(I’m not sure what forum this one belongs in. Mods, please stick it where it belongs if this isn’t it.)
Yesterday, I learned that a friend of mine doesn’t believe that we (NASA) landed on the moon. Normally, I’d laugh this off, but this is actually someone I respect enough to realize that he’s taken this into serious consideration.
It’s something I’ve never really thought about, and always just taken for granted that it was absolutely true, and that people who don’t believe it were, er, cracked in the head.
Now, I’ve decided to keep an open mind and ask people their opinion. Sooooo–
-Do you think there’s any possibility that it WAS faked? If so, why go through the trouble? If you don’t believe in it - what was presented as proof to you that it wasn’t real? Are there any good sites with actual FACTS that suggest either answer? If they didn’t land on the moon, where did they go?
Also, just to enlighten me, how many times have people (not just the USA) been to the moon? What’s the ‘radiation layer’ that is supposedly unsurpassable? Huh?
This should be put in the “What three words…” catagory as reason to be thrown into a some pit of fire or something.
May I recommend you go to Snopes and do a search there. Actually a search here would have helped a great deal too. This has been hashed over in incredible detail a number of times especially right after the lunatic Fox “special” on the U.S. not landing on moon just over a year ago.
If in fact you do have an open mind, after your searches, you will find that, yes the U.S. landed on the moon a number of times, picked up some dirt and rocks and brought them back to the earth.
The USSR had the ability to track the direction to the source of voice communication from the Apollo. They never doubted that the moon landings were actually accomplished. And they certainly would have said something about anything fishy.
The Apollo project involved thousands of people many of whom would have had to be in on any hoax. It just isn’t possible to avoid such an astonishing fact as a hoax of that magnitude being leaked.
The only moon landings to date were made by the US. This site give a rundown on the Apollo program. And this site refutes the Fox TV program claiming Apollo was a fake. BadAstronomy.
Forget about trying to convince your friend. The Apollo moon landings were true whether or not people don’t believe it.
A friend of mine who was a successful company director thought pyramid schemes were bound to make everybody money. Even after I got the whole world’s population ‘involved’, he still couldn’t accept it.
James Randi’s site has an account of a top chess player (rated in the top 100) who believes camera shake on a long exposure is evidence of aliens.
Thanks for those links!! Derrrrrr, I forgot about the Bad Astronomer. I bookmarked that site.
I actually did read old threads on this subject already. I suppose in my OP I should have been more clear about asking for other’s experiences in knowing people with that train of thought. I’m not real inclined to believe conspiracy theories, but this is someone who I really am surprised to learn thinks this.
Like I said, I was really shocked. He’s not someone I’m going to go to the mat over this, but I am finding looking into the whole possibility of it being a hoax. pretty interesting - especially BA’s site.
Of course no one has ever been to the moon. Do you realize how far away that place is? You could run for days and ever get there.
And I hear that it only has 1/6 the gravity, which means it only has 1/6 the air, so you would have to breathe 6 times as fast just to stay alive. Have you ever tried breathing 6 times as fast as normal for extended periods? Why, that in itself tires you out, so you can rule out sports up there.
And without sports, why even try to go? I think we should nuke the moon so the oceans wouldn’t be so choppy.
Yeah, that moon landing did a great job of patching up all of our internal strife in the U.S. back in 1969.
It must have made everyone feel good for something like a week or so.
Spending all that money on a hoax for such an idea is not an efficient use of resources. You can even argue that it wasn’t an efficient use of resources to REALLY go to the moon. But could you believe LBJ and Nixon wasting all that money on a phony lunar landing as well as the Vietnam War.
And wouldn’t it have been better if we had just faked the Vietnam War?
It took a LOT to convince me the moon landing was real. I wanted to believe it, but the evidence was, to me, not strong enough for a long time.
I heard the rebuttals to all the shadow explanations. It didn’t convince me.
I heard explanations about the Van Allen Belt, and that the radiation would not be intense. It didn’t convince me.
What finally did convince me was when they bounced a laser off a mirror placed on the moon to find out how far away it is. Gee, Recursion how do ya s’pose that mirror got there?
The thing that amazes me is that the moon hoax people don’t have any problem believing that we got into space. If they accept that we could build a rocket that was 360 feet tall and weighed 6 million pounds that actually got off the ground what’s the problem with getting to the moon? Doesn’t seem any more unlikely than getting the Saturn V beast to “fly” without blowing up.
Recursion, why that piece of evidence in particular? An unmanned probe can place a laser reflector on the Moon, for 1/10 the cost of a manned flight. Same with radio transmissions, etc.
Personally I think it’s much easier to send a man to the moon than to maintain a consipracy of the magnitude suggested by the moon hoax people. And why do such an elaborate hoax that will inevitably be uncovered? The Russians were very close to sending their men to the moon (unless you think that was a hoax too, in which case why did they fail?). Discrepancies in the moon rock samples would have been discovered very quickly.
One direct bit of evidence that shows that the astronauts got to the moon came when Apollo 12 landed close to the surveyor lunar prove and the astronauts recovered parts of surveyor 3 (it landed 3 years earlier) and BROUGHT THEM BACK to earth. No robotic probe of the day would have accomplished that feat. http://www.astronautix.com/craft/surveyor.htm
And before some “smart” hoaxer replies that those parts were replicas, you have to know that micrometeorite and moon dust damage was found on them.
And one mayor item that I realized: All the components of the modules, rockets, cameras, etc. Were produced by independent business and corporations, that then used the data from old missions to make better tools and items for future missions, if the data was fake, many corporations outside NASA would have found something amiss.
For the hoaxer (if evidence means something) this only leaves the possibility that NASA had a industry only made to age, damage, and radiate all those machines in a precise way, so when the companies got the items back, they would have found the “normal” damage in their machines. This means that even more people have to be added to the conspiracy, this is very unlikely. And that is IMO the reason the hoaxers are crackerjacks. Eventually we have to go for the most likely explanation: we did go to the moon, and wrought back moon rocks and machines damaged by the moon environment.
I’ve never understood this line of thought. A hoax believer is willing to take one expert’s word (that the Van Allen belts are toxic) but not another’s (that adequate shielding can be used)?
Gosh. I sure hope no experts declare that if you flap your arms really hard, you can fly. Some people would have no choice but to believe them, despite other experts trying to talk them out of jumping off bridges and whatnot.
I put ‘moon landing’ in the search box & boy did I get an eyeful on this one. There
are lots of topics on it here already. But it was esp fun after the Fox program on it.
Well, there are lots of sites with info on this topic. Check my “links” link on the page that was mentioned above. www.clavius.org has lots of good info.
