[pingflood]

Of course, it would've been extremely easy to fake the first moon landing. Why? Because it had never been done before. No one could say if that's how the moon's surface would react to astronaut boots, or how it'd look landing on the moon.

Sure, until you do a real mission there and it has to look exactly the same....

Makes it kind of hard to just make sh*t up the first time.

[stewart_photo]

When the first man walked to the North pole, we believed them based on their story. (snip)

We believed them because what they accomplished was entirely believeable. At the time, there had been dozens of expeditions on the artic and antarctic ice. They simply went further than those previous expeditions, using the experience and technology which already widely existed.

With that first moon landing, far more difficult than a trip to the North pole, there was very little experience to draw on and technology proven questionable at best. Think about all the millions of parts (electrical and mechanical), millions of calculations, and millions of things which could have gone wrong - and did repeatedly go wrong in the immediate past. Ultimately, NASA made a huge jump from what was possible before to what they said was accomplished. Given that, there is room for all but the most gullible to at least question those claims.

stewart

[stewart_photo]

"Did We Land on the Moon?"

No.

I have not witnessed it nor has god personally told me it's so. (snip)

No wonder so many, for so long, believed the world was flat when authorities (government, scholars, etc) said it was so. Luckily, there were doubters willing to look beyond that, and people willing to listen. Again, I don't know whether that first moon landing was or was not real. One certainly wants to believe, but there is some evidence to suggest otherwise. Thus, I'm keeping an open mind to either possibility.

stewart

[flyer]

1. This is easy to proove. E.g., Apollo 11, on July 21, 1969, deployed a retroreflector array on lunar surface (Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment). Which reflects light from the landing zone ever since.

2. The films from the landing zone show the landing zone's landscape in glory detail. And wonder what? It always looked precisely as it looks now. How did they know w/o going there?

3. Just read a bit, e.g., Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Thank you for those links.

[stewart_photo]

(snip) 4. And as somebody here already pointed out... The proof must be it is a hoax, not it is not. (snip)

Why? They're the ones claiming an affirmative, not the doubters. When someone claims ghosts are real and shows unconvincing evidence (photographs, videos, personal anecdotes, etc), the burdon of proof certainly doesn't fall on those doubting the validity of that claim. Why should it be any different for those doubting the claims of NASA?

(snip) And to call people making this insult trolls is a much smaller insult. Ben is a troll when it comes to topics like this. I say it again. (snip)

Since they're a fun break from the norm, I happen to enjoy these threads. We're certainly not proving anything here, just have a discussion about the possibilities.

stewart

[Gooshin]

the russians still havent done it, proof enough for me, cuz we would have.

[falconeye]

Since they're a fun break from the norm, I happen to enjoy these threads. We're certainly not proving anything here, just have a discussion about the possibilities.

steward, your opinion is appreciated.
I would fully agree with you, but Ben seems to be on a mission when it comes to such "zero point energetic" topics. Some of my friends (one in particular) are the same. And they are still friends But let me say this, this isn't a fun break for Ben, not at all. And I have trouble let him pass in his evangelistic mission. I've sworn an oath on truth when I received my Ph.D.

Why? They're the ones claiming an affirmative, not the doubters.

Why do you say "They"? I would have said "we". And "They" to the doubters.

The engineers of NASA did nothing else than land on the moon. They never claimed anything. And still largely ignore the "doubters"...

And why do you say landing on the moon is harder to believe than reaching the north pole? It is only ten times more far away (than a trip round the globe). Not that hard to reach. Especially not if parts of your team had already mass-produced 6000 V2 missiles 20 years ago... For an engineer, it is actually much easier to believe that you can fly and land on the moon than walk to the north pole

[Gooshin]

s
... For an engineer, it is actually much easier to believe that you can fly and land on the moon than walk to the north pole

it should be even more easier to believe that it was just staged inside of a bunker and the few people on top of things were told to keep their mouths shut.

[Venturi]

Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, after 2 successful Lunar orbit missions in the preceding 6 months, is far easier to "believe" than bringing Apollo 13 back home at all, much less safely.

When you compare landing on the Moon to the first expedition to the South Pole, the Moon looks easy by comparison.

South Pole: 3 months round trip exposed to extremely harsh environmental conditions, started with 52 dogs and ended up with 11 (Yum, raw dog for breakfast...). A compass to navigate; sleds/dogs and your frost bitten feet to transport you.

Moon: 6 days pad to splash. They left with 3 people, and came back with 3 people (Yum, Tang and NASA pate for breakfast). Had computers, a team of 100 people on the ground with radio telemetry and communications working for them and line of sight navigational tools. You sit/lay on a comparably comfortable couch/chair in a heated cockpit while Saturn V rockets propel you at 20K mph.

[jsherman999]

Of course, it would've been extremely easy to fake the first moon landing. Why? Because it had never been done before. No one could say if that's how the moon's surface would react to astronaut boots, or how it'd look landing on the moon.

If that were true, then why did every subsequent moon landing show exactly the same reaction to boots, sand flying, etc as the first "fake" footage?

The basic physics behind getting a vehicle to the moon had been around for a long time before the actual landing - and it had been proven that the R&D required to implement the technological details was more than doable - the Manhattan project alone proved that. Or were Hiroshima and Nagasaki 'faked' too?

A lot of really smart guys + a monstrous budget + 8 years spent in the middle of a frenetic cultural, economic, and space race? I'd have been very surprised if they didn't make it in 1969.

C'mon, folks. Conspiracy theories need to be taken with a pound of salt, and believing them belies gullibility far greater than accepting whatever event they're trying so feebly to challenge.


[milhouse] We're through the looking glass, here, people! [/milhouse]


.

[falconeye]

C'mon, folks. Conspiracy theories need to be taken with a pound of salt, and believing them belies gullibility far greater than accepting whatever event they're trying so feebly to challenge.

Yes.

We are living in a world where everybody can claim everything and it has become increasingly difficult to separate trash from truth. To a point where many say that there is no such thing as "truth"...

When I was in school, I couldn't understand why in Germany, we have a law (§130 Strafgesetzbuch Abs.3) which criminalizes the "Denial of the Holocaust" / "Holocaust is a hoax claim" (Holocaust denial - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
Meanwhile, it has become quite obvious to me. I can only congratulate the foresight of this law's creators at a time when so many were still alive to testify it.

[Sailor]

The basic physics behind getting a vehicle to the moon had been around for a long time before the actual landing - and it had been proven that the R&D required to implement the technological details was more than doable - the Manhattan project alone proved that. Or were Hiroshima and Nagasaki 'faked' too?

A lot of really smart guys + a monstrous budget + 8 years spent in the middle of a frenetic cultural, economic, and space race? I'd have been very surprised if they didn't make it in 1969.

Well said, my friend. There was absolutely no new science or discovery needed to go to the moon in the '60's (as opposed, say, to development of quantum mechanics, the elaboration of macromolecules or discovering residual radiation from the Big Bang). It "just" took megabucks (for the era), dedication, a bunch of extremely smart engineers, some remarkably courageous pilots and an enormous amount of very hard work. That is not to say it wasn't a magnificent achievement . . . indeed it was, perhaps the engineering achievement of the age. I find it tedious that people want to attribute the pyramids in Egypt or Mexico, the Roman canals, or other remarkable human engineering and agricultural achievements to something other than what they were - positive human accomplishments (borne of need and delivered with grit and determination), of which, unfortunately, there are precious few.


Jer

[wasser]

Many, then and now, doubt that first moon landing was real, pointing to the fact that NASA could not reliably get a rocket off the ground just a short period earlier (at one point burning up several astronauts in a fire), yet shortly afterwards was able to send a rocket to the moon, make a perfect landing on an object in space no person had ever landed on before, make a perfect launch from that same unfamiliar object, make a perfect rendezvous and coupling with the orbiter, make a perfect flight back to Earth, and make a perfect splashdown in the designated area.

It's easy to be skeptical of great achievement when a period of bad performance is followed with a very successful conclusion.

Here are the missions leading up to Apollo 11. The Saturn missions began in 1961. Missions that were catastrophic failures are marked in red. All others achieved successful results.


Unmanned Saturn-I Missions
SA-1
SA-2
SA-3
SA-4
SA-5
SA-6
SA-7
SA-8
SA-9
SA-10


Pad Abort Tests of Launch Escape Tower

Pad Abort Test 1
Pad Abort Test 2

Little Joe II Tests
A-001
A-002
A-003 High altitude abort test; launcher broke up. Result: Failure
A-004

Unmanned Apollo-Saturn Missions

AS-201
AS-202
AS-203
Apollo 4
Apollo 5
Apollo 6

Manned Missions

Apollo 1 Not a launch but a ground pad test. Command module fire, 3 astronauts die
Apollo 7
Apollo 8
Apollo 9
Apollo 10


Out of 26 launches there was 1 catastrophic loss. Apollo 1 was a terrible incident but wasn't an actual launch. However, 25 successful missions out of 27 is a fairly good record, especially considering the complexity and the enormity of the task.

As I said, it's easy to be skeptical when a period of bad performance is followed with a very successful conclusion; however, it's also easy to believe in success after a series of successes.

If you believe we never landed on the Moon, no amount of explanation and evidence will ever convince you that we did.

&

Vice-Versa

[joele]

Mythbusters did a pretty good episode on refuting many of the claims in this documentary and ones like it..

Hey, maybe the documentary is right and the first landing was faked, but many of the claims (like the photography ones) made in this documentary (and others like it) are easily dismissed, so until they offer something not stuffed full of obvious mistakes I'll stick with NASAs story.