# Yes, It's Another Moon Hoax Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 19, 2001, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520 "2001-09-19T02:58:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/121 "2001-09-27T19:01:37Z")
**Donnie B.:** Wow, your first post and it’s in my moon hoax thread? I’m honored! And welcome to the SDMB, too! > [@](#): > > Why couldn’t there be a billowing dust cloud?.. There was a very definite source for a very transient, very turbulent atmosphere at that particular lunar locale and time. There was a rocket motor spewing out a large quantity of hot gases at high velocity! > > If what you saw was in fact a dust cloud, it could very well have been blown around by the rocket exhaust as it disbursed into the tenuous near-vaccuum. Well, it sounds plausible to me, but what do I know? In my travels among the debunking sites, I’ve never heard of any such “temporary atmosphere” effect. But I’m past the point of making any claims of even relative likelihood… > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by jab1_ > Anything within reason is possible. But just because something is possible does not mean that that is what happened. No shit. Do you really think it’s necessary to point out such obvious truths? The thing here is, I seem to be alone in thinking it is “within reason” that the moon landings could have been faked in part or in whole. > [@](#): > > Astronauts landed on the Moon. They took movies and still photos in color and black and white. They brought back geological samples and left seismographs and other equipment, some of which is still in use to this day… Blah, blah, blah. Thanks for your input! Have a nice day! > [@](#): > > The fact that you think you see discrepancies in the images only tells us that you don’t know much about photography. Yeah, every point I’ve made can be chalked up to a misunderstanding of photography. The dust cloud, the poor reporting at [space.com](http://space.com)? More evidence of my lack of photographic understanding. That’s why nobody else can really explain them either. Mea maxima culpa. > [@](#): > > But if you persist in saying, “The landings were real, but the pictures are fakes!” then you deserve all the ridicule you get. Are you actually blind, **jab1**? I’ve said only that I haven’t ruled out the possibility. If that makes me worthy of ridicule in your eyes, well, just please leave me alone. I have no interest in your charming brand of pseudointellect. > [@](#): > > How in the hell could the launch of the LM ascent stage have been faked on live TV, for example? By running pre-recorded footage, obviously. Come on, at least _try_ to think “outside the box.” > [@](#): > > Pulling off the greatest hoax in history would have been far, far more difficult than doing it for real. Ah, more unsubstantiated blather. Might I ask how you calculated the relative difficulty of these tasks, **jab1**? **Skogcat:** Wow, a well-thought-out, thorough, and specific response to one of my questions! Are you _sure_ you belong at the SDMB? My only points of contention are that, as **DaveW** pointed out earlier, there was some “steering” involved during the LEM ascent, so we can’t be entirely sure that all the movements we see are due to the camera. And although you touched on every other movement quite effectively, you seem to have left out the final lateral movement of the LEM after the 45-degrees-to-straight-up shift. What’s your theory for that part? > [@](#): > > All camera reactions to drift occur a number of seconds after the drift begins. Well, except for the “lucky” or “by chance” ones, let’s not forget… > [@](#): > > All the above of course is just my guess as to how the footage may have turned out how it did. But it does show that there is a very plausable explanation for the movements seen and it certainly didn’t require the camera man to be reacting in real time, in fact if the camera man had been reacting in real time it would be expected that the LEM would never have left the screen. Well, unless he was deliberately trying to act as though he wasn’t there, of course. But that’s a way-conspiratorial explanation. I’d say you’ve done a pretty thorough job of explaining away the “magic,” as **DaveW** prefers I put it. > [@](#): > > The quality of the real player video does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the blooming halo effect on screen, dust/light? The fact that it doesn’t appear to move when the camera does appear to move would suggest that it may be some kind of light effect, I don’t know. It may be a light effect, and yeah, the quality of the digital film is rather poor. I don’t suppose anybody out there knows of a specific video available for rent that might contain a clearer version of this footage? **DaveW:** I’m tired of this anomaly/magic game. If I were to say “this looks like magic,” I’d be laughed out of town. You know it; I know it. I can see it now: “You believe in _magic_ but not in the moon landings!?!?!?” > [@](#): > > Read what I write: if it’s expected to be there, it’s not an anomaly. Because you don’t happen to expect things like diverging shadows or weird LM movements in video does not mean that people familiar with such things wouldn’t expect them, as well. Read what _you_ write. You pointed out to me that the [space.com](http://space.com) photo closeup references “photmetric [sic] anomalies related to small fresh craters.” Are you telling me these researchers _didn’t expect_ craters to be on the moon? I mean, seriously, **DaveW** , with all the things I’ve brought up, do we really have to waste so much time on your minor quibbles with my perfectly acceptable use of the word “anomaly”? > [@](#): > > …if a bazillion other pieces of evidence all say that we actually went to the Moon, shouldn’t you give that some weight? Shouldn’t you say to yourself, “hey, all the other evidence points to this being real - why don’t I believe it in this one case?” I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. Even one “dog running around” would be enough to prove a given piece of evidence false, no matter how many other pieces of evidence point to a contrary conclusion. > [@](#): > > Consider that many scholars believe that a single, global flood was highly unlikely, and other reasons exist for multi-cultral flood stories. You _know_ what I was getting at—there’s no rule that say individual pieces of evidence can _only_ be considered in the context of other pieces of evidence. Since you don’t like my Bible and laws-of-physics explanations, how about we use a “Ten Angry Men”-type scenario. Say we found a plausible motive for a given suspect to have committed a murder. Say we found strands of his hair at the crime scene. Say we had a videotape of him entering and leaving the crime scene at the time the murder was committed. And say we found his fingerprints on a knife covered in the victim’s. Only one hitch: the length, width, and serrated edge of the blade do not match up with the wounds suffered by the murder victim. Do you just throw up your hands and say, “well, all the _other_ evidence points to his guilt, so fuck it, let’s fry the guy”? God, I hope not. > [@](#): > > I think your problem is that you failed to note that I didn’t ever say the word “entire” with respect to either example. As such, you are attacking a straw man, and not what I said. Okay, technically you said it was unwise to examine a single piece of footage without looking at _anything_ else, which I mutated into _everything_ else. Still, I think my point stands that individual pieces of evidence can (and probably should) be evaluated in and of themselves. If the moon landings actually happened, I see no reason for you to object to this. > [@](#): > > A pit lit from the east will be bright on its west side and dark on the east (try it). A mound lit from the west will be bright on its west side and dark of the east (again, try it). The two are equivalent when viewed from high above. A pit lit from the east will look identical to a mount lit from the west? And a pit lit from the west will look identical to a mount lit from the east? But if we took a picture of a pit being lit from the east and rotated it 180 degrees, would it or would it not look like a pit being lit from the west? > [@](#): > > I’ve discovered solid evidence that (a) the photo I provided was not a negative, and (b) that the NASA photos of the landing site 30 years ago were lit from the east. They still look more like real craters in with the colors reversed, but you make a compelling case. I note, however, that you seem to have accepted the original [space.com](http://space.com) image as a “positive,” no? > [@](#): > > A baseless assumption on your part that is very much mistaken. I just don’t see how you can’t think the craters look more realistic when the colors are reversed. But my comments in the paragraphs above deal with those issues, so I won’t rehash it all again here… > [@](#): > > Again, perhaps you missed the part where I said that such information is likely to be missing from the Clementine site. There should be other resources. What other resource could tell me whether the [space.com](http://space.com) photo taken by Clementine was in the UV range or the visible range? > [@](#): > > When did I get “upset” at you about the “too close to the sun” remarks? The patronizing “read what I write” struck me as a bit grumpy. > [@](#): > > The \ was meant to emphasize that the heading was not a jab at you. I would have written \ or some such to let you know that. Understood. > [@](#): > > I did invert the NASA landing-site image, and what saw I was less ‘satisfying’ as a real Moon photo. Can you explain to me why? > [@](#): > > These two “best points” of yours I happened to feel were the most-difficult ones to apply my suggested method to. That’s understandable too, but it doesn’t make me any more anxious to ignore them. > [@](#): > > …an “act of good faith,” if you will, that would show me (us?) that you really do give a hoot about “The Truth,” and aren’t here just to ask question after question or post “I found this odd thing” messages in a seeming attempt to prove NASA lied. I know you mean well, **DaveW** , but I don’t have to prove to you or anyone else that I’m interested in “The Truth.” If it isn’t obvious by now, I doubt it ever will be… > [@](#): > > …I suggested what I considered to be plausible, not definitive, answers. Was I not tentative enough in my near-ceaseless qualifying (“maybe”, “perhaps”, etc.)? You appear to find implications in my posts that don’t exist, and ignore those that do. No, I realize you’ve qualified your statements; it’s not really you that’s bothering me here. The problem is that even your extensively qualified statements are being perceived by certain members of the SDMB as “perfectly reasonable explanations” that should inspire me to pipe down and move on. Not that your explanations are entirely unreasonable, of course, but they _are_ generally rather hypothetical, and not entirely satisfying (to me). Had you simply said “I don’t know,” the conversation would obviously have been a lot less interesting, but on the plus side it would have made clear to the “haters” out there that I’m not just spitting into the wind. > [@](#): > > …I presented what I thought was a fair deal in order for me to continue to attempt to answer questions with any semblance of patience… My “if you care” preamble, which you appear to have ignored, was an attempt at learning, from you, whether or not you honestly do value my input anymore… If you don’t like the constraints my proposed deal would put on both of us, feel free to say, “bugger off” and I will. Don’t forget that you get to choose both the task that you would work on, as well as the one that I would work on. Gotcha. Well, I definitely value your input, no question about that. You’re one of the few actually offering any! And it’s not that I have any problem with your “arrangement,” as long as it’s to prove I value your opinion and not to prove I value “The Truth” (call it a point of pride). I certainly don’t want you to stop participating in this thread, but I don’t want your participation to be contingent on me not discussing the dust cloud and [space.com](http://space.com). Admittedly, it would be quite difficult to get proof one way or the other about the dust cloud; you’re absolutely right about that. But hell, you already seem to have made a lot of progress on the [space.com](http://space.com) issue! I don’t know, frankly I’m a bit tired. But I’m not formally rejecting your offer, at least. > [@](#): > > The “antihoaxers” only need to ask the question of “why would they have done such a thing?” to put most, if not all, hoaxer (not quite including you) arguments in a bad light, because the only answers so far are speculative at best (“the Russians”), and silly at worst (“greed”). I just don’t see why motive needs to come into play here. Either the footage is real or it’s not; who gives a crap _why_ it would have been faked? It strikes me as dodging the question. > [@](#): > > By the way, I haven’t ruled out the possibility that the Moon landings were faked, I just think that the chance of that being true is very, very small. There are ways to calculate such things, but I don’t know 'em. Someone once calculated the odds that a mouse could survive on the surface of the sun for a week at very, very, very improbable (I forget the exact number, but rest assured there were a lot of zeroes). There is a chance, but should you bet on it? Probably not. Let’s put it this way: I think it’s much more likely that NASA faked the moon landings (in whole or in part) than that a mouse could survive on the surface of the sun for a week. Call me crazy… **CurtC:** Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out as soon as I can (I’m slacking off at work, ya see). My confusion, by the way, if I did not make it clear earlier, was that **The Bad Astronomer** said something to the effect of “lunar dust reflects light back the way it came, unlike a piece of paper which reflects light in all directions.” I was trying to figure out what lunar dust and airline hulls had in common that lunar dust and paper do not. Metallic content, perhaps? Your dust cloud explanation may be accurate, but the debunkers seem to hold that dust blown around by exhaust on the moon travels laterally just above the ground and does not “billow.” But who knows… > [@](#): > > There seems to be a disconnect between your way of looking at pro-hoax evidence, and the others’ here. You can say that again! > [@](#): > > But just because we don’t have every last answer to them, that doesn’t make it reasonable to ignore the vast amount of evidence that clearly shows the Apollo landings were real. I’m not ignoring it in reference to whether the missions happened as claimed; I’m ignoring it as a means for explaining away anomalies (or whatever you want to call them) in specific pieces of evidence. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Futile Gesture_ > Simple. Dust billows in a cloud due to it being driven by gaseous particles. We usually experience this in the gases of our atmosphere, but of course this doesn’t happen on the moon. However, the example you quote is due to dust being blown by the expelled gases from the rocket. The dust moves in a ‘cloud’ because at that moment it is inside an expanding body of gas. Once the gases disperse into the vacuum the dust reverts to its usual lunar behaviour. Good explanation. Too bad it appears to run completely contrary to the “facts” presented by your fellow debunker, **The Bad Astronomer**. Who’s right? > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by JayUtah_ > You say “merely noticed the forgery,” and we can ask for no better example of the circular reasoning which dooms conspiracy theories to incredibility. What is noticed is not a forgery, but only an effect which could be explained by forgery. We’re getting back to the “dog running around on the moon” argument here. Blatant impossibilities in alleged moon footage would prove the footage fake even in the absence of a witness who could testify that such forgery occured. > [@](#): > > If the effect can be caused by a process other than forgery, then we must find other evidence of our hypothesized process… That’s the “big if,” isn’t it? > [@](#): > > Many lunar landing conspiracy theorists seem to come from a background of more-than-healthy distrust of authority, and often believe in most or all other anti-government conspiracy theories. And this is pertinent to me _how_? > [@](#): > > And in skimming this discussion it seems that you seem too fond of your conclusions to recognize the flaws in the arguments you’re using to support them. A lot of people are trying to get you to step back and see how silly your arguments look to someone who isn’t already predisposed to accept them. Well, I think I see what I think I see. If somebody has a compelling explanation, I’ll consider it and possibly even accept it. What more do you want? > [@](#): > > You cannot use the existence of alleged anomalies as the premise for this proposition, since that would be circular. With my dog-on-the-moon example, I believe I’ve already demonstrated the falsity of this claim. Since the rest of your argument hinges on that point, I’ll just stop here… ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/122 "2001-09-27T20:24:33Z")
In the spirit of keeping this in the OP territory here is my 2 cents BickByro: Regarding the video camera shots of the LM: Fendell and the remote camera setup in Mission control: [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15v.fendell.ram](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15v.fendell.ram) The explanation for his success is similar to what happened to me with my digital camera: my camera has the annoying “feature” of selecting flash and focus automatically, the process takes 1 to 2 seconds, many photos I took were missing people or I moved when the photo was not taken yet. The solution was to adapt myself to that and quickly count to three to get the picture at the right moment. Many times I calculated ahead of time by pressing the button and then, after a few seconds, the camera flashed with the results I expected. It took me a few months to get used to it, now I do not even have to count! I do believe Fendell did the same, I would not be surprised to find that he had lots of practice after the true lag time was known. Since only a few Apollo missions had the rover video camera, a liftoff was captured properly by Fendell only in the last Apollo mission. [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15.lrvload.html](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15.lrvload.html) As for the shadows: [http://www.lunaranomalies.com/fake-moon.htm](http://www.lunaranomalies.com/fake-moon.htm) The lunar anomaly site did look at the evidence, while they remain distrustful of NASA and I don’t agree with many of their conclusions, Lunaranomalies concluded that NASA did go to the moon. I like to bring those guys into discussions like this because they, as certified NASA critics, should be less biased to people like you. [http://www.lunaranomalies.com/fake-moon2.htm](http://www.lunaranomalies.com/fake-moon2.htm) ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/123 "2001-09-27T20:47:14Z")
**GIGObuster:** Thanks!!! Very good stuff… ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/124 "2001-09-27T22:31:00Z")
Man o Man o Man, I hate coming in this late. So much has already been said, I’m confused where to start. Reading through I kept seeing comments where I wanted to respond so badly. Way back at the beginning, BickByro asked about this: > [@](#): > > The thing that gets me is the astronaut who starts out closest to the camera. Look how long his shadow is (reaching above the other astronaut’s knees), and watch how short it gets as he approaches his companion. Then watch how long it again gets as he returns. Check out the point about 2/3 through the footage at which the shadow of the astronaut’s head reaches about, oh, 80% up what is presumably the shadow of the LEM. Observe how the flag-planting astronaut’s head-shadow doesn’t reach beyond about 90% of the shadow of the LEM (and neither does the other guy’s, when he’s out by the flag). And you can tell that the heads don’t just stretch out to some unseen point “over a hill” because the shadow of the flag held over the astronaut’s head is clearly visible, and even it does not extend past the shadow of the LEM. I can’t view the video clip in question. I think I may have seen it before. The situation you describe appears similar to this Apollo 11 photograph: [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/ap11-s69-40308.jpg](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/ap11-s69-40308.jpg) S69-40308 (128k) This frame from the 16-mm camera mounted in the LM window shows Neil (left) and Buzz (right) deploying the U.S. Flag. It was taken at about 110:09:50. Scan by Kipp Teague. From [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/images11.html](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/images11.html) What causes Neil’s and the flag’s shadows to be so short compared to Buzz’s? It is simple - the ground is not flat. Look close, the ground is sloped down and away from the LM into a crater and then curves up the back wall. It is subtle because the camera does not pick up three dimensions well. The length of Buzz’s shadow is caused by it running down the slope, while Neil’s shadow lies on the upslope of the far crater. This is an example of how uneven terrain will show differing shadow lengths. I think that is the effect displayed in the video - but again I cannot see the video myself. Check this site for a graphic showing how it works. [http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/shadows.html](http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/shadows.html) Later you ask about other shadow effects, and how scattered light off the surface can illuminate objects in shadow above the ground but not along the ground in craters. This site gives a clear demonstration of reflected light from the surface illuminating objects in shadow. [http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/iangoddard/moon01.htm](http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/iangoddard/moon01.htm) This comment really grabbed my attention and torqued my chain: > [@](#): > > similar to **The Bad Astronomer’s** almost impossibly hubristic “The claims made by these conspiracy theorists are actually all wrong, and some are laughably so. Some involve some subtle (but understandable!) physics, while others are easily shown to be false.” > > At the very least, have I not proven to you how wrong that statement is? Where is the subtle but understandable physics that so handily defeats ALL my arguments? First, you misquote The Bad Astronomer. While that may be _your impression_ of what he said, he did not, in fact, say **all** comments were of that sort. Second, he was absolutely not wrong. I am a regular at The Bad Astronomy board, and I can tell you from personal experience you have no clue how many times we had posters come in and blabber the exact same stupid comments like “There are no stars on the moon pictures, and without atmosphere you would see lots of stars. That proves Apollo was faked.” Then there was the guy who wanted to argue for some time that engineers in fact do not know anything about heat transfer and couldn’t design cooling systems to make the space suits and lander work on the moon in vacuum. Despite numerous long, tedious descriptions of how heat transfer works, and links to NASA descriptions of the actual hardware, it wouldn’t sink in. Or the numerously repeated claim that astronauts shouldn’t be able to move in their highly pressurized space suits, and then in the next breath why didn’t they ever jump incredibly high to demonstrate the low gravity. The BA’s statement that most claims are either incredibly stupid or rely on a subtle misunderstanding of physics was spot on. However, that doesn’t mean his comment applied to **you**. One other thing, you asked about the cameras and film on Apollo. Check these links: [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html) [http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/moon/1.htm](http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/moon/1.htm) [http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo11/A11\_Photography.html](http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo11/A11_Photography.html) There was one other comment somewhere in there about how maybe the Apollo missions were real, but the Apollo 17 ascent shot was faked. This fails to be convincing as an explanation. What about Apollo 12, where most of the lunar activity was unable to be broadcast live because of an accidental exposure of the TV tube to the sun, burning it out? On that mission NASA had to rely on ground demonstrations in the mockups to show what the astronauts were doing. I might add that those demonstrations were labelled as such and were not masqueraded as real moon footage. Also note one moon hoax believer has dug up some of that footage, and uses it to support his claim that the landings were hoaxed - because it shows astronauts in suits on a set. Just shows you the types of duplicity that is out there, and why HBers have such a bad reputation. I’m not sure what else to address right now. I’d like to try to help answer some questions, but frankly wading through it all is going to be tedious and I’m afraid fruitless as too much has been jumbled up. Let’s see: 1. The Apollo 17 liftoff video, showing (a) a smear that looks like a dust cloud, and (b) you wonder about how the panning was so effective if on a time delay remote control. 2. The news article claiming that Clementine shows a dark spot for Apollo 15. What is the cause of the dark spot, and is there a conflict in explanations vs. other NASA sources saying the area around the lander should be bright? What other issues are outstanding? ---
**Author:** ![JayUtah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@JayUtah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JayUtah)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/125 "2001-09-27T23:10:00Z")
> [@](#): > > **Bick:** Let’s put it this way: I think it’s much more likely that NASA faked the moon landings (in whole or in part) than that a mouse could survive on the surface of the sun for a week. Cute, but I’d rather know whether you believe it’s more likely that NASA faked the moon landings than that they actually landed on the moon. If so, give us the argument. > [@](#): > > **Bick:** I’m ignoring it (the preponderance of evidence in favor of authentic landings) as a means for explaining away anomalies (or whatever you want to call them) in specific pieces of evidence. But if you argue that the records are anomalous, and your hypothesis for explaining the anomalies is that they were falsified, then you have to deal with the pro-landing evidence as a direct and credible threat to your hypothesis. A hypothesis cannot stand if substantial evidence exists contrary to it. > [@](#): > > **Bick:** We’re getting back to the “dog running around on the moon” argument here. No, we are talking about a very simple principle of faulty reasoning called circularity. It’s been well known since Aristotle. > [@](#): > > **Bick:** Blatant impossibilities in alleged moon footage would prove the footage fake even in the absence of a witness who could testify that such forgery occured. So far you have not produced any evidence of “blatant impossibilities,” so your argument falls flat as a defense of your case based on anomalies. You have produced only effects which you allege to be impossible because they run contrary to your intuitive expectation. That is insufficient. There can be observational situations in which one hypothesis is immediately and obviously favored. But this is a special case, and still requires an inductive leap. The general case stipulates that no hypothesis can be asserted simply because it satisfies the inferential rule. > [@](#): > > **JayUtah:** If the effect can be caused by a process other than forgery, then we must find other evidence of our hypothesized process… > [@](#): > > **Bick:** That’s the “big if,” isn’t it? Of course. And the number of so-called anomalies which have valid scientific explanations constitutes the overwhelming majority of all the effects identified by conspiracy theorists as anomalies. This suggests two things to me: 1. The conspiracy theorists aren’t very good at identifying anomalies, since they mistake unremarkable physical phenomena for “blatant impossibilities”, and 2. The preponderance of evidence strongly favors the explanation that NASA did not fake the lunar landings. There will never be full parity on this latter point. This is a historical inquiry, and in any historical inquiry one can never expect full consistency in the record. I accept the likelihood that I will not be able to explain 100% of the items identified by conspiracy theorists as anomalies. It is simply not possible to determine exactly what produced any given photo. If we observe an effect for which at least two hypotheses exist: it is a natural phenomenon, or it is a product of falsification; we can, if we wish, survey our knowledge of the natural world and suggest possible explanations. We consider also that not all natural phenomena are known or understood – even by experts – although their effects are still observed. However, parsimony weighs heavily on the side of natural processes because we observe no direct evidence of the alleged activity of falsification. In this case it is actually more plausible to conclude that an anomaly is due to an unknown natural phenomena than to falsification. We have evidence that there exist unknown natural phenomena with potentially observable effects, but we have no evidence that a hoax existed, and this belief is a required premise to the hypothesis that the photo is anomalous because it was falsified. We rightly reject hypotheses which require belief in additional propositions for which there is no evidence. This is a classic application of Occam’s Razor. > [@](#): > > **Jay:** Many lunar landing conspiracy theorists seem to come from a background of more-than-healthy distrust of authority, and often believe in most or all other anti-government conspiracy theories. > [@](#): > > **Bick:** And this is pertinent to me _how_? It was not necessarily intended to be pertinent to you. The analogy was a general example of circular reasoning meant to be tangentially applicable to your precise arguments. The point I wished to establish is that the vast majority of lunar hoax believers would fall into the anti-government demographic. Conversely I have noticed that those of the anti-government persuasion tend to believe the lunar landing conspiracy. The conclusion I draw is that people believe the lunar landing hoax theories not because of the merits of the arguments in favor of them, but because that theory is one of a class of theories which are collectively and predispositionally believed. Thus the proponents of those theories are not generally concerned with, or even cognizant of, the inherent structural flaws in the arguments for any one theory. This, I believe, may be applicable in your case. Not because I characterize you as an anti-government nut, but because I see evidence that your conclusion is held on a basis other than the merits of the arguments you propose. > [@](#): > > **Bick:** Well, I think I see what I think I see. If somebody has a compelling explanation, I’ll consider it and possibly even accept it. What more do you want? Perhaps nothing more. One may hold a personal belief on whatever grounds that person deems appropriate. He may not necessarily have a basis for that belief that would appeal to objective reason. For example someone who survived a train derailment might have a very real and justifiable fear of traveling by railroad, although the objective case for the safety of that mode of transportation might be quite strong. Nevertheless this is the nature of individual belief. So if you say, “I believe the lunar landings may have been falsified,” that’s your opinion and I don’t have much to quibble about that. But if you say, “I believe the lunar landings were falsified, _and so should you because there’s a very good case for it_,” then we’re into the realm of reason and the standards of evidence escalate dramatically at this point. If you assert that they were falsified (as opposed to merely stating your opinion that they were), then you have to provide a positive case. You can’t just assert it on the basis that someone else cannot sufficiently disprove it. So the real question is: What are you asserting? > [@](#): > > **Bick:** With my dog-on-the-moon example, I believe I’ve already demonstrated the falsity of this claim. Not in the general case you haven’t. The general case is that circular reasoning is false induction, and has been understood as such for many centuries. None of what you’ve presented amounts to the “blatant impossibilities” that would elevate your argument to the valid induction that one and only one hypothesis is clearly correct a priori. A photograph of a dog on the moon is reasonably conclusive because we know of no natural circumstance which would allow such an observation. But this constitutes a special case because if such a circumstance were possible, we should have known about it by virtue of our general understanding of the universe. In this case it is absurd to suppose that some mysterious principle of astrophysics and biology allows canine inhabitation of the moon, but which – in all contradiction to our general knowledge of these subjects – has gone undiscovered for generations. In short, we know of no natural circumstance which accounts for the observation, _and_ we are reasonably sure that no such natural circumstance _can_ exist. But in an example of the general case, principles such as zero-phase lighting and _Heiligenschein_ are appropriate alternate hypotheses to the hoax theory to explain some so-called “halo” anomalies. Conspiracy theorists call these anomalies “blatant impossibilities” because their own understanding (and perhaps that of the general public) is insufficient. This is not analogous to the dog example wherein it can be asserted that we (the human race) know of know natural circumstance that can explain the observation _and_ that no such circumstance _can_ exist. If there is sufficient ambiguity – either in the general body of applicable knowledge or in the individual’s personal undersatnding of it – then you cannot make a case based on “blatant impossibility”. In this case the individual’s expertise is insufficient, but experts can easily explain the observation in terms of natural effects. But if you consider the set of hypotheses in light of the total body of human knowledge, circularity applies. The hoax theory is most assuredly not automatically on more favorable footing than the natural theory in this case, and since it is clearly unparsimonious we reject it. Even if we didn’t do that, asserting a hoax theory for the “halo” effect (e.g., studio lighting) solely on the basis that it produces the observed effect is rejected as circular. Even if we cannot postulate a possible natural explanation for some particular observation, it is not true in the general case that no suitable explanation _can_ exist. This is especially important when the hoax hypothesis is argued on the basis of its being the only plausible explanation. In a true dichotomy, a hypothesis must be accepted, no matter how absurd, if the converse hypothesis is clearly impossible. But in this context of ambiguity it is impossible to construct a true dichotomy, and so the proof fails structurally as a false dilemma. The remaining alternative is to provide positive proof of the desired hypothesis, but this has so far been impossible for conspiracy theorists and they know it. Therefore their strategy has been to try to shore up the crumbling dichotomy. They know that the only chance of supporting their absurd and empirically devoid notions is to pit them as the only alternative to something they say is impossible. They can try all they want to make halos and missing fiducials look like a dog on the moon, but the public remains unconvinced. Obviously the argument that the universe is strange and unexplained is not entirely satisfying. It is not comforting to say, “This anomaly must have a natural explanation because there is much about the universe we do not understand.” It will, in each case, become a matter of opinion whether the likelihood of an unkonwn natural phenomena outweighs the likelihood of deliberate falsification. I can’t help you there. It’s a correct, parsimonious, but ultimately useless argument. But I bring it up in principle to illustrate the basic difference between the epistemology of the dog example, and the epistemology of the rest of your arguments. The dog example rests on the uncommon circumstance of being able to conclusively exclude a possibility. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/126 "2001-09-27T23:21:58Z")
Wow, all this new and useful information coming to light all of a sudden! Well, thanks, guys, it truly is better late than never! (Did it just take me getting pissy or is this all a coincidence?) You’ll have to give me a bit to process all these links; as I mentioned, I’m doing almost all of this on company time… **Irishman:** I think the clip is a Real Player file, so if you downloaded the app, you’d be able to see what I’m talking about. In the particular case in question, I don’t personally see as how sloping ground would account for the effect. If you check the first page of this thread, I believe, you’ll see a short conversation I had regarding a “ridge” in the background of the film clip. There _is_ a ridge there (it was visible on my home computer but not really noticeable on my work computer), but it doesn’t appear to cut enough out of the LEM’s shadow to account for the shortened astronaut shadows. IMHO. Neither does the astronaut who moves from the front of the shot to the rear seem to descend any sort of incline. But if you don’t have access to the film, of course, you won’t be able to corroborate this… > [@](#): > > First, you misquote The Bad Astronomer. While that may be _your impression_ of what he said, he did not, in fact, say **all** comments were of that sort. I beg to differ. Check out [http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html---he](http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html---he) even italicizes the word “all.” > [@](#): > > Second, he was absolutely not wrong… The BA’s statement that most claims are either incredibly stupid or rely on a subtle misunderstanding of physics was spot on. However, that doesn’t mean his comment applied to **you**. Well, if it doesn’t apply to me, then his comment is wrong, because he _does_ say “all,” not “most.” > [@](#): > > There was one other comment somewhere in there about how maybe the Apollo missions were real, but the Apollo 17 ascent shot was faked. This fails to be convincing as an explanation. It’s not supposed to be a convincing explanation, just a possibility. > [@](#): > > Just shows you the types of duplicity that is out there, and why HBers have such a bad reputation. No doubt—I’m just saying let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. > [@](#): > > Let’s see: > > 1. The Apollo 17 liftoff video, showing (a) a smear that looks like a dust cloud, and (b) you wonder about how the panning was so effective if on a time delay remote control. > > 2. The news article claiming that Clementine shows a dark spot for Apollo 15. What is the cause of the dark spot, and is there a conflict in explanations vs. other NASA sources saying the area around the lander should be bright? > > What other issues are outstanding? Hmmm… well, those two (combined with the above-referenced shrinking-shadow film) will probably provide enough fodder to keep this debate going for another two or three pages (though perhaps less if I don’t have to continuously defend myself against dismissive generalities). I’d be more than happy if we could limit ourselves to those few points and actually reach some conclusive answers on why I am wrong to think I see “anomalies.” ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2001, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/127 "2001-09-27T23:38:57Z")
Look, **BB** , just saying, “It’s possible!” does nothing. You must also show why the possibility you favor is more likely to be true than all other possibilities. You have to show why your possibility is the one that actually happened. You haven’t done it. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/128 "2001-09-28T00:19:46Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by JayUtah_ > Cute, but I’d rather know whether you believe it’s more likely that NASA faked the moon landings than that they actually landed on the moon. If so, give us the argument. I wasn’t trying to be cute; I’m not the one who came up with that mouse-on-the-sun thing. But I’m not about to try to mathematically calculate the relatively likelihood of those two possibilities. The nature of the question kind of renders the whole “odds game” pointless; either they did it or they didn’t, and no amount of calculation on our part is going to change that. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > **Bick:** We’re getting back to the “dog running around on the moon” argument here. > > No, we are talking about a very simple principle of faulty reasoning called circularity. It’s been well known since Aristotle. Yeah, but you folks are grievously misapplying it. If I see a dog running around on the moon, I don’t need to “develop a hypothesis” that perhaps the footage was faked, because that fact would be self-evident to anyone with an even rudimentary understanding of physics and the application of physics to living beings. Similarly, _if_ dust clouds are impossible on the moon, _then_ the presence of a dust cloud in the footage would be a dead giveaway that the film was _not_ taken on the moon, regardless of any other evidence. Now, you touch on this later in your post when you say: > [@](#): > > [The dust cloud (presumably)] is not analogous to the dog example wherein it can be asserted that we (the human race) know of know natural circumstance that can explain the observation _and_ that no such circumstance _can_ exist. If there is sufficient ambiguity – either in the general body of applicable knowledge or in the individual’s personal undersatnding of it – then you cannot make a case based on “blatant impossibility”. In this case the individual’s expertise is insufficient, but experts can easily explain the observation in terms of natural effects. Well, _if_ the experts can do so, sure. But if they can’t, then there you have it. You may not like my dog example, but it is perfectly valid as a reductio ad absurdum of your “circularity” argument, no matter how much you couch that argument in vague qualifiers about “the general case.” > [@](#): > > In a true dichotomy, a hypothesis must be accepted, no matter how absurd, if the converse hypothesis is clearly impossible. But in this context of ambiguity it is impossible to construct a true dichotomy, and so the proof fails structurally as a false dilemma. I guess it’s all a matter of determining how much ambiguity there truly is in the proposition that dust clouds are impossible in the absence of an atmosphere. **The Bad Astronomer** put it in pretty unambiguous terms, though **Futile Gesture** seems to contradict those claims. If we could figure out what the real deal is, I’d say we would have sufficiently eliminated ambiguity in this case. > [@](#): > > You have produced only effects which you allege to be impossible because they run contrary to your intuitive expectation. That is insufficient. For God’s sake, read the thread. **The Bad Astronomer** makes the analogy, on his Web site, of blowing on a pile of flour. “If you blow hard enough,” he says, “you might see little curlicues of air lifting the flour farther than your breath alone could have, and doing so to dust well outside of where your breath actually blew.” This effect, he says, is impossible on the moon due to a lack of atmosphere. Therefore, if we see dust flying around outside of the immediate area of the ascending LEM’s exhaust, then we are witnessing footage shot in an atmosphere. My “intuitive expectation” has nothing to do with it. > [@](#): > > It is simply not possible to determine exactly what produced any given photo. That may or may not be the case. That’s why I came here. > [@](#): > > In this case it is actually more plausible to conclude that an anomaly is due to an unknown natural phenomena than to falsification. Then we fall back on my secondary hypothesis, which is that NASA went to the moon but the so-called debunkers don’t know enough about the natural phenomena on the moon to do their jobs properly. > [@](#): > > We rightly reject hypotheses which require belief in additional propositions for which there is no evidence… This is a classic application of Occam’s Razor. I wondered how long it would take for somebody to whip out the ol’ Razor! If there’s one thing you can count on at the SDMB… Luckily for me, I’m not asking you to believe in any “additional propositions,” simply to evaluate single pieces of evidence and answer the question “was this or was this not filmed on earth?”. So you know where you can stick that Razor (though I must give you kudos for not misspelling Occam’s name, one of the most common and embarrassing errors on this board). > [@](#): > > The conclusion I draw is that people believe the lunar landing hoax theories not because of the merits of the arguments in favor of them, but because that theory is one of a class of theories which are collectively and predispositionally believed… This, I believe, may be applicable in your case. Not because I characterize you as an anti-government nut, but because I see evidence that your conclusion is held on a basis other than the merits of the arguments you propose. I love how even _questioning_ the moon landings means I have drawn a conclusion that they are false. For all your tossing about of logical catchphrases, you seem to be missing out on a rather obvious point: I haven’t concluded _anything_. > [@](#): > > So if you say, “I believe the lunar landings may have been falsified,” that’s your opinion and I don’t have much to quibble about that. But if you say, “I believe the lunar landings were falsified, _and so should you because there’s a very good case for it_,” then we’re into the realm of reason and the standards of evidence escalate dramatically at this point. Like I said, I haven’t drawn any conclusions. And believe me, if I did, I wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to say “there’s a very good case for it.” At best, there would be a small handful of pieces of evidence that might point to it, and I would, in that circumstance, implore you to consider the possibilities posed by said evidence. But, in any case, that hasn’t happened yet… > [@](#): > > So the real question is: What are you asserting? Let me state this once more in straightforward terms: _I assert nothing other than that I have noticed some strange things that, if they cannot be explained, may well point to some shenanigans on the part of NASA._ That’s as far as it goes, folks. Sorry to disappoint; it seems you all are hungering for a pile-on in which I can self-destruct in an embarrassing torrent of flames. Ain’t gonna happen. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/129 "2001-09-28T00:21:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jab1 \* > \*\*Look, **BB** , just saying, “It’s possible!” does nothing. You must also show why the possibility you favor is more likely to be true than all other possibilities. You have to show why your possibility is the one that actually happened. You haven’t done it. \*\* That would be necessary if I were attempting to prove that NASA faked all or part of the lunar landings. Since I am not attempting to do so, no such burden falls upon me. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/130 "2001-09-28T00:59:59Z")
**Bick:** > [@](#): > > **Skogcat:** Wow, a well-thought-out, thorough, and specific response to one of my questions! Are you _sure_ you belong at the SDMB? Thanks, > [@](#): > > My only points of contention are that, as **DaveW** pointed out earlier, there was some “steering” involved during the LEM ascent, so we can’t be entirely sure that all the movements we see are due to the camera. The kind of instantaneous changes in direction observed through most of the footage would not only put a tremendous strain on equipment and personell due high g forces but would also require large amounts of fuel, those are the movements I would say are almost definitely from the camera. The drift that occurs near the start where the LEM starts to move from top of screen downwards may well have been due LEM movement. > [@](#): > > And although you touched on every other movement quite effectively, you seem to have left out the final lateral movement of the LEM after the 45-degrees-to-straight-up shift. What’s your theory for that part? I didn’t notice that bit, I’ve been trying to review it but the Net isn’t playing the game. AH, now it is. I’m not sure why exactly the LEM may have darted off that way. I believe it is due camera movement rather than LEM movement. I wouldn’t call it lucky as it didn’t achieve anything (I explain in a little more detail below) favourable. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > All camera reactions to drift occur a number of seconds after the drift begins. > > Well, except for the “lucky” or “by chance” ones, let’s not forget… The only movement I saw which I couldn’t attribute to either good planning (ie the initial launch) or camera reaction was the move from 45 degrees right/up to straight up (and now also the final lateral movement). But that move from the camera didn’t achieve anything, the LEM still quickly disappeared off screen, the only difference was that it went off the top rather than the right hand side. To my mind that movement wasn’t “lucky” as that would imply some kind of favourable outcome. It couldn’t have been in reaction to anything because the movement would have been initiated (accidently by my theory) when the LEM was off screen. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > All the above of course is just my guess as to how the footage may have turned out how it did. But it does show that there is a very plausable explanation for the movements seen and it certainly didn’t require the camera man to be reacting in real time, in fact if the camera man had been reacting in real time it would be expected that the LEM would never have left the screen. > > Well, unless he was deliberately trying to act as though he wasn’t there, of course. But that’s a way-conspiratorial explanation. Yes you could always say that the most realistic looking piece of footage in the world was a very very very clever fake if you wanted to. > [@](#): > > I’d say you’ve done a pretty thorough job of explaining away the “magic,” as **DaveW** prefers I put it. Good enough for the LEM footage to be accepted as _most likely_ legitimate? ---
**Author:** ![DaveW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DaveW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveW)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/131 "2001-09-28T04:52:24Z")
**BickByro** wrote: > [@](#): > > Okay, technically you said it was unwise to examine a single piece of footage without looking at anything else, which I mutated into everything else. Still, I think my point stands that individual pieces of evidence can (and probably should) be evaluated in and of themselves. If the moon landings actually happened, I see no reason for you to object to this. But evaluating a single photo by itself is extraordinarily difficult. Look at what I had to do to present a “compelling case” (thank you very much, I don’t think I’ve ever been the recipient of a “compelling” before) for [photo E](http://members.aol.com/psorsite/moon/) to actually be a positive print:[list=A][li]A general indication of how Hadley Rille _should_ look in a particular light,[/li][li]A photo giving us compass orientation, and[/li][li]A photo taken from a known direction, showing a distinct shadow, to show where the sun was.[/li][/list=A]So, three other pieces of evidence were required just to answer one question about one photo. Think about it going the other way: _If_ the photo had been wrong (let’s try to stay away from ‘faked’, shall we?), then one, two, or all three of the above pieces of evidence would also have to be wrong. That would mean that still other pieces of evidence that showed the same things would be wrong as well, perhaps leading to the conclusion that _all_ of the evidence is incorrect. Well, let’s not go _too_ far. 🙂 > [@](#): > > A pit lit from the east will look identical to a mount lit from the west? And a pit lit from the west will look identical to a mount lit from the east? But if we took a picture of a pit being lit from the east and rotated it 180 degrees, would it or would it not look like a pit being lit from the west? Absolutely, but that’s not what I’m getting at. If you’ve _got_ a picture, and you don’t know _100%_ whether you’re looking at a pit or a mound, then the light can’t tell you. Inverting the colors just turns your pit into a mound with the light coming the other way, or vice versa. In other words, if you know where the light’s coming from, you can tell whether you’re looking at a pit or a mound. If, on the other hand, you know you’re looking at a pit, you can tell where the light’s coming from. If you don’t know either, you’re out of luck. If you add the possibility of a negative into the mix, you’re out of luck even if you know one or the other (since the negative will flip the light source, if that’s what you’re trying to deduce). > [@](#): > > I note, however, that you seem to have accepted the original [space.com](http://space.com) image as a “positive,” no? No. I can tell what you’re looking at, and it was a mistake on my part which will be fixed shortly (by changing the word “negative” to “colors inverted”). > [@](#): > > I just don’t see how you can’t think the craters look more realistic when the colors are reversed. > > . . . > > Can you explain to me why? Mostly, things are too dark. There aren’t enough bright highlights. Of course, this means that there aren’t a lot of really dark darks in the original, but we’ve been over secondary light sources already. > [@](#): > > What other resource could tell me whether the [space.com](http://space.com) photo taken by Clementine was in the UV range or the visible range? I’m just betting that some other camera has taken UV images of the moon. If so, compare what’s possible to compare. Actually, the more I think about it, the less I think that that’s going to turn out to have anything to do with it. I’m going back to the “it’s a negative” idea, but with a twist. The photo has obviously been processed to hell and back. Hadley Rille is, along 99% of its length, either black _or_ white, so the contrast has probably been severly messed with. It looks a little on the fuzzy side, too, so some other filters have been applied. Actually, compare the [space.com](http://space.com) photo with the pre-flight photo linked to on my page - look at all the detail shown. The [space.com](http://space.com) photo isn’t of such a lower resolution that most of the detail in the pre-flight would be lost, but it ain’t there. Of course, in the pre-flight photo, the Rille is black _or_ white again, but if it’s due to contrast enhancement, it’s not nearly as severe as in the [space.com](http://space.com) picture. I played around with the NASA navigator some, by the way, entering the map coordinates of the Apollo 15 landing site, but got nothing recognizable - I think I’ve got browser problems, because saving the images to disk gives me very different results than viewing them in the Web page (but I never saw Hadley Rille, no matter what, so there’s still something else wrong). > [@](#): > > That’s understandable too, but it doesn’t make me any more anxious to ignore them. > > . . . > > I certainly don’t want you to stop participating in this thread, but I don’t want your participation to be contingent on me not discussing the dust cloud and [space.com](http://space.com). Okay, it’s obvious I’ve made a major omission. I don’t want to ignore or not discuss the other questions, either. I just want to back-burner them until we get one or two questions answered to your satifaction (as opposed to this four- or five-way chaos going on now). > [@](#): > > I know you mean well, DaveW, but I don’t have to prove to you or anyone else that I’m interested in “The Truth.” If it isn’t obvious by now, I doubt it ever will be… I apologize. That came out much stronger than it was intended. Too tired. > [@](#): > > No, I realize you’ve qualified your statements; it’s not really you that’s bothering me here. The problem is that even your extensively qualified statements are being perceived by certain members of the SDMB as “perfectly reasonable explanations” that should inspire me to pipe down and move on. Not that your explanations are entirely unreasonable, of course, but they are generally rather hypothetical, and not entirely satisfying (to me). Had you simply said “I don’t know,” the conversation would obviously have been a lot less interesting, but on the plus side it would have made clear to the “haters” out there that I’m not just spitting into the wind. Well, no. Just because some schmuck (me) doesn’t know, doesn’t mean that everyone’s clueless. > [@](#): > > Gotcha. Well, I definitely value your input, no question about that. You’re one of the few actually offering any! And it’s not that I have any problem with your “arrangement,” as long as it’s to prove I value your opinion and not to prove I value “The Truth” (call it a point of pride). Thanks, but the more I think about this, the more I’d hope it’d be to show _you_ that a lot of this stuff isn’t rocket science (haha!). I really do think that if you look around, with a critical eye, in your own parking lot, you’ll find a lot of the answers you’re looking for. > [@](#): > > Admittedly, it would be quite difficult to get proof one way or the other about the dust cloud; you’re absolutely right about that. Just as an aside: the caption for “Pan Camera 9809” (Apollo 15) reads, in part: > [@](#): > > _Compare a detail showing the area around the LM with similar details from the earlier pan camera frames. The immediate area around the spacecraft has been swept by engine exhaust for a second time; insulation from the descent stage was scattered around the area following staging and ignition; and there is no Ascent stage to cast a shadow._ Now, here at home I’m having a hell of a time getting the images they’re talking about to look like anything but a bunch of garbage. I gotta remember to look at them from work. But anyway, it got me to wondering if the “dust cloud” you’re seeing for Apollo 17 isn’t actually lots of bits of insulation. > [@](#): > > But hell, you already seem to have made a lot of progress on the [space.com](http://space.com) issue! Well, I’ve gotten started and frankly, I don’t know how to stop. It’s eating at me, now. I should have passed. 🙂 > [@](#): > > I just don’t see why motive needs to come into play here. Either the footage is real or it’s not; who gives a crap why it would have been faked? It strikes me as dodging the question. Because if there’s no plausible motive for faking it, why would anyone do it? There appear to be two main motivations for hoaxing: for the fun of it (watching the “suckers” run around changing theories willy-nilly), and for greed (either for money or for fame). “Showing up the Ruskies” is a third possibility in this case, although as I see it, they pretty much just shrugged it off after their own disasters. If the Moon landings were done for fun, I don’t see anybody giggling. If they were done for money, there was much easier pork to be found. And if they were done for fame, the people who became the most famous for this ‘hoax’ weren’t the people who created it, paid for it, or maintained it all these years. Fame by proxy? Not very satisfying. If there’s no good reason for the hoax, it makes the possibility that there was a hoax much more remote. Who _gains_ from faking, say, just the ascent footage? _What_ do they gain? ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/132 "2001-09-28T10:44:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > Good explanation. Too bad it appears to run completely contrary to the “facts” presented by your fellow debunker, **The Bad Astronomer**. Who’s right? In this case, does it matter? They are both very plausible. Maybe both are right to a degree. If I was to demand an explanation of how **exactly** the internet worked I would, no doubt, be told things that contradicted each other in some nitty gritty details. I would conclude that the truth of the matter may lie somewhere in between, or that they were both right in certain circumstances. I would also accept that maybe I’m never going to understand everything about internet mechanics unless I want to devote a fair chunk of my life to it. I would **not** decide that both explanations are obviously invalid and that the internet is actually faked by hundreds of little men living inside my computer. To much of the hoax believers’ arguments are based around demands that every single aspect be explained to them in the intricatest of details. Failure to provide such information is interpreted as a cover-up. They then apply a few home-spun hunches to a field of study the know little about and behold! another hoax theory is born. I say to the hoax believer; if you need to know every single explanation of every single detail before you will accept the landings as fact; if you will not accept anyone’s expert word on these things, then you’re going to have to first spend at least 20 years in intensive and multi-specialized study. Following this you’ll need about 30 years work experience in a number of fields. After that you’ll probably be one of the most intelligent beings on the planet and you truly will know for sure if the landings were faked or not. The rest of us who don’t have time for all that will just have to accept what sounds plausible and take other people’s word on some things. ---
**Author:** ![JayUtah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@JayUtah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JayUtah)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/133 "2001-09-28T17:42:11Z")
> [@](#): > > **BB:** I wasn’t trying to be cute; I’m not the one who came up with that mouse-on-the-sun thing. Irrelevant. In examining the total body of available evidence, not just the so-called anomalies, do you believe it’s more likely that this entire body of evidence is explained by a falsification, or by a genuine landing? I’m not asking for a calculation. I’m asking for your estimate based on whatever you deem appropriate. In any historical inquiry there will be anomalous data or apparent inconsistency. Can you compare the level of inconsistency in the Apollo record to that of, say, the American Revolution? > [@](#): > > **BB:** Yeah, but you folks are grievously misapplying it. Not in the least. You are providing textbook examples. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Similarly, _if_ dust clouds are impossible on the moon, _then_ the presence of a dust cloud in the footage would be a dead giveaway that the film was _not_ taken on the moon, regardless of any other evidence. No, _not_ similarly. You have provided nothing commensurate to the analogy of the animal on the moon. First there is the nomenclature issue. “Dust cloud” is too general a term. Standing billows are not the same as blowing sheets. Second, you have been given a number of putatively plausible alternative hypotheses. That they may all turn out to be wrong is irrelevant. That they may contradict each other is irrelevant. The animal-on-the-moon analogy favors the one hypothesis (i.e., falsification) because, as you say, _any_ other hypothesis is known _a priori_ to be false. That is not the case here. You cannot know that any hypothesis aside from falsification to explain the dust behavior _must_ be false. Thus your argument falls under the aegis of the general inductive case. > [@](#): > > **BB:** my dog example, but it is perfectly valid as a reductio ad absurdum of your “circularity” argument, no matter how much you couch that argument in vague qualifiers about “the general case.” No. _Reductio ad absurdum_ is for deductive arguments. Yours are inductive arguments, and my refutation is the application of the rules of induction. That induction may in one case clearly favor one hypothesis to the exclusion of all others, is not proof that it must or can do so in all cases. > [@](#): > > **BB:** That may or may not be the case (that photos may not be explainable). That’s why I came here. But your conclusion seems to be that if the Apollo record is not 100% explainable, then it may have been falsified. In the absense of explanation, why do you advance that possibility instead of others which many believe may be more plausible? Your reaction to the contradiction between two hypotheses is strange. You seem to have rejected the entire process of induction simply because two members of the hypothesis set were not harmonious, and one was likely wrong _a priori_. In fact, the strength of the inductive process is precisely in the variety of its hypotheses. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Then we fall back on my secondary hypothesis, which is that NASA went to the moon but the so-called debunkers don’t know enough about the natural phenomena on the moon to do their jobs properly. I think you over-formalize the debunking process. It is very likely true that so-called debunkers don’t know enough about the applicable sciences to be able thoroughly and conclusively explain all alleged anomalies. I have asserted as much in my case. But you don’t consider whether this is the personal failing of the debunker in question, or whether it may be the failure of science in general to conclusively provide answers for any given set of observations. In short, no debunker can claim nor expect to answer all questions put to him. The question is then what you plan to do in that case. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Luckily for me, I’m not asking you to believe in any “additional propositions,” Only because you have failed to state your conclusion. But the conclusion toward which you are hinting indeed requires additional propositions. > [@](#): > > **BB:** … to evaluate single pieces of evidence and answer the question “was this or was this not filmed on earth?”. The problem is that you assert one conclusion because its converse is not proved. And you seem to ignore the possibility of other conclusions which are not the converse. You are, as I said before, trying to shore up the false dilemma. > [@](#): > > **BB:** I love how even _questioning_ the moon landings means I have drawn a conclusion that they are false. Despite your protest it’s not apparent that you are merely questioning. > [@](#): > > **BB:** For all your tossing about of logical catchphrases, you seem to be missing out on a rather obvious point: I haven’t concluded _anything_. First, I’m sorry you believe I’m just throwing around logical catch phrases. I was under the impression I had discussed their meaning at length as they related to your arguments. Second, although you have not stated your conclusion, you’re hinting strongly at one. Failing to state the conclusion is not the same as not having a conclusion. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Let me state this once more in straightforward terms: _I assert nothing other than that I have noticed some strange things that, if they cannot be explained, may well point to some shenanigans on the part of NASA._ Well, that’s your conclusion. Phrasing it conditionally does not sufficiently qualify it since you are strenuously rejecting arguments that your observations are not anomalous. In the absence (actual or eventual) of satisfactory explanation, why do you leap to the possibility that NASA has falsified the photos and films? Why is that hypothesis worth mentioning while the others languish in silence? I don’t accept the argument that the falsification hypothesis remains the only plausible or clearly correct hypothesis, a la the dog-on-moon analogy. The dog-on-moon analogy does not apply to your evidence. Thus I require a defense of the _prima facie_ plausibility of the falsification hypothesis on first-order empirical grounds before I am willing to entertain the notion of falsification, no matter how timidly phrased. My holiday snaps of my visit to Long Beach contain a few photographic anomalies. I can’t explain them, nor can the photographers I’ve consulted. Should you therefore favor a conclusion that I did not ever visit Long Beach and that I or some other agent has falsified my photographic record of that trip? Your “may” qualifier renders the entire statement worthless. I can just as plausibly say “… if they cannot be explained, may well point to a deliberate plot by space alien Elvis impersonators to hide their secret bases on the moon from human inspection.” Without that “may” you would fallaciously affirm the consequent. But by including “may” you have walked right up to the face of a particular conclusion in such a way that you can conveniently deny having drawn it when pressed, but still present the standard arguments in favor of it when it suits you. Sorry, the only “shenanigans” I see are from you. It seems you are more interested in ridiculing debunkers than in debating the question. As such I’ll probably graciously excuse myself at this point. Speaking more realistically, the inability of debunkers to explain some set of anomalies may have several potential explanations which are putatively more plausible than falsification. 1. The individual debunker may lack the specific knowledge required to identify a natural process by which an anomaly may have been created. You accept this possibility, but do not accept that this is endemic to any form of empirical investigation. 2. The entire body of human knowledge may lack understanding of the natural process by which an anomaly may have been created. You seem unwilling to differentiate this from the dog-on-the-moon analogy. 3. Due to the limitations of historical inquiry it may be impossible to causally relate a hypothesis to the observed effect. Even the ability to reproduce the anomaly does not guarantee causality in the case of the photo in question. 4. Due to the limitations of historical inquiry it may be impossible to test the relative plausibility of several different hypotheses. In this case it is not licit to dismiss all such hypotheses on the grounds of any contradictions between them. 5. Due to the limitations of historical inquiry it may be impossible to discover all the factors which contributed observable effects to the photo in question. You have already acknowledged this possibility. And so forth. The point is not so much that any one of these necessarily applies to some particular anomaly you may name. The point is that these hypotheses establish the character of the inductive case such that no one hypothesis is clearly held, to the _a priori_ rejection of all other hypotheses. Given the number of non-falsificatory hypotheses which may explain any given anomaly, and given the epistemology of historical inquiry, I ask a different version of my original question? Upon what basis does the hypothesis that NASA falsified Apollo records even enter into a reasoned discussion of alleged anomalies? ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/134 "2001-09-28T19:02:56Z")
I’ll get to all the rest of you in a sec; let me address **JayUtah’s** points first… > [@](#): > > In examining the total body of available evidence, not just the so-called anomalies, do you believe it’s more likely that this entire body of evidence is explained by a falsification, or by a genuine landing? Again, I’m not evaluating the entire body of evidence. You may deem this evasive on my part, but we’ll just have to disagree about that. Consider that the “odds” seem to point to a greater likelihood that NASA _did_ land on the moon but faked at least some of the footage than that NASA never landed on the moon at all (I assume you’ll agree with me about these odds). You seem to be gunning for an all-or-nothing evaluation of the situation, and I don’t feel comfortable providing that. > [@](#): > > You have provided nothing commensurate to the analogy of the animal on the moon. > > First there is the nomenclature issue. “Dust cloud” is too general a term. Standing billows are not the same as blowing sheets. Standing billows, blowing sheets, it doesn’t matter; if I am reading **The Bad Astronomer** correctly, all blown dust on the moon moves laterally parallel to the surface, rendering billows, sheets, clouds, whathaveyou impossible. > [@](#): > > Second, you have been given a number of putatively plausible alternative hypotheses. That they may all turn out to be wrong is irrelevant. That they may contradict each other is irrelevant. The animal-on-the-moon analogy favors the one hypothesis (i.e., falsification) because, as you say, _any_ other hypothesis is known _a priori_ to be false. That a dog cannot survive unaided on the moon may be quite obvious to us, being educated types, but I hardly think it qualifies as _a priori_. A small child, for instance, might not understand why it is physically impossible for a dog to run around on the moon (but even a small child would be disturbed by the sight of a dog running around upside-down on the moon, because we _do_ know _a priori_ that this is impossible). By analogy, we Dopers, with our perhaps limited understanding of the physics of dust particles on the moon, may not understand why a dust cloud is or is not possible on the moon. In my inquiries, I have been working under the assumption that **The Bad Astronomer** had it right; the may not actually be the case, and if it is not, I readily admit that it takes the sting right out of my argument. But I take it for granted that, although it may take a while for _us_ to figure it out, the physics of dust particles on the moon is not a subject beyond the purview of science. As such, the answer to the question “are dust clouds possible on the moon?” is out there _somewhere_. If the answer is “yes,” then any potential argument against NASA crumbles, of course. But if the answer is “no,” and we _can_ establish that we are looking at a dust cloud, then we will know we are looking at a forgery. > [@](#): > > You cannot know that any hypothesis aside from falsification to explain the dust behavior _must_ be false. I _do not_ know; I think it extreme to say I _cannot_. > [@](#): > > But your conclusion seems to be that if the Apollo record is not 100% explainable, then it may have been falsified. In the absense of explanation, why do you advance that possibility instead of others which many believe may be more plausible? Obviously weird things are going to show up in photos; I can’t deny it. I partly operate under the hope that NASA would have noticed any “anomalies” as well and would have taken an interest in explaining them for their own purposes. Of course, I can’t know whether they would have done this, and there may be some things in the photos that even NASA can’t explain. But I don’t think the LEM-ascent dust cloud should be _that_ unexplainable, and if it is, I’d like to know why. > [@](#): > > I think you over-formalize the debunking process. It is very likely true that so-called debunkers don’t know enough about the applicable sciences to be able thoroughly and conclusively explain all alleged anomalies. I have asserted as much in my case. But you don’t consider whether this is the personal failing of the debunker in question, or whether it may be the failure of science in general to conclusively provide answers for any given set of observations. Well, actually, I have considered that. I was operating under the assumption that it was a personal failing because even if the answers cannot, in fact, be provided conclusively by “science in general,” that only means the debunkers should not attempt to explain such things in a “conclusive” manner. So either they screwed up, or they realize science can’t help them so they just picked an explanation and ran with it. Either way, I blame the debunkers. > [@](#): > > In short, no debunker can claim nor expect to answer all questions put to him. The question is then what you plan to do in that case. Mock them for their hubris, of course, because as I’ve pointed out, **The Bad Astronomer** minces no words when he says _all_ hoax claims are false. How does he know? > [@](#): > > Only because you have failed to state your conclusion. But the conclusion toward which you are hinting indeed requires additional propositions… Despite your protest it’s not apparent that you are merely questioning… although you have not stated your conclusion, you’re hinting strongly at one. Failing to state the conclusion is not the same as not having a conclusion. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s so hard about humoring me for a bit? > [@](#): > > Phrasing it conditionally does not sufficiently qualify it since you are strenuously rejecting arguments that your observations are not anomalous. Like I say, it isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. NASA may have faked some of the footage, may have faked all of the footage but gone to the moon, or may have not gone to the moon at all. I don’t think it’s fair to force me to choose one of these three possibilities as my “official argument,” so I will continue to phrase my argument conditionally. And it’s a bit extreme to say I “strenuously reject” the arguments against me; I simply don’t consider them sufficient, as yet, to abandon my line of questioning. At such time as they become sufficient, I will abandon my line of questioning. And yes, I am the self-appointed judge of what is “sufficient” here, but I’m the OP and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s my prerogative. > [@](#): > > In the absence (actual or eventual) of satisfactory explanation, why do you leap to the possibility that NASA has falsified the photos and films? Well, because leaping to a conclusion would be unreasonable. “Leaping to possibilities” is a different matter entirely. > [@](#): > > I don’t accept the argument that the falsification hypothesis remains the only plausible or clearly correct hypothesis, a la the dog-on-moon analogy… Thus I require a defense of the _prima facie_ plausibility of the falsification hypothesis on first-order empirical grounds before I am willing to entertain the notion of falsification, no matter how timidly phrased. Again, I will attempt to clarify my position: I’m not saying “if there was a dust cloud, then the footage was faked.” I’m saying “if it is true that dust clouds are impossible on the moon, and if we are actually looking at a dust cloud, then the footage could not have been taken on the moon.” You haven’t sufficiently demonstrated to me what is so circular about the logic of the preceding sentence. It looks to me like a perfectly sound logical proposition. My inclusion of “may,” by the way, may render my statement worthless, but again, there are three hoax possibilities and I’m not about to commit myself to any of them. > [@](#): > > But by including “may” you have walked right up to the face of a particular conclusion in such a way that you can conveniently deny having drawn it when pressed, but still present the standard arguments in favor of it when it suits you. Well, I _haven’t_ drawn the conclusion, but I still entertain it as a possibility. Sorry that you can’t see the difference between these two states of mind, but that’s not my problem. Excuse yourself if you must. > [@](#): > > Speaking more realistically, the inability of debunkers to explain some set of anomalies may have several potential explanations which are putatively more plausible than falsification. Oh, I know one right off the bat: the debunkers don’t really know what they’re talking about. > [@](#): > > You accept this possibility, but do not accept that this is endemic to any form of empirical investigation. I accept it; I’m perfectly willing to turn the argument around from “NASA may have faked it” to “ **The Bad Astronomer** is peddling (forgive me) moonshine.” > [@](#): > > The entire body of human knowledge may lack understanding of the natural process by which an anomaly may have been created. You seem unwilling to differentiate this from the dog-on-the-moon analogy. It’s a possibility, but it hasn’t been shown to me that man simply does not know whether dust clouds are possible on the moon. > [@](#): > > Due to the limitations of historical inquiry it may be impossible to causally relate a hypothesis to the observed effect. Even the ability to reproduce the anomaly does not guarantee causality in the case of the photo in question. I’m kind of lost as to how this would apply to the dust-cloud question. Obviously I can “reproduce” a dust cloud here on earth, but I’m certainly not saying that proves anything. > [@](#): > > Due to the limitations of historical inquiry it may be impossible to test the relative plausibility of several different hypotheses. In this case it is not licit to dismiss all such hypotheses on the grounds of any contradictions between them. When we reach a point where we all just have to say “that’s it, we’ve hit the wall, that’s as far as we can probe these issues,” these kinds of points will be valuable. At this point, they are merely distractions from the discussion at hand. > [@](#): > > The point is not so much that any one of these necessarily applies to some particular anomaly you may name. The point is that these hypotheses establish the character of the inductive case such that no one hypothesis is clearly held, to the _a priori_ rejection of all other hypotheses. By that same token, are you not rash to take it as _a priori_ that NASA _did_ everything it claims to? > [@](#): > > Upon what basis does the hypothesis that NASA falsified Apollo records even enter into a reasoned discussion of alleged anomalies? Well, you’re the only one driving for such a hypothesis to be made. But just to humor you, I’ll say it again: _if_ impossibilities (not merely “anomalies,” mind you) are found in the historical record, _then_ it is reasonable to hypothesize that the historical record has been tampered with. ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/135 "2001-09-28T20:51:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > **Consider that the “odds” seem to point to a greater likelihood that NASA _did_ land on the moon but faked at least some of the footage than that NASA never landed on the moon at all (I assume you’ll agree with me about these odds).** Why would they fake _some_ of the footage? Why take the risk that the trickery be found out later? What was the motive? You’re suggesting that NASA has committed the crime of forgery; like all good detectives, you have to establish means, motive and opportunity. They certainly had the opportunity, they MAY have had the means (though I doubt it), but what about the motive? > [@](#): > > **if I am reading The Bad Astronomer correctly, all blown dust on the moon moves laterally parallel to the surface, rendering billows, sheets, clouds, whathaveyou impossible.** What is blowing the dust? Exhaust gases from the rocket. How should gases behave in 1/6th gravity? BA is right when he describes the actions of dust in a vacuum, but with the presence of exhaust gases, there is no longer a perfect vacuum in this one area of the Moon, so the dust should behave differently. (Even experts make mistakes, y’know.) (And I hope BA didn’t say that dust would move parallel to the surface; if so, he should have said it would move in perfect arcs in the lunar vacuum.) To recap: What you see in the video of the LM ascent is a cloud of dust AND rocket exhaust gases. > [@](#): > > **The Bad Astronomer** minces no words when he says _all_ hoax claims are false. How does he know? The fact that NASA really did put astronauts on the Moon renders false all claims to the contrary. It’s like having someone claim that no man named Abraham Lincoln was ever President of the United States. We know for a fact that a man named Abraham Lincoln was once President, so all claims to the contrary must necessarily be false. > [@](#): > > **We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s so hard about humoring me for a bit?** It sure is taking you a long time to cross that bridge. It’s like you’re walking from Key West to Miami. > [@](#): > > \*\*_if_ impossibilities (not merely “anomalies,” mind you) are found in the historical record, _then_ it is reasonable to hypothesize that the historical record has been tampered with. \*\* What “impossibilities”? Do you know of any (or _think_ you know), or are you just speculating? ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/136 "2001-09-28T21:23:20Z")
It’s been a busy day; sorry I’m slacking on the SDMB, folks! [QUOTE] \*Originally posted by jab1 \* > [@](#): > > Why would they fake _some_ of the footage? Why take the risk that the trickery be found out later? What was the motive? > > You’re suggesting that NASA has committed the crime of forgery; like all good detectives, you have to establish means, motive and opportunity. They certainly had the opportunity, they MAY have had the means (though I doubt it), but what about the motive? The motive to fake only some of the footage/photos (or, for that matter, to actually go but fake _all_ the footage/photos) would be that, for any number of possible reasons, the real footage/photos didn’t look good enough. It’s been said that the astronauts spent a good deal of time training to capture good shots without viewfinders and with cameras mounted to their chests; while I certainly don’t question that some such training would have been involved, I’d certainly imagine the astronauts had many more important details to practice and memorize. In the absence of artificial lights, shooting only at lunar dawn so as to stay alive, with (possibly) long exposure times that would have resulted in blurry photos due to small movements, maybe a lot of the photos just didn’t turn out so great. But that’s just my speculation as to motive; there may be other possible motivations. > [@](#): > > What is blowing the dust? Exhaust gases from the rocket. How should gases behave in 1/6th gravity? BA is right when he describes the actions of dust in a vacuum, but with the presence of exhaust gases, there is no longer a perfect vacuum in this one area of the Moon, so the dust should behave differently. (Even experts make mistakes, y’know.) Oh, of course experts can make mistakes. And, since **The Bad Astronomer** didn’t really touch on the issue of the effect of exhaust gases on lunar dust, he may have only have made a mistake of omission. He does say “In a vacuum, no air means the exhaust spreads out even more, lowering the pressure,” which leads me to believe that the exhaust from the ascending LEM would have dissipated too quickly to act as a “temporary atmosphere” as per **Futile Gesture’s** model. I may well be wrong on this point. > [@](#): > > (And I hope BA didn’t say that dust would move parallel to the surface; if so, he should have said it would move in perfect arcs in the lunar vacuum.) No, he didn’t say “parallel”; I used that word to convey the idea that the dust would just blow out to the sides, as opposed to rising up on “little curlicues of air,” as **The Bad Astronomer** rather poetically put it. > [@](#): > > To recap: What you see in the video of the LM ascent is a cloud of dust AND rocket exhaust gases. Certainly a valid possibility, and one worth investigating. > [@](#): > > The fact that NASA really did put astronauts on the Moon renders false all claims to the contrary. > > It’s like having someone claim that no man named Abraham Lincoln was ever President of the United States. We know for a fact that a man named Abraham Lincoln was once President, so all claims to the contrary must necessarily be false. You already established opportunity and possibly means. Motive can be more or less compelling depending on the scenario, but I can’t help but feel the real circular reasoning isn’t coming from my side of the discussion at this point. “We know NASA went to the moon because NASA went to the moon” just doesn’t satisfy me intellectually. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > **We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s so hard about humoring me for a bit?** > > It sure is taking you a long time to cross that bridge. It’s like you’re walking from Key West to Miami. Well, I thought it might be nice to establish whether there actually _are_ impossibilities in the NASA record before I go around making accusations and drawing conclusions. I know you guys are thirsty for some Moon Hoaxer blood, but snapping at my heels is a little gauche, don’t you think? > [@](#): > > What “impossibilities”? Do you know of any (or _think_ you know), or are you just speculating? Why do I get the feeling you people aren’t all paying attention? ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/137 "2001-09-28T21:26:04Z")
BickByro said: > [@](#): > > Wow, all this new and useful information coming to light all of a sudden! Well, thanks, guys, it truly is better late than never! (Did it just take me getting pissy or is this all a coincidence?) Um, for me it’s just a coincidence - I came to the party late. But I do want to say you’ve handled yourself pretty well in this thread. You do seem amenable to reason and looking for answers and willing to except explanations that are internally consistent and don’t contradict other explanations. And this has kept for the most part civil. Just wanted to tell you that. > [@](#): > > **Irishman:** I think the clip is a Real Player file, so if you downloaded the app, you’d be able to see what I’m talking about. In the particular case in question, I don’t personally see as how sloping ground would account for the effect. If you check the first page of this thread, I believe, you’ll see a short conversation I had regarding a “ridge” in the background of the film clip. There is a ridge there (it was visible on my home computer but not really noticeable on my work computer), but it doesn’t appear to cut enough out of the LEM’s shadow to account for the shortened astronaut shadows. IMHO. Neither does the astronaut who moves from the front of the shot to the rear seem to descend any sort of incline. But if you don’t have access to the film, of course, you won’t be able to corroborate this… I know it’s RealPlayer, I’m reading from work, too. I can’t get video clips - my company has filters in place on the firewall. I can’t comment more specifically - I do wish I could. I have seen a couple different clips from different missions, and they all have the same explanation. The ground is not flat. There is either a downslope and an upslope, or just an upslope behind. Basically uneven terrain will foreshorten shadows from some positions. This can easily be demonstrated here on Earth using an afternoon sun and ground with a hill. I don’t know what you mean by the ridge cutting out enough of the LEM shadow. Maybe I can check it out this weekend. No guarantees. > [@](#): > > I beg to differ. Check out [http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html---he](http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html---he) even italicizes the word “all.” Oops. You are correct, my apologies. I haven’t read that page in some time. I note that he has already conceded he will update that page in the future. Anyway, my remaining point is that the vast majority of people claiming the Apollo missions must be faked rely on the same string of claims, and those are either a misunderstanding or are stupid. For instance, anything uttered by Bill Kaysing (aka the Fox video). I have yet to see any statements by him that are not wrong. Actually, in a way that statement still is correct - bear with me. If we go on the assumption that the Apollo missions were real and the pictures were not faked, then every anomaly or unexplained circumstance called out by the doubters _must_ be the result of natural processes, and are thus either a misunderstanding of how the physics works or just stupid. But there are some cases like you are pointing out where the explanations don’t roll off the tongue, and thus in those cases it is hubristic to claim everything has been disproven. Fair enough? BickByro said: > [@](#): > > Consider that the “odds” seem to point to a greater likelihood that NASA _did_ land on the moon but faked at least some of the footage than that NASA never landed on the moon at all True. But consider the part where I pointed out an example where NASA did _not_ fake film in a similar situation as your proposed case that they couldn’t get real film for some reason and faked it, and that does cast more doubt on the likelihood of them faking it in the places you allow. JayUtah, I think we can cut through some of the extraneous crap here if we back off from BickByro’s statements a little and rephrase the questions. Consider it from the standpoint of “Hey, these things don’t make sense to me, and I see these inconsistencies in explanation from various NASA and debunker sources. I would really like an explanation, can you help?” In that phrasing, there is no mention of the anomalies or discrepancies actually leading to a moon hoax as an explanation. However, the weakness with that phrasing is that there is not as much incentive to actually try to find the correct answer. The typical response is just “Well, I’m not really sure, it looks like it could be dust or maybe it’s light blooming.” Whereas if BickByro says “it proves Apollo is a hoax”, suddenly he’s got people running off to search up how lunar dust should behave in a vacuum, and whether the effect is dust or is light blooming, etc. Not to say that’s BB’s motivation, but it does have that effect. Anyway, there is no need for the contention that these effects lead to the conclusion Apollo was hoaxed for us to wonder about inconsistencies in explanations (i.e. is the ground around the landing site darker or brighter than the rest of the ground?; if dust cannot billow or float, what is the effect in this video?). I do agree that maybe we cannot know for certain. But I think it fair to attempt to find the answers to the best of our ability. ---
**Author:** ![JayUtah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@JayUtah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JayUtah)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/138 "2001-09-28T22:37:27Z")
> [@](#): > > **BB:** Again, I’m not evaluating the entire body of evidence. You may deem this evasive on my part As a matter of fact I do consider it evasive, and we can agree to disagree. I believe it’s important to consider unresolved anomalies in the context of the entire body of evidence from which the anomalies are drawn. But if you wish only to allege that NASA may have falsified only those materials which appear anomalous, against the implication that authentic materials may also exist, then the totality of the evidence is less applicable. > [@](#): > > **BB:** You seem to be gunning for an all-or-nothing evaluation of the situation, and I don’t feel comfortable providing that. Understandable, but now the waters muddy. If Apollo succeeded and NASA indeed had some authentic documentation of those missions, why would they want or need, in addition, to provide falsified records which they would then pass off as if they were the real thing? > [@](#): > > **BB:** Standing billows, blowing sheets, it doesn’t matter It does to me. Each of these effects proceeds from a different physical phenomenon, some of which are present on earth but absent from the moon, and some of which are present in both places. To wit, > [@](#): > > **BB:** all blown dust on the moon moves laterally parallel to the surface, rendering billows, sheets, clouds, whathaveyou impossible. I disagree. A dispersal which is lateral in the vertical dimension and radial in the horizontal dimension would certainly carry dust with it until the density of the exhaust plume fell below that which was required to keep the particles in aerosol. Particles would then transition to ballistic trajectories. Listen to what John Keller of NASA has to say on the subject: "I’ve looked at the problem of dust entrainment by the exhaust of the descent stage engine of the LM for many years. My focus has been what effect does dust deposition have on thermal control surfaces and solar panels, how much is generated and how it is distributed. “One the first things that I’ve noticed is that the photograph experts in our group feel that the area of the lunar surface that was affected by the exhaust of the LM is between 50-150m around the landing site. This number agrees exactly with the numerical models and experimental data (from Apollo 12 and the amount of dust on the Surveyor lander) that we’ve used at the Johnson Space Center and Lewis Research Center (I know it’s Glenn now, but at the time it was Lewis). In our modeling efforts we’ve used 70m as the area around the LM that’s most affected by the exhaust flow, but some dust is ‘thrown’ as far as 2km from the landing site.” (From a contribution to the Project Apollo mailing list) How does this apply to ascent stage plumes? Obviously the sedentary descent stage represents an obstacle to the plume. Once the ascent stage reaches a sufficient altitude (say in the neighborhood of 30 feet) for the plume to extend beyond the boundaries of the descent stage, it would be expected to have a visible effect on the surface dust. Further, if the descent stage central core contains shunts directing the exhaust flow through it to the surface beneath, the effect would be immediate. None of my references on the lunar module provide evidence for the presence or absence of such shunts, however common design practice makes them desirable. I don’t agree that particle displacement either in the context of ascent or descent is impossible. You may take that as a contradiction of Bad Astronomer, or as an assertion contrary to your interpretation of Bad Astronomer’s statements, whichever suits you best. > [@](#): > > \*\*BB:\*\*That a dog cannot survive unaided on the moon may be quite obvious to us, being educated types, but I hardly think it qualifies as _a priori_. Fine, a quibble. I mean that a reasonable person with sufficient personal knowledge of the nature of the universe. I’m not interested in arguments convincing to small children. > [@](#): > > **BB:** I have been working under the assumption that **The Bad Astronomer** had it right; that may not actually be the case, and if it is not, I readily admit that it takes the sting right out of my argument. He may be wrong, or you may have misunderstood him. If he’s arguing that dust displacement due to engine exhaust is impossible on the moon, either in the descent or ascent case, then I disagree with him. If he intended otherwise, but you have construed it as such, then I disagree with you. > [@](#): > > **BB:** As such, the answer to the question “are dust clouds possible on the moon?” is out there _somewhere_. If the answer is “yes,” then any potential argument against NASA crumbles, of course. I believe the answer is “yes”. I further believe we know the substance of that model already, if not its particulars. I think we finally agree on the induction. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > You cannot know that any hypothesis aside from falsification to explain the dust behavior _must_ be false. > > **BB:** I _do not_ know; I think it extreme to say I _cannot_. Perhaps we’re getting too esoteric, but I believe the difference is important, and I stand by my phrasing. In the dog case we need not entertain any other hypotheses because the hypothesis which leaps to mind (i.e., fraudulence) is well understood and its causality amply established. Our understanding of biology and physics is thorough enough to dismiss any hypothesis which effectively suggests a dog can survive unprotected on the moon. That is, we know there can be no hypothesis other than fradulence. That is not true in the dust cloud case. Your understanding (or our understanding, if you prefer) is not sufficient to accept one conclusion automatically and categorically reject all others. Thus you cannot know that some hypothesis will not come along to substantially challenge an allegation of fraud. Therefore you cannot use a dichotomy to prove fraudulence since you cannot construct the dichotomy. I believe your attempt to construct the dichotomy based on Bad Astronomer’s statements is invalid. > [@](#): > > **BB:** I partly operate under the hope that NASA would have noticed any “anomalies” as well and would have taken an interest in explaining them for their own purposes. … there may be some things in the photos that even NASA can’t explain. NASA accepts a burden of proof to demonstrate that it succeeded in landing on the moon. It has provided voluminous evidence of many kinds to satisfy this burden. The vast majority of humans seem to accept this body of evidence. NASA does not accept a burden to _disprove_ unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, which is what most of the conspiracy theories constitute. NASA has addressed many dozens of alleged anomalies. Yet the die-hard critics remain unconvinced. NASA at this point correctly concludes that nothing it can say on its own behalf will affect the opinions of whose who simply wish to believe otherwise. You are, in a sense, dealing with a poisoned well. Those who are merely curious or who have legitimate questions regarding anomalous material aren’t necessarily going to attract NASA’s attention. That’s unfortunate, but NASA’s reaction is understandable. > [@](#): > > **BB:** But I don’t think the LEM-ascent dust cloud should be _that_ unexplainable, and if it is, I’d like to know why. I don’t assume NASA has the will to explain it. And if they did, I expect their answer to be, exactly, “That’s the way dust behaves on the moon.” Full stop. No one, not even NASA, can provide a convincing inductive argument to someone predisposed to believe otherwise. NASA realizes this and saves its breath. For my purposes, I understand enough of fluid mechanics to believe that the visible effects of dust on the descent and ascent do not violate my expectations. I cannot detail with great precision the exact flow characteristics and aerosolization which came into play, but that’s because I don’t have a need to investigate it to such a great depth. And the process for duplicating or computing the effect would be so laborious that I would require a very great need in order to motivate me to do it. > [@](#): > > **BB:** So either they (the debunkers) screwed up, or they realize science can’t help them so they just picked an explanation and ran with it. Either way, I blame the debunkers. I screw up a lot, and consequently I make many corrections and apologies. I will gladly withdraw a weak argument. The ground rules of the lunar conspiracy debate urge polarization. Bad Astronomer, for example, has dealt personally with a number of the very hard-core conspiracy theorists. In these dialogues tentativity immediately derails a refutation. If I say, “It may have been the ascent plume,” instead of “It was the ascent plume,” the answer is too often, “Well, you can’t know for sure, therefore I’m right.” That’s an explanation, not an excuse. Since it’s an inductive argument anyway, all hypotheses are tentative whether stated dogmatically or not. So if you want to blame certain debunkers for abrasiveness, you may be well founded. As for just grabbing some random hypothesis and running with it, that would be egregious if true. But what you see as grabbing and ad hoc hypothesis may be simply advancing a hypothesis which is plausible but unprovable. This is necessary to provide a strong induction, even if the hypothesis remains forever unprovable. Without plausible alternate hypotheses, we may wrongly affirm the consequent. > [@](#): > > Mock them for their hubris, of course, because as I’ve pointed out, **The Bad Astronomer** minces no words when he says _all_ hoax claims are false. How does he know? I’ve known the Bad Astronomer by reputation for about a year. That’s his personality, and if it stands in the way of his argument then so be it. I personally believe he is a man of keen intellect. I also know he has made mistakes before, and corrected them. As to whether _all_ hoax theories are false, I think that universality has to be taken with a grain of salt. There are undoubtedly innumerable variations of the lunar conspiracy theory, and he cannot presume to have evaluated them all in detail. However, they do tend to fall into patterns and categories, gravitating toward one or more of the prominent hoax enthusiasts: Bill Kaysing, Ralph Rene, James Collier, David Percy, Bart Sibrel, and perhaps others I can’t immediately recall. These individuals base their cases on extremely flawed arguments which are easily disproved, and so if one can accurately characterize all theories as variants on the major ones, sharing their fundamental flaws, then one can say to have rejected all the theories. Perhaps inaccurate, but that’s how I interpret the Bad Astronomer’s statement. > [@](#): > > **BB:** We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s so hard about humoring me for a bit? There’s nothing I can do to affect whatever latitude you feel like taking. I believe it’s a bit dishonest to have a conclusion but not to state it before making one’s case. But do what you want. > [@](#): > > **BB:** I don’t think it’s fair to force me to choose one of these three possibilities as my “official argument,” Well, in an inductive argument it’s customary to state your indended destination so that we can tell when we’ve arrived. This wandering in the wilderness is tedious and tries the patience of those who might otherwise want to amicably debate you. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Well, because leaping to a conclusion would be unreasonable. “Leaping to possibilities” is a different matter entirely. This is why I did not accuse you of leaping to a conclusion. But I notice that you consistently refer to the falsification hypothesis, and it’s prominent in your statements. Why do you entertain that as a possibility when so many others are equally plausible, if not more so? In my opinion you are signalling a predisposition, which casts doubt on your ability as a fair judge of competing hypotheses. > [@](#): > > **BB:** I’m saying “if it is true that dust clouds are impossible on the moon, and if we are actually looking at a dust cloud, then the footage could not have been taken on the moon.” Then let me clarify as well: I don’t believe it is true that dust clouds are impossible on the moon. And I need to stress the proviso that what I mean by “dust clouds” may not be what you mean by “dust clouds”. > [@](#): > > **BB:** You haven’t sufficiently demonstrated to me what is so circular about the logic of the preceding sentence. That’s because the preceding sentence is not the statement I claim is circular. I called circular your statement that a witness to the forgery is stronger than a witness only to the effects of the forgery. I argue there is no _prima facie_ evidence of a forgery, therefore the statement is circular. It was at this point I introduced the example of the car wreck. You are now discussing Bad Astronomer’s hypothesis and the question of dust clouds associated with engine, and that is not the statement I originally set out to refute. You’ve changed horses. That’s fine, but you need to understand that you can’t take my refutation intended for another statement and apply it here. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Well, I _haven’t_ drawn the conclusion, but I still entertain it as a possibility. Sorry that you can’t see the difference between these two states of mind That’s not accurate. I have always seen the difference, but I have not been convinced that you are respecting the difference in your arguments. > [@](#): > > **BB:** Oh, I know one right off the bat: the debunkers don’t really know what they’re talking about. No, this statement applied to all debunkers is unwarranted. I know a lot about somethings and a little about others. A different person may have reciprocal expertise. An inductive journey toward the truth will require both of us, even if one of us stumbles from time to time. > [@](#): > > **BB:** It’s a possibility, but it hasn’t been shown to me that man simply does not know whether dust clouds are possible on the moon. Dust displacement on the moon resulting from exhaust plume impingement is certainly possible. It cannot be conclusively shown that such a process would produce the exact observation in the photos and film. If this, for you, constitutes a failure to provide a valid explanation, then I believe you’ll never be satisfied. > [@](#): > > **BB:** I’m kind of lost as to how this would apply to the dust-cloud question. I’m enumerating the difficulties of historical investigation for the purposes of characterizing the resulting induction. > [@](#): > > **BB:** By that same token, are you not rash to take it as _a priori_ that NASA _did_ everything it claims to? I do no such thing. I have investigated the Apollo record in depth and find it extremely likely that NASA succeeded in landing on the moon. I do not claim that NASA at all other times, or in relatively insignificant particulars relating to Apollo, has been fully honest. My investigation suggests that there is no credible evidence of material falsification or deception in connection with Apollo, and that Apollo was carried out substantially as NASA claims it was. Just as you balk at being characterized as a conspiracy theorist, I balk at being characterized as a NASA cheerleader. > [@](#): > > **BB:** _if_ impossibilities (not merely “anomalies,” mind you) are found in the historical record, _then_ it is reasonable to hypothesize that the historical record has been tampered with. \*\* You’ve changed your position again. Originally you argued that anomalies _which couldn’t be satisfactorily explained_ would suggest, among other things, falsification. This left open the possibility of legitimate phenomena which, for various reasons, could not be explained, and this does not support a contention of falsification. Okay, so let’s change horses. Do you argue that impossibility is an absolute and objective determination? After all, I’ve heard lots of people argue that this or that was impossible, simply because they personally lack the ability to postulate a way to make it possible. So when you say “impossible” I’m not sure we’re automatically on the same page. ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/139 "2001-09-28T22:42:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > **The motive to fake only some of the footage/photos (or, for that matter, to actually go but fake _all_ the footage/photos) would be that, for any number of possible reasons, the real footage/photos didn’t look good enough.** The motive is **vanity**??? You think it’s possible that NASA went to the Moon and _then_ set up a soundstage somewhere to fake photos of the trip? Besides the fact that it would be impossible to build a vacuum chamber big enough for the job, why couldn’t the astronauts have just said, “Sorry about the bad pictures, but things happened we didn’t anticipate and couldn’t cope with. Anyway, we can prove we went to the Moon with our rocks and soil samples. None of the geologists who studied the rocks believe they are Earth rocks or man-made fakes.” And they’d have to have a vacuum chamber so the dust would behave right and they’d have to use wires so the astronauts would look like they were in 1/6th gravity, something even Stanley Kubrick did not attempt when he made _2001: A Space Odyssey_. (Watch the scene where the people go to the big black monolith that was found underneath the Moon’s surface and compare it to NASA’s footage of real astronauts really walking on the real Moon. Kubrick’s footage does not match up to the real thing, partly because it was made before Apollo 11 flew and partly because it would have been too much trouble to film.) > [@](#): > > **It’s been said that the astronauts spent a good deal of time training to capture good shots without viewfinders and with cameras mounted to their chests; while I certainly don’t question that some such training would have been involved, I’d certainly imagine the astronauts had many more important details to practice and memorize.** Astronauts ain’t stupid. It really isn’t that hard. I bet if you were to practice taking photos with your own camera held chest-high you could learn to do it. I’ve taken photos by holding a camera high above my head. They didn’t all come out the way I had hoped, but them’s the breaks. > [@](#): > > **In the absence of artificial lights, shooting only at lunar dawn so as to stay alive, with (possibly) long exposure times that would have resulted in blurry photos due to small movements,** Why would they need long exposure times? On the Moon, sunlight is just as bright at dawn (albeit at a low angle) as it is at high noon because of the lack of air. A long exposure would have over-exposed the film. > [@](#): > > **maybe a lot of the photos just didn’t turn out so great.** _Some_ of them didn’t. I’ve seen them, though I can’t recall the URL’s right this minute. It’s just that, like nearly all photographers, they published the good ones and not the bad ones. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > \*\*To recap: What you see in the video of the LM ascent is a cloud of dust AND rocket exhaust gases. > > Certainly a valid possibility, and one worth investigating.\*\* How do you propose we do that? > [@](#): > > **"We know NASA went to the moon because NASA went to the moon" just doesn’t satisfy me intellectually.** We know NASA went to the Moon because of all the supporting evidence. The evidence that seems not to support it does not bear up under close scrutiny. > [@](#): > > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > What “impossibilities”? Do you know of any (or _think_ you know), or are you just speculating? > > Why do I get the feeling you people aren’t all paying attention? \*\* You haven’t described anything impossible in the photos, just apparent discrepancies that you can’t explain. Just because you can’t explain them does not make them impossible. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2001, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/140 "2001-09-28T23:22:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Futile Gesture \* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > > Good explanation. Too bad it appears to run completely contrary to the “facts” presented by your fellow debunker, **The Bad Astronomer**. Who’s right? > > In this case, does it matter? They are both very plausible. Maybe both are right to a degree. Of course it matters, if the best resolution we can get is “maybe both are right to a degree.” I’m reminded of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s “what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.” > [@](#): > > I would **not** decide that both explanations are obviously invalid and that the internet is actually faked by hundreds of little men living inside my computer. If you don’t want to help answer my question, just say so. > [@](#): > > To much of the hoax believers’ arguments are based around demands that every single aspect be explained to them in the intricatest of details. Failure to provide such information is interpreted as a cover-up. They then apply a few home-spun hunches to a field of study the know little about and behold! another hoax theory is born. You’re right! And most Mexicans live in broken-down houses on the bad side of town. Usually they are illegal immigrants or descendants of illegal immigrants. They often have familial ties to gangs or other illegal activity, and generally harbor an ill-founded resentment for Caucasians. Seriously, this is just getting to be a waste of time. Either take on my questions as they stand or leave the discussion. I’m not interested in your generalized opinions on what hoax believers as a category do or do not believe. **Irishman:** Thanks for the kind words. Sorry to hear about your company’s filters (my boss, thank God, is too old-school to worry about such things). > [@](#): > > I don’t know what you mean by the ridge cutting out enough of the LEM shadow. Maybe I can check it out this weekend. No guarantees. Well, I’ll take a shot at clarifying my point anyway: The shadow of the LEM legs is on the far left of the picture, with a flag-planting astronaut 20 feet or so from the camera and another astronaut who moves from right in front of the canera to about where the flag-planter is. As regards the ridge cutting out enough of the LEM shadow, what I was saying is that the effect you describe involves some sloped land “eating” part of the subject’s shadow. In this case, though it’s hard to tell for sure whether the astronauts’ shadows are being “eaten,” it doesn’t look like the LEM’s shadow (which also falls beyond the ridge) is being eaten very much, which would lead me to believe that neither are the astronauts’. But hopefully you’ll get a chance to see the clip for yourself and draw your own conclusions. > [@](#): > > Oops. You are correct, my apologies. I haven’t read that page in some time. I note that he has already conceded he will update that page in the future. I tell ya, if all I get accomplished in this thread is getting **The Bad Astronomer** to tone down his condemnatory rhetoric, I’ll be a happy man. > [@](#): > > Actually, in a way that statement still is correct - bear with me. If we go on the assumption that the Apollo missions were real and the pictures were not faked, then every anomaly or unexplained circumstance called out by the doubters must be the result of natural processes, and are thus either a misunderstanding of how the physics works or just stupid. I know I’ll catch a whole new load of heat for this, but I simply do not feel comfortable going on the assumption that the Apollo missions were real, for the same reason I don’t feel comfortable going on the assumption they were false. It seems to me that any time you make such an assumption, you’ve likely tainted your own judgment process and will end up seeing what you want to see. I know, I know, it’s only fair to say “innocent until proven guilty.” But remember, I’m not saying “guilty until proven innocent” either. I’m trying to engage myself in the most judgment-neutral evaluation of the evidence that I can. As an aside, I’ll ask a relatively rhetorical question (answer if you see fit!) that’s been rolling around in my head the past few days. I wonder: what would those of you who regard the moon landings as an historical fact on par with, say, Abraham Lincoln’s presidency have thought of a person like me asking these same questions thirty years ago, before the moon landings truly became “history”? > [@](#): > > …consider the part where I pointed out an example where NASA did not fake film in a similar situation as your proposed case that they couldn’t get real film for some reason and faked it, and that does cast more doubt on the likelihood of them faking it in the places you allow. Definitely. I just don’t want to apply Occam’s Razor until the stubble of improbability has grown sufficiently long. Now is not the time for me to draw conclusions. > [@](#): > > JayUtah, I think we can cut through some of the extraneous crap here if we back off from BickByro’s statements a little and rephrase the questions. Consider it from the standpoint of “Hey, these things don’t make sense to me, and I see these inconsistencies in explanation from various NASA and debunker sources. I would really like an explanation, can you help?” In that phrasing, there is no mention of the anomalies or discrepancies actually leading to a moon hoax as an explanation. **Irishman,** you’re my hero! > [@](#): > > However, the weakness with that phrasing is that there is not as much incentive to actually try to find the correct answer. The typical response is just “Well, I’m not really sure, it looks like it could be dust or maybe it’s light blooming.” Whereas if BickByro says “it proves Apollo is a hoax”, suddenly he’s got people running off to search up how lunar dust should behave in a vacuum, and whether the effect is dust or is light blooming, etc. Well, maybe. It’s a catch-22, because you’ve got people like **The Bad Astronomer** who will retreat as soon as they think they smell a conspiracy theorist on the grounds that said theorist is already a lost cause. Or you’ll get the “well, you think just because you think you found this one point that it calls into question the MOUNTAINS of evidence in favor?” and then the specifics of the question are lost, and we’re back in the ol’ mess. I’m not sure there’s _any_ way to bring up these issues that won’t offend somebody. > [@](#): > > I do agree that maybe we cannot know for certain. But I think it fair to attempt to find the answers to the best of our ability. I swear, folks, I’m not paying **Irishman** anything! Okay, now I’ll get to the rest of y’all—I want you to know that I still haven’t had time to check out all the links that have been posted recently because I’ve been spending so much time replying. Just a little caveat. Anyhow… **Skogcat:** > [@](#): > > The kind of instantaneous changes in direction observed through most of the footage would not only put a tremendous strain on equipment and personell due high g forces but would also require large amounts of fuel, those are the movements I would say are almost definitely from the camera. The drift that occurs near the start where the LEM starts to move from top of screen downwards may well have been due LEM movement. Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere—ruling out alternative hypotheses and nearing a solid explanation. Now, I still need to find out what the range of movement was on the lunar rover tripod to which the camera was mounted. Then, we could compare the observable camera movements to the range of motion of the tripod and at least rule out (or, dare I say it, confirm) the possibility that the lunar rover tripod was _not_ used to film the ascent. > [@](#): > > I’m not sure why exactly the LEM may have darted off that way. I believe it is due camera movement rather than LEM movement. I wouldn’t call it lucky as it didn’t achieve anything (I explain in a little more detail below) favourable. I agree with your definition of lucky in that context; regaining the LEM for a second certainly isn’t much of an accomplishment (although, if the guy was sufficiently desperate, I guess _he_ could consider it an accomplishment!). My question for you, if you’re game, is this: what camera movements would have been necessary to get the LEM to go from 45 degrees to straight up to straight right? Seems to me he’d have needed a 360-degree ball-and-socket mount for that, but my experience with tripods is limited to the photos I sometimes take for the food magazine I work for. > [@](#): > > The only movement I saw which I couldn’t attribute to either good planning (ie the initial launch) or camera reaction was the move from 45 degrees right/up to straight up (and now also the final lateral movement). But that move from the camera didn’t achieve anything, the LEM still quickly disappeared off screen, the only difference was that it went off the top rather than the right hand side. Well, yeah. But he _did_ capture the LEM for a few seconds, which one might say was the only goal to start with (especially if NASA really _did_ go to the moon, in which case, as **DaveW** and I have established, the job would have been a real pain in the ass). I guess, as has become cliched to say, it’s all relative. He may not have been able to tilt the camera any further up, so the thing was going to move off screen whether at 45 degrees or straight up. The result, then, would be as favorable as it was going to get. Again, this ambiguity could be resolved if I spent less time on the SDMB and more time researching the lunar tripod. Damn! > [@](#): > > Good enough for the LEM footage to be accepted as most likely legitimate? Close. Very close. Perhaps once I get fully informed on the tripod situation, that’ll be that. But even with the camera movements explained, we’d still have to resolve the dust-cloud issue. Finally, there’s good ol’ **DaveW**. Thanks for hanging in there, buddy! I know it’s been a long and bumpy ride… > [@](#): > > But evaluating a single photo by itself is extraordinarily difficult. Look at what I had to do to present a “compelling case” (thank you very much, I don’t think I’ve ever been the recipient of a “compelling” before) for photo E to actually be a positive print… But you did it! It _can_ be done. That’s the point. > [@](#): > > If the photo had been wrong (let’s try to stay away from ‘faked’, shall we?), then one, two, or all three of the above pieces of evidence would also have to be wrong. That would mean that still other pieces of evidence that showed the same things would be wrong as well, perhaps leading to the conclusion that all of the evidence is incorrect. Well, let’s not go too far. You’re absolutely right; I never thought this would be quick-n-easy, but I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to respond to so many generalized, ultimately off-topic posts in an effort to establish the legitimacy of my line of questioning. The point you make above is precisely the reason I don’t find it nearly as ludicrous to consider the possibility of forgery as the rest of you apparently do—the presumption that the moon landings are “established fact” seems largely based on taking NASA’s word for it, because nobody actually wants to do the legwork to figure out if the whole puzzle fits together. Along the same lines, this is why I don’t buy the “thousands of people were involved, how could it be fake?” argument; the guy making gaskets for the LEM would have no way of knowing if the thing would actually make it to the moon—all he’d know is that he was making gaskets for NASA. Hell, even in final assembly, they’d just be following blueprints, not running computer simulations on whether the product would work (this skepticism isn’t entirely unfounded, either; I spent a year of my professional life processing reams of paperwork pertinent to a Boeing-related lawsuit, and I learned that in these big aerospace companies, one hand rarely knows what the other is doing). > [@](#): > > If you’ve got a picture, and you don’t know 100% whether you’re looking at a pit or a mound, then the light can’t tell you. Inverting the colors just turns your pit into a mound with the light coming the other way, or vice versa. True enough, but I’m inclined to believe there are a lot more craters on the moon than mounds, and looking at the inverted-color version of the photo you provided, I see a whole lot of craters where previously I saw a whole lot of mounds. What, in any case, would cause a mound that, with its colors reversed, would look identical to a crater lit from the opposite side? That seems like it would be a rather odd coincidence of physics (I mean, these mounds look _exactly_ like craters when reversed!) > [@](#): > > In other words, if you know where the light’s coming from, you can tell whether you’re looking at a pit or a mound. If, on the other hand, you know you’re looking at a pit, you can tell where the light’s coming from. If you don’t know either, you’re out of luck. If you add the possibility of a negative into the mix, you’re out of luck even if you know one or the other (since the negative will flip the light source, if that’s what you’re trying to deduce). The only source we have for the direction at this point is your rock photo, taken from the north (ie facing south). I certainly don’t reject that out of hand, but I also don’t think it’s an outlandish possibility that the photo was actually taken from the south, facing north, and just got mislabelled. I bring up this possibility only because I just don’t understand where all these perfectly-inverted-crater-looking mounds came from; if that can be explained, my skepticism would diminish in kind. > [@](#): > > I can tell what you’re looking at, and it was a mistake on my part which will be fixed shortly (by changing the word “negative” to “colors inverted”). Gotcha. > [@](#): > > Mostly, things are too dark. There aren’t enough bright highlights. Of course, this means that there aren’t a lot of really dark darks in the original, but we’ve been over secondary light sources already. Yeah… still, where the hell did all those mounds come from? They got gophers up there? > [@](#): > > I’m just betting that some other camera has taken UV images of the moon. If so, compare what’s possible to compare. Will do, as soon as I take a break from posting! > [@](#): > > I’m going back to the “it’s a negative” idea, but with a twist. The photo has obviously been processed to hell and back. Hadley Rille is, along 99% of its length, either black or white, so the contrast has probably been severly messed with. It looks a little on the fuzzy side, too, so some other filters have been applied. Actually, compare the [space.com](http://space.com) photo with the pre-flight photo linked to on my page - look at all the detail shown. The [space.com](http://space.com) photo isn’t of such a lower resolution that most of the detail in the pre-flight would be lost, but it ain’t there. Of course, in the pre-flight photo, the Rille is black or white again, but if it’s due to contrast enhancement, it’s not nearly as severe as in the [space.com](http://space.com) picture. Well, what if the pre-flight photo isn’t enhanced, and the [space.com](http://space.com) photo consequently only slightly enhanced (as opposed to “to hell and back”)? But yeah, the fuzziness is definitely an issue; I sort of assumed that was just because [space.com](http://space.com) didn’t want to waste the bandwidth needed for putting up such a detailed photo, so they just reduced its size (not necessarily its resolution), consequently cutting out a lot of detail. (If that was at all vague, I’m going off the principles I’m familiar with in Photoshop, wherein if you actually shrink the size of the photo [not just the diplay size], you lose a lot of detail upon trying to blow it back up again.) > [@](#): > > I played around with the NASA navigator some, by the way, entering the map coordinates of the Apollo 15 landing site, but got nothing recognizable - I think I’ve got browser problems, because saving the images to disk gives me very different results than viewing them in the Web page (but I never saw Hadley Rille, no matter what, so there’s still something else wrong). CONSPIRACY!!! IT’S A CONSPIRACY!!! Heh heh. > [@](#): > > I don’t want to ignore or not discuss the other questions, either. I just want to back-burner them until we get one or two questions answered to your satifaction (as opposed to this four- or five-way chaos going on now). I tell ya, the chaos wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t have to continually justify even _asking_ the questions. Not that this is your fault, of course. Just bitchin’. > [@](#): > > I apologize. That came out much stronger than it was intended. Too tired. No sweat; like I say, I know you mean well. Hell, you even set up a Web page! > [@](#): > > Well, no. Just because some schmuck (me) doesn’t know, doesn’t mean that everyone’s clueless. The problem is, **Dave,** you’re just about the only one trying to answer the questions! > [@](#): > > Thanks, but the more I think about this, the more I’d hope it’d be to show you that a lot of this stuff isn’t rocket science (haha!). I really do think that if you look around, with a critical eye, in your own parking lot, you’ll find a lot of the answers you’re looking for. Certain stuff, yes. > [@](#): > > …it got me to wondering if the “dust cloud” you’re seeing for Apollo 17 isn’t actually lots of bits of insulation. I don’t see why, in a vacuum, they’d behave any different than bits of dust. > [@](#): > > Well, I’ve gotten started and frankly, I don’t know how to stop. It’s eating at me, now. I should have passed. I’m ever so glad you didn’t! > [@](#): > > “Showing up the Ruskies” is a third possibility in this case, although as I see it, they pretty much just shrugged it off after their own disasters. If the Moon landings were done for fun, I don’t see anybody giggling. If they were done for money, there was much easier pork to be found. And if they were done for fame, the people who became the most famous for this ‘hoax’ weren’t the people who created it, paid for it, or maintained it all these years. Fame by proxy? Not very satisfying. Well, I think it’s just stupid to say the landings were faked for fun. I’d never entertain such a notion for even a second (remember, folks, I _like_ NASA; I’d gladly pay more taxes if I knew it was going to help space exploration). Doing it for money seems a bit strange; in the end, what profit was made off the moon? The fame issue, though, could be valid if modified a bit from what you described. You said the people who became most famous weren’t the ones who paid for it—well, the taxpayers paid for it, and America as a whole became even more famous for it, so that one sort of works out. The ones who maintained it would include the astronauts, of course, and they’re the ones who got most famous for it, so that one also seems to work out. Finally, NASA in general would gain popularity, so in that sense the ones who created it would get famous too. To some extent, there would be a fame-by-proxy factor, but that’s the curse of “black ops”—you can’t shout from the rooftops about your successes. As for whether the Russians had shrugged off the possibility of going to the moon—well, why? They beat us at pretty much everything else space-related. > [@](#): > > Who gains from faking, say, just the ascent footage? What do they gain? Well, if the ascent footage _were_ faked, I doubt it would be the _only_ piece of faked evidence (though that would not imply that _all_ the evidence was faked). “Just to look good” would, I guess, be my answer. Weak, I know. But you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to know the government does some weird things from time to time. Uh oh, looks like there are some new posts. Well, let me put this up and I’ll get right to them… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520.md?page=8)