Last week, I got a message from my buddy and fellow Skeptologist Steve Novella, asking if I could join up with them to do a Skeptics Guide 5×5, where they have five skeptics discussing a topic for five minutes. Of course I jumped in, so the six of us (five of them plus me) talked about the Moon Hoax for 12 minutes. OK, fine, so it’s really SG 6×12, but there you go.
You can download the podcast on their website; here’s the direct link.
That was a fun interview! If you need a pocket guide to debunking the Moon hoax nonsense, you’ll get some good ideas there.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:24 am
You did a great job (as usual). I always love guest appearances by the Bad Astronomer, whenever and wherever they turn up.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I wonder how the Moon Hoaxer are taking Edgar Mitchell’s revelation? Here’s a guy that went to the Moon, ummm, correction, that wants to make us believe he went to the moon, saying UFO’s are real, but of course we know they’re not, ummm, wait, no they are real, but the government is…. I think my head is going to explode.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:47 am
@ Michael L
My sentiments exactly! Talk about doublethink!
July 27th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Cool stuff. Personally, I like to point out two things to moon hoaxers:
1) The government is horrible at keeping secrets. We couldn’t keep the Manhattan Project secret, we couldn’t keep the Pentagon Papers secret, frackin’ kids stole secrets and sold them to the Soviets! (See Falcon and the Snowman.) As many people that were involved in the space program in the 60’s, it seems as if it would be rather difficult to have everybody keep their mouths shut.
2) It seems inconceivable that the Soviets did not monitor transmissions from Apollo. Heck, ham radio operators were listening to the audio transmissions when they were aligned. It seems to me that if the Soviets did not say that the transmissions came from the moon, it stands to reason that they did. I’m sure the Soviets would have loved to rake the U.S. over the coals for faking that. (You CAN bounce radio signals off the moon, but even in 1969 they could analyze the signals to determine that they didn’t originate from the moon.)
July 27th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Re manned space flight
Here’s a link to a discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg where Prof. Weinberg agrees with Bob Park that manned space flight is a poor way to do science, mainly because the payoff doesn’t merit the expense. But I guess that Prof.Weinberg doesn’t know what he’s talking about either.
July 27th, 2008 at 11:23 am
You bumped Mike! You bastard!
July 27th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Forgot the link to the Dawkins/Weinberg discussion.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5142990843927602274&ei=&hl=en
July 27th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
SLC, while robotic exploration has its advantages, and, for now, at least, can provide a wealth of information at a relatively cheap (compared to manned spaceflight) way to explore, by nature, human beings are driven to explore. It is within our nature, I believe. This nature, plus the necessity to develop the vast resources of the asteroids, the Moon, and eventually the colonization of other worlds will continue to drive our species. Manned exploration of the stars is inevitable.
July 27th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Why deny only the moon landing? Is anyone claiming we’re not at Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, on the way to Pluto ? Come on, you hoax theorists, get on it!
July 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
@Chris:
Well, here’s proof positive we went to Mars with the Russians!
Enjoy!
July 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
It would help if I posted the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS-zfct1_BQ
July 27th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Phil Plait
When does that Skeptologist show premier? I can’t find a date anywhere.
July 27th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Michael, can’t see the link.
July 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Chris, it’s held up in the spam/moderation filter.
July 27th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
There were only five of us! We kicked off Mike, who was on the line but when we suggested bringing you on, said, “If Phil’s coming, I’ll get off.” I leave that without further comment.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Wish there was a little more NASA news. I think we can safely say the moon hoaxers have been soundly beaten, at least in the sense of knowledge.
July 27th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet, but I was watching Mythbusters and they had an ad for a new episode coming up where the Mythbusters take on the question… Was the moon landings a myth? Checking the Mythbusters site, I find that the episode first airs on 27 August at 21:00. I’m curious on how they deal with this.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Best 5×5 so far. As I was listening, especially at the “no photographs of stars” section, I started thinking that someone really should come up with a Photoshop picture of what it would look like if the Moon Hoaxers had there way. E.g. Tranquility base with flat flag, *trillions* of stars in the background (even colorful nebulae), parallel shadows, 6 feet of dust, etc.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
^ That would look an awful lot like the Tiger Woods Gatorade commercial currently running in the US: Tiger hits a golf ball off of the “moon’s” surface, kicking up clouds of dust as he walks.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Suppose NASA had launched an unmanned Apollo capsule to the Moon containing a communications relay. It wouldn’t have to simulate the speed-of-light delay (approx. 1.5 seconds each way when it was at the Moon.) If the astronauts were on the ground (e.g. Nevada desert, and all comms to mission control were relayed through the unmanned Apollo, then there would be a 6-second delay, not a 3-second delay. getting 3-second responses from the Moon means the astronauts really had to be 240,000 miles away. If they tried to cheat it by not sending through the Apollo relay, anyone with a radiotelescope would be able to catch them. Therefore there really had to be people (or at least, a version of Eliza far beyond 1969 technology) in the vicinity of the Moon.
This doesn’t prove they actually landed on the Moon, but it does prove the footage (or at least, the soundtrack) had to be filmed in real time somewhere near the Moon. (Imagine playing back a video tape from lunar orbit and trying to overdub the dialog complete with conversations with Mission Control, Tricky Dick, reporters, etc. in real time!)
The blows away all the objections that people couldn’t have survived the launch, passage through the Van Allen Belts, etc. And if it was a one-way trip, Armstrong’s first words would not have been “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed”, but instead, to quote Bugs Bunny “GET ME DOWN FROM HERE!!!”
July 28th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I’m looking for ammunition for discussions with folks, who though not full-on hoaxers, may be hoaxer-friendly. Recently an intelligent guy asserted that you can’t see stars from the surface of the moon. When I disputed this, he responded that “none of the astronauts you’ll ever talk to will say that.” Having not spoken with any of the 9 surviving moon-treading men (not counting Michael Jackson), I didn’t have a response to that. Later, searching online for interviews that would dispel that myth, I found an article from Discover ca. 1997. None of the astronauts mentioned seeing stars. In fact, Schmidt talked about the sky being a very shiny black, like patent leather. So, please, can anyone point me to such an interview?
July 28th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Not only did you bump Mike, you didn’t even notice! I think Mike deserves an apology, after what he did for you.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:09 am
I seriously doubt the Apollo missions were hoaxes. I cannot grant credibility. to thousands of people keeping secret that missions from 1969 to 1972, three years, were all hoaxes.
That’s humanly impossible, imho.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Is this something I can find on iTunes? Gotta go look…
RDTAB
Yup, in Charlottesville…
July 29th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
It’s ok Jonny. Like Rebecca said, when Phil came, I got off. So it worked out for everyone.
Besides, it was either Phil talking about some of what he knows best or me reading my lines straight from Phil’s site. heh
July 29th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
As always Phil does a great job. In reference to the “no stars” argument: there aren’t stars in Russian moon probe pictures either. Pictures taken by Russian and American manned spacecraft don’t have stars in them [look at the famous pictures of Leonov and Ed White's space walks for example]. Look at the pictures of Shuttle and Space Station Spacewalks, no stars! When the camera is set to photograph something that bright, stars just don’t show up [the same applies if you are photographing someone walking through a parking lot under bright lights, of course]. Of course there is an Alice in Wonderland quality to a claim that the fact you can’t see stars in Moon pictures proves that NASA had Hollywood fake the pictures and the movie makers “forgot” to matte the stars in to all the pictures, something they routinely have done in space movies for years before anyone actually went into space!
Also, if the craft didn’t go to the moon, as the hoaxers who say we were just in Earth orbit seem to claim, countries around the world, especially the Russians would have known this on the first day. Just imagine an Apollo passing overhead once every 90 minutes for two weeks in earth orbit and remaining unnoticed [or did the Russians "forget" to mention it?].
As for the claim that Von Braun went to Antarctica to collect Lunar meteorites, remember no one knew that there WERE lunar meteorites until we got real moon rocks back to compare them to. Neither Von Braun, nor any geologist [who would be a more likely collector] would know which meteorites to pick up. And for those who claim that moon rocks were just cooked up in a lab, remember that the samples from the three Soviet Luna sample return missions [the first of which succeeded about a year after Apollo 11] proved that our moon rocks were real.
P.S. has anyone checked to see if Von Braun actually went to Antarctica anyway?
July 30th, 2008 at 8:54 am
It is my duty to inform my fellow skeptics of a conspiracy so immense, so huge, that it dwarfs all other conspiracies by comparison. We must all be made aware for nearly 4 decades the United States government has spent billions of our taxpayers dollars in perpetuating the absurd myth that men have walked on the moon. I discovered this by playing backwards a Top Secret 18-1/2 minute audio tape found hidden inside a pumpkin.
The “astronauts” who claimed to have walked on the moon are actually Government Agents, & belong to a Top Secret coterie which was created & is controlled by 100 United Nations meteorologists,who also created the Global Warming myth. Thru their Government-built laboratories they have also created AIDS, bird flu, & Texas Mad Oprah disease. They have already started terrorism by anthrax; next come terrorism by Amtrak! Their Top Secret laboratories are hidden deep inside a spider hole underneath a Taliban-built cave complex beneath the Grassy Knoll in Dallax, TX, whose entrannce is cleverly concealed by a white Fiat belonging to a mysterious man named Raoul. I discovered the exact location on a government map secretly published on the back of a box of Kix cereal.
The government has also hatched one of the most dastardly plots ever attempted against the USA. They are removing the mercury from our drinking water, thereby to sap & impurify our Precious Bodily Fluids. This has already affected this great country of ours. Recent Top Secret tests have proven the United States of America has dropped down to 14th in mathematical abilty thruout the countries of the world, but at least we are still in the top 10!