Yes, many hoax beliefs are somewhat logical considering the likely level of understanding. It is the level of understanding, then, that we examine. Many conspiracy theorists appeal to intuition, or as they phrase it, "common sense". It is apparently their belief that any significant aspect of engineering or space exploration or astrophysics can be fully understood by simple intuition and appeal to common, unspecialized knowledge.

Hoax believers don't appreciate just how much there is to know about engineering and space travel, and how little of it they actually know. There is nothing so dangerous as a person who is entrenched and content in his ignorance.

This is one thing that is very interesting about the populations of HB'ers (and other, similar ilk, such as the UFO crowd). While some or even many of them are educated, they are hardly ever educated in the sciences or engineering.

What I find especially interesting is that this wasn't always the case. In the 50s and 60s it seems that there the UFO movement had at least a few people who were not completely ignorant of science (Dr. James MacDonald, for instance). Individuals such as Dr. MacDonald gave the UFO movement some credibility to authorities (at least temporarily) that it has not reached since.

One explanation for this is that these scientists had less science and information to work with then, so that certain conclusions are easier to reach now than then.

When it comes to UFO's, there has been the intrusion of the ever more rapid conspiracy theories. First, the government had no involvement, then the government was trying to prevent the spread of UFO belief to prevent panic, then the government was taking part in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth as it sells us out to the aliens.

This increase in conpsiracy theories both serves an indication of how reason and science have pushed out the reasonable possibility of UFO's on one hand, and probably caused the lack of any scientific support for UFO's on the other hand. When you eliminate the plausible UFO theories by science, leaving only the crazy conspiracy theories, you alienate reasonable people, so that fewer educated people buy into the theory.

The HB phenomenon (which always has had some relationship to the UFO phenomenon), started propogating at about the same time that the UFO believers became more and more conspiratorial, and there were no more reputable scientists attached to the UFO issues, so that the Apollo hoax started in an intellectual vacuum. Of course, the Apollo hoax needed to be conspiratorial to begin with, but the lack of reputable scientists connected to the HB belief has made it sorely lacking in the eyes of people with techical knowledge.

The sad thing is how little this matters to the general public. As stated in another thread, many are willing to believe that scientists are in league with the evil government, so HB's don't even need the scientific background to convince others. How to re-open these people's ears to science and reason is a vital educational issue, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

Yet another excellent and thorough debunking by Jay. I have a couple of points to make of my own though.

In my mind, this is actually a good argument against a hoax. If the result is that critical, then it would be suicide to try to fake it. Unlike a normal fraud, the consequences of this being discovered would be way too severe. Trying to fake something of this magnitude would be frighteningly difficult, if not impossible, and the low probability of success would have been recognized from the outset. Simple logic would say you just don't attempt it. Better to accept defeat with dignity than go down in flames by being caught in such a humiliating and cowardly deception.

Was it true that the A11 laser reflector was made almost useless by dust? I hadn't heard that one. But doesn't it strike you as just a bit odd that they are using this in support of their arguments? Why would the "hoaxers" include such a minor but damning bit of evidence if their stories were simply made-up? And if it was all made up anyway, why try to use it as if it were a factual statement to support the dust-blowing claims? The entire "coating the reflector" argument depends upon the pre-condition that there was a landing in the first place.

Go look for logic in HB arguments. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Minor nitpick: The samples returned by unmanned probes were core samples. It's somehow more simple to just pull down a drill and pull out the core than to grab rocks - as long as your drill doesn't land dead smack on a rock... IIRC it was on one of the Venera landers where some sensor to investigate surface properties was positioned right onto the jettisoned camera lens cover... Talk about bad luck...

Ahh, Astonautix.com is your friend...
http://www.astronautix.com/project/venera.htm
About Venera 14:
It has been reported that the surface analysis arm accidentally landed on one of the ejected camera covers and therefore didn't send back any data on the Venusian soil. This is visible in photographs sent back.

Also check http://www.astronautix.com/project/luna.htm on the drilling stuff.

Harald

I was at a french forum, where I found also aerospace specialists, and scientists.
they agree NASA did it.
BUT they have some reservations about photos.
some say, could be real ones but got cut/Paste to to enhance them.
some say , some photos must have been earth studio shot.

my questions:
1. u scientific explanations regarding photos are fair and convincing.
have u found photo odddities which u cannot provide scientific explanation. if yes which ones. ?
2. did NASA publish ALL its photos, or just some nice ones only ??

I thanQ

The samples returned by unmanned probes were core samples.

I'm not so sure. The Astronautix article description would also apply to a screw auger, which would be the simplest way to retrieve a certain amount of undifferentiated surface material. This consists of a cylindrical tube inside of which is a screw that may extend a small distance from the end of the tube. If this is placed in contact with the surface and the screw is operated, it will draw an amount of aggregate surface material the length of the tube and out the top. This is how grain is often conveyed in harvesters.

This has the advantage of being a simple, robust mechanism, much less likely to break down than an articulated arm. It would have very few moving parts. Compared to conveyor belts and scoops, it provides the most reliable way to convey material vertically.

A core sample is a continuous intact sample transverse to the layers. It is obtained by forcing a thin hollow tube into the surface for a considerable distance and then withdrawing it along with the material which has been forced into the tube. It is retained in the tube until analyzed.

The descriptions of the Soviet lunar surface samples uniformly characterize it as loose, indiscriminate samples which would be consistent with that obtained by a screw auger and not consistent with a useful core sample.

The reason I mention core samples is that they were very difficult for the astronauts to obtain. They required the astronauts to drill the tube into the surface for a great distance, and the motors driving the tubes would frequently overheat. It required lots of muscle and ingenuity to work the tubes loose again. It would be very difficult to conceive of an unmanned probe successfully retrieving a one-meter or 1.5-meter core sample in 1970.

BUT they have some reservations about photos.

I'd have to see the actual photos and their discussion before I could agree or disagree with them.

some say, could be real ones but got cut/Paste to to enhance them.

Why would this need to be done?

some say , some photos must have been earth studio shot.

And why would this need to be done?

If the missions were successful and some significant portion of the photographs are genuine, why would there need to be any falsification? The main purpose of the photographs is to document the mission for scientific analysis. Falsified photos have no scientific value.

There are some legitimate cases of enhancement. For example, many prints of the photos of Aldrin's egress from the LM are probably "pushed" to bring out the detail in the dark areas. This is a legitimate darkroom technique which would be appropriate even in historical or forensic photography. We suspect it has been done, and we aren't worried about it.

The other case is for public relations purposes. Although the photographs were largely intended for scientific documentation, there are some (e.g., Young's jump-salute) which were for purely public relations purposes. Those photographs were taken so that NASA could put them in color brochures and on posters.

Photos for public relations purposes never appear in their raw form. Many PR photographs have unwanted artifacts like the reseau grid and lens flares removed. Some are cropped and rotated. This is because the intent here is to create a visual impression, not to accurately document an image.

When evaluating this form of alteration, we simply consider whether the raw photographs are available. In each case they are. There is no historical deception then. If you can get the unaltered form, then it doesn't matter how many altered versions are created for whatever purpose.

Conspiracists disagree. They have a sort of odd belief that photos should never be altered for any purpose, and that the propensity to do so indicates a willingness to deceive. I guess these people believe that magazine cover models really are that attractive. The point remains: if an historian can obtain the raw data, there is no deception.

have u found photo odddities which u cannot provide scientific explanation.

I'm sure I have, but I can't think of any examples right now. Well, any from Apollo. I take hundreds of photographs a year, and I find inexplicable stuff in them all the time. I have a print of a photo I took of a Mexican mariachi band playing on the deck of a Soviet submarine (don't ask). There's a strange red feature in one corner. I don't know what it is. I keep meaning to look at the negative and see if it's there.

The point is that I don't presume to be able to identify or explain everything in every Apollo photo. And I don't have to. Just because I can't explain something doesn't mean the photo was falsified. Without knowing what the feature is, you can't conlude it's due to anything in particular, including a procedure associated with falsification.

The conspiracists don't understand that in order to prove their point they have to find something in the photos which can be explained only by a process of falsification. Many claim to have done that, but it's pretty easy to show that they haven't consider certain very probable other sources.

2. did NASA publish ALL its photos, or just some nice ones only ??

Well, we have to quibble.

Anyone has always been able to obtain any Apollo photo, ever since the duplication masters were made. You just had to know how to ask. Legitimate historians and scientists don't have a problem knowing how to ask. Conspiracy theorists generally are amateurs and not familiar with how to get access to archival photographs.

It would have been prohibitively expensive to duplicate and widely disseminate all 20,000 photographs, most of which are unremarkable. But NASA would cheerfully (and for a small fee) make you a copy of whatever photograph tickled your fancy.

Most of the photographs seen by the public were those with special visual impact -- the photo of Aldrin standing in the crater (AS11-40-5903) for example. The consumer-oriented publications wanted good-quality photos that depicted interesting activities. This demand defined the desire of NASA to keep certain photos in stock and even distribute them free. It's a simple exercise in supply and demand.

Nowadays we have very advanced ways of storing and disseminating information. The cost of scanning (at low quality, albeit) all of the Apollo transparencies and making them available for download in digital form is dramatically less than earlier ways of making photographs widely and coveniently available.

In short, all the photographs were always available, but only the good ones were easy and convenient to obtain. And so that's all most people tried to obtain.

You can find all the images from Apollo 8 on up at the Apollo Image Atlas, and they will eventually have A-4,6, and 7 as well. These are just low-quality scans, provided as a simple reference guide only, but at least all are available. If you want higher-resolution photos, they are available if you know where to go, as Jay said.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

the following photo/video oddities, often come at french forum, and the allegations ...

IN SHORT:

http://membres.lycos.fr/autocoup/lune5.html
1. jeep, no wheels groves left on moon just after the rock .
steering too tight at about 90 deg for left wheel.


http://membres.lycos.fr/autocoup/lune8.html
2. Apollo 17, LM take off, video. zoom and follow up of LM.
how could this be remote controlled from earth, due to signal delays ( probably the guys means the 2.5 s shift ) ??


http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/...11_40_5874.jpg
3. the cable -- no, not me [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] -- coming from LM, and the ground both look muddy.

The LRV had four wheel steering. And it's difficult to say, if there really is nothing left by the wheel. Sometimes, due to the irregular ground, it was also the case that one wheel was not in contact with ground, e.g. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/AS15-86-11659.jpg

Ed Fendell, the camera operator, gave the commands ahead of time. Lift-off happened at a predetermined moment, so he knew when to push the button to move the camera up. On 15, he didn't as the camera clutch came loose and they were afraid, the camera would be stuck in an upward direction after the launch. On 16, he didn't catch it exactly. Finally, 17 worked fine.

That's the usual way those guys argue. They imply from looks muddy that it is muddy. You surely can develop that photo in a way that it looks dry. That the lunar surface behaves like wet sand is due to the fact that the grains of the sand are very rough, not softened by erosion as on Earth, such sticking together easily.

Harald

(typo corrected)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kucharek on 2002-12-18 06:04 ]</font>

Ooops!!
ie. the video camera (left at moon) makes quick zoom and follows the ascent module vertically ...
all remote controlled by NASA in real time from earth . haw could this been done , due to signals delay.

As I already wrote, lift-off didn't happened as a surprise to the camera operator. He didn't react on it, but handled in unisono with it. If, for some reason, lift-off would have been delayed 5 seconds, he would have missed it.

It's always strange how the Twinkies deny knowledge about even the simplest, well documented procedures.

Harald

http://membres.lycos.fr/autocoup/lune5.html
1. jeep, no wheels groves left on moon just after the rock .
steering too tight at about 90 deg for left wheel.


The lunar rover (that's the proper term for it) was not a very heavy vehicle, and in lunar gravity bounced around a lot. When it went over a large rock, there'd be a space before it came down again.

As Harald mentioned, the rover also had all wheel steering, in other words both the front tires and the rear tires could be steered seperately. This made it very maneuverable and able to make turns that an average vehicle couldn't do. And since it was light, sometimes the astronauts just picked up one end and turned it into the direction they wanted it to go.

In addition, the astronauts themselves kicked up a lot of dust as they walked around, which sometimes buried the tracks.


http://membres.lycos.fr/autocoup/lune8.html
2. Apollo 17, LM take off, video. zoom and follow up of LM.
how could this be remote controlled from earth, due to signal delays ( probably the guys means the 2.5 s shift ) ??

I'll attempt to make what Kucharek said a little clearer. The person controlling the camera knew there was a time lag, and he knew just how long the lag was. So he simply moved his controls about 2.5 seconds before the actual lift-off time. On Apollo 15, there were technical problems, on A-16 he got the timing off and the ascent module quickly went off of the screen, and on A-17 the timing was perfect and the camera was able to follow the lander for a long distance.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/...11_40_5874.jpg
3. the cable -- no, not me [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] -- coming from LM, and the ground both look muddy.

I'm afraid I don't see any "muddiness" in the photo myself. It's hard to say, since both the ground and the cable are grey in this photo, but at most the cable looks dusty to me. I don't see any clear evidence of moisture in any case.

The lunar dust has some very different properties from earth soil. The grains are very rough and tend to stick to each other and to surfaces easily, so even though it's not particularly fine, it acts more like a fine powder than regular sand. That's why it can hold such clear boot prints.

I think what we're seeing in this photo is that the ground looks a bit "muddy" because the astronauts have been walking all over it, kicking up dust. This leaves darker, fluffier patches covering the normally firmly settled surface. It's not muddy, it's just reflecting the light differently. The cable has also been coated in places with the dust, blocking the shiny surface of the cable. Either that, or perhaps it's just that the angle of the cable in places just doesn't reflect highlights towards the camera. Either way, it would make some sections look darker than others.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

jeep, no wheels groves left on moon just after the rock.

As would be the case on earth. Not only does the rover's slight weight make it sometimes bounce on the surface, but like any four-wheeled vehicle it will sometimes be in a position where three of the wheels are touching the terrain but the fourth is not.

steering too tight at about 90 deg for left wheel.

No. The LRV's turn radius is slightly more that one vehicle length. Both the front and rear wheels steer.

how could this be remote controlled from earth, due to signal delays ( probably the guys means the 2.5 s shift )?

Ed Fendell, the flight controller who controlled the camera from earth, was a highly educated, highly skilled signals engineer. He had one job on Apollo 17: control the camera. Now if that's all you thought about for 12 hours a day, for six months, you'd figure out a way to track the ascent.

Simply put, the liftoff time was known. He simply began tilting the camera upward 1.3 seconds prior to the known liftoff to allow time for the signal to arrive at the moon. And he had practiced this.

3. the cable -- no, not me [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] -- coming from LM, and the ground both look muddy.

The cable is covered with lunar dust. The dust is very cohesive (sticky) especially to cloth. Most of the astronauts commented that cables dragged through the dust became very dusty themselves and hard to see.

The dust itself is impressible because of the shape of the grains and because of the lack of chemical patina. It can do this while dry. Go get some Portland cement (which by its nature is very dry) and experiment.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-12-18 09:57 ]</font>

Jay,

BUT yes there are groves but weaker. jeep changed speed just after rock.
this according to photo enlargment, on a french rebuttal site:

http://perso.club-internet.fr/arnaud...nalyse-03.html

BUT yes there are groves but weaker. jeep changed speed just after rock.

Quite possibly. I may be looking at a different portion of the photograph than you. Photographic analysis is difficult in this medium; you really want to reach out and graphically indicate some particular spot on the photograph. But that means using an image editor and then finding someplace to host your edited photo.

The tracks in this photo indicate the LRV originally intended to go from left to right in the frame, but then backed up and turned to the right. During this turn the right wheels rolled over a couple of rocks. The LRV straddled the infamous C-rock to the left of the gnomon.

I believe photo 17444 or 17445 also captures this scene from a slightly different angle.

And then there's that music...

David Hall said:
It does seem confusing, but I think this one can be decyphered. If the moon landings were a hoax, then the dust covering the reflectors and thereby precluding their use is the excuse why the reflectors don't work. To play the role, one would have to argue that perhaps the laser reflector was an experiment suggested by someone not aware of the hoax, and rather than omit it (because they couldn't come up with a good reason?), they came up with a different excuse why the reflector didn't work, the dust covering it from the launch of the ascent module. Thus they carry the experiment and explain the failure away. And the dust then feeds the other arguments.