I agree. Japan isn’t the only country with independent proof of the Apollo missions, China and India have mapped the landing sites too. The breadth of such a conspiracy is so vast that it would be easier simply to go to the moon.
Regarding computer navigation, I should add that most of it was done on the ground way before liftoff. What was needed inflight were mostly course corrections due to inevitable drift. That probably could have been done by siting on stars and using tables and slide rules if necessary. Come to think of it, I think commercial jets had simple on-board navigational computers at the time, so the same may have been true of Apollo.
Yes. Thank you for the link LearJeff. It would be easier to land on the moon than to fake the video. It’s very watchable. The narrator is cool and calm.
What is scary, is that some of these CT’ers are apparently intelligent people. I’m stunned that an engineer (the OP’s cousin claims to be an engineer) of any stripe would deny that we got to the moon.
Like all CT’ers, I think it comes down to “I know something you don’t know”. It puts the conspiracy theorist in a slight (if temporary) advantage over their audience.
Gotta go. Bigfoot again.
There is a small subset of engineers (Lawyers, doctors etc) that are very educated in one small field. They know damn near everything about this one small field and they make the assumption their level of knowledge is equal in all subjects.
They loudly proclaim I AM AN ENGINEER! To anyone that dares to challenge their statements. Regardless of how stupid those statements are. This response always makes me want to reply: That is so cool, Southern Pacific or Amtrak?
That is a classic!
I’ve known too many engineers to find it that surprising.
In addition to the hundreds of pounds of Lunar rocks we brought back (which every geologist from around the world who has seen them has authenticated them) a six foot long core sample was also brought back (along with several other smaller core samples). Keep in mind prior to Apollo the best a robotic probe could do was send back a handful of grams.
I’d like to know what engineering issues he has with the Apollo missions.
What type of an engineer is he?
[] civil engineer
[] mechanical engineer
[] electrical engineer
[] domestic engineer
conspiracy engineer (one who engineers conspiracies)
Best find out what type engineering your cousin practices, and which particular projects he has worked on. Then keep clear of those projects for your own safety.
Look, he’s a nutter. You are wasting your time arguing with a nutter. Facts and reason will make no difference. You might as well try to change the mind of a brick.
Exactly.
If this guy is an engineer he clearly never spent any time studying the subject at hand. If he did he would realize just how damn hard it was to accomplish.
This actually makes it more likely to have actually occurred because when you look at the hurdles that had to be overcome and the solutions developed you realize they actually would work. As objections come up they can be refuted by actually studying the solutions.
Furthermore not only did NASA address the issues they knew about at the outset, they addressed issues which were unforeseen and presented themselves along the way and realistic solutions were developed for those complications as well.
I’ve only done very cursory reading on the subject but it’s clear these were some smart people.
Ha!
…and, by that logic, there was no Cuban missile crisis?
Of course there wasn’t a Cuban Missile Crisis, let alone a moon landing. Only a lunatic would thing there had been.
Look, the earth is young. A lot younger than you think.
God and his soon-to-be but always-ways-having-been beloved son Jesus the Christ, blessed be their names, amen, created The Firmament at 19:23 UTC, 30 November 1987, not too far from soon-to-be American President and World Cage Match fighter Co-Champion Sara Palin.
Then God and his soon-to-be but always-ways-having-been beloved son Jesus the Christ, blessed be their names, amen, flooded the earth on 24 August 1992, not too far from soon-to-be World Cage Match fighter Co-Champion George Zimmerman.
Since then, the librul conspiracists have been using fluoride and vaccinations to brainwash people into believing their [deep world indoctrination.
Here are the true facts.](Refuting Evolution chapter 8: How old is the earth?)
I’m an engineer, with a degree in electrical engineering from MIT and a PhD in Computer Science, and trust me, your cousin is an idiot. 
[url=http://web.mit.edu/aeroastro/news/magazine/aeroastro6/mit-apollo.html] Here is a nice article on how the Draper Lab at MIT worked on the Apollo guidance system. I started at MIT just about 6 weeks after the landing, and the story about Draper Labs and Apollo was all over the place.
I also went to see the Apollo XVII launch. You might ask if they faked the first one, why did they do six more? Pretty expensive, right?
How old is he? I suspect that he never worked on computers from the period (I have) and doesn’t realize how much you can do with relatively limited computing power. I’ve programmed computers older and less powerful than the Apollo ones, and you can do a lot.
Tell him to write specifically what he thinks the problem is, and we’ll moiderize him.
Similarly, they obviously didn’t have the medical knowledge or know-how to develop vaccinations until, oh, surely, the 1990s.
Three seconds. About 1.5 seconds there and 1.5 seconds back. The lightspeed delay is minimal for something as close as 250,000 miles.
I recently saw a video which stated that the technology that we lacked in the 60’s was the technology to fake the moon landings. Now, the man said, we could fake it, but then with the photo non digital technology it would not have been possible. Myownself I don’t have the expertise, but mayhaps you can find that video at youtube and use it as ammo.
Oops editing. I see that Learjeff already found said video and posted it!
Though I am way to young to have worked on the Apollo program, I’ve worked on a number of systems derived from Apollo-era hardware, including a family of rocket engines derived from the TR-201 Lunar Module Descent Engine (which also has a loose heritage to the current Merlin family of engines being used by SpaceX for the Falcon 9 vehicles). I’ve also done extensive work of evaluating upgrades to the J-2 engines used in the S-II and S-IVB states in the Saturn V. While the propulsion systems for the LM and the Saturn V are not the only required technologies necessary to get a crewed vehicle to the Lunar surface, they were certainly critical enabling technologies which had to be developed, and a plausible chain of development can be readily demonstrated back to the timeline of the Apollo program.
A cursory look at habitat systems shows that those are entirely feasible in the timeframe of Apollo. Ditto for communications, thermal protection and recovery systems, power systems, et cetera. The one potentially questionable technology would be computing technology, and specifically computer memory, which was really the limiting factor in most operations. However, the computing technology required for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), while challenging for the time, is very primitive even compared to 'Eighties-era personal computers. The AP-101 (used as the basis for the AGC) has been used in various versions in the B-52, F-15, and Space Transportation System Orbiter Vehicle (“Space Shuttle”) as well as having common heritage with the System/360 mainframe systems which are very widely used in commercial industry since the mid-'Sixties. In other words, the viability of every critical required technology that was needed for Apollo/Saturn system to deliver a crew to the Lunar service can be essentially demonstrated independent of the Apollo Program.
In addition to that, there are tens of thousands of engineers, scientists, and technicians who worked on various aspects of the Apollo/Saturn system and the Apollo Lunar Missions. While few of them have the high level knowledge of every aspect of the system and operations, many of them can assure that critical enabling capabilities are in fact workable or that information like communications could only come from a lunar mission. In order to perpetrate a conspiracy of this scale would require thousands of people to conspire to lie about the mission with no credible evidence or deathbed confessions. This is so incredibly impractical to be practically impossible. If anybody were going to fake a Lunar landing it would be the Soviets. However, despite their lack of success in a crewed program, they were remarkably successful (far more than NASA) at uncrewed soft landing and remote exploration.
Exactly. It was so difficult to dummy up believable footage of the Moon landings that we actually had to go to the Moon to fake it.
Joseph Heller should have written a novel on this topic. Hell, perhaps I’ll do it. I’ll entitle it The Moon is Lying Bitch of a Mistress.
Stranger
Hit the wrong button, FriarTed?