I’m not sure I agree with his gross generalization of YouTube commenters, and I’m sure not all Hoax Believers are as dumb as he says (but I have seen precisely this level of deductive reasoning by some HBs myself), but I feel I must link to this XKCD comic because if I don’t, I’ll get emails about it anyway.
Click to see the rest of it. Some NSFW language!
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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December 27th, 2006 at 12:03 am
I thought it was funny. The grain of truth in there about the overwheming amount of ignorance out there is a bit sad. I guess the first words spoken on the moon were “what a wonderful world!”.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:20 am
I actually knew a guy in high school who wrote a paper wherein he referred to “Louis Armstrong, the first man on the moon.” I asked how he could play the trumpet in a vacuum, and he just looked at me funny.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:29 am
That, Akusai, is the funniest thing I have heard today. You, sir, are a master of wit.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:48 am
you know, as a public service i try to turn those conversations around sometimes… i have to admit i think maybe i’m less than effective.
December 27th, 2006 at 3:49 am
That is so aweome…hahaha…Bigmike’s response is the best!
December 27th, 2006 at 5:57 am
I know they don’t even talk about this in schools, as my niece the other night, while we were “quizzing” her on things, thought that “Lance Armstrong” was the first man on the moon.
I don’t remember a bicycle though. Hmmm.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:26 am
Good one there, Phil! (might want to warn about the language, though).
And they say PANs have no humor…
December 27th, 2006 at 6:56 am
Dang it Phil, I’m gonna have to move my xkcd feed above my BA feed on my Google home page, so I go there first. That very comic is the next tab in my browser right now!
Y’all know Randall Munroe (the xkcd author) used to work at NASA Langley, dontcha? At least so he says…
December 27th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Wasn’t it Steve Armstrong of the Armstrong brothers the first man on the moon? I think with the VoltCruizer, he can go anywhere…
December 27th, 2006 at 7:58 am
No, I think you mean Jack Armstrong. He was The All-American Boy after all.
December 27th, 2006 at 8:21 am
I thought it was Steve Austin….
Funny stuff. Funny, funny stuff.
December 27th, 2006 at 8:56 am
It was Stretch Armstrong, you noobs lol!
(I think that’s where he missed the true essence of YouTube commentary – lol and noob. I’m waiting for the webcomic named that).
December 27th, 2006 at 9:01 am
Yeah, well I’ve seen the stuff… they put in Stretch Armstrong.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:21 am
The moon landing was clearly faked. Louis Armstrong would never have survived passage through the Van Halen belts. geesh!
December 27th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Unfortunately, the commentary on YouTube commentaries isn’t all that far off the mark.
What likely prompted the cartoon was the posting on YouTube of an old Apollo video. Some hoax believers went hog wild in the comments. Of course, it doesn’t take much to comment on a YouTube video (no entry requirements, so to speak).
Here’s the link (language warning w.r.t. some of the comments):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RMINSD7MmT4
Lorne
December 27th, 2006 at 9:55 am
I thought it was so real I clicked on the start button.
Ger
December 27th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Actual comment from that video:
OxBaker88 (1 week ago)
This is fake. WE Have never been on the moon. Not yet anyways. 1 word. Money. 2 more words. Tax Money. This took A LOT of money from tax payers in the usa. And this isn’t a communist country? Go figure..
December 27th, 2006 at 10:42 am
Sad. Very sad. But, the saddist thing is that it isn’t so far fetched to hear people say those things.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Very sad, Astroprof. What’s really sad is that the parody is virtually a verbatim echo of the real thing.
No hyperbole necessary.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:38 am
It’s funny that this has shown up with this timing. I had heard about people believing the moon landing was a hoax and thought it was ridiculous so I started to do my own research. First I spent about 30 seconds on a page describing why that showed pictures; at that point I realized how stupid it is to look at their pictures because they could be altered.
So… I started searching and found a website that links to the actual archives from nasa (I used this site because it’s links are easier to follow than others although it’s not a nasa site the pictures it links to are). After studying the photos I came to the conclusion that the PHOTOS don’t seem correct. In almost every picture the shadows don’t line up correctly and in pictures that extend far away from the camera there appears to be a backdrop. The backdrop consistently begins an area with different colored dirt and usually a sudden change in the density of rocks (usually less). I am being completely honest in all of this, I looked for myself and I was convinced. I’m not saying we never made it to the moon but I can’t believe these photos. I have detailed a couple below.
I found the pics through this site:
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html
(please note that the pics it links to are at hq.nasa.gov a subdomain of nasa)
Apollo 11:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5930HR.jpg
1. Bright light behind astronaut’s head – with no atmosphere and only one light source there should be no reason why there would be brighter light from around him, just one crisp shadow. (I also read somewhere that NASA didn’t use lights in the pictures but I have no verification of that).
2. Zoom in the shadows on the left and right are angled to the center – most lenses are convex not concave so I don’t think it’s the lense. It seems more like there is one bright light shining away from the person into a curved reflector, that’s pure speculation.
3. In the distance there is a definite line where the dirt changes color and there seems to be less rocks. Almost like a backdrop, once again speculation.
Apollo 17:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a17/AS17-134-20425HR.jpg
1. Look to the shadows again, particularly how the astronaut’s shadow is at about a 60º angle from level (in the 2nd quadrant) and the rocks on the right, middle (vertically) of the picture have shadows that are practically horizontal.
2. Again as you look past the focus of the picture there is a definite change in color of the soil and the density of rocks changes in a line.
These are the main problems that I have found in all the pictures. Another problem that I didn’t include is that sometimes you see the side of the astronaut not facing the sun and it is visible, not completely dark like it should be. With only one bright light source that shouldn’t happen, and with the curvature of the surface there should be no light reflecting back, at least not enough to illuminate the space suit like it does.
I have tried to reason this out and make excuses like the change in soil is from the dirt being stirred up by the thrusters when it landed, but these lines where the soil change are not curved and is too consistent in all the pictures. Also in some photos it extends too far away.
I don’t know why they would be fake and I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this but I did my own research on the subject, if you can rebut these arguments please do so in a kindly manner, I want to be wrong. I believe we the mars rover is real I believe most everything else about NASA, I would even believe we landed on the moon, but I don’t believe these photos.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:43 am
MLPSkeptic, all of your concerns are met with either my page about the Moon hoax or Jay Windley’s Clavius site.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Well that was about as fresh as week old bread, MLP.
Five minutes on this site would have saved you the embarrassment.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Actual youtube quote:
And that’s a moon landing defender!
The other thing the cartoon forgot was the string of expletives.
I thought about posting links to Clavius and the BAUTForum, but don’t feel like signing up to YouTube.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Who was Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story—-Aldrin?
December 27th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Gimme the specific links to the videos, Irishman. We have our own YouTube Channel, so we’ll post the links where you want them.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Just posted links at the link Lorne Ipsum provided, but my comments haven’t shown up yet.
Too many links, perhaps?
One for the BA’s page, one for the BAUT forums, and one for Clavius.
December 27th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
You can tell Lance Armstrong to his face, but watch out what you say to Buzz Lightyear.
Aldrin punches out Sibrel.
(just in case the above link doesn’t work,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcoyiJdeWT4)
December 27th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I’m reminded of another Simpsons quote!
“I’m like that guy who single-handedly built the rocket and flew to the moon! What was his name? Apollo Creed?”
December 27th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
A new twist that’s started to show up lately is claims that “color TV wasn’t even available in the 1960s.” This is an incredible demonstration of ignorance. I’ve encountered this particular argument at least three different time within the past couple of months. It’s just more of the same-old-same-old: they don’t do research.
December 27th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Ha, I’ve seen that “no colour TVs” thing as well, funny stuff. It reminds me of the “Apollo couldn’t even run a calculator” stuff thats tossed around from time to time, I guess based on the assumption that without computers science is impossible.
December 27th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Or, that the computers at the time were special purpose electro-mechanical devices rather than general purpose digital electronic devices like we have today. Building a device that solves a fixed set of math problems is a very different thing than building a universal calculator.
I suppose some may start denying WW2 all together soon, but the devices built for code breaking and trajectory calculations back then are sort of a case in point.
December 27th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Mark, I wouldn’t be surprised if that idea’s coming out of the UK. At the end of 1969 there were only about 200,000 colour TV sets in Britain so colour broadcasts weren’t available to the majority of the population until the ’70s.
As for the HBs, I’m pretty sure a lot of them don’t believe the hoaxes they just want to get a reaction, in other words they’re stirring. And the ‘true believers’, well, if they can spend 10 years or more at school and not be able to spell nor put a sentence together in a comprehensible form, how can they be expected to understand Phil’s excellent debunking of all the Moon Landing Conspiracy “facts”?
December 27th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
British or not, it still remains that five minutes of research on the internet would yield an account of the availability of color TV in the U.S. back to the 1950s. This exemplifies the whole modus operandi of the Hoax proponents; they don’t do research.
But you’re right. When grown adults cannot even grasp the role of punctuation, their strategy for choosing a worldview may lack some essentials.
December 28th, 2006 at 5:30 am
I suspect that the HBs are winning, and the best tactic they have is poison root wrt the Iraqi conflict
The claim is that the evil American Gubment lied about WMDs that that great philanthropist Saddam Husain had so they could get his oil and GW could right a family dishonour against his dear old Pa. This means the evil American Gubment lied about the Apollo hoax and were not above murder (Apollo 1) to cover things up.
or the record – My take on Iraq is that either Saddam miscalculated and thought if people thought he had wmds they would not attack him or their construction was subcontracted to Syria to get around the weapons inspectors
Any hue, America has a credibility gap into which the HB’s have been piling in
December 28th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Yes, but it’s not enough to just cite examples of official lies on the part of specific government individuals. Conspiracies sometimes happen, but when a conspiracy theorist cries out, it’s possible to ask if the alleged conspiracy is within the domain of possibility. It’s quite possible to lie to the public just long enough to get a war going. It’s another order of magnitude to claim that an administration decades long-gone erected a falsehood -the Apollo Hoax- which must be maintained by future generations of liars, indefinitely, regardless the cost, even if that cost may far exceed that of actually placing some people on the Moon.
The “Government” is an entity of quite finite resources, and is far from capable of doing absolutely any arbitrary agenda at will.
December 28th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Phil:
In Charlottesville’s Barnes & (Ig)Noble I found a moon hoax book about 6″ away from your Bad Astronomy book in the astronomy section.
Sooooo….
I took it over to the mythology section where it belonged!
Score one small one for reality… B&N staff will probably put it back, though.
Richard B. Drumm
Former UVa Parallax Program Observer
Vice President, CAS (Charlottesville Astronomical Society)
December 28th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
I notice that Barnes & Noble likes to take books from categories {c,d,f} and plant them in categories {m,n,o}.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Everyone knows that the photos were faked. Its even in those redbull commercials. How can the lunar thingy be so clear if the sun was behind it? The cross markes are even well into images like they was photo shopped or something. As a kid in florida I saw the night apolla launch. It seemed to be quite small and go out of sight really fast and then they said they were on their way to the moon, but we really knows the truth.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Mick Mus, you’re making an idiot of yourself. The Bad Astronomer posted a link in this thread to pages that answer the very questions about how come the lunar lander is visible when the camera is looking at the shadowed side, how come the pictures are clear, and how come the reseau grid (cross marks) are obscured by objects in the pictures (i.e. look like they are behind the objects). It would be one thing if we hadn’t already pointed this out, but since we have and you have failed to look at the evidence, that pretty much shows your level of credibility.
Here are a couple of specific links addressing these and several other photo claims, complete with example pictures.
http://www.iangoddard.net/moon01.htm
http://www.clavius.org/photoret.html
December 28th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
I think we have a troll here; Mick Mus mentions a redbull commercial? C’mon.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:17 am
I was at Titusville when Apollo 11 took off, and got to see it, albeit that was a good distance away, but it was still awesome. I remember sitting on the sofa upside down when the first video images were shown on tv.
So let me aks you all a qurestion: why don’t they turn the hubble towards Tranquility base and just get some snapshots of the LM base and all that and get it over with?
December 29th, 2006 at 2:59 am
Ticklemonster Says: “So let me aks you all a qurestion: why don’t they turn the hubble towards Tranquility base and just get some snapshots of the LM base and all that and get it over with?”
As has been mentioned here before, as spectacular as the resolution of the Hubble is, it’s still about 10X shy of being able to resolve something as small as the LM base. Remember that the moon is still a quarter million miles away from the Hubble.
- Jack
December 29th, 2006 at 5:41 am
Well heck, just hook up a chain to it, and tow it a little closer with a shuttle then!!!
OH well. (not like I have read every page here)
December 29th, 2006 at 5:43 am
Incidentally one of my favourite films is “The Dish” which showed other countries were tracking Apollo 11. Were they all fooled. Sorry I forget the Russians who acknowledged the feat were paid to do so with Wheat :rolleyes:
Sheesh!!!!
December 30th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Anyone old enough to remember the landings KNOWS they went. The Russians would have given anything to have the chance to put one over the Americans. If you knew the world situation at the time you would have no doubt at all. I’m a Brit and not all that keen on the USA & GWB at the moment, but I know they went. Don’t forget the Russians got unmanned probes there years before the USA, so were perfectly capable of tracking the missions, and boy, would they have been shouting ‘Foul’ given the slightest hint of anything dodgy. Ye gods, I don’t even know why I’m bothering to argue with them, they’ve probably all been abducted and taken to Venus by friendly aliens, so they can’t be wrong.
December 31st, 2006 at 10:41 am
“Another problem that I didn’t include is that sometimes you see the side of the astronaut not facing the sun and it is visible, not completely dark like it should be. With only one bright light source that shouldn’t happen, and with the curvature of the surface there should be no light reflecting back“
That’s just my favorite part of MLPSceptic’s post.
How big does this mensa think the moon actually is, about the size of a football field?
December 31st, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I also have to laugh (hard) when reading this part specifically:
“Another problem that I didn’t include is that sometimes you see the side of the astronaut not facing the sun and it is visible, not completely dark like it should be. With only one bright light source that shouldn’t happen,…”
They never seem to grasp the implication of this claim. If the shaded side of the astronaut is pitch black, it means that no light is entering the astronaut’s eyes. An astronaut in the shade should, according to Hoax proponents, be bat-blind. That first A-11 photo cited by MLPSceptic is pointing directly away from the Sun. Why doesn’t MLP argue that the very landscape ought to be unseeable, just nothing but blackness? Doesn’t he realize the difference between the soil and the sky, which is in fact perfectly black?
Hoax proponents are just plain stupid, not because they question the conventional wisdom, but because they only take their arguments just far enough to assure themselves that the hoax is real- but no further.
October 9th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
In fact, there is no MOON!
February 29th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Here in Scotland. I am surrounded by hoax believers, since there was recently a documentary on t.v. no one can recall the name of show…so I’m not sure if its the fox one…I haven’t seen any of them myself….
but it was all the works, flag waving, no stars, people being murdered, intense heat, which I assume to be van allen belts, some of these people are so convinced of these hoaxes…but I reckon its as my main man the humanitarian Peter Gabriel says” You are what you watch” ….but to do so blindly is folly..and dangerous…just look what they got way with doing in Iraq..after misleading..if not down right lying to the us. and uk people
ps the footage of astronaut getting help up off the ground was difficult to argue against with its seeming wee glitch…over use of footage I said…help on this one
April 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
If these arguments are to progress beyond ignorance, NASA and debunkers should acknowledge that to be skeptical of the Apollo Manned Moon Missions is not unintelligent, illogical, unscientific, or unreasonable. Many skeptics do a lot of reserach. Of course there is a lot of ignorance out there. NASA is responsible for much of it. Many Americans don’t even realize that the Space Shuttle only travels about 150 miles into space. But every elementary school student in the U.S. is thoroughly instructed about the Apollo Manned Moon Missions, even though there is no proof (zero) some 40 years later, and while there is a mountain of NASA manufactured evidence, the quality of that evidence is lacking. I watched the first Manned Moon Landing on television when I was 8. After 20 years of observation using superior sensory technology, I became very skeptical. Another 20 years later, having reviewed thousands of pages of so called scientific evidence, it is clear that at least some portions of the Manned Moon Missions were simulated. I read a lot of the hoax and hoax debunker blogs. NASA is a highly skilled propaganda machine. But they often fail to even consider valid hoax arguments. They distract, sidestep, focus on invalid or ignorant arguments, even stoop to name calling. If a child asked me to prove that I personally made a toy, it would not matter if the child mispronounced a word or wasn’t previously familiar with a particular tool I used. For me to call the child stupid or crazy, or avoid the child’s legitimate request does not make me more intelligent … nor does it in any way indicate that the child is not a critical thinker. Regardless of the TRUTH … NASA is responsible for continued widespread ignorance and for failing to provide quality evidence and adequate proof of an outrageous claim. 100% propaganda and 0% evidence usually is a strong indicator that somethging isn’t true. If NASA would turn off the propaganda machine, and seriously answer valid questions, we could make some progress.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:02 am