I've often asked conspiracists what it would take for them to fully accept the reality of the Apollo moon landings. What bit, or string of evidence would they require before they'd be able to admit it was all authentic, and faithful to NASA's version of events.

Very seldom have I received a straight answer. The responses typically veer off into diatribes about evil past or present administrations, charges of murder and brainwashing, or lengthy dissertations on why 2500 lbs. of thrust should produce a crater in hardpan.

I'd be interested to hear actual straightforward answers to that question, from anyone who doubts the validity of Apollo. What WOULD it take for you to believe? Where's your threshold of proof? IS there a threshold? Are you so firmly entrenched that nothing will ever change your mind?

Conversely, what would it take for an Apollo believer to change course, and admit that the landings were all faked? Is there a single piece of evidence that would completely nullify what you've known to be an established truth? Would a deathbed confession do the trick, or would it take a tidal wave of new revelations?

I realize the ratio of believers to non-believers on this board is uneven, but I would hope that doesn't dissuade those in the latter camp from participating. I'm honestly interested in hearing both sides.


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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

change mind? which way, or do you mean either way?

At first, I was going to say that definitive proof that the Moon doesn't exist at all would do it...but that doesn't necessarily prove fakery. Maybe we just thought we went.

A much harder question to answer than it first appeared to be. A single disclosure in the face of all that evidence? I just can't wrap my head around one at the moment.

This was discussed a couple of years ago in this thread.

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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

In essence: What would you need to believe the opposite of what you currently believe?

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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

Believe it or not, there is a small group of people who *don't* think the moon exists. They theorize it's possibly an illuminated high altitude balloon, or some type of 3D holographic projection.

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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

...or some type of 3D holographic projection.

Yeah, that 80,000,000-watt light bulb is a [expletive] to change.

For me, in short: a whole lot.

I say that not because I'm idealogically committed to NASA's success at landing on the moon, but because I have put many years of study into the Apollo historical record, including into parts some would consider the dregs of geekitude. For heaven's sake, we can look at the source code to the guidance computers and write emulators for it to verify that it does what it says it can do. We can duplicate all the orbital mechanics computations. We can reconstruct the mechanical design of the spacecraft almost down to the nuts and bolts.

It all checks out. That's the thing. With every detail you provide to a cover story comes the possibility that someone can verify that detail does not correspond to reality. So proven hoaxes are typically short on detail initially, and are discovered when the push for additional detail forces the hoaxster into saying something falsifiable. Apollo provides gargantuan amounts of verifiable detail -- all of which bears up under scrutiny.

If this is a hoax, this is a masterfully designed and executed hoax, right down to the alleged bits in the alleged computer.

Bart Sibrel likes to laugh at me when I said that even if Neil Armstrong himself admitted it was a hoax, I still wouldn't believe it. Armstrong's testimony does not by itself establish Apollo as credible, so by itself cannot impeach it as incredible. If Armstrong said it was all a lie, we'd still have to know how so much was faked. Without it the best explanation would still be that Armstrong is lying about it being a hoax.

So I would need a reasonably consistent and coherent combination of eyewitness and circumstantial evidence for a hoax. The circumstantial evidence objectively exists, but can usually be variously interpreted. The eyewitness provides the interpretation. The eyewitness would have to be someone recognizably attached to Apollo -- not Joe Blow who claims to be some low-level technician for a sub-sub-contractor in 1962. I'm thinking about people with the stature of John Aaron, Gene Kranz, Maxime Faget (albeit from beyond the grave). And they would have to provide verifiable evidence of how all that fakery was done, not just spin me a tale.

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

Somebody pointed out in another Apollo thread before that in order to prove the landings were fakes you would need to prove that every single piece of evidence and every single picture was faked, because if even 1 picture was real, then we were there.

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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"

But all Apollo aficionados believe in the paranormal as a result of Ed Mitchell.

For me it would have to be seeing the double shadows created by all those studio lights.

Knowing how they faked it.

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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!"

I don't think double shadows would do it for me. If the circumstances were perfect, I could imagine sunlight striking a reflective piece of metal on a piece of hardware and forming a secondary light source that might be bright enough to cause a shadow.

If that was sufficiently disproven, there would still be the question of some type of double-exposure malfunction, or other film anomaly.

Of course I'm sort of putting the cart before the horse, because before even exploring the possible technical gaffes, the very existence of a photo showing double shadows would have to be properly explained.

How could such a photo exist when every single Apollo photo has been analyzed to the nth degree by thousands of eyeballs over 35+ years. If there WERE any true double shadows, they would've been noticed and singled out by now. It therefore would have to be some previously uncirculated photo(s), which would necessitate a whole new level of inquiries and investigations into their authenticity.

Now, if Aldrin was standing there saluting the flag with four soccer-stadium style shadows poking out in each direction, and it had NASA's stamp of authenticity on it, I might begin rethinking my position a bit. :-)

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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

It is extremely hard for me to imagine circumstances where I would come to think the landings were fake, the amount of evidence is just beyond overwhelming. If Neil Armstrong had a press conference with that announcement I would conclude it is time for Neil to see a doctor and get some strong medication.

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

if only someone would just make a webpage with NASA photos that have slightly weird variations from what one would expect from a photo shot on the moon- along with a book that supports that position- then i'd believe it was fake..
or, maybe if one of the astronauts would punch some guy in the face for trying to make him swear on a bible that he was really there.. i guess that would be proof, too..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

I got it I gotIgotitIgotit! The thing that would really convince me...

...waking up as the star of The Truman Show.

If you woke up as the star of the Truman Show, the moon landings would be the least of your worries.

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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

I was thinking that I would only know it if I saw it but:
That would probably be a good start for me. Of course, we would have to know how all of it was faked, not just a bunch of pieces put together.

That, in itself, is a huge task. I haven't even seen enough HB knowledge to even justify starting the research.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

A left hook from Buzz perhaps........

Well, your showing the extended footage of the "transparency" window, and that of the flag really helped me... and that's despite the fact that the flag issue was never one of the biggest sticking points with me to begin with.

Since watching Lunar Legacy I now have a much deeper experience when I go into the yard and look at the moon... I can now really feel the reality of men strapped into seats heading that way... I can see and feel them as the approach, orbit and land... I can see through their eyes and feel through their skins and guts!

Oh yeah, that makes me think of another thing that might make me believe in the hoax.....Alzheimer's.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)