Hello,
I'm quite new to this but interested in explanations. Over here in the UK the Apollo hoax issue isn't as hotly contested as it appears to be in the USA. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating topic. Did we (you) really go to the moon?
I'm quite convinced, but the other day I ran into a bloke who seemed to be very much informed and was certain that we didn't. He told me about contradictions in photographs (an issue I believe has been settled long since) and doubted that the technology of the sixties was up to the reliability required for such a feat. It "sounded" plausible (my background is rather literature than technology) even if it is highly unlikely that such a hoax could be hidden for decades so I simply listened.
However, one point was very interesting. He claimed that he never got a satisfying answer to the following:

A couple of years ago, the third stage of the Staurn V was found to be circling Earth; the very third stage that sent Apollo to the moon. So how can it be that the third stage that pushed the lunar lander to the moon turned up in Earth's orbit?

According to him the best explanation is that the craft simply stayed in orbit to tape some floating astronauts (something you can't do with even the best slow-motion) and some days later returned back to earth. The astronauts had the proper bone-loss and brought some rocks with unusual properties along; enough facts to convince most people.

When I asked him about the Russions he shrugged it off. They were much to embarrassed (when it turned out that the technology of the sixties was incapable to deliver) to admit that they failed to realise in time that the moon landing was an unachievable goal. Questioning the landing would have amounted to an also-ran.

This didn't quite convince me but I didn't know what to reply. Any suggestions?

BenGun

It should read saturn V instead of staurn V upper stage.
Sorry for the typo
BenGun

I would guess he is talking about the S-IVB-507 of Apollo 12.
PhantomWolf talked about it in this post:
The Disclosure Project

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After the TLI burn (the one that sent Apollo to the Moon) the third stage was reignited to push it into a solar orbit, in order to get it well out of the way. Orbital mechanics dictated its path from then on. Since it started out somewhere near Earth orbit it will return to that distance from the sun, and it just so happened that thirty years later Earth was in the right place to meet it again and for its gravity to have an effect on the orbit of the stage.

Ask him where he thinks it's been all this time if it wasn't as I described. If it stayed in Earth orbit it would have been a naked eye object for the last thirty years.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Before the later missions when the upper stages were crashed into the moon as targets for the seismic instruments, they flew past the moon and on into either high earth orbits or solar orbits. The Apollo 12 stage that was recently rediscovered had done the latter. After years of orbiting the sun, it returned to the vicinity of earth and was recaptured, temporarily, into a high earth orbit. The tracking data fitted this scenario.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/j002e3a.html

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It should read saturn V instead of staurn V upper stage.

Welcome to the board, BenGun. You can edit your posts up to 24 hours after you make them, in order to correct typographical and other errors, or to reword unclear passages.

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Thank you folks,
I didn't expect such a fast reply.
Did I get it right? The 3rd stage was recaptured by Earth because both (Earth and Saturn V) happened to be in the right place at the right time?
benGun

and the Moon, and the Sun...there are lots of forces tugging on it, albeit slight.
So the A12 SIVB has indeed settled in something of an Earth orbit, but it's a very, very big and very "eccentric" orbit...

My emphasis, as this seems to be saying that there was only one flight to the moon. Remind him (if he doesn't already know) that there were eight flights to the neighborhood of the moon.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Make that nine manned flights (and many more unmanned, of course). That's Apollo 8 and 10-17. Apollo 13 counts even though it never entered lunar orbit.

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"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Hi and welcome, BenGun.

If the Apollo CSM spacecraft had stayed in low Earth orbit it would have been a very visible naked-eye object. Ask your friend why nobody noticed it in the ten days or so it was supposedly there.

Ask him how geologists from around the world never questioned the authenticity of the lunar samples. Are they all so foolish as to fail to recognize the "unusual rocks" for what they were? Or are they all in on the hoax? Remind him that many of these geologists are NOT from the United States.

As for the Russians, well, I have to assume your friend is rather young. No one who was alive at the time would suggest the Soviets would have passed up the chance of exposing a hoax. And they would have detected it easily, as would anyone with the technical capacity to track the flights. Even amateurs in the US did that!

Finally, why would the hoaxers have repeated the hoax six times (and hoaxed one failure to boot)? The chances of its being detected would grow exponentially but there was nothing to be gained from repeated fake landings.

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"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Nowhere Man, your answer doesn't lead anywhere. Don't belittle me! I KNOW that there have been several landings but that was not my point. It struck me rather odd that something on the way to the moon simply returned on its own.
However, Donnie B brought up a rather good objection. If the Saturn stage would have stayed in earth orbit, any astronomer (certainly one) would have spotted it (although there may be hoax believers who'd claim that it was crashed deliberately after the mission to get rid of the evidence).
But I don't understand Dave J. He claims:
Does this mean that the upper stage is circling BOTH (?) Earth and the moon?
BenGun

Here is a nice orbital plot of the "temporary capture" of that old S-IVB:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/j002e3/j002e3c.gif Warning: 2.1MB image

This the motion of the object relative to the earth-moon system. Note that it came in near the L1 point, circled around several times then went back out. This motion is entirely in agreement with laws of physics that apply to orbital mechanics.

Yes, something can "circle" both the earth and moon, but the orbits are very complex, not the simple modified 1-body problems of elementary mechanics.

-Richard

Thanks Publius,
nice animation but is this real? I noticed that the object (named Joo23) in the animation did not come from Earth but from outer space. Now, I won't claim that this is an UFO, but it be interesting to learn why the object zig-zagged around whereas moon remained on its way.
BenGun

It depends on what you consider "returned". It's not like it is in low earth orbit or even remotely circular orbit, never mind stable orbit (see animation, it was just a short visit). The stage departed from the vicinity of the earth. Without large forces applied to it, it was bound to more or less return some time.

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Hmmm...I don't see how Nowhere Man was belittleing anyone. (based on the "remind him if he doesn't know already.")

It struck you as odd?? In the OP you stated that "He claimed that he never got a satisfying answer to the following..."

So are we now talking about your beliefs or his beliefs??

You really should warn people when posting a link to a 2.1 meg image, it almost killed Firefox on my machine.

If it helps to visualise the situation, in the time between 1969 and 2002 the stage was in its own orbit about the sun, slightly inside that of the earth and hence with a slightly shorter "year". It thus moved ahead of the earth, with the distance increasing until it was on the other side of the sun, at which point it can be considered to be catching the earth from behind. As it eventually came around to lap the earth, it passed close enough for the combined gravitational fields of earth, moon and sun to take it into that six-orbit earth-centred trajectory before going back out to its solar orbit.

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Sorry, I've got a 3Mbps cable moden connection and I didn't even notice how big it was.

-Richard

Nowehere Man was not belittling you or or anyone else. It is not unknown for hoax believers to come along who don't even know that there was more than one lunar landing, and your use of the singular in relaying what your friend said made the response perfectly valid. Additionally this was directed at your friend, not you.

Firstly, the stage was not on its way to the Moon. Once the LM had been extracted the S-IVB stage was shot off in an entirely different direction.

Secondly, it is not at all uncommon for things on the way t