I was wondering how people got interested in debunking the apollo conspiracy theories.
I'm trying to understand the motivations people have for arguing (one-sidedly) endlessly with a group of people who will never back down. Mainly I'm trying to understand why I do it.

I expect my background is a bit different from most debunkers.
I have no formal qualifications in the field, only a scientific way of thinking and some common sense. Also I'm an amateur photographer.

A few years back, I found a website detailing some hoax-proof claims and at first I actually believed them, I looked at their photos and things seemed to make sense.
What changed it was two videos I watched, to do with the slo-mo moonwalk claim and the flag waving in the wind.
Even from the point of view of a hoax believer with no real qualifications, I could tell that:

1. The film looks very wrong at around 2X
2. The flag only waves when it's being twisted
3. the movement of the flag would be very hard to simulate on earth

That started me actually looking at the claims more critically and then I found clavius...
need I continue?

I can sort of understand the usual tactics of CBs (never give up!). When I realised I'd been mislead in the way I had been, I felt very stupid. I suppose some people cannot admit they are wrong.

Welcome to BAUT
Maybe you will become a debunking contributor here.

Debunking provides a rebuttal to HB claims.
To the uninformed or the fence riders, the HB claims may seem to make sense. Without an effective rebuttal, some folks may play with the idea it may have been faked etc.

So the debunking isn't to convince actual HB's- Especially not to convince those like Percy and Sibrel- they are making their wages by claiming it was a hoax!

The debunking is to teach the masses how Apollo happened, what happened and how to use critical thinking to reach rational conclusions.

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"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." -- Vaclav Havel

Quote:

We just don't know much.

Yet if not for those words, what would science be for? - KaiYeves

I propose an ATM corollary to Godwin's law: an ATM'er will inevitably compare himself to Copernicus (Or Galileo), when the going gets tough. - CodeSlinger

Space has always been my Wow, it is the place of dreams. Apollo made some of those dreams, for a time, come true. Think about it, in 1903, we fulfill one of mans oldest dreams, to fly like a bird. Then, a mere 66 years later, we fulfill another dream, flying to the moon. If you take the time to think about that it just overloads completely. Apollo said, we don't need alien black building blocks to take us to the stars, we can do it, ourselves, for we are WE. And while the astronauts are not gods, they are heroes, men who calmly did scientific miracles, along with the thousands of other people pushing them high and higher until they touched the moon.

To try and spoil that, to make it a fiction is just, wrong. It shrivels our reach, and paralyzes our grasp. If they had evidence that could stand the light, that would be sad, disheartening, and I would morn the the lie that had been my truth. But they don't, and whats worse, some are more than foolish, more than delusioned, some profit from their lies, that they KNOW to be lies. That is disgusting, especially in light of what lies they tell. Stories of murder and saboteurs, on a scale that defies all hope of reason. This is their cult, their religion, and nothing we say will convinve those who cling to its putrid mass. Still, lies in shadow take on a kind of truth.
We must continue to expose this for what it is. For this is not about America, this is about Humanity, and what greatness it can do. For WE landed on the moon. People the world over say it, it unites us in ways few other achievements have. We must continue to reach out to the heavens, and know its wondrous ways. For the We that went to the moon, shall some day dance up on the floor of heaven, and swim between the stars. We shall make it our destiny and our hope.



And yeah, the peeps on youtube. Twas they who REALLY got me fired up on this.

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Jarrah White started a thread on the theory on the Brickfilms.com forums. Initially, I was under the impression he was right (yes, I've been a hoax believer). Then I ran across some debunking websites.

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I animate LEGO Bricks as a hobby. Isn't that just awesome?!

Very well said, Ravens Cry. I love to see people passionate about this.

Nitpick: Paragraph 2 line three reads "...whats worth, some, are more then foolish, more then disillusioned..." It should read "...whats worse, some, are more than foolish, more than disillusioned..."

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

*facepalm* thank you very much will edit that. I also, looking at it again,I meant to say delusioned , which turns out may not be a word, but it should be.Oh what the heckles cakes, I am going to use it anyway. And yes, 'than', 'then', always screw them up. In my haste, I didn't proof read as well as I should have, so thank you for taking the time to look this over.
[edit] I am sure there is some run on sentences, and my English teacher would crucify my grammar, but it gets the point across. For some reason I enjoy writing little speeches like this, full of my love of words and oratory. I wouldn't say I am good at this, but it is something I enjoy. And that is the point.

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I watched them on TV before there were conspiracy theories to debunk

Actually, the first space-related conspiracy theory that I can remember was in articles claiming that the early Soviet EVAs were fabricated. I think I read one in Reader's Digest, ten years after.

I saw the Fox TV show, and it made me wonder. So I looked into it in more detail. In my searches I found Bad Astronomy, and as I looked in more detail and studied more material it soon became apparent that one side was based on ignorance and misunderstanding.

The up side of all this is that it provoked me into looking into Apollo in far more detail, and I have been amazed by what I have found. There is so much material available it's incredible. It's sucked me in (much to my wife's frustration!), to the extent that whereas only five years ago I was reading library books on the subject, now I have a shelf full of books, all the Apollo DVDs from Spacecraft Films, model rockets, magazines and newspaper clippings from the time, and I've given presentations at my local astronomical society about Gemini and Apollo, and have been booked for one on the Soviet space program in November and the Apollo 11 40th Anniversary next year!

As to why I argue about it online, it's because for every hardcore HB who will never be convinced, there are a hundred people who may have been fooled by the convincing (to the layman) arguments they put forth. I argue to provide a rebuttal, lest the wrong view remain unchallenged. It works in two ways. We can provide the factual rebuttals (such as when they claim certain images do not exist or were never taken, and we provide the links to same, to give an extreme example), and we can provide the clearly framed arguments to display the attitudes of the HBs. Over on Apollohoax a thread has been started with some very specific questions asked of one semi-regular HB. The answers have consisted of claims of insufficient time and some vague handwaving, despite all we have asked for being the evidence and line of reasoning that led him to conclude it was faked. There could be no clearer illustration of the fact that they often search for something they can make fit a predetermined conclusion, rather than drawing a conclusion from a reasonable train of evidence and logic.

So, I argue to reduce the effect of the conspiracy theory rubbish and contain its spread as much as I can. For a lie to spread only requires those who know the truth to remain silent. I refuse to remain silent.

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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.

1. Actually I don't remember how I got involved, it might have been some idiocy about Apollo13 or "From the Earth to the Moon" on some DVD-Forum.

2. As Neverfly already said, you don't try to enlighten the entrenched HoaxProponents, they would rather invent some evil worldwide conspiracy (usually involving at least the Jews, the Illuminati and George W. Bush*4)
than admit their theories are wrong. But it is important to educate those who may have seen the Moonhoax on TV etc.

Which leads us to #3
3. I'm no rocket scientist either, but a lot of Hoaxer claims can be shown to be silly by
- common sense
- going out of the door with open eyes
- reviewing complete and better images or video
- showing internal contradictions
While most lurkers won't show up, I think it is enough to address those points for them, and the actual responses of the Hoaxproponents will be rather telling to the fencesitters...

Some ten years ago a colleague at work showed me a magazine article supporting the hoax, mainly with the photographic arguments. He knew I had an interest in astronautics and he challenged me to debunk it all, which I did without too much effort, helped by the fact that I'm also interested in photography. It rested there for several years until I came across the Bad Astronomy book, which led me to here and also to the Apollohoax forum.

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

"Delusional" is the word you're looking for.

Unusually for this crowd, I don't come at debunking from a scientific angle at all. I consider warping history to be a great crime. The history only works if Apollo was and is real. If these men really went to the Moon and back. If the great machinery behind it ground out a real program with real science that still really works. Once you claim it's a hoax, you have to explain not just the history of those people who worked the program but the history of those people who created the hoax. You have to explain the history of those outside the US who accepted the hoax, including those who weren't exactly our allies at the time--the history of the Cold War only works if the Apollo missions were real. If the history of the Cold War is wrong, there's even more explaining to do.

So how did I get into it? I encountered Phil's book in a bookstore, then--since I didn't have money at the time--I checked it out of the library. I got fascinated and read the website in its entirety. (This was before the blog.) Eventually, I ended up posting to the forum, though mostly what I contribute in this section is either correcting spelling and grammar where necessary and where asked or asking the Great Obvious Questions.

The Great Obvious Questions? What would it take to convince you that you're wrong? How and why was it done? If you can't answer those two questions, you don't have anything on those who accept the evidence.

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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've been interested in Apollo since the missions were flown. Later than interest became professional.

I've always known that there were people who thought it was fake, but I didn't know they took it seriously until I had to share a three-hour bus ride with someone who talked me ear off about it.

I googled up Sam Colby's atrocious web site at first. Leaving comments here and there got me an invitation to David Percy's site (when he still paid attention to critics) and then an e-mail exchange with Phil.

The rest is Clavius.

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

At almost 58 years of age, the arc of my life has paralleled that of the exploration of space. Astronomy, telescopes and deep curiosity have been with me the whole time.

I, too, remember an article about the USSR spacewalk by Leonov being faked. Googling around will hook you up with all sorts of stuff the USSR supposedly faked.

Anyway, by the time the FOX show was broadcast, I was teaching high school science. I recorded the show for my own amusement. I was shocked when I finally got around to watching it but what really struck home was the number of my students who had seen and believed the show. I did some "teachable moment" debunking of the aspects of the show I already understood and then went looking for more ammo.

The "Moon Hoax" assignment that I give (almost) every year was the final product. I have written about it on these pages previously and will be doing so again. Right toward the end of the school year, I will be doing this multi-day activity with all my honors earth/space science students. I will be polling them before watching the movie, after the movie and after my rebuttal. I will let you know what the results are although I predict the general range of "belief" that man has walked on the Moon will be in the 70% range before the show, 20-30% range after and 80% or above after my rebuttal.

The Kennedy assasination conspiracies have drifted in and out of my sphere of caring over the years. In fact, I have been reading (since the first of the year) Vincent Bugliosi's huge book on the subject. However, I don't feel much of a need to try to educate anybody about that one as most of the crowd I run with are not conspiracy believers about it.

The 9/11 stuff came later as people whom I otherwise find intelligent started to spin those stories. I tried to stay on top of it all but find that I only have the capacity to deal with a single consipiracy theory. Since it hits so close to home (my classroom), the Apollo hoax claims are the ones I spend my energy on.

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"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

-Kilgore Trout

Oh, so your'e a johnny-come-lately. I made a scale model of the
CSM when I was in junior high school, out of wood, shaped on my
dad's lathe, before the first plastic model kit came out in 1967.
My model was dimensioned from a poster about the Apollo project
that I got in 1965 or 1966, though I can't recall or imagine where I
could possibly have acquired it. It wasn't folded, so it must have
been rolled. Huh. Wonder where I got it.... Maybe a present from
my parents, or my grandmother. Where did she find it? Bookstore?

Anyhow, I've been following Space exploration since the 1950's,
perhaps with the series of Disney movies, or the launch of Sputnik,
or the attempts to launch Vanguard. My mother says I was
fascinated by a series TV programs about the stars when I was
four, which would have been circa 1957.

In the late 1960's I read "The Interrupted Journey", which was a
watershed publication in UFOlogy, but that is the only such book
I ever read. I found it nearly convincing, but not quite.

I don't recall ever running into any UFO believers or Apollo hoax
believers before the computer networking era, but I did run into a
guy who received messages from the USS Enterprise... I didn't try
to argue with that....

I was co-sysop of the Minnesota Space Frontier Society BBS from
the late 1980's through the mid-1990's, and posted in the Fidonet
astronomy and Space echos. There I argued with a number of
cranks, on the presumption that if somebody gave out wrong info,
and nobody else corrected it, I had to....

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

Debunking misconceptions [when I can] is sorta voluntary service I do for mankind.

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"Shut up and calculate" R. Feynman

I had always had an interest in space exploration and such but actually had no knowledge at all of hoax believers, until one day a friend tried to convince me that it was all a hoax. This took me aback and I had no immediate answers to any of the HB claims. Twas a bit of a shock. And so I googled forth and found BAUT, Clavius and many other great resources, and many nutty sites too.

My grandfather worked on The Saturn V that sent the Apollo 8 crew to the moon in 1968, and I watched the landings on TV in July of 1969, so I guess I take this Moon Hoax nonsense a little too personally.

I remember guys claiming it was a hoax as far back as 1973, but the internet has help spread this kind of collective insanity.

I don't know who said it first, but this moon hoax belief is cultural vandalism. The most ambitious journey in human history is being trashed by people who for the most part seem to understand it the least.

I don't expect to convince any of them, but it's important that we not let these HB claims stand unchallenged.

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Banned By Nancy Lieder

I heard it was James Oberg who came up with the term "cultural vandalism."

"Cultural vandalism" has a more literal meaning when talking about the destruction of physical icons of culture, such as painting the Parthenon pink or opting for "Pepsi Presents Michelangelo's 'David.'" But I think Oberg is the originator of the connotation of attacking and co-opting the ideas of a culture and its history for presenting one's own ideas.

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