# Fake moon landing - I'd like to hear the pro-Moon side
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 5, 2003, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059 "2003-12-05T00:58:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2003, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/21 "2003-12-05T19:36:52Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Merijeek \*
> **It just didn’t seem right to me that we could look at a star lightyears away, but couldn’t see a flag only 250,000 miles away.**
Actually we can’t see the surface of a star light-years away. We can see a star as point of light because it’s _really_ bright, but throug a telescoep it still looks like an infinitely small point of light. Not even the Hubble can see surface features on other stars.
We _can_ see patterns in galaxies and gas clouds (nebulae), but nebulae are typically many light-years in diameter, and galaxies are tens of thousands of light-years across.
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### Author:  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2003, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/22 "2003-12-05T20:02:01Z")
Actually, the star Betelgeuse has been resolved as a disk, revealing some surface detail. But Betelgeuse is relatively close and exceptionally large - if you placed it at the center of our solar system, its surface would extend out well past the orbit of Mars!
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### Author:  [@gcarroll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gcarroll)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2003, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/23 "2003-12-05T20:19:56Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Q.E.D. \*
> \*\*Let’s say the flag is 4 feet across. The moon is roughly 250,000 miles away. At that distance the flag has an angular size of about 3 x 10[sup]-9[/sup] degrees (if I’ve done the math right), which is well below Hubble’s resolving power. \*\*
Worse than that. If the flag is still upright, you’d be seeing the thing edge-on. If it was blown over by the exhaust taking off, then it was also probably covered in dust from the same event.
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### Author:  [@Pablito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pablito)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2003, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/24 "2003-12-05T20:30:43Z")
The “pro-Moon side” goes something like this:
Actually, it’s the Earth-landing that was faked. Generations of humanity have been duped by the corporate-military-industrial complex to believe that we live on the Earth, when really we all live on the Moon, inside a large sound-stage (like they use in Hollywood for movies, but bigger). No-one has ever been to the Earth–it’s uninhabitable, kind of like Venus, but less sulfur–but scientists who are members of the c-m-i-c dreamed it up to help us to feel better about where we do live. That’s why the Matrix was such a controversial, popular movie, because it tapped into our collective subconscious awareness that reality isn’t real.
If you have problems accepting this, stop drinking metropolitan water for a few weeks and let all of the drugs get out of your system. But don’t switch to bottled or ‘distilled’ water: that’s got even more mind-altering chemicals in it. You’ll have to find a supply of fresh well water that hasn’t been tampered with. (As if that won’t be a challenge!)
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### Author:  [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2003, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/25 "2003-12-05T20:36:26Z")
From what I’ve heard, the flags probably don’t exist anymore. They were made of thin nylon cloth, which after a few decades of direct sunlight and vacume would turn to dust.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2003, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/26 "2003-12-05T21:48:09Z")
But the bottom part of the lander would still be there, as well as the rovers and other junk. There’s lots to see besides a flag.
But as has been pointed out, it’s too small and its relative motion is tremendously fast.
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### Author:  [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2003, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/27 "2003-12-07T00:22:01Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Q.E.D. \*
> \*\*…diffraction, an edge effect that bends light around an object’s edge. It’s what makes a pinhole camera work. \*\*
Offtopic nitpick, but: Diffraction is what makes a pinhole camera work **poorly** , limiting the sharpness of images. A pinhole camera works because light travels in straight lines unless it’s got a good reason not to.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2003, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-moon-landing-id-like-to-hear-the-pro-moon-side/217059/28 "2003-12-07T02:01:56Z")
Yes, there is no telescope that can see the flag, AFAIK only the film cameras on the orbiters did pick up the shadows of the lunar landers:
[http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/lunar\_lander.html](http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/lunar_lander.html)
Of course, that will be no good for the moon hoaxer proponents. After years of patiently explaining all the evidence and debunking all the silly arguments of the believers of a moon hoax, I am ready to go “Buzz Aldrin” on them!
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