Well I do have to say I based my comment solely on Jay's own comments, accepted his word as the Truth™ , and did not bother doing any real research for myself. Once I had "discovered" the wig was powdered, I simply came to this thread and started parroting this new found knowledge verbatim. In the next few posts I plan on having a meltdown, moving the goal post of what constitutes proof, and putting the burden of said proof on the obvious Wig Disinformation Agents, ignoring questions, and then starting a new thread on the same subject so I can continue to argue the fact about the wig ad infinitum.

And then maybe I'll have lunch

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

I think that lunar rock samples are indisputable evidence that hoax believers always forget. They are imposible to fake, and they have been under scientific study of several nations since the moon landings.

Just my two cents.

Sorry for my english.

No problem with your english.
But you forget that those hoax believers are of the unalterable opinion that lunites found here on earth are used to fake the lunar rocks.
And as scientific studies are done by scientist, who are liars as per definition, these studies are nothing more worth than the paper that the burger I just ate was wrapped in. For them.

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916

I guess if there was one piece of evidence that would at the very least get me to admit that yes, perhapes we did fake the moon landings, it would be for some HB, somewhere, to produce a fake moonrock.

I actually heard a few HB say that "faking moonrocks is the easiest thing in the world". Yet I've never, ever heard of anyone actually creating a fake moonrock that would fool a geologist.

However, if someone was to find a way to fake a moonrock and actually trick the world's geological community into thinking it was a moonrock, then I would at least be willing to entertain some kind of debate on a possible moonhoax.

Mind you that by itself still wouldn't convince me, not by a long shot. But it would at least open up the door for the possibility. Because without that, there is simply no way to fake the Apollo missions. Ever.

This is a good idea. I've told other HBers that a sure way to improve their case would be to develop a fake moonrock that would pass muster with an independent group of geologists. I've suggested that maybe Percy and Sibrel could pool some of the money they have fleeced from their followers and put it toward such a test.

Of course, this will never happen. Evidence is anathema to these people. It's much better for them and their incomes if they continue to play upon the ignorance of the people who buy their books and videos. It's very easy to crow about how simple it is to fake a moonrock, but I suspect most of the HBers who make a living from this deception know that it can't be done.

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"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

Even if they could be manufactured with 2007 technology, that wouldn't explain how geologists were authenticating samples in 1969 and 1970.

But I agree with you in the sense that a bonafide fake (pardon the oxymoron) moon rock capable of fooling 21st-century geologists would definitely raise some eyebrows. It would establish as possible, something previously thought to be impossible, but would still be only the first step of a thousand mile journey as far as I'm concerned.

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Apollo unbelievers go here for immediate salvation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khDI2MsWSYc

"I had a hand in Tom Morrow's kiester."
-JayUtah

"The only physical proof nasa has that they landed men on the moon is 840 lbs. of rocks"
-straydog02

One of the problems with creating moonrock is, What do you make it like?

You can make a rock and claim it is moonrock, but unless you actually know what a moonrock is like, how do you know you have it right?

The whole Lunarite as Apollo moonrock claim falls over here quite simply because how would NASA know which rocks were Earth rocks, which were Lunarites, and which were normal meteorites. If you look at a Lunarite, it actually looks for the most part like a normal Earth Rock, so they are hard to tell apart. They are different from normal meteorites, but since NASA wouldn't have known that, if they went and collected a heap of Meteorites they wouldn't have gotten any Lunarites.

See the problem is that no-one knew that a Lunarite was from the Moon until 1981 when the comparasion to the Apollo samples showed it was. Now of course you could say but they picked out all the meteorites of a certain type, and we have no proof that these and Lunarites are really from the moon, well except that the Soviets brought some back robotically, and the Apollo samples and the Lunarites match with those too.

So the only solution for the HB's is to claim that NASA had magical foresight and knew exactly what a moonrock looked like before they ever saw one.

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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

Somewhere in the the CT forum are at least two previous discussions about how one could fake a moon rock. I have to toot my own horn here, but as a PhD in solid state inorganic chemistry, I know quite a lot about this. I have during my career grown crystals of at three different materials that have mineralogical equivalents: calcium fluorite, quartz, and pyrite, the first two in industrial (tons) quantities.

The consensus was that it would take years of work to come upon with a method to fake even small quantities and that it is highly doubtful that they would fool a trained geologist or solid-state chemist. To fake hundreds of kilos.... well, it would be easier to go to the moon.

One previous discussion

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

As a former HB, I would just like to pipe in and remind some of you that we don't so much think that the moon rocks were faked, but rather gotten using unmanned craft... so from that point of view, the existence of moon rocks proves nothing... we know we have them, we just don't believe astronauts picked them up and packed them into the ship. Or rather "they"... as mentioned, I no longer count amongst the "we"

As a former HB...

Just wanted to make sure you know I saw this.

...we don't so much think that the moon rocks were faked, but rather gotten using unmanned craft...

Among the (former) we, the primary theories are: (1) manufactured in a lab, (2) Earth rocks possibly doctored, (3) meteorites found in Antarctica, (4) retrieved by unmanned lander, or some combination of them.

Each of these theories has problems. For (1), no one can figure out how that might have been done, and no geologist can be found who will say he would be fooled by it. (2) is essentially a claim that geologists wouldn't know moon rocks if they saw them, having nothing against which to compare them. Spend some time reading geology papers or talking to geologists and you'll see how silly that claim is. (3) doesn't work for many reasons: the lunites weren't found in time, in great enough numbers, and they wouldn't fool geologists. (4) is discussed below.

...so from that point of view, the existence of moon rocks proves nothing... we know we have them, we just don't believe astronauts picked them up and packed them into the ship.

Right, and that's somewhat the problem: the conspiracists don't believe in a thing so much as against a thing. When your goal is to avoid one certain idea, you get into some pretty desperate and illogical thinking. You have to paint certain experts as idiots. You have to imagine unlimited budgets and ingenuity.

But most egregiously, you have to change the whole landscape of the argument. Instead of comparing one theory against another to see which one best explains the evidence, you try to stack the deck in favor of your theory and try to make the other guy do all the uphill work.

(1) and (3) are essentially impossible. (2) works unless you know anything about geology; if you do, it's not impossible but just highly absurd.

(4) seems most logical because the Russians actually did it. So you stack the deck by assuming (4) is the default explanation and trying to put the exclusive burden of proof on the Apollo astronaut theory. That is, you say, "Since we know it was possible to get Moon rocks by remote sample-return, the Apollo samples aren't proof that men went to the Moon to get them."

We dismiss it as deck-stacking because it avoids an important burden of proof.

How do we know it was possible to retrieve lunar samples remotely? Because the Russians did it that way. And they can provide no end of historical and engineering data to show how it was done. We have examples of the spacecraft. We tracked them to the Moon ourselves and knew what they were up to. We got to see their samples too.

If you accept all that as fact, you have to accept also as fact the relative unreliability of the Russian sample-return method, and the limitations even when it did work. You basically got a convenience sample with the Russian method; whatever was nearby. And not much of it. Not to be too flippant, but the Russians basically got as much as would fit in a ketchup bottle -- mixed gravel and dust.

From the Apollo samples alone, I've personally seen more lunar material than the Russians ever got. The Apollo samples are differentiated. Some of them are core samples. Some of them are chip samples knocked off with a hammer. Some have a mass of several kilograms each. Some are documented, meaning that geologists on Earth watching the missions told the astronauts to pick up a certain rock they saw on television, and then were able to study that same rock in the lab. And there is just under half a ton of the stuff, not a ketchup bottle's worth.

In short, the nature of the Apollo samples cannot be answered by the sample-return method. We still don't know how to take core samples remotely, for example. So when you say it was possible to retrieve samples remotely, that's just not true. It's true only in the most meaningless and superficial way. The Russians can have retrieved the Russian samples by the sample-return method, but the Apollo samples cannot have been returned by a similar method.

I've already alluded to the other point in the burden of proof: the Russians told us how they did it. As an engineer, I and others can look at those designs and mockups and conclude that they probably would have worked as designed. They're credible. And there's evidence they were used: we tracked them, we can talk to the people who built and operated them.

Even if we accept that somehow a sample-return program could have retrieved what we now have as the Apollo samples, where is the evidence that such unmanned spacecraft actually existed? Where are the plans? Where are the people who built them? Operated them? Why didn't the Russians track them? The English?

That's why deck-stacking is very bad. If you examine the Apollo theory and the sample-return theory side by side and start them on equal ground, all the evidence points to the Apollo theory. Not just a preponderance of it, but the entirety of it. That's why conspiracy theorists go to extreme lengths to make sure their theory has an undeserved head start. Their head start, in fact, is already past the finish line; the conspiracists don't even run the race.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yeah, I kind of figured someone would bring this up but I was too lazy to comment on it in my first post. So, allow me to address this. Btw, congrats on being a former HB. Glad to know we've changed at least one mind!

The best unmanned sample return mission from the Apollo era was done by the Soviets. They where able to send a lander to the moon and scoop up about 100 grams of lunar soil (I'm pretty sure it was 100. perhapes it was a few hundred, but at any rate it was a fairly small amount). This was also only soil, nothing larger then a pebble. It was also strictly surface soil, no core sample. AND it was all collected from one spot, namly the only spot that the landers arm could reach.

Compare that with the several hundred kilograms of moonrock that Apollo brought back. And this was not just loose soil, but in many cases large rocks AND core samples, taken from a wide variety of geologically interesting sites on the moon. In other words, far, FAR more then what the Soviets where able to do. Many of these sites were kilometers apart (from the same mission). Consider that with todays technology, the Mars rovers took years to cover a few kilometers and also in no way could have collected rocks. The idea of a Mars sample return mission was droped when they realized how costly and complex it would make the mission (although I believe we are still planning a future one).

In short, there is simply no way to get the amount and variety of rock samples that Apollo got without people up there getting them. Robots can do a lot, but that kind of a task is simply beyond any robot that we have today, never mind 40 years ago.

So if a HB is going to say that the rocks where collected with a robot, then instead of making a fake moonrock they would have to build a lunar robot using 1960's technology which could accomplish that task. And trust me, no one will ever be able to do that.

So I guess that's 2 ways to make me second guess myself. Make a fake moonrock or make a lunar robot.

*Edit: I see Jay already beat me to it

Why didn't the Russians track them? The English?

Careful, Jay--you may draw the ire of Architect.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Well it would not be the first time an Architect and an Engineer had an argument.......

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

There is a further point to this: the Apollo samples didn't fit any of the three common pre-Apollo theories of the moon's origin. However, they did show strong resemblances to the later Russian samples and subsequently discovered lunites. It was only the development of the big impactor theory of the moon's origin in the late 1970s that gave a satisfactory match with the characteristics shown by all three sample sources.

So the hypothetical fakers not only came up with something that matched the future Russian samples and the lunites, they matched a scientific theory that had yet to be developed.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

Yes, the fact that the samples were devoid of water even in formation is a critcial factor. Until a moonrock was seen there is no way that NASA could have know this. In fact pre-1969 had you suggested it, most geologists would have laughed you out of the room. Rocks on Earth contain water, there is no way of getting around it. That the moon samples didn't is what lead to science having to change its entire ideas of Lunar formation.

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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

What does the Moon Hoax believers think about the Russians at that time? That they were so stupid to not notice the supossedly hoax? Or that their intelligent services were totally incompetent?

Add to the fact that with the Russian sample return hardwarewe also have, just as with Apollo, unflown hardware and actual flown hardware (the sample return capsules) available for inspection. As with Apollo, this evidence has been examined by engineers from round the world and, post cold war, the project engineers round the world are avilable for interview. Plus the samples have been studied by engineers from many countries.

By contrast there is not one fragment of physical, documentary, or oral evidence the supposed unmanned missions that the US used to obtain the samples credited to Apollo. Despite the fact that, to collect the amount and diversity of samples already mentioned would require mission much larger complex and capable that the LUna samp