LOL! I said the same thing about Vermont. (and yes I was kidding.)

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I am the stone that the builder refused
I am the visual,
the inspiration,
that made lady sing the blues
Judo flip, chop chop chop

Martin, unless you are able to get into space and orbit the moon with a very good telescope, it is extremely unlikely you will be able to see it directly through a telescope from here on earth, optical resolution is just not good enough. That is unless the mirror is the size of Manhattan, or London (I know it needs to be large, but not entirely sure how big!? I'm sure someone will add this information!!)

There are so many other events that I am sure you DO believe happened, such as the sinking of the Titannic, WW1, the Wright Brothers first flight, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Florida Marlins winning the World Series in 1997. All of these events were well documented, some a lot more than others, and we believe they happened becuase of what we know from history.

Both the Mercury missions (7, I think) and Geminii missions (12, I think) were a testing ground and a lead into the Apollo programme and ALL of these programmed missions were followed in great detail by the press of the time. from these we have thousands upon thousands of detailed photographs, film and video footage, documentation, left over artifacts, and many hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, and people who worked on the projects throughout the very late 50's, 60's and early 70's. Many of these people continued onto other space programme work, but also many thousands left or had to be let go as Apollo came to an end and space funding was reduced.

There is also about 800kgs of moon rocks returned by the astronauts, which many of the worlds top geologists have studied and all agree they are not rocks found anywhere on earth. Many of these geologists are from countries with no alleigiance to the US, in fact some were openly hostile during the cold war years.

So with the sheer weight of evidence in favour of the Apollo moon programme and landings, which must be massively in excess of many of the events I listed above, there are still people who still believe the moon landings were in some way hoaxed, yet never seem able to produce any actual concrete evidence to prove it. We often end up with "it just doesn't look right" (well then, what SHOULD pictures of the moon look like?), and a lack of interest or understanding about the science involved.

Yet these same people are still happy to believe that the Wright Brothers contraption actually flew ("I mean, have you SEEN it? It's all string and wood and cloth - can't possibly have flown...."), the Titannic sank ("I'm QUITE SURE they would have spotted something as big as an iceberg, that could do that much damage, much earlier...").... etc ... etc.....

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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'
- Isaac Asimov

Are we alone in the Universe? Are we the only intelligent life? Who knows? But the universe is so BIG, it somehow seems such a waste of space if we are ....

I saw him fly over my house once...

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Happy to oblige The resolution of an optical telescope operating under perfect conditions is about 0.8" divided by the diameter of the telescope. We need to place the telescope at earth, so that everyone can verify that no false images are inserted by evil MIB. If we assume that we need to resolve features no more than 10cm big at a distance of 364,567km (perigee) -- a conservative guess at least in my eyes -- the resolving power has to be at least 0.6mas and minimum aperture size is then about 1400 meters.

I suppose telescope technology could push this value down (3.6m wide CFHT at Hawaii has a PSF of only 0.13"), but we need to keep the system simple for those who want to inspect our little telescope

Just a quick note, I've seen a bit of confusion on the mass of the returned moon rock, presumably due to unit conversion. There was a total of about 379 kg or ~834 pounds of moon rock.

See here, for instance:

http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/ceps...ls_return.html

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Yeah, sorry! I do remember (now!) that it was "about 800 pounds" of moon rock, not 800kgs! It's funny how you remember these things once someone tells you ......

__________________
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'
- Isaac Asimov

Are we alone in the Universe? Are we the only intelligent life? Who knows? But the universe is so BIG, it somehow seems such a waste of space if we are ....

Isn't it though? No big. I see this every now and then. With different units, it's easy to make a mistake.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Just ask NASA.

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Sleep? Isn't that that totally inadaquate substitute for caffeine I've heard so much about?

Quantumfoamy.com, my astronomy/astrophotography blog.

Just ask NASA.

Actually, that was Lockheed-Martin's screw up. NASA just didn't catch LM's mistake.

Oh, good news, btw. Lockheed-Martin has the contract for the next moon mission.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

hope someone explains metric to them

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

True enough. OTOH, it was NASA that was out both the money and the data from the probe.

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Sleep? Isn't that that totally inadaquate substitute for caffeine I've heard so much about?

Quantumfoamy.com, my astronomy/astrophotography blog.

It could have been worse, I mean it's not like they dropped a multimillion dollar satelite, or installed some switches up the wrong way or anything.......

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

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

Also make sure that it is a direct vision telescope (so one with an eyepiece), because "nobody" will believe an image shown on a computer monitor.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

And you know what they can do with smoke and mirrors, so that pretty much limits it to refractors, right?

Ouch! And a nuclear plant to power the tracking drive

Ah very good, no smoke. I was going to use a water wheel.

I'm convinced, and writing a book tentatively entitled 'The Landscape Theory of Reality'.