You mean, like the LRO referenced in post 2?
Any amateur with a really, really powerful laser and a very large telescope.
Yes, and that’s why we did it. See the link in unclelem’s post, the very first reply to your question.
Sorry. I didn’t know a LRO was a satellite. I assumed it was one of those things they sent to Mars and Saturn’s Cassini spacecraft .
The claims you’ve heard are false. First of all, theoretical resolution through the atmosphere, even with adaptive optics and sophisticated anti-aliasing filters, is only good enough to get down to about a 10 cm (4 inch) resolution. It’s just not physically possible to resolve objects finer that that, regardless of the magnification and aperture of the optics; you just get more blur. The latest IMINT satellites are thought to have resolutions down to 12-15 cm, so that’s pretty close what is possible. In comparison, the highest resolution images you’ll find commercially available are about 50 cm resolution.
Second, Hubble is much further from the Moon than surveillance satellites are from the Earth. Hubble is really designed for an exceptionally large aperture and effective light gathering, not the highest possible optical resolution (as these two qualities are somewhat in conflict with each other; the finer the resolution, the less light available on each individual sensor. Hubble has been used to take high resolution pictures of the outer planets, but is designed for looking much further distances, out to the edge of the visible universe. I scarcely think that the segment of the public that isn’t wowed by images from the earliest post-inflationary period is going to go gaga over pictures of some non-functional equipment abandoned on the Moon.
Third, the thing about conspiracy theorists of any shade is that they’ll take any disparate facts (or what they believe to be facts) that don’t fit with the “official story” and weave them into a tapestry of a vast conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands (in the case of the supposed Moon landing hoax, the tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, managers, pilots, et cetera) who had intimate knowledge of various aspects of the Moon landing effort sufficient that duping them would have required experts of equal caliber manufacturing false data and requirements, none of whom discovered the deception or (if they participated in it) offered any kind of deathbed confession.
As noted by others, the recent Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter–which is basically a spy satellite for the Moon–has taken images that show the landing sights and discarded lower stages for the Lunar Modules. This doesn’t “prove” anything to the hoax-boosters, of course; the images could just be faked by the same shadowy entity that falsified data of the original landings. And giant pink monkeys could be flying out of your butt, too.
Stranger
[quote=“Kobal2, post:12, topic:550935”]
I’ve always felt that the laser reflector was a weak argument - that actually could have been placed by an unmanned lander. The hundreds of pounds of moon rocks - none of which have had their authenticity challenged by anyone who’s been studying them - could not have been gathered by 1960s robotics. (I doubt we could do it today…)
The big thing for me is the huge scope of the project and the lack of people stepping up to say “This can’t be done”. NASA didn’t build Saturn V & Apollo, that was done by Boeing, North American, Grumman, etc. - thousands of engineers, hundreds of thousands of craftsmen either built what they must have thought was a craft that could take men to the Moon or were part of a conspiracy. Nobody slipped?
Even today, nobody with any sort of aerospace credentials have been able to point to any part of the spacecraft and say “this couldn’t work”.
So we’re left with a hypothesis where NASA built a working spacecraft, decided not to use it, and secretly pulled off a decoy mission, using some other hardware that had been secretly developed and that nobody has ever seen any trace of, anywhere?
What strikes me is that in some ways a spacecraft is easier to build than submarines – and we know submarines exist. (Of course, most of us know that spacecraft exist as well.) Both manned spacecraft and submarines operate in realms that are not friendly to human life, so in that way they are comparable. That is, they both provide a habitable environment while surrounded by environments that would kill humans instantly. Standard atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi. Under 33 feet of water the atmospheric pressure doubles. You can figure out the pressures involved for a submarine operating at whatever depth. OTOH, a spacecraft’s cabin pressure is usually lower than one atmosphere. In a broad sense, spacecraft structures are not that far from an airliner. (NB: I believe in airliners and other airplanes too.)
So we know that we can build a vessel that can support human life in a vacuum. Since we have satellites and space probes, we know that we can but things into orbit or send them to other planets. Therefore, there is no reason to believe we cannot put a manned craft into orbit or send it to another body. Early spy satellites carried cameras that were ejected and recovered on the ground. I think most people accept that the Space Shuttle has reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, too. So we know that a spacecraft can be built that will survive reentry. The same Newtonian physics apply to launching a craft from the Moon as apply to launching a craft from Earth. So putting it all together we have A) the ability to launch a craft our of the Earth’s atmosphere; B) the ability to send a craft to another body; C) the ability to construct a craft that can support human life; D) the ability to launch from the Moon; and E) the ability to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and land safely.
Hoax believers must therefore believe that either we did not have the capabilities we demonstrably had in the '60s and '70s; or we did have the capabilities, but chose to fake it rather than use them. Since we had the ability, there was no reason to fake it.
EDIT:
Dammmit, Spiny Norman! That’s the point I was trying to make, but spent too much time sipping coffee while I was typing! :mad:
.
You missed one of the conspiracy theorists’ arguments, and you have to cover them all if you are arguing with them or they’ll just keep going “Yes, but it’s still not possible because…”. You also have to persuade them (not me - I’m a believer!) that the astronauts wouldn’t die a gruesome death from radiation poisoning while going through the Van Allen Belts (is that the right name?).
“Behold the moon rock! It’s tremendous power is mine to command!”
To further answer the OP
In addition to resolution issues mentioned already, there’s brightness issues. Hubble is designed to take very very dim light, so dim it’s comparable to detecting a lit cigarette on the moon, and amplifies it to produce usable information. On the other hand, the moon so bright that you can read by it under some circumstances. The Hubble actually has been pointed at the moon before (and Earth for that matter), but they had to turn off some of the more sensitive instruments because the brightness would damage them. Which means it isn’t able to use it’s full capabilities observing bright objects like this.
Leave the Hubble to examine the dark skies. It’s astoundingly good at doing that. Pointing it at bright objects is kinda like saying “This is a great hammer, let’s try using it as a screwdriver.” Just because a tool is good at one thing doesn’t mean it’d be good at another.
It’s also worth noting that they didn’t even try pointing it at the Moon until after the primary mission (the so-called keystone project) was completed. Under normal operations, it’s hard-coded to never point close than 45 degrees to the Sun (which makes it really hard to target Venus, too, and impossible to get Mercury), or 30 degrees to the Moon.
Why would we want to convince those lunatics? 
What’s the point?
IMHO the most significant reply to the moon hoaxers is that there is nothing about the moon landing mission that required a scientific breakthrough. The moon landing wasn’t a scientific mission, it was an engineering accomplishment.
There was nothing about it that required an advance in science. NASA didn’t have to develop a system of mathematics beyond calculus. The moon mission didn’t depend on something like an anti-gravity machine. The mission didn’t take off from a landing strip. It required a big ass Saturn 5 rocket to get it going which thousands of people witnessed. It would have been much easier to fake a take-off from a landing strip and let them return.
The moon landing wasn’t a scientific accomplishment, it was an engineering accomplishment. When JFK made his statement he had undoubtedly consulted with the engineers. They had to have told him that it is doable, there is nothing that made it impossible but it is going to be very expensive and we need some time to pull it together. Again, it’s not impossible given the current technology but it can be done. JFK went with it.
Thousands of people worked on the project. Probably most of us know someone that worked for NASA at the time. Just the number of people involved make it almost impossible for the moon landing to have been a fraud.
Again, a moon landing is not something that was impossible even given 1960’s technology. If you take on a project like that and throw enough money, time, resources and people at it, it can be done. That was the choice that the US government made. Whether it was worth it is a discussion for another thread. There’s no reason to believe it was a hoax because there is nothing about it that was “impossible” given the technology of the time.
Into the James Bond movie (“Diamonds are Forever”)?
I’ll always remember that scene where Bond drives off in the “Moon Car”-while being chased by the fake astronauts on the fake moon set.
Was this added into the script on a whim? It didn’t add much to the story, IMHO.
In those days people found about how the government could lie about what was going on in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, so it was not strange that some people assumed also that something was amiss regarding the moon landings.
As it turns out the Cold War also gives us one very good reason why there was no hoax, the Russians would had loved to broadcast to the third world that the USA was also lying about the moon landing if that had been the case.
They did the bounce the laser beam off the moon thing on The Big Bang Theory. What more proof could anyone want?
Meanwhile, is this what NASA has kept secret? And possibly why no-one has gone back?
That’s always been my question to moon hoax believers – Why would the Russians “dink the NASA koolaide”, as it were. Has anyone carefully read a moon hoax truther explanation for why the USSR didn’t conclusivly prove that NASA didn’t go to the moon, and release that evidence? It seems to me that’s one bit that just gets glossed over. Likewise, soil and lunar rocks were, as I understand it, given to scientists in other nations, so they too could say, “Lunar basalt – this looks like someone picked it up in the parking lot.” Do the hoax afficionados ever claim that happened?
Perhaps the clain is that all space science is faked, and the russians and other scientists must keep quiet, or the whole house of cards will fall all around them. Is that the claim being made? Or do people just really hate the concept of a lunar landing, for some reason?
So ‘Moon hoaxers’ are perfectly happy to accept Aldrin’s admission of a run-in with a UFO, yet it’s still not enough until he disavows the entire Moon landing? 
:rolleyes:
This is how the mindset works. Your tape recording was probably photo-shopped, but my grainy black&white undocumented Xerox copy is the real thing. The government lies about things, so everything they say is false, ergo, anything not claimed by the government is true. I’ve spent years studying this (cite authors selling CT newsletters), you just have the white-washed lame-stream media versions. Remember they laughed at Von Daniken and L. Ron Hubbard too.