Here´s a gigantic Moon Hoax webpage from HB James Beals:

http://www.futuresunltd.com/sudarsha...oonShadows.htm

James Beals claims that:

"In the 1960's I grew up in So. Cal. in La Puente, near West Covina. The boy who lived next door was in the same grade as I so we were friends (well, most of the time). The boy's name was Rob Moore (Jr, but everyone called him Robby, and called his father Bob). His father was also Robert (Bob) Moore. When we moved to that house in 1960-61, the neighbors told us that Bob (the father) was a strange guy. They said he was all right, they guessed, but no one knew anything about him. No one knew where he worked, or what he did for a living. Nothing. The other neighbors told us all he ever said to anyone was 'Hi', then he would walk away. They considered him a sort of eccentric hermit, a nice guy, sort of, maybe, but definitely not the sociable type. My friend, Rob, however, was more than eager to tell me that Bob, his father, worked on 'Top Secret' military projects for the US space program. And latter on (in the latter 60's) Rob told me a lot more about his father and the space program."

And ....

" But, my friend Rob, he used to tell me that it was all faked. I had to listen, after all, his father was secretly working on the projects. I recall Rob showing me actual 8x10 photographs (his father gave him) showing the US and the Russian space walks and how they were both made in large water tanks, painted to appear as being in space. The space suits were under water suits and on TV when they showed live videos of it they moved slowly. I will explain the slow movements latter, but, their moving slowly was due to the water, not due to being weightless in space. If you notice the space walks of today that are taken from the Space Shuttle the movements are quick (this will all be explained later in this article). In the photos he showed me you could actually see bubbles in the Russian photos and small hair thin lines in the US photos."

http://www.futuresunltd.com/sudarsha...oonShadows.htm

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Pssst ! I can almost imagine Jay take a look at the size of the webpage and think "Oh, no ! Now I know what to do for the rest of the day .. Sigh !" [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

I can almost imagine Jay take a look at the size of the webpage and think "Oh, no ! Now I know what to do for the rest of the day .. Sigh !"

Hardly. Early on he says,

"I must also say that I have been inspired to remain fixed in my understanding over the years due to the teachings of my spiritual teacher, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad, who boldly preached that man has not gone to the moon."

Enough said.

This site has been around for a while, although it seems to have accumulated a few more fairy tales since I last looked at it.
Codswallop, as they'd say in the U.K.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DaveC on 2002-07-09 14:28 ]</font>

Yes, I've seen this site before. Mostly speculation and fantasy (which shouldn't be unusual on a HB site anyway).

Near the bottom, he makes this comment about the LRRR:

Now, having said that, I have some problems about how this project was carried out. We are talking about a beam that traveled 500,000 miles. That was one very true and tight parallel beam of light. Another thing is that this beam has to pass through the earth's atmosphere, which has a certain percent of moisture and causes a measurable refraction of a parallel beam of light. The atmosphere could also cause the light to bend and go slightly, or greatly, off angle. All of this would be multiplied by 2 when the beam re-enters the earth atmosphere on it's return from the moon, however, the re-entry beam will have been already spread out and weakened and off angle from its first pass through the atmosphere.

And since this beam has to travel 250,000 miles to strike this 1 foot square reflector, then another 250,000 miles back to a reception device on earth, a very minute fraction of a degree off will throw this beam miles off center in any direction. In other words, the beam has got to be extremely precisely positioned, and all the diffractions and bending the atmosphere would cause would have to be very precisely taken into account and made up for to within a tiny fraction of a degree. I may be wrong, but really, is it possible to do all this? It doesn't seem very probable to me.

Can someone help with this? I think he's confusing the laser light if it was visible light, which might behave differently.

__________________
~AstroMike

No, he's right. The divergence of the laser makes it hard to capture the returning beam, but it can be done.

I have a hard time believing this story. At one time in my life I worked on some secret projects and the company was extremely strict when it came to these materials.

Bringing home secret stuff like photos, documents, etc., would definately get you fired and probably jail time. The stuff is tracked in and out of a storage facility. We had one guy you went to the bathroom and left the stuff on his desk. He got fired.

Another made up HB lie.

I think I can help here. Back in my Air Force days, I maintained infrared imaging and laser target designator systems so I was schooled in the behavior of light in general and lasers in particular.

Yes, a laser beam (whether visible or not) is essentially a "very true and tight parallel beam of light." Although a laser is coherent and tightly collimated, it will still exhibit beam divergence which is much more pronounced over long ranges such as the Earth-Moon distance. Even so, as mentioned in the quote, a laser beam can be tricky to aim with such a relatively small footprint. Fortunately, the Earth-Moon laser ranging experiments weren't conducted with a raw beam. Instead, they were aimed through a telescope which acted as a beam expander which made "painting the target" much fairly simple. Using a telescope also makes detecting and measuring the comparatively weak return pulse easier.

Atmospheric attenuation can be a problem (with water being a main culprit) but it's certainly not insurmountable. One option is to use a higher power to make up for the losses. Another is to use a wavelength that takes advantage of one of the atmosphereric "windows"...that is, ranges of wavelengths that suffer less attenuation. There is a rather large window in the near IR region where attenuation is rather mild.

As for atmospheric refraction, I don't see this as a problem since the expanded beam is going to be many miles across by the time it returns. The refractive index of air isn't huge and most telescopes aren't at extreme latitudes so refractive error for such a large beam footprint should be a minor concern.

The argument about actually detecting such a weak return pulse is even weaker than the pulse. We've detected far fainter signals from the heavens.

_________________
Cheers,

Loreto

[deleted redundant quote]



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gramma loreto on 2002-07-09 18:49 ]</font>