Did the Soviets ever hint at, in any way, that the landing was a hoax?

Nope.

This is one of the sticking points for me about the HBers (I assume that stands for hoax believers?) If our opponents could have discredited our achievement, had there been any true doubt about whether we landed on the moon, then they certainly would have been the ones to blow the whistle on the whole thing.

More nope.

I was there.

The very first Moon hoaxers *I* ever saw or heard about wasn't until the late 70's. Then it was black radicals spouting it was just a "White man's lie".

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

I started hearing about them shortly after Capricorn One was released. I remember being amazed that anyone bought into that. After that my amazement just changed to pure disgust and remains at that level today.

Mike

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Plan as though you will live forever, but live as though you may die tomorrow.

Ah, we do live in different cities Mr. Meister.


(Okay, I really didn't need to reply, I just wanted to say "Mr. Meister")

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

As Neverfly and Big Don said - nope (and I was alive then too). The usual HB handwaving explanation (and you are correct, HB = Hoax Believer) is that the US paid off the Soviets with grain shipments, or something like that. Yeah, I don't believe it either.

And since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of information the Soviets had secret has come out, but absolutely nothing indicating that they suspected the US of any hoax.

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

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

^ I hadn't heard about the "grain shipments"...interesting.

Funny how those magic grain shipments never eased disarmament talks or released dissidents.

Another lame HB claim is that Soviet Union did not contest NASA's claim about the Moon landings because the USSR was faking their own moon program and would have likely been exposed as frauds themselves. Well, who's the bigger fraud in that case? The HB's already weak case is never weaker than when a third party is involved and they know it, so they mostly avoid or ignore issues like the tracking of Apollo from other countries.

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What happens on the event horizon, stays on the event horizon.

I find the mentions of grain deals as part of a HB clincher very naive. That is when they are used without understanding the circumstance at the time. Political circumstances and the arms race and what it was like in Europe and the oceans and who had who in who's pocket (owls around here?).

In this case there are multiple third parties. Jodrell Banks also tracked Apollo, and still others did so optically by watching for things like urine dumps.

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That actually had the reverse affect on me. I never realized the Soviet space program was as robust as it was.

And; because they were further along than I thought, it makes me wonder just how much technology that we had that was never really understood by the general public.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Well, yes. They had practically all the units they needed, including a lunar lander. They just couldn't get the main booster into the air without the big 'firework effect'!

With Apollo being so open - it had to be so that all engineers could work on it - I think practically all the US space programme is well known about and documented.

It is only things such as the military payloads that were put into orbit by well known rockets or the shuttle that remain secret. the general space 'tech' I believe had been built, worked on, redesigned, and upgraded in a fairly open environment, such that all engineers were aware what was going on. This enabled them to question anything openly if they thought there was a problem.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'
- Isaac Asimov

Are we alone in the Universe? Are we the only intelligent life? Who knows? But the universe is so BIG, it somehow seems such a waste of space if we are ....

Yes; and that's why I worded it the way I did. Although it was all freely available, I do think there was a lot of technology that had to be searched (even if it was just a casual picking up of a document) that wasn't really made known through press releases, in depth interviews, scientifict or technical magazine articles and other outlets that are available to people not in the normal loop.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

NEOWatcher,

I'm not quite following you. I was a kid at the time, 10 years old when Apollo 11 landed. There were tons of articles in the popular press, magazines like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, some of the news magazines. They didn't have wiring diagrams, but they were very detailed.

Now, the "general public" generally understands very little technical detail, even today, because they aren't interested (how many people have a clue as to how a cell phone works). But certainly the segment of the public who was interested in the Apollo program could find out lots of information.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

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

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Yes; But I was thinking more along the lines of test projects and some other little known stuff that led up to the big popular press.
For instance, I followed the space program very closely as a kid, and did have access to quite a few magazines (My dad had a waiting room) and my own PSci subscription, but there are things during that time frame that I don't remember hearing about. Mainly, the things that I see in museums now that were test projects, or support facilities.

Now; maybe it was because I was too young at the time, but what was revealed from the Soviet program was an eye opener to make me look closer at our program. (And ours, being open, is able to be looked at closer and more easily).

Actually; I'm not really convinced I understand myself because I think I lost my train of thought.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

At the time, I was reading magazines like Aviation Week and Spaceflight, and it was obvious from those that the Soviets had some sort of manned lunar programme going. For instance, Cosmos XXX would be launched on an unexplained mission, and the magazines would explain how it made manoeuvres typical of lunar orbit insertion, etc. Come glasnost, while lots of extra detail emerged, the basic analysis in the magazines was proved correct, Cosmos XXX was indeed a test of the manned lunar module.

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

By Cosmos XXX, do you mean Cosmos 30? I thought that was a photo reconnaissance satellite?

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Just in case you're not kidding, gwiz is probably referring to Cosmos 379, 398, and 434, all of which were tests of the ЛК lunar lander.

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“There’s nothing that spells progress in large, friendly letters like trying to combine two totally incompatible technologies.” – David Szondy, Tales of Future Past.

Their big problem was building large engines and the engine bells. The N1 rocket was hampered by too many engines, 30 in the first stage, 8 in the second, 4 in the third, and then in the forth a stage. Too many engines increases your risk geometrically, they just didn't have the lifting power.

Correct.

Also Cosmos 381, which was a test of the Block D stage for its role in the manned lunar mission.

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

Really? Wow. I hadn't heard that one.

I was born in '71, so I don't remember the moon landings, but I did still grow up in a cold war environment. To think that the Soviets would have been willing to be party to a US moon landing hoax in exchange for a few boat loads of corn? Absolutely, positively ridiculous. The reasons why that is absurd keep popping into my head so fast it would take me weeks to type up the list.

NASA could claim that we landed men on Mars last week by building a huge trampoline and having them jump REALLY high, and it would still be a more believable story than the idea that the Soviets would have ever gone along with a faked moon landing by the US.

Especially given the fact that the whole point of the Space Race was to demonstrate the superiority of one side (ours) over the other (theirs).

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Relight the Firefly!

"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)