Hello everyone, I'm a new member. I've seen tons of information online about the apollo missions and I would like to know what proof is there besides moon rocks, pictures, and film. I tend to keep an open mind about this subject and others, however, in my own opinion, I don't think that NASA was capable of sending a man to the moon in the late 1960's. I do believe that they could send a man to orbit around earth, but not any further. If NASA has been working on space travel all this time, why is it going to take until 2020 to send a mission to the moon? I've studied the films, Pictures, etc. and they seem very fake. The moon rocks are supposedly made up of stuff found here on earth. How do we know that they are not meteorites or just rocks found somewhere on earth? To those of you who believe that man went to the moon, can you tell me exaclty why you believe this?
thanks.
Martin

You will have to be more specific about what pictures you think are faked and why.

As far as the rocks go, do you trust geologists world-wide, some from countries hostile to the US, when they say they can absolutely tell the difference between material claimed to be rocks from the moon and "meteorites or just rocks found somewhere on earth"? They do, you know.

You have come to the right place if you have questions about the moon landings. These people know A LOT about them. But, it is important that you bring up specific issues.

You will be surprised at how much evidence there is that we DID land on the moon, and how easily explained so-called anomalies are.

Hi Martin! Welcome to the forum. I lived
through the project devouring every newspaper
report, television report, televised launch
until the last misson. You did not apparently.
Tough! It happened! I can understand, my
younger brother, two at the time of Apollo 11,
devours much information about the history
as he is fascinated by the fakery idea. And he
has been through all the moonwalks on cdroms.
He cannot fault them yet

Okay, if you want evidence besides moon rocks, pictures, and film (and it's there; see http://www.clavius.org), it helps to explain what your problem is with the moon rocks, pictures, and film, and why you don't believe them. Is it just that you can't, from a clearly unstudied position, believe that the technology was any good? That's not really an argument, you know. It's cause to go look it up. The resources are there, though not exclusively online.

Welcome to the board. It's a great learning experience.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Welcome Martindm!
Having actually watched the Apollo landings, I'm convinced they were not faked. One source you didn't mention is the astronauts themselves. Many of them are still living and willingly talk to groups about what they experienced. As twinstead mentioned, you'd have to give us examples of pictures you feel are faked.

It might be good to read the FAQ and to look at other threads people have started on this subject.

Hope you stay and learn!

__________________
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Asimov's addition - "Or ignorance."

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

Because what they brought back from the Moon was more than a bit of rock and dirt, it was a LOT of rock and dirt, measuing into the tons of the stuff. No robot mission to date has ever gotten beyond the ounces.

I do have to ask you, what is it that makes you believe its not possible to get men beyond Earth orbit? Insufficient thrust? Then what would launch the machines that returned all that rock and dirt from the Moon?

If all that rock and dirt were retrieved by machines with the capability of pulling it off, then they'd need rockets with at least the same performance characteristics that a rocket sending humans would. Interesting that people question a rocket full of men going to the Moon, but seem to have no problems with a machine pulling it off.

Sending people out of Earth's orbit is a butt simple process of having enough thrust and enough fuel. You have those two elements, and the rest is academic. The trick is timing the thrust to put them at the right speed, to be in the right place to be captured by the Moon's gravity when it overtook them (the Moon is moving MUCH faster than anything we can build, so you don't fly to the Moon, you get in its way and it pulls you in).

FYI, if you think this was beyond American technology, please be reminded that there were a number of unmanned probes, which no one seems to question the success of, that managed it a few years prior to Apollo.

Finally, had these missions launched, and remained in Earth orbit, they would still have been visible from the ground by anyone with half a brain, a decent pair of binoculars, and a mean streak against the government.

So my question back is, where's the easily attainable proof they didn't leave Earth orbit?

__________________
I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

So if you think they are fake, then perhaps you might be able to tell us what moon pictures should look like...

Welcome!

Pete

__________________
PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

And how would one fake them - including the effects of lower gravity and a vacuum?

As Gillianren said above, check out Clavius.org for answers to just about all of these.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Well we must have gone - Richie Blackmore said so

Remember when we did the moonshot
And Pony Trekker led the way
We'd move to the Canaveral moonstop
And everynaut would dance and sway

Space Truckin' Deep Purple

Not to mention the telemetry that was intercepted by several different nations IIRC and which can be proven to come from space, not a studio in Hollywood. If we hadn't gone to the moon, I'd think the Russians would've called our bluff after intercepting telemetry that did not indicate a moon trajectory. You said you 'keep an open mind' yet you don't believe we could've done it?

If we can get to orbit, why is it so impossible or improbable that we couldn't get to the moon? IMO it becomes a matter of pointing the payload in the right direction and imparting enough velocity to it. Everything else would seem to be details.

As for taking until 2020, ever heard of priorities and resource scarcity/allocation? NASA plans on 2020 because any reasonable projection of available resources (and assumptions about technology, etc.) and priorities says that they can do it by then. Among other things, you have to build the facilities to construct the hardware that you are going to use. You don't build facilities for hardware you aren't going to use -- Congress (and the tax payers and the scientists whose projects were derailed because of that diversion) would want scalps in that case.

IF it was really important (say national survival kind of important) that we get back to the moon like right now, then the decision makers (such as Congress) would have to make the needed resources available and we'd get to the moon (again) sooner. It is a matter of priorities.

Welcome to the BAUT BB, Martindm!

You will find that those who know that Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 landed on the Moon, and that Apollo missions 8, 10, and 13 made it to the Moon and returned without landing, base their knowledge on something called objective evidence. It's not a matter of belief, but rather a case where the evidence has been tested time and time again and has been found to be entirely reliable, which then generates scientific knowledge.

Those who have studied the Apollo program know that they were successful in their overall mission. Even better those of us who had first-hand experience with the program know what was done to achieve this success.

Unfortunately the program was being killed by a hostile administration even as Armstrong was stepping out onto the lunar surface. We are still paying the price for those short-sighted decisions. Hence no lunar bases or Mars missions as were envisioned to become reality during the 1970s.

Space exploration, just as anything else, is subject to the harsh realities of economics. If there's no money appropriated, the program won't fly, it will instead wither and die, as happened with almost all of NASA's Apollo Applications proposals.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the general picture. Re current "Moon Hoax" hucksters, please check out what our own Bad Astronomer has to say about it and them.

Good luck with your analysis of the data available concerning the Apollo program.

Re the hoaxers, remember, GIGO!

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Thank you to all members who have replied to my question. Just to clear up where I'm coming from. I was born in 1965 and have been to Kennedy Space Center. I even saw apollo 14 taking off. However, my point is that films, pictures, and rocks don't prove anything because they can all be altered, retouched, staged, etc. I saw a film of Neil Armstrong having to bail out of the test lunar lander because he couldn't control it here on earth. (That could be fake too of course) The only way I could believe it, is if I can look at a telescope and see the flag planted on the moon or the remaining artifacts left behind for myself. People say that telescopes aren't strong enough to see anything like that. What about a satelite based one? aren't the japanes sending one up next year to do that?

To those of you who believe that man went to the moon, can you tell me exaclty why you believe this?

I believe it because that's what the evidence tells us.

Hello everyone, I'm a new member.

Welcome.

I would like to know what proof is there besides moon rocks, pictures, and film.

Well the biggest ones beyond those 3 are the telemetry transimissions from the missions and from the experiments that were set up, many which were monitered right through the late 70's. Of course the LRRR are still being used today as well, so the fact these packages were placed there, many needing human intervention to install and operate (The manipulation of the packages to deploy them was too difficult for a robot, even today.) To get this telemetry the receivers had to be pointed at the moon, so it can't have come from anywhere else (Due to orbital mechanics.) We also know that these transmissions where intercepted by not only the Soviets, but a number of Ham Radio operaters set up dishes and tuned into the radio from the missions as well. Amatuer Astronomers watched the Spacecraft travel to the Moon as well, and a number took images of certain events.

I don't think that NASA was capable of sending a man to the moon in the late 1960's.

Pehaps you need to look at other examples of 1960 technology such as the Trieste Bathysphere (only craft to reach the bottom of the Marina Trench), The SR-71 (Fastest jet engined plane ever, hold current air intake altitude record), The 747 (still the most popular longhaul aircaft in the skies), Concorde (The worlds only ever supersonic passanger jet,) the F-14, one of the most popular and still the world's foremost intercepetor jet fighter.

With this being the state of Technology in the 1960's, why is Apollo so doubtful?

I do believe that they could send a man to orbit around earth, but not any further.

Getting into Orbit is the hard part, after that it's easy.

If NASA has been working on space travel all this time, why is it going to take until 2020 to send a mission to the moon?

Because they have a comparatively smaller budget and aren't in a race to get things done at speed to beat the Soviets.

I've studied the films, Pictures, etc. and they seem very fake.

What part of them looks fake? Have you studied the high resolution scans and full screen video avaible from Spacecraft Films, or have you seen small compressed photos and footage?

The moon rocks are supposedly made up of stuff found here on earth. How do we know that they are not meteorites or just rocks found somewhere on earth?

Glad you asked, from a geology point of view it's actually pretty easy. Firstly, the samples include soil, core samples and fragments chipped off larger rocks, so none of these could be from Lunaites (moon meteorites.) Nor could they have been returned by robots as we simply don't have the ability to build a robot capable of doing these things, even today. The systems to take a soil core, a deep core and break off then gather a rock chip are just too varied to be able to do. That and taking the deep cores were so hard for the astronauts trying to retrieve them, any robot would still be stuck to the core sample, trapped. Further the full rock samples show no sign of a melted fusion crust, which all meteorites have, no internal fracturing from the heat of passage, and no sign of weathering or erosion from being on Earth, but instead have a pistine micro-meteor pitted surface. The samples are chemically consistant with other lunar samples (The Soviet returns and also lunaites which have been found) and yet they were returned previous to these other references (Luna 16 returned the Soviet's first sample in Dec 1970, over a year after they had been sent an Apollo 11 sample. The first Lunaite was discovered in 1979, ten years after Apollo 11, and the first one wasn't identified until 1981.) The amount of sample is another factor. Apollo returned 380 kg. The three Luna porbes returned less than 0.5 kilos. To date there have been about 40kg of Lunaites found in various places about Earth. Of course the biggest difference between Earth Rock and Lunar Rock, and something that was totally unthought of prior to Apollo is that Lunar Rocks have a total absence of water, something no Earth Rock has. On Earth water is bond into the rocks on a chemical level, they can't not have it. There was no reason to believe otherwise about Lunar Rock, and yet no Lunar has it, something that has actually changed our thinking on how the moon come into existance. This revelation actually caused us to throw out the three, at that time, current theories and create a new one, the Impactor Theory we have today.

I hope that helps, if you have more questions I'm happy to attempt to answer them.

__________________
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

Would you be satisfied with satellite-based photos? Remember, photos can be altered, retouched, staged, etc...

__________________
"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

I don't want satelite based photos. I want to see it myself on a telescope. Not another photo.

That was one failure among many successful tests. BTW, that wasn't a test lunar lander, it was a jet-powered platform that simulated the performance and reactions of LM. The particular failure that Armstrong survived was related to equipment on that platform and was unrelated to the technology of the LM.

So when you are outside and feel heat from the Sun on your skin, that's not real? After all, it's the result of infrared radiation that's invisible to the human eye.

BTW, re do a search on "telescope resolution" and you'll find it's not "people say", it's a physical limitation of present day telescopes. In fact this has been addressed many times on this board, so you might want to start that search within the BAUT BB.

Of course, if you eventually did see a flag (probably gone by now due to heating/cooling and radiation effects on the nylon) or the LM descent stage, etc., how do you know NASA didn't plant them there during and after 1969 using robotic spacecraft?



Meanwhile, please check out the links given, read the material there thoroughly, and then get back to us with reasonable questions on this subject that you consider to be still unanswered.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.