Will the Moon Hoax dumbosity ever end?
No, of course not. As long as people lack critical thinking skills, and are lazy, it won’t.
Why Phil, you are asking, what do you mean by "lazy"? I mean that nearly every hoax claim can be debunked with just a few minutes of investigation. Yet most people don’t bother. Of course, it’s daunting when the conspiracy theorists flood you with a bazillion dumb claims, but sometimes you just take ‘em one at a time.
The latest comes from that bastion of antiscientific nonsense, Rense.com. In an article on that website, Ted Twietmeyer claims that an image from Apollo 16 is questionable. What’s really questionable, however, is Twietmeyer’s ability to do any actual investigation.
He found a picture from Apollo 16:
Click to embiggen, or get a nice hi-res 1Mb version.
About this picture, Twietmeyer says:
This is about a pole standing on the Moon placed there by Apollo 16. It may be the flagpole, but that cannot be determined by this photo.
What? Of course it can be determined. What a ridiculous thing to say! If he had done any actual work –even a trivial amount — he would have found everything he needs to explain this picture.
Incredibly, and unlike most Moon Hoaxers, he gave the catalog name of this picture: AS16-115-18557. About thirty seconds of searching yielded me the transcript of what was happening on the surface of the Moon when that picture was taken. From this, I learned that the pole is actually what’s called a double-core penetrometer, and not a flagpole. This is a device that allowed the astronauts to get deep samples of material from below the lunar surface.
Twietmeyer didn’t bother to find out what the pole actually was, which is really pretty shoddy research. After all, it maybe just might play into the picture, dontcha think? As he says:
What’s so amazing about this pole? Incredibly, the astronauts were able to hammer this into the ground without ever getting near it.
Well, that depends on what you mean by "near". The nearest bootprint in the photo looks to be about two feet or so away. What can we make of this?
Well, another thirty seconds on teh googles gave me this image of the entire device:
This picture (click for a better version) is from a simulation of the use of the device, so the astronauts could practice using it. Look at the picture. The astronaut is standing a couple of feet back from the penetrometer, allowing him to use the side of a rock hammer to pound in the pole. He can’t stand too close to it because of the limited movement of the spacesuit; he has to stand back to be able to reach it.
Also, reading the transcript linked above, I saw that Charlie Duke at first used his hands to ram the penetrometer into the surface. Then he moved off and let John Young use a hammer to pound it in the rest of the way. It looks to me from the picture taken on the Moon that Duke used his left hand to get the pole deep enough so that it would stand up, then moved around to let Young whack at it. Before Young actually hammered it, Duke took the picture. The footprint is sideways in the picture; it’s entirely reasonable that Duke stood sideways to it when he hand-drove it into the surface. In fact, if you look at the hole the penetrometer made, the shape of the hole is consistent with Duke having stood sideways; the hole is an oval aligned left/right, as you’d expect if Duke were on the right, using his left hand to drive in the pole.
That’s it. There’s your big conspiracy.
I love how Twietmeyer tries to make this sound so conspiratorial. He talks about zig-zag threads of dust where someone brushed over footprints… in his mind, that means someone was covering up evidence of the faker’s shoe prints. In real life, those are most likely just streamers of dust from the astronauts boots as they moved around; the dust travels farther on the Moon than on Earth due to the low gravity and, more importantly, the lack of air and therefore air resistance.
He also goes out of his way to ask why don’t we see a picture of the astronaut’s face (I presume he means that of John Young, whose legs we see in the picture). Um, Ted, they were taking a picture of where the penetrometer was penetrating. As I have said a zillion times, one reason the astronauts went to the Moon was to take pictures of the Moon. In this case, they wanted a record of the surface around the device. Who cares what the astronaut looked like at that moment?
Sheesh. That’s very typical of these guys; say something that sounds profound, sounds like there’s a big mystery. But when you pull back the curtain, you find these guys are full of sound and fury, but they signify nothing.
It’s funny– it took quite a bit of effort for Twietmeyer to edit that photo, write up that page, and make all those silly claims. It would have taken far less effort to get the actual truth! It was trivial for me to find the answer.
I often wonder what these guys are thinking, what their motivation is. But in the end, what matters most is that they are wrong, and it’s really really easy to show. I hope that the more people laugh at these silly antics, the more marginalized these goofballs become.
Tip o’ the sun visor to Fraser for sending me this!
January 30th, 2008 at 11:43 am
That’s… um… WOW.
Lots of imagination eh?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:47 am
*sigh* When will all that Bad Word Deleted end…
January 30th, 2008 at 11:48 am
And what about the fact that the shadows on the “flagpole” and astronaut aren’t parallel? Heck, they couldn’t even get the “flagpole”’s shadow to be a straight line!
For the humor-impaired:
January 30th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Greg:
When will all that bulls**t end…
When Hoagland is launched into space and walks on the Moon himself? Of course, he’ll just say it was all part of a NASA-induced hallucination.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Ken: I thought Hoagland believed we did go to the moon and was one of the biggest debunkers of the hoax?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Solopsism. The opposite of faith; the other extreme really. Faith in extremis is adherence to a truth somebody else has established without question; the moon hoaxers hold that nothing outside of their direct experience or inference is “true” – so their subjective truth is absolute, and should be accepted by everyone. Any deviation from this is perceived as malicious, since attacking their worldview is attacking them; it can result in paranoia and aggression.
In both cases, it is attacking the certainty of what somebody knows to be the truth – and, personally, blind adherence to a doctrine of faith or solopsism is something of a control issue, and speaks more about the person than the belief.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Ted Twitmeyer is a crackpot, indeed. But he seems entirely stable compared to the rest of the crackery on Jeff Rense’s website, such as the ads for Psychic Powers, Paranormal Experiences, and the articles on the Mystery Space Machines.
What do you call it when you have a hypothesis, but then pick and choose evidence to support your hypothesis? Cause it AIN’T SCIENCE!
Example: If you think that the moon landings were a hoax, would you:
A) Look thru the hundreds or thousands of photos available, and only dissect the 2 or 3 that might support your idea, and totally ignore the rest?
or
B) Accept the fact that it is much easier to explain the other 99.99% of the photos as evidence that we DID go to the moon?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
*awaits for episode 546,762,982 of this never ending saga*
January 30th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
So phil, I didn’t actually catch (in your debunking) where the footprints of the astronauts are in the actual picture above… like in the simulation, there should be two footprints side by side within 2-3 feet of the “pole”… there are none seen…
Actually, in the “conspiracy” photo above, there is a left foot and a right foot, but they are facing opposite directions… so that would mean that the astronaut was standing with his legs IMPOSSIBLY crossed over each other, which (as you say) pushing a pole into lunar rock (and not using the pile driver that NASA provided?!)
Seems to me, that you are making the facts fit your worldview, instead of letting the worldview change with the facts…
The fact is, of course, that there are NO footprints where they should be.. and that is indeed weird, and I am skeptical of anyone who doesn’t see what is right in front of their face… the picture you show (the simulation) doesn’t match with the actual photo of the lunar “pole” at all.
Please explain this difference a tad bit better… i.e. where are the dual side by side footprints that SHOULD be next to the “pole”, and why would an astronaut defy NASA and try to use their hands to drive a pole “deep” into lunar rock?
After all, NASA said that the lunar surface was rocky, and hard, not soft plyable regolith… so how was the astronaut able to “hand drive” a pole “deep” into rock without leaving footprints?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Why would they not just keep the print near the pole? Why would getting rid of it help create the illusion? Why not show the face of the astronaut, would they not have been involved in the hoax?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hey, BA, is the second picture from the other studio?
*Ducks and Runs Away*
January 30th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
30 seconds to google it? I googled for it and found it in about 10 seconds. The third link is http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/, which has a very nice description about it.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
His name is actually Twiet-meyer? O.K., NOT twit. Seems to translate to “alley-farmer bright one.” Both German/Hebrew origin (Yiddish, perhaps?). Anyway, nothing to indicate why he became a nut case…
W.M
January 30th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
How come there are no footprints facing the pole like in the training image. Toes pointed towards the pole. Could they be out of range on the left?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Over the last several months at my office we have been battling our finance director with continual false claims to our executive management. She will simply say “such and such is broken, and I have no confidence in x”. This in turn causes the executives to question our professionalism as an IT department, and our competency as people.
We always have proof that she is full of sh*t but when we produce irrefutable proof she either seems to forget about the accusation and/or makes a new false claim about something else distracting people from her.
What kills me is that our executives seem to continue to listen to what she says, and we have to continually fight to prove ourselves.
Your stories about the moon hoaxes and about creationism vs. evolution strike me as a similar issue. I often wonder, more and more out load lately, how is it that we as children are told the story of the boy who cries wolf, but in reality these people are taken seriously almost every time. At least by enough people to start the whole process over again.
Keep up the good fight!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
bkallee, look at where the shadow of the pole lies in the second photo — right where the astronaut is standing, which is — as you surmise — directly to the left (and off camera) in the first photo.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Wondering…..
Is there a connection between different subsets of woo?
That is, do the people who are HB’s also subscribe to the Psychic Friends network, and are they homeopaths/anti-thimerosal activists?
And how many HB’s are ‘cdesign proponentists’/planet X believers?
And, is there a cure (aside from the band, of course)?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I came across that article the other day on a site I frequent to get the latest news from Conspiracy nutters. As long as their is stupid to go around, these guys will never stop.
Michelle, Hoagland did de-bunk the moon landing hoax, BUT, saw smashed glass domes and alien artifacts there instead. If I had a choice between the two, I’d much rather believe we never went. (Of course we did!)
BTW, is there any way I can post without going through the spam filter? I think I accidentally spammed when I tried to link to my blog? Is there any way to do that without spamming?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Mike J, for once — just once — can you actually read what I wrote before you comment here? I talk about this exact issue in my post.
I explain the footprints in the actual lunar picture. And where do I say they try to drive the pole deep into the dust by hand? I don’t — I’m explicit about the use of the device.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
@ Michael Lonergan: Well… YEA, but still, Ken picked the wrong guy here. If anything, I’d throw Hoagland there to show him there are no glass buildings.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Game, set and match to Phil!
January 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Why are there trees and clouds in the background of the second picture???
January 30th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Because that pic wasn’t taken on the moon. XD
“This picture (click for a better version) is from a simulation of the use of the device, so the astronauts could practice using it.”
January 30th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
We had a brief thread about this picture a couple days ago on another forum. There are a couple partial footprints just below the big one on the right. They’re hard to make out because they’ve had dust kicked over them, they they are indeed pointing towards the core sampling tool and at the right distance.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
how old does NASA believe the earth and universe to be?
January 30th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Doris: because you don’t know how to READ.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
phunk, do you have a link? Now that I look, I see them.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Okay, so I picked the wrong guy when I said Hoagland. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep all those conspiracies straight. Mea culpa.
As penance, I promise to never visit the glass cathedrals on any future visits to the Moon.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
@Seargent Zim: only when their particular beliefs are in concordance.
A believer in ancient astronauts is, of course, at odds with a young earth creationist. A devout faith-healer is at odds with a crystal-healer: the latter is considered witchcraft, and is by that definition evil.
Hoagland, the face-on-mars guy, affirms the lunar landings were real and debunks others who don’t mostly because then he can affirm that the things he sees in artifacts were really in the context of the moon and not of a studio.
Reason isn’t the only enemy of folks that have these control issues: anybody that threatens their weltanschauung is an outsider and a threat.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
My first thoughts were boy they were standing a long way from the pole. Then I had to think, how far would I be if I put on ALL my winter clothes and tried to do the same thing.
It become similar to working with an axe or sledge hammer, as you shoulder becomes the pivot point and not your elbow or wrist, if you were using a hammer.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I usually try to turn the tables on the HB’s. Don’t start out on the defensive, go on the offensive.
Ask them if they believe the Shuttle is real and that people really fly into orbit. If they pass that one, ask if they believe the ISS is real and that people are on board it (this one works a lot better if there is a Shuttle/ISS pass in your area that you can predict and then point to).
If they pass those, then ask, “If we can do that, then what’s the magic boundary that keeps us from going to the moon?” After all, the Shuttle is only one generation removed from Apollo flight hardware. It’s sort of the same tactic as asking creationists who admit to “micro-evolution” (AKA “adaptations”) what the barrier is that prevents accumulated adaptations from turning into speciation.
That usually ends the discussion for me, and the silence means they’re actually thinking about it.
- Jack
January 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Skeptic4u posts:
[[how old does NASA believe the earth and universe to be?]]
I think the best figures available at the moment are 13.7 billion years for the Universe and 4.55 billion years for the Earth.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Phil said: Mike J, for once — just once — can you actually read what I wrote before you comment here? I talk about this exact issue in my post.
I explain the footprints in the actual lunar picture. And where do I say they try to drive the pole deep into the dust by hand? I don’t — I’m explicit about the use of the device.
————————————————–
Stop saying I don’t read the article… that’s totally annoying, because I do read every one that I comment on, and several that I don’t ;^)
So according to the article, the guy put the pole in BY HAND before using a small device correct?
So if he put it in by hand, the laws of physics in a microgravity enviroment would basically dicate that in order to push a pole vertically down into the soil (enough that it would “stick” before using the device to push it deeper) that the astronauts footprints should be on either side of the pole…
And the “excuse” that regolith was pushed over the close footprints is laughable at best…
I still believe the USA went to the moon, but that the public pictures were all edited and/or faked….
I’d like to raise another point, about the ‘broadcast’ of the Apollo over live TV … I personally don’t believe the technology existed to send a video picture television broadcast from the moon to earth during the late 1960’s… since coast to coast broadcasts were a “new” thing during this era… how am I supposed to believe that they could do it from the moon, when they had a hard time even going 3,000 miles?
Furthermore, I’m supposed to believe that they had “remote control” cameras that were left on the surface of the moon to capture the take-off of the lander?! Where is the landing site, so I can pay the thousands of dollars it takes to have the “landing site” imaged via telescope, or chinese satellite… we should be able to see “rover tracks” in the regolith… just like we were able to see the “4×4 tracks” on mars made by small dust devils… or like we were able to see the mars rover…
Put up, or shut up phil.. show us current images of the landing craft’s base, and the 4-5 foot wide tracks left by the rovers..
I’m willing to bet there are NO images of this site, or even coordinates that are public so I can do my own science and look for myself… and to me, that makes me skeptical of the offical story.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
<3 the Macbeth reference at the end.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/lunarlanding.html
January 30th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
MikeJ: I propose a simple experiment. You will need:
* 1 short, sturdy pole with a pointed end. (Try a support pole from a tent, for example.)
* 1 location with sandy, gritty soil (so as to be similar to the regolith on the Moon.)
* 1 large, heavy, sturdy object
* 1 tape measure or similar
Now, stand at your chosen location. Stretch out your arms to their full length in front of you, pole in hand. Slam the pole (pointy-end down) into the sandy soil. If it doesn’t stay upright the first time, do this a couple more times, until it remains vertical on its own. Release the pole.
Now, without moving your feet, whack the end with the large, heavy object, using a simple downward motion against the top end of the pole.
Set down the large, heavy object next to your foot. Then measure the distance from your footprint (or from the large, heavy object if you didn’t get a good footprint) to the pole. Report back to us with the distance between your footprint and the pole.
Actually, I’m tempted to do this and YouTube it. Even though I have short arms, a quick check with a pole suggests 35 inches from my foot to the pole.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Mike J, you really need to read some background. I strongly recommend Andrew Chaikin’s book “A Man on the Moon”.
Working in those bulky suits was really hard work. The astronauts had to work hard to grip a tool, or to bend their arms, and their vitals were being continually monitored. If they worked too hard at one thing, they had to cut something else out of the schedule.
So, they found ways to minimise the effort required for each particular task. These were often found during training sessions like the one pictured in Phil’s second picture. It was probably harder work for Charlie Duke to bend the arms of his suit so he could stand next to the pole while shoving it into the ground than it was for him to shove it into the ground from a couple of feet away. Hey, your arms are more than a couple of feet long, aren’t they?
The properties of the lunar regolith are also relevant – it had a few inches of fairly loose material covering a much more solid layer (the individual grains are jagged so they interlock – drilling deep was a big problem on more than one Apollo mission). My guess is that Charlie Duke was able to shove the pole into the loose stuff, that was very likely deep enough to hold the pole still while John Young whacked it with his hammer, which was needed to drive it deeper into the regolith.
But, here’s a thought. Don’t take my word for it. Do some research for yourself. Phil has a links page that includes a link to the Apollo lunar surface journal, which carried a huge wealth of detail (including complete transcripts of the radio transmissions of each mission). Once you have researched it, then you will either be able to understand why Phil reckons his explanation is right, or you will be able to ask relevant and sensible questions.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
[/i]Where is the landing site, so I can pay the thousands of dollars it takes to have the “landing site” imaged via telescope, or chinese satellite…[/i]
0° 40′ 26.69″N
23° 28′ 22.69″ E
That took all of 10 seconds.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Mike J: Assuming you really are asking the question, why we don’t show you pictures of the base. The base is not that wide, nor that visible. Viewing it directly would take a telescope capable of a resolution below 12cm/pixel or better. This is currently not available. It could be done from orbit, but that I’m sure would not suffice.
Besides, were you shown these things, the goalpost would be moved. You are comfortable in your belief and scoffing at others who do not give you proof sufficient to your standards. It must be doubly comforting because you have standards that cannot be met; prodding others with claims like the old woman in Italy who proudly demanded that James Randi tell her “…the chemical formula of the soul.”
It is nonsensical in the same degree as your demands. Were you given the coordinates, you would not have a telescope of sufficient resolution, yet you would claim success in not seeing the landing struts.
So, then – come up with a plausible reason why we would go and not take photographs yet rig up another multi-million dollar set on earth and shoot those but not spend the time to screen the photographs for errors and, oh, in your words I believe: “put up or shut up.”
Qualifying answers will not involve esoteric cults, conspiracy theories involving freemasons, NASA efforts at disinformation to hide alien artifacts, and any other explanation for which you do not have proof at hand.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
[...] debunks another Moon hoax [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I checked the hi-res on the archives. The original footprints facing the pole appear to be dust covered in the lower right corner of the picture. The assumtion is that this must be the original spot the astronaut stood when driving in the pole. If you enlarge with Photoshop, they even appear smudged from the slight movement of the feet while hammering as well as partially covered by dust from later movement. Check the hi-res, they clear show up. This is a great one BA. Has fun figuring it out, but took me a lot longer than it did you.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
No lie: I’m dealing with some moon hoax idiots who INSIST that 150% is double. The reason why is that, if you double the footage of the video taken on the moon (actually, 2.4x is the correct amount) to match 1-G, the arms and everything else go crazy.
I showed this in Episode 3 of Bogosity and proved it in a follow-up video. Now the cranks are insisting that I sped it up too much, and 150% is the proper amount to speed it up.
Their reasoning: originally, the video was slowed 50% (100% down to 50%), so to get it back to its original speed, you increase it 50% again (100% up to 150%). They INSIST that it’s dishonest to do it any faster.
I am not making this up. I COULD not make this up!!!
This is the mentality we’re dealing with, here.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Well, the thousands of pictures we do have from the surface of the Moon is proof enough for me. The reality is, even if we could image the landing sites, the conspiracy theorists would just proclaim them as being fake. It’s really pointless to argue with them. Look at Hoagland. The Face on Mars has been shown for what it really is. These people asked for it to be re-imaged, and it was. The images came back, showing it to be nothing more than a hill. What did they do? Screamed NASA was deliberately degrading the image. It’s a losing fight, I fear.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
@Shane – that’s too funny. A lot of people do genuinely struggle with percentages though. I remember vainly attempting to convince somebody once that 20% off a 20% discounted price was 36% off, not 40%…
January 30th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
You can get exactly where this picture was taken on Google Moon.
http://www.google.com/moon/#lat=-8.971134&lon=15.485100&zoom=15&apollo=a16/17
January 30th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
“But when you pull back the curtain, you find these guys are full of sound and fury, but they signify nothing.”
Bra-vo.
You really should have titled this article “A Tale Told By An Idiot”.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
“I’d like to raise another point, about the ‘broadcast’ of the Apollo over live TV … I personally don’t believe the technology existed to send a video picture television broadcast from the moon to earth during the late 1960’s…”
You don’t “believe” that Apollo 8 was able to broadcast a video of themselves taking turns reading passages from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968? As a “theory” this is extremely easy to debunk with science but if it’s a belief then it’s impossible. No matter what evidence is presented someone can always “believe”.
Just to explain a few things on how this all works. As the signal comes into NASA it’s collected and processed (put together) into a viewable video. Then it’s transmitted on a giant monitor in the control room which the media (TV Stations) “recorded” with their cameras and then transmitted. It wasn’t a direct connection between the astronauts and the people’s TV sets. “Live” is a relative term because there is always some delay when there is space in between two points of transmission. Electromagnetic energy travels at up to 186,000 miles per second and the moon is around 200,000 miles from Earth. http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/ ……..
The DSN, Deep Space Network was established back in 1958. We used this sucessfully to communicate with our very first satellites Pioneer 3 and 4, in 1958 and 1959 respectively. By 1968 we had advanced well beyond and stations in many places on Earth creating many lines of sight to the Earth. We also had very big and powerful antenna such as the 64 Meter facility in Goldstone California.
http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/history/1960s.html
January 30th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Nobody seems to have seen that the pole is far too complex to be a flagpole. No astronaut or faker would ever use a flagpole that is not as simple as possible, to keep weight low.
Also, a big issue raised by conspiracists is the perfect quality of the photographs. Why, then, the apparent lack of good photographic style in this photo is so criticized? According to the conspiracy theory, all “lunar” photographs were taken by professional photographers that made a far too good work to be credible. Now a photo of dubious to no artistic value is criticized for exactly the opposite reason.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Mike J. says: “Stop saying I don’t read the article… that’s totally
> annoying, because I do read every one that I comment on, and
> several that I don’t.
Phil’s annoyance came from the fact that you asked a question on something that he had specifically gone out of his way to address (i.e. no footprints where they “should be”).
>So if he put it in by hand, the laws of physics in a microgravity
> environment would basically dictate that in order to push a pole
> vertically down into the soil that the astronauts footprints
> should be on either side of the pole…
First, the moon is not a microgravity environment, it’s 1/6 g. Second, planting a pole on the moon in an Apollo-era EVA suit is not like raising the flag on Iwo Jima. You do it one-handed standing to the side.
> I still believe the USA went to the moon, but that the public
> pictures were all edited and/or faked….
I find this fascinating (really). If we went to the moon, why would the photos have to be faked?
> I personally don’t believe the technology existed to send a video
> picture television broadcast from the moon to earth during the
> late 1960’s… since coast to coast broadcasts were a “new” thing
> during this era… how am I supposed to believe that they could do
> it from the moon, when they had a hard time even going 3,000 miles?
1) Coast-to-coast broadcasts were not “new” in the 1960’s. The first c-t-c entertainment transmissions were in the late ’20s or early ’30s.
2) Tremendous difference broadcasting and analog signal through 3,000 miles (5,000 Km) of atmosphere around the curvature of the Earth to a private TV receiver with only a few decades of amplification, and transmitting digital data through only 100 miles or so of atmosphere (after 240,000 miles of vacuum) to a 60 meter receiving dish that has millions of times amplification.
3) Small signals from space is a specialty for these ground stations. The tracking beacon in Vanguard 1 (1958) was only 100 mW (1/10 Watt) yet they had no problem hearing it at it’s 2,000 mile (3,200 Km) apogee. Pioneer 10 has a transmitter with only 10 Watts, yet it was still detectable at several billion miles, many times the distance to Pluto.
- Jack
January 30th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Mike J.,
If you think that both live television from the Moon and real-time remote-control of devices on the Moon were not possible at that time, then you’ll have to also tell the Russians about it, since that’s precisely how the Soviet space agency explored the lunar surface with its two Lunokhod rovers at about the same time.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
About the penetrometer:
How far away from the penetrometer is the astronaut in the picture taken on the moon?
What distance was the photographer from the penetrometer when he took this picture?
How different does an object at a distance of 10 feet look from the same object at 100 feet when it is photographed on the moon? Does it look smaller and more distant?
Is the video of the astronaut pounding the penetrometer into the moon’s surface also faked? Was that video taken here on Earth? Do you notice how the tool stands almost straight up for a few seconds when it drops to the moons surface. The video is provided in the nasa link.
The astronaut uses only one hand to pound the penetrometer into the surface of the moon. Why would it be impossible to walk by and shove it into the ground before starting? Why would it be hard to force it into the ground and get it to stand?
I’m not sure what I’m refuting. What part of that photograph make it look like it wasn’t taken on the moon? I need facts and physics to debunk the “problem”. I need critical thinking, not just “it doesn’t look like the other photograph.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Don’t be so hard on Mike J… He said, “I still believe the USA went to the moon, but that the public pictures were all edited and/or faked….”
Remember that for some people in this world, seeing IS believing. Some people were not around to SEE the Great Depression, therefore, it must not have really happened. Some people were not around BEFORE color television, therefore, they cannot believe broadcasts were ever only in Black and White, or worse yet, only on AM radio. Some people cannot fathom there was a time when microwaves, cellphones, or even the internet DID NOT EXIST. Therefore, anything that predates their own existence MUST be questionable.
If Mike J had been alive and old enough during the late ’60’s to see the live broadcasts of the lunar missions, I doubt he’d “believe” the pictures were faked.
That doesn’t mean you HAVE to have been there in order to know the truth. I for one wasn’t even born until after the last human mission to the moon. However, I have been to NASA (and not just to the places the general public gets to see on the tour), and I KNOW that it takes hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of people just to get one Shuttle mission off the ground. The sheer number of people involved in the Apollo missions pretty much proves that there was no conspiracy. Not to mention the fact that there is PHYSICAL EVIDENCE of lunar samples, photographs, films and EYEWITNESS reports of people who are still alive today.
So, Mike J, I totally understand your ignorance. If you yourself weren’t there, it must not have happened.
*rolling my eyes*
January 30th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
“Some people were not around BEFORE color television, therefore, they cannot believe broadcasts were ever only in Black and White”
It’s interesting you should mention this. One guy claimed to me, as evidence of the Apollo hoax, that there was no such thing as color TV in the late ’60s.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
On a lighter note, does anyone else chuckle at the word, “penetrometer?” It sounds like a cheesy porn movie prop.
Now, the Mars Pathfinder’s “Alpha-Proton X-Ray Spectrometer” may SOUND like a made-up word instead of an actual scientific instrument, but at least its not something a third-grader (or much older adult who’s been up too late) would laugh at!
January 30th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Greg in Austin, I never thought about that until now, now I can’t stop thinking about it. Curses! Where’s my DVD collection?
January 31st, 2008 at 1:20 am
> I personally don’t believe the technology existed to send a video
> picture television broadcast from the moon to earth during the
> late 1960’s… since coast to coast broadcasts were a “new” thing
> during this era… how am I supposed to believe that they could do
> it from the moon, when they had a hard time even going 3,000 >miles?
They?
The technology of the first “they” isn’t the same as the technology of the second “they”. Broadcast television wasn’t contracted by NASA nor to did the two use the same technology. Broadcasting is casting “broad”, to be picked up by individuals. It’s not the same as directional, to a targeted reception.
Fallacy of:
Appeal to Novelty.
That only new technologies are worthy.
If the video technology wasn’t available, then why did Apollo haul the transmission antenna along and take time setting it up, when every micro-ounce was important as well as time spent on the surface?
By today’s standards, the vid transmissions were crude, but that’s far from being non-existent. If the video setup was a hoax, why did none of the hundred’s of TV engineer’s that worked on the project step forward and admit it? Did Westinghouse rip-off NASA and fool them into buying the one-vidicon technology when it didn’t even work? Did NASA send it along without testing it, practicing with it, and training with it? Why did the LSM’s have an S-band array if it didn’t even work?
If the 60s and 70s were too archaic for straightforward S-band VHF transmission then surely the automobile was a technology too advanced for anybody in the 1930s.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:46 am
HAHAHA! Love the flagpole-may-not-be-a-flagpole thing!
This LOOKS like a comment on the Bad Astronomy Blog, but there’s no way to tell for sure if that’s really what it is.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:58 am
Whatever the conspiracy theories, it’s pretty cool seeing photos of footprints on the moon. I’ve used (I’m guessing) similar sampling kit during geological investigations and it sends a little shiver down my spine knowing people have done the same up there.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:18 am
I personally don’t believe the technology existed to send a video picture television broadcast from the moon to earth during the late 1960’s… since coast to coast broadcasts were a “new” thing during this era… how am I supposed to believe that they could do it from the moon, when they had a hard time even going 3,000 miles?
Simple – the problem with coast-to-coast broadcasts was the curvature of the Earth (since they hadn’t invented communications satellites at that time), whereas the moon has a clear line-of-sight. It’s freakin’ light, man – 3000 miles is nothing.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:06 am
Excellent job, Phil, but with one extremely small mistake: the purpose of the penetrometer was to measure the hardness of the lunar surface, not to take samples of it. (The same gadget was used on Apollo 15.)
January 31st, 2008 at 8:40 am
Mike J said: “And the “excuse” that regolith was pushed over the close footprints is laughable at best…”
What’s laughable about the explanation?
January 31st, 2008 at 8:57 am
Embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word!
January 31st, 2008 at 9:10 am
“But when you pull back the curtain, you find these guys are full of sound and fury, but they signify nothing.” – BA
Gotta award style points for paraphrasing the Bard. Now if you could do an entire debunking in iambic pentameter, that would be something.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:31 am
MikeJ writes:
[[I personally don’t believe the technology existed to send a video picture television broadcast from the moon to earth during the late 1960’s… since coast to coast broadcasts were a “new” thing during this era… how am I supposed to believe that they could do it from the moon, when they had a hard time even going 3,000 miles? ]]
The technology existed, but it was expensive. NASA could afford it, CBS couldn’t.
[[Furthermore, I’m supposed to believe that they had “remote control” cameras that were left on the surface of the moon to capture the take-off of the lander?! Where is the landing site, so I can pay the thousands of dollars it takes to have the “landing site” imaged via telescope, or chinese satellite… we should be able to see “rover tracks” in the regolith… just like we were able to see the “4×4 tracks” on mars made by small dust devils… or like we were able to see the mars rover…
Put up, or shut up phil.. show us current images of the landing craft’s base, and the 4-5 foot wide tracks left by the rovers.. ]]
They’re not big enough to show up even if we pointed the Hubble at them. Look up the resolution and do the math.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:46 am
Mike J:
Merely claiming that an argument is laughable doesn’t debunk it. You need to show why it’s laughable. Otherwise it’s just your unsupported opinion.
This is my unsupported opinion: You really need to shut up.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:54 am
Ok, I apologize for the “shut up” thing. I jast came her from reading Aetiology and my tolerence for ignorant commenters is at a low ebb.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:57 am
So is my typing ability, apparently.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:33 am
# Thomas Sieferton 30 Jan 2008 at 3:30 pm
I’m willing to bet there are NO images of this site, or even coordinates that are public so I can do my own science and look for myself… and to me, that makes me skeptical of the offical story.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/lunarlanding.html
————————————–
LOL, so I was right… there are no pictures of the landing site… and the claim that we don’t have the optics to see 5 foot wide tracks on the moon is stupid! Since we were able to see the “4X4″ tracks on mars… see APOD for the actual shots of the 4×4 tracks left by dust devils on mars…
So if we can see dustdevil tracks on mars, we should be able to see rover tracks (which are the same size) on the moon… follow me so far? I know most telescopes wouldn’t give us a clear high-resolution pic, but we could at least be show the 1km loop that was left in the regolith by the mars rovers when they drove around…
As for the coordinates given by nasa… I’ve known about these for a long time… strange thing, is that others have looked at the supposed sites… there is nothing located at those coordinates… just standard moon surface… no tracks, no lander, no remote control cameras and the associated broadcasting hardware it would take to make the broadcast (i.e. power source, antenna, and at least a mega-watt tranciever). The broadcast didn’t just have to go through a vaccuum.. it had to go several hundred thousand miles, then go through our magnetosphere, the atmosphere, and then be relayed to the major tv stations…
As soon as I get the money I’ll pay to have the supposed sites imaged by the Chinese satellite…
But I suggest that the “skeptics” have dropped the ball on this one, since none of you have “looked for yourselves” … you just “believe” it becasue it was on TV, and because NASA says so.
Rosa said: MikeJ: I propose a simple experiment. You will need:
* 1 short, sturdy pole with a pointed end. (Try a support pole from a tent, for example.)
* 1 location with sandy, gritty soil (so as to be similar to the regolith on the Moon.)
* 1 large, heavy, sturdy object
* 1 tape measure or similar
Rosa, you forgot one crucial part of your little snarky science experiment suggestion… and that of course is LOW gravity… if you add low gravity to the equation, you will see that it would be quite hard to make a pole stand perfectly vertical on the lunar surface when standing over 3 feet from the object… i.e.. in the bulky astronaut suits their reach was even less…
Jack Hagerty said: 1) Coast-to-coast broadcasts were not “new” in the 1960’s. The first c-t-c entertainment transmissions were in the late ’20s or early ’30s
Jack, television was invented on January 26 1926 By John Logie Baird … so logically it is impossible to have the first coast to coast broadcast in the late 20’s -30’s… and according to all sources I know of… the first transcontinental tv broadcast was on September 4, 1951…
Finally a commenter said that the moon is not a microgravity environment, that it’s actually a 1/6th gravity … to them I say you’re mincing words … since they obviously knew the argument I was trying to make, that in a LOW gravity environment, you can’t exactly “push” things into the ground from a distance and still get a perfectly vertical pole… and the HAND hammer that the astronauts used was small, and couldn’t be swung from far away… unless they had a long hammer with some reach on it like a sledge hammer.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Not to beat this one to death, but a direct broadcast from the moon was a lot easier than a coast-to-coast broadcast. One, the signal from the moon was line-of-sight (LOS). Two, long before 1969 people (radio amateurs mostly) were using the moon as a reflector for point communication on the ground. Radio amateurs in the U.S. are limited to 1000 watts input power. That translates to around 850W output. The technique was developed by the U.S. Military in the late 40’s. Imagine the losses caused by ionospheric signal rotation and absorption by the lunar surface. Yet communication using lunar reflection was a realistic proposition. Imagine how much easier it would be if the transmitter were actually on the moon using large, high-gain, parabolic antennae on Earth!
See EME http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)
In case you are wondering, TV is just another form of radio transmission despite the fact that TV’s and radios are sold as distinctly separate items in retail stores. And yes, in 1969 we had electricity and all that.
Coast-to-coast, OTOH, requires a network infrastructure as the recipients are not LOS. How the moon broadcast was transmitted on the coast-to-coast network was described well by Dan Asti.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
The Rover tracks aren’t 5 feet wide they are 5 feet apart, theres a difference.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
MikeJ, dust devils photographed on mars were done so using the Spirit rover located on the surface of Mars. The other ones you mentioned were photographed from Mars orbit. However, as an example, two of the latest, ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, orbit at only between 260 and 300km, i.e. not very high.
However, the best we can point at the moon is Hubble which is 300,000km or so from the moon. The smallest Hubble can resolve at that distance is ~120metres, thus while your “circular track” of the moon buggy might make a circle big enough to be seen by Hubble, the lunar buggy tracks themselves are still too small to resolve, being only some 2m wide, i.e. a 1/60th or so of what Hubble cab resolve.
However, sometime this year, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will blast off and that has an imager with a 0.5m resolution. This means that the lunar buggy will cover some 4×6 pixels of an image, more than enough to be seen. BTW, most, if not all, of the above facts are actually on this site somewhere if you only care to look, usually complete with source links.
January 31st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Mike J., you are powerfully ignorant of technical matters. This stuff isn’t a secret. You just haven’t bothered yourself with knowing about it.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Mike J said: “Furthermore, I’m supposed to believe that they had “remote control” cameras that were left on the surface of the moon to capture the take-off of the lander?!”
What’s so hard to believe about that? In any case, filming the lift-off wasn’t the only use of the remote control TV cameras on the missions. There is a lot of other footage taken by these remote control cameras, taken while the astronauts were visiting various geological sites.
“Where is the landing site, so I can pay the thousands of dollars it takes to have the “landing site” imaged via telescope, or chinese satellite… we should be able to see “rover tracks” in the regolith… just like we were able to see the “4×4 tracks” on mars made by small dust devils… or like we were able to see the mars rover…Put up, or shut up phil.. show us current images of the landing craft’s base, and the 4-5 foot wide tracks left by the rovers..”
G’day Mike J. There’s no technology available which allows us to image the lunar module descent stages from the Earth – they’re nearly 400,000 kilometres away and less than 10 metres across. The laws of optics indicate we’d need a telescope with a mirror tens of metres across. By contrast, the images taken by the Mars Orbiters were from ranges less than 400 kilometres, so less than one-thousandth of the distance. That alone makes a big difference.
The thing is, NASA’s Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter will be on its way to the Moon this year, and I’m looking forward to it producing some images of the various landing sites.
“I’m willing to bet there are NO images of this site, or even coordinates that are public so I can do my own science and look for myself… and to me, that makes me skeptical of the offical story.”
The latitude and longitude of the Apollo landing sites are well attested. May I recommend Orloff and Harland’s “Apollo” which includes lat/long of the landing locations, and detailed discussion of the geology of each landing site, based on the work carried out by the astronauts.
I’m concerned that you’re trying to set an impossible standard – there are a couple of photos of Apollo landing sites taken by Command Modules during the missions, where it’s just possible to see the Lunar Module. There’s also a Clementine photo of the Apollo 15 landing site which is detailed enough to show a disturbance in the surface exactly where the Apollo 15 lunar module’s rocket exhaust would have blown across the ground.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Mike J, everytime you open your mouth, you put your foot in it. Let me tell you how you are wrong in at least 3 ways:
1) You said, “LOL, so I was right… there are no pictures of the landing site… and the claim that we don’t have the optics to see 5 foot wide tracks on the moon is stupid! Since we were able to see the “4X4? tracks on mars… see APOD for the actual shots of the 4×4 tracks left by dust devils on mars…”
Perhaps you are talking about this article:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20061006a.html
If you read that article, you will realize that those photos are taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which in IN ORBIT around mars. It clearly states,
“This view is a portion of an image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on Oct. 3, 2006. The complete image is centered at minus7.8 degrees latitude, 279.5 degrees East longitude. The range to the target site was 297 kilometers (185.6 miles). At this distance the image scale is 29.7 centimeters (12 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects about 89 centimeters (35 inches) across are resolved.”
To explain it in simple terms, the photos were taken from 186 miles above the Martian surface, with a very high resolution camera. There are currently NO orbiters around the moon. The average distance to the moon is 238,855 MILES. There is no telescope on earth that can resolve objects 35 inches across from 238 thousand miles away. So, all the pictures we have of the moon are simply not of high enough resolution to make out details of the landing sites. This has been discussed here and all over the internet at length. You need to do some more research.
2) You said, “… if you add low gravity to the equation, you will see that it would be quite hard to make a pole stand perfectly vertical on the lunar surface when standing over 3 feet from the object… i.e.. in the bulky astronaut suits their reach was even less…”
You have it wrong here. Low gravity does not equal NO gravity. Let’s say you take a metal pole to the beach. Right over by the sand dunes the sand is loosely packed. Let’s say the sand is 6″ deep. How hard do you think it would be to stick the pole 3″ into the sand? How much force would it take? Now go to the moon and apply the same force. Remember, there is still gravity on the moon, so even though the “sand” there is 1/6th of the weight it is here, so is the pole. But the FORCE which you (or the astronaut) would use to stick the pole into the surface would be almost the same. So, if anything, you would be able to stick the pole even further into the lunar surface than you could here on the beach.
3) You keep using a false argument that it was not possible to receive video transmissions from the moon. As others have tried to explain to you (if you would only listen) is that the size or power of the lunar equipment that sent the signals isn’t important. What IS important is the size of the receiving equipment. Have you ever seen the radio antennas used by NASA? They were not the 18″ DirectTV dish you have on your house. They were enormous. They were quite capable of receiving the faint signals from not only the lunar missions, but also the Pioneer space probes, the Voyager probes (both of which are STILL broadcasting today) and many others.
Here’s a great website you need to read: http://www.clavius.org/index.html
It answers ALL of your reasons for disbelieving the moon missions.
And on a personal side, its OK to be wrong. I’m wrong all the time. But I will admit it when I am, because its how I learn. No matter how much you think you know, there will always be someone who knows more. Use the experience of others to your advantage, and try to learn from them.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:58 am
Mike J, you really are sounding off like an ignorant teenager.
Mike J said:
>”LOL, so I was right… there are no pictures of the landing site… ”
But you also claimed that there were no officially-available coordinates, and Thomas’s link proved you wrong. Why do you not admit this?
>”and the claim that we don’t have the optics to see 5 foot wide tracks on the moon is stupid! Since we were able to see the “4X4? tracks on mars… see APOD for the actual shots of the 4×4 tracks left by dust devils on mars…”
Er, Mike, we have a frakking big spy satellite in orbit around Mars, and it has an extremely powerful and sophisticated camera on board. We have no such thing orbiting the Moon. Look up the resolution on Hubble, and do the maths for yourself.
For an object on the Moon to be clearly resolved by Hubble, it needs to be quite large (tens or hundreds of metres across). This is because the Moon is 200,000 miles away.
>”So if we can see dustdevil tracks on mars, we should be able to see rover tracks (which are the same size) on the moon… follow me so far?”
I follow you, and you have made a trivial error. We have never seen any tracks on Mars from Earth. We have pictures of those tracks sent to Earth by a spacecraft that is orbiting Mars. Just like we have spy satellites orbiting Earth.
Tracks or objects left on the Moon cannot be compared to objects and tracks on Mars until we have an equally powerful camera in lunar orbit.
>” I know most telescopes wouldn’t give us a clear high-resolution pic, but we could at least be show the 1km loop that was left in the regolith by the mars rovers when they drove around…”
Not a chance. Not from any existing Earth-based scope (and Hubble is so close to Earth that it might as well be Earth-based as far as the Moon is concerned. When Hubble takes pictures of galaxies that are billions of light-years away, those things are huge, which is how Hubble can see them from so far away.
>”As for the coordinates given by nasa… I’ve known about these for a long time… ”
So, you lied when you claimed there were no official coordinates for the landing sites.
>”strange thing, is that others have looked at the supposed sites… ”
Yeah? Such as who?
Did they expect to see tracks or Apollo hardware?
>”there is nothing located at those coordinates… just standard moon surface… no tracks, no lander, no remote control cameras and the associated broadcasting hardware it would take to make the broadcast (i.e. power source, antenna, and at least a mega-watt tranciever).”
All of which is too small to see freom Earth or low-Earth orbit.
Did you have a point?
>” The broadcast didn’t just have to go through a vaccuum.. it had to go several hundred thousand miles, then go through our magnetosphere, the atmosphere, and then be relayed to the major tv stations… ”
So? That’s why they used VHF, idiot.
Did you have a point to make?
>”As soon as I get the money I’ll pay to have the supposed sites imaged by the Chinese satellite…”
What makes you think its camera is powerful enough to see the small items left behind by the Apollo missions?
The largest will be the descent stages of the six LMs – and these are each only about 2 metres square.
>”But I suggest that the “skeptics” have dropped the ball on this one, since none of you have “looked for yourselves” … you just “believe” it becasue it was on TV, and because NASA says so. ”
And the moon rocks (I’ve seen a piece, BTW – have you? It really looks, well, unearthly) and the photographs, and the radar tracking data, and the video footage. There are two particular pieces that I found impressive: one is from Apollo 15 (I think), where one astronaut is videoing the other using the lunar rover. You can clearly see that the dust kicked up by the wheels follows a slow but perfectly ballistic trajectory, indicating 1/6 g and hard vacuum. The other is from Apollo 17 (I think, again I’m not sure), where one of the atronauts is videoed dropping a hammer and a feather simultaneously. As predicted by Galileo and Newton, they slowly fall to the surface at exactly the same rate. Again, 1/6 g and a hard vacuum. We can’t simulate that in a TV studio today, never mind 40 years ago.
>”… Rosa, you forgot one crucial part of your little snarky science experiment suggestion… and that of course is LOW gravity… if you add low gravity to the equation, you will see that it would be quite hard to make a pole stand perfectly vertical on the lunar surface when standing over 3 feet from the object”
Why? You make a claim, but you do not attempt to back it up. Why should anyone take your word for it, Mike? Or are you just guessing?
>”… i.e.. in the bulky astronaut suits their reach was even less…”
Which is why there are footprints about 2 feet from the pole. Did you have a point to make?
>”… Jack, television was invented on January 26 1926 By John Logie Baird … so logically it is impossible to have the first coast to coast broadcast in the late 20’s -30’s… ”
Obviously, you’ve never heard of radio broadcasts.
Mike, listen to yourself. You’re talking rubbish.
>”and according to all sources I know of… the first transcontinental tv broadcast was on September 4, 1951…”
And before you say anything, there is no difference between TV and radio as far as the radio waves are concerned. Different methods of encoding pictures, different bandwidths, but the propagation of radio signals is the same whether you transmit morse code, voice, music or TV pictures.
>”Finally a commenter said that the moon is not a microgravity environment, that it’s actually a 1/6th gravity … to them I say you’re mincing words … ”
But 1/6 g is several hundred times the gravity in a microgravity environment. That’s hardly mincing words, is it, Mike?
>”since they obviously knew the argument I was trying to make, that in a LOW gravity environment, you can’t exactly “push” things into the ground from a distance and still get a perfectly vertical pole… ”
Actually, you were not making an argument, you were making a claim. You did not make any substantiating comments to explain why we should accept your word that such a thing is impossible.
>”and the HAND hammer that the astronauts used was small, and couldn’t be swung from far away… unless they had a long hammer with some reach on it like a sledge hammer.”
Is this actually relevant to anything? Are you trying to say that you can’t knock a spike into soil with a small hammer (which I have done, BTW)? What difference does the length of the handle make?
February 1st, 2008 at 6:31 am
MikeJ posts:
[[the claim that we don’t have the optics to see 5 foot wide tracks on the moon is stupid! Since we were able to see the “4X4? tracks on mars… see APOD for the actual shots of the 4×4 tracks left by dust devils on mars…
So if we can see dustdevil tracks on mars, we should be able to see rover tracks (which are the same size) on the moon… follow me so far?]]
So far but no farther. It isn’t only the size of the object being viewed that detemines whether you can see it. You also have to account for distance.
The shots of rover tracks are from satellites in low Mars orbit, 200 km up or less.
The Moon is 380,000 or so km from the Earth’s surface (a = 384,401 km, Re = 6,371.010 km). 1,900 times farther away. So to see Lunar rover tracks from here, you’d need a telescope with 1,900 times the resolution.
See the problem?
February 1st, 2008 at 6:32 am
MikeJ posts:
[[the claim that we don’t have the optics to see 5 foot wide tracks on the moon is stupid! Since we were able to see the “4X4? tracks on mars… see APOD for the actual shots of the 4×4 tracks left by dust devils on mars…
So if we can see dustdevil tracks on mars, we should be able to see rover tracks (which are the same size) on the moon… follow me so far?]]
So far but no farther. It isn’t only the size of the object being viewed that detemines whether you can see it. You also have to account for distance.
The shots of rover tracks are from satellites in low Mars orbit, 200 km up or less.
The Moon is 380,000 or so km from the Earth’s surface (a = 384,401 km, Re = 6,371.010 km). 1,900 times farther away. So to see Lunar rover tracks from here, you’d need a telescope with 1,900 times the resolution.
There’s also the fact that Earth’s atmosphere is thick and soupy, and Mars’s atmosphere (except during a dust storm) is thin and clear.
See the problem?
February 1st, 2008 at 6:33 am
Sorry for the double post, y’all. Trouble with Wordpress again.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 am
[...] Another Moon Hoax claim bites the dust [...]
May 30th, 2008 at 5:21 am
I’ve never seen China… it must not exist. I can’t see it from here with my telescope either, and I can’t receive it’s radio broadcasts… that’s final then, it just plain doesn’t exist!
June 12th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
The American people paid about $19,408,134,000. For the Apollo program. Six of the missions — Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 — achieved this goal. Leaving behind 6 LM Lunar Descent stage modules Diameter: 4.2 m (13.8 ft) Landing gear diameter: 9.4 m (30.8 ft) and 3 Lunar Roving Vehicle Apollo 15,16,17 The frame was 10 feet (3 m) long with a wheelbase of 7.5 feet (2.3 m).
Many of us have now seen the latest phoenix mission images acquired from the MRO’s HiRISE camera.
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-hardware.php
We clearly have the technology to acquire images of the numerous pieces of hardware left behind at the lunar mission landing sites. There are currently orbiters from Japan, China, and one soon from India. The USA should have one, we could easily afford a high-resolution image mission of the Moon. This would put to rest nearly forty years of questions about the lunar missions.
July 14th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Everyone knows Ted Twietmeyer is completely gaga.
And i can write a scientific articlwe with no proof or research to prove it…
August 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
MikeJ – technically not possible to send TV via line of site from the moon in 1969? I must thank you. Us uplink guys have had a pretty stress-filled week here at the TV station. The one thing that gets our spirits high is a good laugh. Hat’s off to you. There about 20 TV engineers who cried they laughed so hard. Thanks for making our evening! BTW Nipkow invented television a number of years before Baird.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch the live satellite-cross made between the UK and Australia in 1964. According to you that probably was technically not possible. After that I’ll watch the Beatle’s performing “All You Need is Love”. They must have used a pretty long coax cable to pull that one off in 1967 no less.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
How do you know men went to the moon? Because “they” say so?
Silly moonies.
January 24th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Hey
finally an non Hoax forum
I Have a question tough, when you look at the picture of the moon lander, Neil armstrong and the flag, why is the shadow of the flagpole in a total different direction then the ones of Neil and the moonlander? can someone give me a explatnation, i’ve been looking for it some weeks and didnt find anything,
to make things clear, I TOTALLY believe that there was a moonlanding, im not another conspiracy guy, i just noticed this and wondered why it was that way
Greets from Belgium, ( explains the bad english)
thanks
April 13th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
It is easy for NASA sponsored debunkers to regard skeptics as crazy nutters. But every time they do it, it is an indication of their inability to debunk using logical argument and valid reasoning. Millions of human beings are capable of critical thinking, even without scientific or educational credentials. Highly credentialed scientific critical thinking can find six different contradictory causes for one disease. One does not have to read conspiracy theories or NASA paid debunkers to draw reasonable and logical conclusions. Despite great advances in technology, it is increasingly obvious, after 4 decades, that NASA does not yet possess the practical technology to send manned missions safely to the moon and back. Anyone can take NASA images from the NASA site, take them into basic photo software, enlarge them, adjust the brightness and contrast, and see clearly where images of real and/or simulated lunar terrain have been superimposed upon real and/or simulated (or airbrushed) backgrounds. The blurring and airbrushing of the lines between foreground and background were very poorly done by NASA personnel, perhaps unaware that within a few decades, even common folk would have the computer technology at their fingertips to enlarge these images and expose all kinds of sloppiness and errors. No doubt, NASA figured that practical space exploration technology would advance at least equally as rapidly. They were wrong. Clearly many scenes were simulated. I observed the Apollo Moon landings in 1969 on television and believed it completely for some 20 years. However, I have actually seen zero credible scientific evidence that men have ever landed on the moon. The lunar rocks prove nothing. The lasers prove nothing. Lasers will bounce off the Moon itself or hardware left by possible previous unmanned missions. If men had actually landed on the moon, it would have been relatively easy to offer much more credible evidence, rather than the mountain of circumstantial evidence and images which are obviously a blend of real (unmanned) lunar images, simulated lunar terrain, and airbrushing. To expect critical minds to accept without proof that the United States successfully landed men on the Moon six times between 1969-1972 (all during the Nixon Administration), and that no country including the U.S. has ever achieved this (manned Moon landings) either before 1969 or even within the following 4 decades, is simply NOT rational or logical. The statistical probability of this actually happening is becoming increasingly astronomical, like a “hole in history” as Arthur C. Clarke said. Despite all our advances in technology, the United States has not even sent men beyond approximately 150 miles into space since the Apollo Missions! That is like from Birmingham, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia. So don’t give me this horse poop about “critical thinking.” Regardless of the truth, anyone in their right mind should seriously doubt the credibility of the Apollo Manned Moon Missions. NASA should either respectfully provide logical explanations to serious questions, and offer credible proof, or just come clean and say we don’t know or we actually simulated that portion. If the “evidence” NASA has presented is all we have, then for all practical purposes, NASA may as well stop mass conditioning our elementary school children about the Apollo Missions. The current reputation of the United States Government and NASA are not such that any citizen or nation would likely be that surprised if NASA admitted to simulating some or all of the Apollo Missions. Any critical thinking mind knows as fact that our government is capable and morally willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve U.S. objectives. Do I know that the Apollo Manned Moon Missions were simulated? No. Do I believe they were simulated? I believe Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 Manned Moon Missions were completely simulated. I don’t believe either the USSR or the US successfully retrieved lunar soil samples or lunar rocks and brought them back to Earth. I believe the only lunar material we have are the lunar meteorites collected by NASA and other scientific organizations over many decades. If comparing lunar meteorites are the primary method to determine whether lunar soil or rock samples are genuine, then any crushed or fired or reformulated variations containing lunar meteorite material would probably be regarded as genuine material of lunar origin by reputable scientists. This does not prove that either manned or unmanned craft retrieved such material directly from the Moon. When lunar soil samples and lasers are used by NASA as arguments for proof, this only encourages critical minds to question and doubt their reasoning, intent, and credibility. NASA should show the proof and stop trying to achieve FACT status by simply repeating NASA propaganda millions of times on television and print media with simulated/altered images and artist renderings. The TRUTH doesn’t need lies or simulated evidence … it will continue to reveal and validate itself. The sensory equipment aboard every human mind is far superior to even the vast propaganda machine of NASA. As we continue to study Nature … we begin to see things more truly. But when we overestimate our knowledge and forget our position … Nature will gladly laugh … and embarrass us for forty years … maybe even forever.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:05 am
April 15th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Cross post again here from the “Moon movie” thread because Thoth has!
…& to give the troll another chance to actually answer the questions I raise for him.
(Yeah I know, U shouldn’t feed trolls but still .,. I’ll just wait till sun rise for him to turn into stone!
)
@ Thoth – and the other Moon Hoax Conspiracy Theory Believers. (MHCTBers)
All these following individuals (most still living) have circled the Moon and many have set foot upon the Lunar regolith : (In order of appearance)
James Lovell,
Frank Borman,
William Anders
Apollo 8 – circled the Moon – & took the famous ‘Moonrise’ image. How do the MHCTBers explain that?
Tom Stafford
Gene Cernan
John Young
Apollo 10 – dress rehearsal for Lunar landing.
Neil Armstrong,
Buzz (Edwin) Aldrin,
Michael Collins
Apollo 11 – first Lunar landing. Aldrin would later write an autobiography as well as at least one SF novel.
Charles “Pete” Conrad
Alan Bean
Richard Gordon
Apollo 12 – the second Lunar landing. Alan Bean would later paint many scenes from his Lunar adventure from memory.
John Swigert,
Fred Haise
Apollo 13 – NASA’s “finest hour” amazing rescue story – which also circled the Moon. Plus again, Jim Lovell who would write a non-fiction book ‘Lost Moon’ detailing his Lunar voyages in 8 & 13.
Alan Shepherd
Edgar Mitchell
Stuart Roosa
Apollo 14 – third lunar landing – & Al Shepherd was the first American in space with the ‘Mercury’ programme.
David Scott
James Irwin
Fred Worden
Apollo 15 – fourth Lunar landing
Charles Duke
Thomas Mattingly
Apollo 16 – fifth Lunar landing. Plus John Young, again. Both Duke & Irwin later became preachers if that carries any weight for those who think preachers are more honest than, say, scientists. NOT a view I hold personally I’ll add, but one I know some do.
Harrison Schmidt
Ronald Evans
Apollo 17 – sixth & so far last lunar landing. Plus again, Gene Cernan. Schmidt, a geologist was the first and only scientist to walk on the Moon, the other astronauts mostly came from air-force or navy backgrounds.
Now according to the MHCTBers *all* of these brave and honourable men (& many more people as well) who have all have different characters, abilities and backgrounds, who have written, painted, and talked about their lunar experiences are consistently and continually lying!
Moreover, the MHCTBers would have us believe that all these men ( & many hundreds more involved in the Apollo program )who have been interviewed, studied, debriefed and questioned are *perfect* flawless liars who have never once “slipped up” and accidentally revealed “the secret.”
Not to the media, not to their partners, not to their kids, not once, ever.
Yeah riiiight.
Given human nature and fallibility, I think the Lunar landing is far more plausible than the absurd “Moon Hoax” alternative.
I think that all of these twenty-four astronauts named ( & the many others involved in the Apollo program) are owed an apology by the MHCTBers. (Incl. Thoth.)
April 15th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
D’oh! Italics error …
Wish we could edit these posts. Sigh.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:04 am
& boldingerror too. Damn this html coding!
***
Now according to the MHCTBers *all* of these brave and honourable men (& many more people as well) who have all have different characters, abilities and backgrounds, who have written, painted, and talked about their lunar experiences are consistently and continually lying!
I don’t think so!
Can anyone just imagine being the dude in charge of telling the Apollo astronauts – Aldrin and Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell and Al Shepherd and the rest :
“Hey, you know we’ll actually be faking all this so you’ve got to act .. & lie really well .. and then hide somewhere while we somehow fool the Russians and ya gotta keep this so secret and.. ”
* WHACK! * Person telling them this falls over with bloody nose and black eye from Buzz Aldrin’s killerleft hook!
Do Moon Hoax belivers really think all these men are lying?
Do the MHCTBrs have *any* idea how many people would have to be inon this “conspiracy” with NOBODY ever slipping up or cracking to reveal the “secret”.
Can the MHCTBers really be dumb enough to think any such baloney is remotely possible?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:50 am
TROLL:Jack, television was invented on January 26 1926 By John Logie Baird … so logically it is impossible to have the first coast to coast broadcast in the late 20’s -30’s… and according to all sources I know of… the first transcontinental tv broadcast was on September 4, 1951…
I was wondering why that name sounded familiar. He developed an ELECTROMECHANICAL means of video transmission,not the current ELECTRONIC system. I know I shouldn’t feed trolls, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television
July 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
In this photgraph there are clearly trace boot prints at the right portion of the image. Some prints are smooth and velvety like talc, very vivid and crisp. Others are trace
evidence and not nearly as bright and vivid, indicating that they have been covered by the same sediment as in the surrounding terrain. Also, the clear bottom right
footprint, and the clear left and right prints, do not follow a normal walking pattern for a man of that height. There is at least one more set of prints necessary between
the top and bottom clear prints. The bottom print indicates that the subject jumped and then change directions to 90 degrees in mid air and came to a soft landing with
no side travel impact upon landing.
Also, the nearest boot print to the pole in the photo’s center is about arms reach. How is it that the soil can bear different weights differently in different locations? How
is it that a man has the strength and reach to jab a pole in the ‘lunar’ soil, yet not enough weight to make an impression of similar depth? Why are the of the pole and the
man on a potential intersect?
There is a lcak of natural walk path footprints leading to the man in the photograph. It is as if he were picked up and placed into the scene.
Also, make sure you pretend to hammer a pole, taking turns with a partner. Observe the tracks made. There are only one fresh set of tracks. One man in the photograph, so, if these two guys told this story that you found then they are both fibbing.
Apparently the basher who wrote the original post has never hammered anything in his life.
Basher, you seriously need to stop being lazy and put some thought into what you are writing. Do not give into conceit before having tried many different explanations. You are as big a fool as any.
To John Paradox,
NASA lies about this stuff. Gordon Cooper did not. Now, who is really crazy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkV1ybBnHI Buzz Aldrin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvPR8T1o3Dc Gordon Cooper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7AbhxDcCIc Gordon Cooper
You people who refuse to give benefit of doubt to either side are the true fools. Predudice against others’ beliefs and thoughts is what leads to the destructions of thousands in the middle east and africa. I thought you all would have been raised better than that. If you believe in God, then, one day you be a fool in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, but, you will still be a fool nonetheless.
January 19th, 2010 at 2:18 am
The main reason people doubt the moon landing is because the US government has no credibility, has had none since the 1950s, and nothing it says can be taken at face value. THAT is why there are so many doubters. Forget the wrong shadows, flag the the wrong way, etc, rubbish.
Your government has lied and cheated its way through the world for the past 60 years, with one goal in mind: preserve the American Myth – we are the greatest nation on the planet and are entitled to take whatever we want from whomever we want.
THAT’s why I don’t believe we’ve ever been to the moon.