IMO skepticism is a good thing. I’ll just restate the point I made earlier. If the US government did stage the whole thing (possible), then how did the US government fool the Russians? The Russians would have had every reason to blow the whistle.
The Russians sent unmanned probes to the moon. THEY would have known exactly how much radiation was out there beyond the protections provided by the Earth. If the Russians knew that there was no way the US could shield a space craft to the moon with humans on it and bring them back, THAT alone would have tipped them off the US moon landings were a hoax. At that point it would just be a matter of sending unmanned probes to where the US claimed to have landed, and find no footprints, flag, etc.
I’m guessing that, alas, if this guy is brilliant, then he’s also uh, sanity impaired, on some level.
But if you think it’s possible to have a rational conversation with him about this, I think the best tactic is not to spend too much time on the science. Instead focus on the cover-up. Just ask him how many people worked at NASA since 1965 (say) and now. How much money would the conspiracy have to pay them to keep quiet forever (especially given how much money they stand to make with such a sensational story)? I mean, a filmed movie hoax would take a LOT of scene builders, technicians, key grips, best boys, yadda yadda. And we’re supposed to believe NONE of them have ever come clean?
I mean, sure, government officials can lie. And they have, many times. Often, they can get a few people to try and cover up the lie. But the more people involved, the shorter the cover up is. (“Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead”). A cast of tens of thousands keeping quiet? Not a chance.
But in actuality, I suspect your time would be more productively spent in self-education trying to understand why he WANTS to believe in the hoax rather than wasting both of your time trying to use logic to move him out of a position he didn’t use logic to get into.
And in particular point out how much this “sensational story” would be worth if the person sold it to the Russians as a spy? The Russians in this time period would probably be the only ones who could actually prove absolutely it was a hoax. The money they’d have to pay to the spy would be peanuts compared to the robot probes going to the moon and finding no trace US astronauts ever were there.
Verisimilitude. The very fact that you think this adds credibility to the Apollo program being real would be the same reason why fakers would want to include the occasional staged “mishap”. (I’m just pointing out the flaw in your argument, not siding with the conspiracy theorists.)
I don’t have any trouble believing that the moon landings were genuine. Occam’s razor and all that. [Damning But] But that would require some amazingly precise flight, wouldn’t it? [/Damning But]
They wouldn’t have had to hit the area exactly. They could have sent a remotely controlled rover (like Lunokhod 1, which they sent in 1971) to drive its little self to the landing area.
I suspect radar would be able to track the launch of the Apollo spacecraft into lunar orbit. Then there is the problem of what happened to the astronauts who were launched. (And enough people saw them enter the capsule to make it hard to hide.) Were they in orbit for a week? If so, how come the Russian radar didn’t detect them? Why not make the launches secret if there was a hoax? It would make the job much easier.
Many geologists have examined the moon rocks, which I believe are distinctive enough to not be Earth rocks. Are they all in on it? I could see one flight as a hoax, but seven?
I was there when Apollo 17 launched (the best reason to skip a week of college ever known) and that launch was no hoax.
If this guy is brilliant he’s not sane, and if he’s sane he’s not brilliant.
a person can be brilliant and still have some pretty stupid ideas.
A person can be brilliant and still be wrong.
A person can be brilliant and be bull-headed and/or arrogant to not admit he/she wis wrong.
To judge a person based solely on thier opinion of a single topic is NOT brilliant.
you read my mind. i do, however, believe in oliver stone/jim garrison’s magic bullet.
i really need to learn to start qualifying/prefacing my statements
okay, i’ve done some research, e-mailed links (thanks again! ) with small bullet points, etc., and we’re set to get together to seriously debate this sometime this week. my only problem with my sources is they use some form of questionable language at one point or another such as assuming this and provided that. i work in consulting and those are gi-normous red flags. i’m hoping i can sneak them past him though. :wally
i’m mostly nervous because i’m not the best debater and if i start getting angry everything gets all blurry, while he just becomes more consice and clear. :smack: i don’t know if this means something is wrong with me, but even if i can’t reason with the man, i’ll still be over the moon for him. heh.
(I’d like to caveat my post by saying that it doesn’t really answer the OP’s request, i.e., how to prove the moon landings were real).
Some people who claim to believe outlandish things are in a third category: defiant as all hell, wanting attention and needing to feel superior.
Example: my late mother used to claim that nuclear weapons were a hoax.
She had no scientific training, and had never heard this theory espoused by anyone who had. She was, however, a member of Mensa, and considered herself smarter than everybody.
I don’t think she really believed this – i.e., she wouldn’t have accepted a bet that involved standing next to a nuclear weapon as it was set off. But she knew that such a scenario was very unlikely to ever be put to her. And of course, since none of her kids had ever personally seen a nuclear weapon go off, she could challenge every item of ‘proof’ we provided her.
It provided her one more smug thing to shake her head about and say, “Ah, you young people are so naive – and I’m so much smarter than you all”.
I’m not saying this made Mom insane. But it was definitely a personality disorder.
Your arguement is exactly right. In the space race second place is the first loser.
Don’t forget Russia got sputnik up first, and launched an astronaut first. The US had to come back strong, soJFK proposed putting a man on the moon.
Without seeing specific quotes it’s hard to tell. But I work in science and those are perfectly normal phrases. That’s just how we talk. When a scientist says “assuming A is true, B is true” or “provided A is true, B should be true as well”, that’s usually a polite way of saying “look, it’s bloody obvious to everyone that A is true, and I’ve just proved to you that B is a logical result/extention of A, so you better accept B.”
In my opinion, that’s a sign of reliability, not unreliability. Real scientists tend to be humble about their knowledge and careful about what they claim, so as not to go beyond the evidence. One of the hallmarks of a quack is that he’s absolutely certain about everything, even when he’s talking about a complex subject like the physics of a lunar voyage. (Unfortunately, I think this air of certainty is what makes quacks attractive to some people.)
) with small bullet points, etc., and we’re set to get together to seriously debate this sometime this week. my only problem with my sources is they use some form of questionable language at one point or another such as assuming this and provided that. i work in consulting and those are gi-normous red flags. i’m hoping i can sneak them past him though. :wally