctly.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

I came in about half-way through; I saw that it was on, but I didn't know what tone they were going to take. When I heard them start to introduce Jay, I nearly fell of the couch I was bouncing around in excitement so much. All this time reading his posts and now I know what he looks like.

I think it all went well, but I do agree with BA: they need to take a more firm stance on this. At the end I'd like to see a statement like "We've examined the evidence on both sides fairly and openly. With all due respect to the HBs: You're wrong."

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Jeff Schwarz
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Argh!! They booby-trapped their sun!!****--Invader ZIM

Especially at the end of each segment where they can put a big ol' "BUSTED" for each HB argument.

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Jeff Schwarz
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Argh!! They booby-trapped their sun!!****--Invader ZIM