Okay now, I'm not a Lunar conspiracist, and there's little to no doubt in my mind that 24 Americans flew to the Moon, 12 of whom walked on the surface. Now here is the Question: Does anyone think that the Lunar Landings could have been faked, assuming that anybody was dedicated (or foolish) enough to try to do it? And, if so, how would you pull it off? As for why, it's probably the old Beat the Ruskies/ Distract from Nam/ Demonstrate non-existant U.S. Missile tech/Cause the Prez said so combo. I'll be back in a day or two to discus any potential scenarios, or lack of them.

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Problems that need to be sorted out:

- How are rocks going to be obtained? They must be genuine samples, and include 10kg+ boulders, core samples and fragile clods of compressed lunar soil.

- How are the voice transmissions going to be handled? The astronauts and Mission Control spoke with a 1.5 second delay each way, about live events, using dishes which were pointed straight at the Moon for 8+ hours at a time.

If you wanted to fake Apollo, you'd have to be a lot tighter with things like rock sampling and voice transmission.

For me, I say no. I had the pleasure of discussing the idea of a hoax with Mike Dinn a couple of years ago and we tried to work out a scenario where the telemetry signals could have been faked well enough to fool the worldwide net of the MSFN. Couldn't do it while maintaining real-time conversations with the astronauts about the day's sporting & news events, etc.

The tracking & telemetry to me is the ultimate showstopper.

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I saw an episode of "Conspiricy" on the History Channel that tried it. They tried to do a fake moon landing on video using all of the arguments (shadows, film slowed down, no stars, etc) Long story short, they couldn't do it.

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is it safe to say we didn't have the technology? :wink:

[edited typo, because i still can't type]

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Exactly.

We didn't have the technology to fake it (nor do we now, if ever), but we did have the technology to do it. A simple combination of facts that seems always to be beyond the ken (and barbie) of the HBs. :roll:

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That depends on what you mean. Do you mean, could Apollo as we know it been faked, or could a landing by some other means been faked?

For the first part, I say no way. There is just too much documentation and physical evidence to fake.

For the second part, maybe, but certainly not likely. It would have to be faked in such a way that produced very little evidence, and yet, still be believable. I don't know if that is really possible. For instance, how do you explain to a geologist that you sent a man all the way to the moon and back, and yet he returned without any moon rocks. Furthermore, you would have to fake the transmissions and provide an actual target for tracking. By the time you do all this, you might as well just land a man on the moon for real.

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Building on this idea, let's say we go back in time to 1961 and we're put in charge of faking a manned lunar landing from the onset. Clearly our efforts would not produce Apollo as we know it, but what form would our fake lunar landing take? Could we pull it off and fool the experts? Could we keep it secret?

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I like that idea. Ignoring luner rendezvous, what would other craft look like. What kinds of things would you let out to the public (both information and misinformation)

I don't have that kind of background or imagination, but love to hear about it.

The first thing you do if you are going to fake it is you definitely don't bring any rocks back. Only real lunar rocks will work. If you try to make rocks that appear 4.5 billion years old, you not only have to create them to appear that old by every known dating method, you also have to account for new dating methods that hadn't even been invented. So if you are in charge of a "fake the landings" project, you declare that there will be no rocks returned, perhaps arguing that the "moon bugs" risk is too high, or some such. If you are going to get real rocks by sending an unmanned craft there, aquire the rocks and return them, then it would probably be easier (given the robotic technology of the 60's) to send a couple of people to dig the cores etc.

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I agree. In fact, unless we can obtain it robotically, all science from the Moon is hands off. We just can't risk faking data that can be proven false at some time in the future.

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Ultimately what you produce as evidence will be a product of what you know already you can do, and what you can do using techniques you plan to develop, which then generally become part of the ongoing technical lexicon. Either way, you tailor what you produce to what you can produce. The "show" becomes an expression of your capability. So it's reasonably strong to argue that if the capability doesn't or didn't exist to fabricate the body of evidence, then it wasn't fabricated.

That something is impossible argues conclusively that it wasn't done. However, the reverse is not true: possibility doesn't indicate actuality, and this is what the conspiracists wish to argue. So noting that their argument has a strong converse is tempting, but ultimately serves to validate their line of reasoning (even to refute it directly). If the impossibility premise is ever refuted or even credibly eroded, it would seem then that their original (flawed) argument then becomes valid. The direct refutation is often the most straightforward and easily discernible, but does not always endure over the long term.

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Clavius Moon Base

To fake it you would want to run it similar to the Russians did their whole program, rather then having it live, claim to have done it and then release the Hoaxed data in an after the event release. This way you can release audio, etc, claiming it was live at the time.

Also you only want to do it once. After the first time it is more likely that something will go wrong and you'll get caught, so claim that once it was done the first time there isn't a point in returning.

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Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Went there did that.
-or-
Didnt find any rocks, therefore nothing to research>

There is also no chance that you can either fool, or complain complete and perpetual silence from, the thousands of people inside the program who could have figured out the bogosity in progress.

Especially when engineers are involved. Engineers culturally and historically have a very low tolerance for shenanigans such as this, which they regard as exclusively a distasteful hallmark of clueless, inept, and dishonest management.

There are many ways to irritate an engineer, but one of the most effective is to compel him to say he solved problem that he did not in fact solve. Engineers feel these claims will come back to haunt them, sometimes with legal ramifications.

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Clavius Moon Base

[SaidFromASafeDistance]
Just like 2/3 of all scientists.
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=22233
[/SaidFromASafeDistance]

Perhaps it goes without saying that another sure way to irritate an engineer (sounds like a straight line, doesn't it?) is to compel her to say she didn't solve a problem that she did solve. Maybe that's not quite as pertinent to the Apollo hoax question, but valid nonetheless.

Of course there is an alternative universe where we didn't really go and NASA faked the whole thing. I doubt even in that universe that the secret could be kept forever and it would be discovered. Unfortunately, in that universe there are also woo-woos who claim that it really wasn't faked and they really did go, but the fake fake-landing is covering up the secret that they really went.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Yes ...

And Also in this Universe, a Benevolent Alien Flies around Fighting Crime, Wearing a Red Cape and Blue Tights ...

What can I say ...

It's Just About, as Likely.

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