Okay, riddle me this, Bick. Did you see From the Earth to the Moon? In it, the best episode (IMO) was the fifth one, called Spider. It explained the origin and logic behind selecting the LEM (lunar module) option of landing on the moon. Then, it explained how Grumann, on Long Island, got a half-billion dollar contract to build the LEM. Let’s state that again:
They got a half-billion dollar contract. Why the hell would NASA spend all that money to make a working lunar module when it wasn’t going to be used? Oh yeah, I forgot, it was used as a prop. :rolleyes:
Like I said, I’d prefer to consolidate over on GD…
But that one’s too easy. Grumann got the money, they just used it for things other than building a working LEM (nobody’s saying it would have been CHEAP to fake all this). Or, option 2, Grumann couldn’t, in the end, make a working LEM even with a half billion dollars, so NASA decided to fake it instead.
Good heavens . . . people are having a hard time understanding this. On a sunny day when the moon is in the sky, no, it obviously doesn’t cast a shadow. But on a clear night when the moon is up, it does cast shadows. When it’s full, you can read by it. That’s how bright it is, even at a distance of a quarter of a million miles.
When you’re standing on the moon, even when it’s daytime and the sun is up, the sky is black, just like it is on the Earth at night. The sun’s rays aren’t dispersing and scattering through an atmosphere, drowning out the moon’s reflected light. So you’ve got the sun, you’ve got the brightly reflected light from the moon that you’re standing on, and you’ve got Earthshine, which is bright enough that when you’re standing on Earth, you can see the waxing crescent moon illuminated by it. Three major light sources, right there.