For the record, Bick, your comment
Did not offend me in the least. I took it to mean what you said you meant.
Kamandi: Thanks! And again, I’m sorry, DaveW, I had no intention of insulting you or your intelligence.
They’ve also been doing quite a fine job of criticizing my technique in general, so I hardly see what you’re bringing to the table by doing so as well.
The only thing “outrageous” about my claims are that they obviously do not accept on face value NASA’s claims of legitimate footage. You can try to stereotype me or generalize this debate or anything you like; I’m confident that any honest evaluation of this thread will reveal (1) that I am, at times, insightful and (2) that sometimes, Dopers trying to prove me wrong screw up. Taken together, these factors make this debate not nearly as one-sided as you would like to believe.
If you say so. I suspect that any such single deposition would be regarded by yourself and most others here as the work of a publicity-seeking crackpot. I can see the arguments now: “Well, the cover-up would have been so huge, how come only this one guy came forward to say anything about it?” The Fox special, for example, featured claims from someone identified as “Jan Lundberg, Project Engineer, Hasselblad”—did anyone who watched the program take his comments any more seriously because of their source? Hell, I remember when the Fox special first aired and they had Gus Grissom’s son on saying he thought Gus was murdered—what was the first thing the debunkers said? “Oh, looks like the moon hoaxers got to him, too!” Not that I’m saying Grissom was murdered, mind you, I’m just trying to illustrate the fact that I doubt even a sworn deposition would be truly sufficient to convince you. But, like I say, if you say so. Either way, I imagine it’ll be a long time coming; if they haven’t broken their silence by now, I don’t see why they’d do it for li’l ol’ me…
Sorry, but you’ve got me at a bit of a loss. Whoever said the Apollo landing sites were blue?
I wasn’t aware it had to.
That’s why I’m asking these questions. What is so frigging hard to understand here? I realize my grasp of physics is limited; hence, I seek information from those more knowledgable. The biggest problem I’ve been having is that the answers I’m getting back are not always consistent from Doper to Doper, so then I ask for clarification and get yelled at. But please, understand this: I’m not asking you to accept my claims of anomaly; I’m asking you to evaluate my claims of anomaly. Doesn’t mean I’m automatically going to agree with your evaluation, but then again I might.
Well, technically, yes. You know what they say, it’s impossible to prove the universe even exists! But surely we can come close.
I expect those who debunk “for a living” (and I doubt The Bad Astronomer gets paid much to operate a debunking website, but you see what I mean here) to do so in a consistent manner. I don’t have as high a standard for the rest of you Dopers who are just enjoying the conversation, but I reserve the right to point out when said Dopers make the same kind of scientific errors which I am so often accused of making. I don’t think I should be rejected as some sort of lost cause because of this.
True; however, it still irritates me when debunkers are wrong. It’s a mark of ignorance; and worse, didactic ignorance. Perhaps I should have just started a thread called “Erroneous Claims Made By Moon Hoax Debunkers” and avoided all this mess.
Ideally. But am I really to understand that without the testimony of witnesses requested by you and pldennison, it is impossible to disprove the moon landing using material evidence alone? That seems strange to me (but, of course, many things seem strange to me that don’t seem to bother anyone else!).
That really isn’t that circular. If I saw, to take an extreme case, a dog running around in the background of the LEM ascent footage, the anomaly itself would be the proof that the footage was faked, would it not? Or, to take the reverse approach, if I showed you a picture I took of a UFO and you found an “anomalous” string suspending my “UFO” from a tree branch, wouldn’t you consider the case closed?
The problem here, and I’ve said it before, is that I’m not really making an effort to pick between “NASA faked some footage,” “NASA faked all the footage, but went to the moon” and “NASA never went to the moon.” So it’s hard to say exactly where the line should be drawn regarding “the entire body of applicable evidence.” I’ve been trying simply to evaluate single cases for this reason; I have no interest in biting off more than I can chew. If you feel I have to provide a comprehensive theory of exactly how NASA could have pulled off a hoax in order to evaluate a single example of their evidence, well, that’s just too damn bad. I’m not about to open myself up to the kind of ridicule that would bring…
BickByro wrote:
My apologies.
I’m going to divide this up into subjects, because the free-form stuff is driving me batty:
I - Terminology “Deviation from the common rule” means exactly the same thing as “out of the ordinary.” Your definition, “fits in with accepted laws of physics,” is applicable even to photos which are faked, since the fakers must still work within the laws of physics. Since that leads to the word “anomaly” being absolutely meaningless in the context of this thread (real things would be just as anomalous as fake things), I cannot accept it as a good definiton. The only other meaning I can see for your definition would make the word “anomalous” equivalent to “magical” or “supernatural” (outside the laws of physics) and I cannot accept that, either, unless you really do feel that God, for example, was in on the fakery.
Say I take a million pictures of the sky over my house. If, in one of those photos, I find a black dot which later turned out to be a person parachuting, it’d still be “out of the ordinary,” (one out of a million over my home), and thus an anomaly, even after having been explained. Note the fact that the space.com photo (enlarged) has a caption which talks about “crater anomalies.” They’ve explained them, but are still calling them anomalies.
The shadows and other light effects in the rover photo are not anomalies. A person using the same camera, film, and lens under the same conditions should expect to see them in the resultant prints. They are not out of the ordinary. If they weren’t there, then that would be a definite anomaly.
What’s the point of all this? That it’s important to use words the same way as everyone else does. Otherwise, miscommunications occur. This ‘dissection’ is far from pointless, since, as I’ve written above, I cannot accept your interpretation of one dictionary definition of ‘anomaly’ (the link I provided listed four different dictionaries) as being at all meaningful in a discussion where mysticism or bending the laws of nature appear to be rejected by all sides. And so, if you really want me to evaluate your claims of anomalies with your physics defintion in mind, I’d have to say that there are very close to zero anomalies to be seen, since almost everything is easily explainable within the laws of physics that I think I understand.
II - Evaluating Single Cases Doesn’t seem wise to me. “Let’s just discuss the historical evidence for this one verse of the Bible,” or “let’s just discuss the evidence for this one law of physics” seem like similar propositions to yours. In the former case, it rips the verse from all context, and the latter may force a person to ignore other known laws of physics which are intimately tied to the one in question. Trying to evaluate individual photos or films from the Moon landings without looking at anything else seems to me to borrow from both.
III - Ascent Footage I haven’t “recanted” a thing, as I still believe my guesses about what’s going on are likely to be true, to some extent or another. You are free to dismiss them as ancedotal evidence from an admitted non-expert, as is your perogative. This is okay to do, since I cannot, apparently, convince you with just words (which is all I’ve got), and I can’t think of a way for you to convince yourself (by doing some backyard experiment). But, it seems to me that if you do dismiss those guesses, you’re left with the alternative of “NASA lied” if you ignore the other evidence.
And right now, since the only other viewpoint on that footage is from real hoaxers who claim that the first 13 seconds after lift-off are ‘impossible’ due to the time delay, which is extreme, it’s would appear that if you don’t want to take my word or NASA’s word on it, then you really only have your own say-so that it’s more likely the footage was shot without a delay.
IV - The Space.com Photo For starters, given an optical illusion shown here by M.C. Escher, I don’t think it’s possible to say, defintively, whether or not any given photo of a Moon scene is a negative or not without also knowing the angle of the sun (a bump in one light can look like it’s a pit that’s lit from the other side). In the original LSJ photo I linked to, they look like craters to me, not mounds. Try finding out where the sun was in relation to the Apollo 15 landing site two revs after launch of the LM before saying anything definitive about that photo (because if I reverse the space.com photo, I wind up with two photos of a bright blast site). “Actually a negative?” Please. I’ll ignore the insinuation that I purposefully lied to you. You might want to get some solid evidence, like a statement on the LSJ site that says “these are all negatives unless otherwise noted,” before pointing that type of finger.
Secondly, go search the Web for pictures of how flowers look to bees in the ultraviolet spectrum. What’s true for visible light is not always true for UV. Heck, what’s true for what appears to be white light (entire visible spectrum as perceived by our eyes) isn’t necessarily true for one small band within the visible spectrum. Neither our eyes, nor photographic film, respond to all colors of the spectrum equally well. This is why it’s important to find out which filter set was used on the UV/Vis camera when talking about the photo presented at space.com. Heck, it might be a post-processing mixture of one or more filter settings rendered in grays (as opposed to “false color”).
Couldn’t find anything about why something might look black in UV but bright in visible light? I doubt the Clementine sites would have anything on that, either. You need to go out hunting for information on UV light in general. Go read about how window glass blocks some UV wavelengths. Go learn about light transmission and reflection in general (or, specifically, in regards to the lunar regolith - don’t take some Doper’s word on whether it’s supposed to be bright or dark after being disturbed).
V - The Rover Photo Perhaps Chas.E meant “any closer to the sun and the photo would be worthless,” which is a fair assessment of the scene. Again, we’d have to ask him. Perhaps Googling on “photographs towards sun” might shed some light (haha!) on the situation. You also wrote:
My response, that you should perhaps track down a Web site which explains the phenomena better than I could, is quite reasonable. I don’t know for sure (I’ve got a guess), and since you’re the one who’s more interested in an answer, I gave you an idea of what I would go looking for.
VI - What Would Constitute Proof? As others have said, one witness under oath. The people you mention being interviewed on the Fox show were, I believe, free to lie without fear of punishment, since they weren’t under oath. Heck, given Fox’s apparent desire to stir controversy, those people may have been either encouraged towards confabulation, or edited towards it. Fox is not a good source of evidence.
As for material evidence, anything which, beyond a doubt, would have had to have been faked, or beyond a doubt a mistake in the faking process. Your dog is a good example. A standard garden rake would work for me as well. Hey, a copy of “USA Today” in a photo would do wonderfully, since it wasn’t even published until 1985! Anything which might conceivable be laying around a fake Moon set, but which has no business being on the Moon itself. But in any case, there would have to be some method to verify that it was, indeed, a NASA photo, unretouched. After all, we do have the cat already.
I have grave doubts that your dust cloud is actually a dust cloud - it may look like one, but you’re back to relying on your own “say-so” as evidence. I have grave doubts that what you see in the ascent footage is a reaction. I have grave doubts that the detail photo I posted is a negative, or that the space.com photo is directly comparable to any Apollo-era full-visible-light-spectrum pictures.
VII - Your Education <grin> When I wrote about what “I’d rather see,” I figured it’d be vague enough to show that I meant it as an example, and nothing else. Not that “every apparent contradiction has a resolution.” Given your ‘update’ and the other things you’ve written today, you’ve gotten about half of the point I was trying to express. Given the fact that you’ve “proven” (to yourself, at least) that the image I gave you is a negative, you’ve completely missed the other half, which is that if you’re going to try to sound like an expert, go out and become at least a student, first.
If you care, what I would truly enjoy seeing (and, if you make a habit out of it, I think it’d make you a first-class Doper, as well) is this: pick one question from the thread so far that you haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer for (not the ascent footage, since it’s probably the most difficult to really nail down hard - and perhaps not the space.com thing, either). Sit in a quiet room for an hour and think about it. Write down what particular sciences you think might be useful in answering the question. Write down what sorts of backyard experiments you think might be helpful. Write down which experts might be able to help, or at the very least, give you ‘hints’. After the hour is up, go find information on those sciences, on the Web, in a library, or wherever. Go do the experiments. Email the experts. These activities will perhaps give rise to more thoughts on what other sciences, experiments, or experts will be more helpful. Follow up on those. Take a day, two days, a week (I don’t think anything so far would require a degree - and this thread will still be here, hopefully), then post everything you thought up and did, and your results. If others here have valid criticisms (as judged by, perhaps, me) of your results, due to a perceived lack of knowledge (or incorrectly applying it), methodological problems with your experiements, or bad critiques of your experts, you will fix them, and report again at a later date.
Do this, and I promise I’ll get my patience back and I’ll do the same for any other question you’ve had in this thread (not the ascent footage) that still hasn’t been answered to your satisfaction, and you will be the sole judge of when I have answered the question (though other people may help or criticize your criticisms, and you can take 'em or leave 'em as you wish).
An even trade, yes? (Note that I may have left out terms and conditions which might apply to making any particular exercise ‘fair’ to both of us, and reserve the right to add such qualifiers as needed - this goes for you, as well, so modify the terms, within reason, as you see fit.)
Just for the record, I spoke to Brian O’Leary, the NASA astronaut interviewed on the Fox television program, and he says they quoted him very much out of context. O’Leary has no question in his mind that the Apollo program succeeded in landing men on the moon as NASA claims.
Quoting people identified as various experts, who say they too believe the landings did not occur and the records were falsified, does not constitute the type of testimony I would accept as compelling or convincing. These people can testify only to the alleged anomaly of the end result, not to the PROCESS hypothesized by conspiracy theorists to have produced that result. In other words, these greatly hyped experts do nothing to increase the credibility of the conspiracy theory.
I require someone who can plausibly say, “I know the lunar landings were falsified because I was materially involved in falsifying them. Here’s how it was done.”
The same arguments keep on coming up again and again. Please believe me, I’ve seen them all, each and every one dozens of times.
Here’s something to think about…
The web page I’m involved with http://www.redzero.co.uk/moonhoax has been investigating these hoax claims for years. I’ve been looking at these moon hoax claims for years. Moon Hoax has evidence collected and submitted by far more qualified and intelligent people than me who have worked for entire lifetimes in areas of study that have benefited from the Apollo programs.
Not one of these people have the slightest doubt that man has walked on the moon. Not the start of the merest flicker of a doubt. And what’s more they can prove it.
So why is it that someone can spend a weekend browsing a few dodgy websites written by paranoid kooks and third rate hacks wanting to sell you a video, think it over during their lunch break at work on Monday, and then decide that they know better? That they, almost alone, have managed to slice through decades of work and expose the rotten core that no-one else has noticed? Just how arrogant do you have to be to declare that you’ve had a bit of a think about it, and every other person who may have spent 30 years studying it is not only wrong, but also stupifyingly blind to the obvious flaws in the events that underpin their whole life’s work?
Man walked on the moon. You could spend the next 100 years recycling the ‘anomolies’ to be batted away, but it wouldn’t change the facts.
Bickbyro wrote:
As an interesting aside, I’ve noticed many times while flying on an airliner, that it’s fairly easy to spot your airplane’s shadow on the ground, because it’s surrounded by a very bright halo. This is the same effect that The Bad Astronomer is referring to, which would be responsible for some of the lighting of the shadowed parts of the LM. Plain old reflected light from the rest of the sunlit lunar surface would explain almost all the rest.
There’s also a picture at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal web site, where a standing astronaut took a photo directly away from the sun, and the Moon’s surface all around his shadow is noticeably brighter than the rest. Same effect.
CurtC: I don’t get the connection between lunar surface dust and an airliner, but I’ll accept that in the photo (can you be a bit more specific about where it is than just the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Web site?) the surface around the shadow is noticeably brighter than the rest of the surface. I don’t see how that applies to the issue of apparent illumination within the shadows, but frankly, I’m getting a bit sick of this myself, so if you don’t know, don’t care, or are pissed off by my confusion, let’s just let it go.
Futile Gesture: Yeah, I know, you’ve seen it all before. So tell me: what’s up with the dust cloud?
Actually, this thread started when I saw some footage in an ABC special about the ups and downs of the 20th Century. It had nothing to do with any hoax theory; I just couldn’t figure out how they tilted up in the film of the LEM taking off.
And just how boring and useless an intellect do you have to be to never question accepted “scientific fact”? Moreover, I highly doubt that there are that many people out there whose life’s work would be any different if NASA had sent probes to the moon instead of people. Again, not that I’m saying NASA sent probes instead of people, only that I can’t imagine too many people’s careers revolve around, say, studying the effects of zero atmosphere and 1/6 gravity on golf swings. What real difference would it have made if we learned everything we know about the moon from probes alone?
JayUtah: I understand. Certainly a witness who participated in the forgery would be more convincing than a witness who merely noticed the forgery.
DaveW: I’ll tackle these points in the order you presented them…
I - Terminology
I really think this is getting silly. Obviously, even the fakers would have to work within the laws of physics, but that’s not quite what I meant. Consider, again, the dog running around on the moon—if we’re looking at footage purported to be from the moon, it would violate the laws of physics for there to be a dog running around in the photo because, on the moon, a dog without a spacesuit would quickly die. And, just to make the connection clear, neither dogs nor dust clouds can survive without an atmosphere. So you see, I’m not trying to use “anomalous” as “magical” or “supernatural,” but simply as what it means: something that, given the circumstances, should not be there.
It all depends on how you interpret the “common rule” part of the anomaly definition. If your “common rule” is “there are not parachuters or black dots in the sky,” then yes, you would have yourself an anomaly. I was using “common rule” in this context as “the rules of physics,” which in and of themselves do not preclude parachuters in the sky. The laws of physics don’t even preclude alien spacecraft in the sky, technically speaking. They do, however, preclude men flying through the sky by flapping their arms or shooting flames from their bare feet, so if you saw that, you might rightly suspect someone had tampered with your film. Frankly, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this line of questioning. What term, other than “anomaly,” would you prefer I use for “features which appear to violate the laws of physics, but which I cannot confirm as violations”?
So sometimes, if you can explain it, it’s no longer an anomaly. But other times, even if you can explain it, it’s still an anomaly. Can you explain this, or is it just an anomaly?
“Very close to zero”? “Almost everything”? What would be so hard about saying, “You’ve made a few good points, Bick”? Just to be, ya know, a little more positive?
II - Evaluating Single Cases
This may not seem wise to you, but let’s be realistic. There is a lot of evidence connected with the moon missions. It seems we can barely evaluate a single point without losing the plot completely and getting lost in generalities and overarching criticism of me for even thinking that NASA could/would have faked part or all of the moon missions. Do I really have to examine the whole body of evidence to get a straight answer on whether or not we’re seeing a dust cloud?
In any case, there is nothing invalid about examining individual biblical passages without taking into account the whole of the Bible. Consider that some scholars believe the presence of a Great Flood story in many ancient traditions may be evidence that some sort of water catastrophe did, in fact, happen. Wouldn’t it be fair to evaluate the historical basis of the Great Flood story without tying it into the historical basis of the entire Bible? And I’d wager the laws of gravity have occasionally been contemplated and discussed without invoking the question of whether light is more like a particle or a wave. Seems like the current specialization of science would be impossible if everyone insisted on an entirely holistic approach. Your notion that one must evaluate the entire Bible or body of physical laws in order to evaluate a portion does not, to me, appear to have a sound logical basis. Perhaps you can elaborate further on what you meant by this…
III - Ascent Footage
You say it
Well, your say-so and mine appear equally valid here, as far as I can tell (excepting that you have evidently tracked some objects with some time delay). But I don’t really like taking anybody’s “word for it,” whether it’s mine, yours, NASA’s, anybody’s. You’ve already pointed out that a good way to (hopefully) resolve this would be to learn more about the camera, the tripod, and the equipment back on earth. I agree; this is why I haven’t touched on that particular issue in a while. As for the dust cloud in the ascent footage, however, I haven’t gotten much of any response except “it doesn’t look like a cloud to me,” to which there isn’t much I can say. There’s something obstructing the LEM and part of the sky; looks like a cloud to me. I don’t see how it could be seen as anything but a cloud, and what you said early in this thread about “blooming” doesn’t seem consistent with what we see in the LEM footage. Obviously, I’d like to know more about what we’re looking at, but I make no apologies for my perceptions.
IV - The Space.com Photo
Try reversing the colors and I think you’ll see almost immediately what I’m talking about. Escher illustrations aside, the craters look a whole lot more like craters when you reverse the colors. And your ideas about a crater looking like a mound don’t make much sense to me; suppose the sun was coming from due east in the photo you provided. Now rotate the picture 180 degrees. How different, in terms of mound-vs.-crater, would this rotated picture look from a picture of the same spot taken when the sun was due west? I may once again be missing something here; please advise.
In any case, I’m not insinuating that you purposely lied to me; rather, I’m suggesting that you made the same mistake as me: you put up a piece of evidence without fully understanding what it was you were looking at. Remember that you said:
What gave you that “sneaking suspicion”? Was it not because you assumed the photo taken after the launch of the LM was in fact a “positive”? What basis did you have for this assumption?
Okay (though it might take a while). But don’t think language like “sneaking suspicion” is going to hide the fact that you drew some conclusions of your own about the photo (and without even reversing its colors for comparative purposes, mind you).
Yes, but then ALL of the craters look like mounds.
When did I say it was?
But look at the assumptions implicit in your current argument: the space.com photo is actually UV, and disturbed lunar dust does not reflect UV as well as undisturbed dust. Do you have any basis for that? It’s all just guesswork. But when I do it, people say “go learn something first.” Well, if you think disturbed moon dust is a poor reflector of UV, why don’t you provide some evidence for it? Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re not obliged to provide me with anything because you believe NASA. I mean, seriously, folks. Extraordinary claims may require extraordinary proof, but that works both ways. You can’t just invent some reflective property for lunar dust and expect me to believe it because “hey, it might be possible, and by my calculations, it’s more likely that disturbed lunar dust is a poor UV reflector than that NASA faked any part of the lunar evidence.”
I’ll do the research, as I did yesterday; unfortunately, as I pointed out, I wasn’t able to find much by way of “here is a UV photo taken by Clementine, now here is a visible-spectrum B&W of the same area.” So have some patience, and I’ll see what I can dig up.
Perhaps you missed the part of my post in which I went to the Clementine Photo Navigator and attempted to discover exactly the information you’re discussing. It didn’t work.
It was a NASA quote, not just some Doper’s word. Unless you mean taking your word for it that disturbed lunar dust is a poor UV reflector, in which case I will certainly look for a more authoritative source.
V - The Rover Photo
Yeah, maybe he meant that. But that sure isn’t how it came out, so I still think it rather unfair of you to get upset at me the way you did.
VI - What Would Constitute Proof?
I realize Fox is not a good source of evidence; surely you realize that wasn’t my point (and, frankly, I doubt you’d take the hoax any more seriously if the special had been on one of the Big Three).
Well, great. So I see a cloud, and you don’t. I don’t really know where we can go with this issue. I don’t see how I could ever establish to your satisfaction that we are, in fact, looking at a dust cloud.
And then there’s
As upset as you got over what you perceived to be my slight to your intelligence, I’d think you’d be a bit more careful about this sort of thing. But regardless…
Have you even tried reversing the colors on the photo in question? I think anybody reversing the colors in the photo in question would come to the same conclusion I did.
So as long as I don’t discuss two of my best points, you’ll continue this conversation with me? Gee, thanks. What would be so hard about nailing down whether we’re seeing a cloud of dust or not, anyway?
I’ll do some research, but it unfortunately seems that, in any case, the SDMB is not the place for this debate. I’ve tried to be as specific as I can in my objections; if the questions are too hard for you or anyone else here to nail down, why didn’t you just say “I don’t know” in the first place? Now, it seems, you want me to ask only questions with easy answers, but I have no obligation to do so. I don’t want to stop participating in this thread, but I think it unreasonable to impose such limitations upon my participation, and most everybody other than you has gotten fed up with this. Isn’t there any other way?
Bick, I can’t help being a little sad that you feel we have let you down, I know that hard skeptics can sometimes go in with all guns blazing.
I’ve found this debate quite difficult to follow (mostly due to the breadth of subject information we’re trying to cover), perhaps it would have been better to discuss just one photo in a thread to save confusion.
I think I’d like to hear from you about what sort of reaction you would have found reasonable in the face of the evidence you’re presenting and the conclusions you’re drawing from it; as far as I can see, most of the thread is taken up with people exploring possible alternative explanations , is that so bad?
I’m not trying to be nasty here, but could you tell us exactly what you expected from the SDMB?
(Just to clarify, I’m not claiming to be a ‘hard skeptic’ myself, but I think that the general flavour of the SDMB is skeptical)
Incidentally, one of the reasons for the ‘halo’ thing with the plane; most of the objects you see on the ground are casting shadows; the shadows are dark in colour, but the shadows cast by the objects near the plane’s shadow are not visible as they are entirely hidden behind the objects themselves (your line of sight is the same as the rays of light from the sun), so you can’t see the dark shadows and the object appears brighter.
This effect will happen on any surface where there are many small objects around to cast shadows, this can happen on a microscopic level too, I can’t see why the lunar surface wouldn’t produce this effect.
Okay, Bick, here’s one possible explanation for your dust cloud in the ascent video.
Disclaimer: your link seems to be broken, and it’s been quite a while since I saw the video in question, so I’m going on your description of a “billowing” dust cloud. I realize that others have mentioned other possible explanations, such as “blooming”, and those may very well be correct. However…
Why couldn’t there be a billowing dust cloud?
I know, I know, sounds silly. But… the reason dust doesn’t billow on the moon, in normal circumstances, is that there is no (appreciable) atmosphere on the moon.
But these circumstances were anything but normal. 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.
What do you think… do I win the plausibility ribbon?
Well, I appreciate that. I can tell you for sure that I’m not as upset as I was last time, when my queries inspired not one but two Pit threads! And I haven’t seen anybody post “DNFTT,” either, so that’s nice…
Tell me about it! I felt bad even bringing the space.com thing into this, but it just seemed like too good an example of half-assed debunking. The problem, of course, is that some people (such as DaveW) believe that the examination of single pieces of evidence is inappropriate, so even if I did stay exclusively focused on one photo, I’d catch the same flak.
Alternative explanations are not bad at all; in fact, I welcome them. The thing that gets me is that (and this is just how it seems from my end, so maybe I’m being unfair, but…) when I present a not-entirely-watertight explanation, people naturally attempt to pick it apart. When I do the same to explanations that do not appear to me to be watertight, I am accused of “seeking a debate, not answers” or some such. When I try to explain that I am only attempting to apply the same critical reasoning to “anti-hoax” arguments that others apply to my “pro-hoax” ones, I am told that the burden of proof rests with me (seemingly freeing all anti-hoaxers from the burden of actually knowing what they’re talking about).
Now, I’m not by any means saying that I haven’t gotten any useful input from Dopers; I certainly have. Unfortunately, for every piece of constructive criticism, I have to endure loads of garbage like this, from SPOOFE:
Such a statement implies that every critique or alternate explanation a Doper has provided has been “perfectly sound” (a dubious assumption—and again, the “facts” provided have often differed from one Doper to the next). Furthermore, it implies that I have been jumping from topic to topic, trying to apply information from one to another when said topics are unrelated. I don’t think I’ve done this.
Then there are The Bad Astronomer and Futile Gesture, our resident debunkers, who are evidently under the impression that saying all hoax claims have been or can be proven false is the same actually doing so. But what they lack in answers, they’ll be more than happy to make up for in generalized insults about how I only see what I want to see or how I got taken in by some fly-by-night sensationalist, when really I’m just asking some questions and looking for some ANSWERS, not just speculation.
What I expected from the SDMB, unfortunately, was not much more than what I got, because I’ve already been through this wringer, and I had a hunch it would turn out like this. I thought it would be worthwhile to try it again, with a bit more focus. I haven’t given up on it yet, because I know there are at least a few of you who are willing to work through my occasional ignorance or disbelief. But those who expect to sway me with unsubstantiated, overconfident lines like “all hoax claims are false” are only convincing me further that debunkers aren’t in it to make people smarter; they’re in it to make people feel stupid (or, alternately, to give them a smug sense of superiority that they would never stoop to questioning such self-evident matters as the moon missions). And that just sucks, if you ask me.
I agree. Bick, you’ve done a great job presenting your position and defending yourself in the face of a pretty big pile-on. You haven’t gotten satisfying (to you) answers to your questions, yet you’ve had to deal with the arrogance and exasperation of the debunkers.
But you probably understand our position, even if you don’t agree with it. This is not like discussing a scientific theory. The Moon landing is a fact. And it’s not just because NASA says so. It is one of the most well-documented events in history. Thousands and thousands of people were involved, from dozens of government offices and private companies. It is one of the crowning achievements of humanity and a source of tremendous pride for many, many people. When the claim is made that it was all faked by a cynical government, we get more than a little put out. Would you question the existence of your own mother? To us, questioning the Moon landing is as ludicrous as that.
And so when you modestly and reasonably question even tiny aspects of the event, it sets us off. Because we can see where the questions are heading.
No offense meant, Bick. I hope you can be convinced somehow, but I don’t know how to do it.
Your conduct in this thread has not offended me in the least, Kamandi; in fact, if memory serves, you’ve been the only one to give me an outright compliment, and I sure can’t complain about that!
That says it all, my friend…
Wonderfully said, and of course I agree. I don’t enjoy the thought of us not landing on the moon either. And it’s not like I believe it was all a hoax, anyway—the difference between you and me is that I believe in the possibility of a hoax. I obviously have nowhere near the body of evidence required to prove that we didn’t land on the moon, or even that NASA doctored the photos to make sure the American flag would always be visible on the LEM.
So why don’t I rule out the possibility? Well, maybe you folks are right and I’m just stubborn and ignorant. But I can conceive of a scenario wherein a desperate government, not a cynical one, would feel the need to stage such a hoax. The Russians had already beaten us in putting the first artificial satellite in orbit and the first man in space. Kennedy had, of course, set his famous goal and then been killed, bringing down public morale while making his goal now the goal of a slain, heroic president. Vietnam was starting to heat up; communism was still quite feared as a viable global disease. The need for America to make a statement, to both the Russians and the American people, was undeniably strong. What stronger statement could be made than landing Apollo mission after Apollo mission on the moon while the Russians scratched their heads, wondering what we knew that they didn’t?
None of this, of course, is presented as any sort of proof (or even evidence) for a conspiracy. I just want you to know how I could think such a thing; why I do not reject out of hand the possibility of a moon hoax. I figured you might like to know…
Anything within reason is possible. But just because something is possible does not mean that that is what happened.
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. (The mirror assembly that reflects laser beams so they can accurately measure the Moon’s distance from the Earth, for example.) The fact that you think you see discrepancies in the images only tells us that you don’t know much about photography. If you want to ask questions about photography, go right ahead. But if you persist in saying, “The landings were real, but the pictures are fakes!” then you deserve all the ridicule you get. How in the hell could the launch of the LM ascent stage have been faked on live TV, for example?
Pulling off the greatest hoax in history would have been far, far more difficult than doing it for real. I really wish you could see that, but I have lost all hope of you ever doing so.
Ok here’s my take on the footage, I can’t see anything unusual about it:
First up, the camera guy knows that there is an approx 2sec delay (no doubt, the camera guy knows exactly what the delay is)
Also the LEM will have less apparent movement the further away it gets from the camera, until it would appear to be essentially stationary.
There is a 3 sec countdown immediately prior to launch. All the camera man needs to do is execute the carefully planned zoom out/tilt up manoeuvre when the countdown hits 2. That explains the timelyness(sp?) of the initial camera movements.
Once the initial launch is complete then it seems as though the camera is starting to be more reative rather than proactive. The LEM stays at the top of screen for sometime until at 0123 it starts drifting down. What I believe is happening is that the LEMs apparent movement is becoming less ie it no longer would appear to be going up but more directly away from the camera. The camera is still being tilted up so the LEM appears to be moving down in the frame.
At 0128 the camera reacts to this downward movement and the LEM becomes stationary in frame in terms of tilt, thats 5 secs after the downward movement began so thats a couple of seconds for the camera man to note the movement and begin adjusting (tentatively) plus a couple of secs for the delay.
While adjusting the tilt though, the camera dude has allowed the camera to start panning slightly right, or the LEMs trajectory is very slightly right to left and uncorrected for by the camera. SO the LEM drifts to the left of frame.
It’s not until 0136 that the LEM is almost entirely off screen and it’s sideway movement slows. Thats around 7 secs since the sideways movement would have been noted, again it’s plenty of time for a delay plus human reaction time plus tentative correction to be carried out.
At this stage the LEM just goes of screen. The camera man has over reacted to the pan and also allowed some tilt up to be introduced. This is seen when at 0137 the LEM goes shooting down and across the bottom left hand corner of the screen.
The camera man reacts by correcting the pan and introducing a down tilt rate that he hopes will reaquire the LEM. Note at this stage the LEM probably isn’t far of screen, he knows it’s just off the bottom of the screen. The LEM isn’t aquired for some time so he increases the down tilt slightly (when he does this he accidently changes the pan rate).
At 0152 the LEM is reaquired but the tilt rate is excessive and the target soon dissapears off the top of screen. The change of direction in the LEM on the way up the screen would be the unintended pan input from a couple of seconds earlier ie it’s not reacting to anything and it is pure chance that it happens to keep the LEM from exiting stage right rather than stage top!!
SO to summarise:
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All the apparent LEM movements after the initial launch are actually camera movements. There is no reason for the LEM to “manoeuvre” there is nothing out there to hit.
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The camera man knew there was a 2 sec delay and so began the planned launch sequence a couple of seconds before launch (relying on the countdown)
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The initial launch sequence was planned in the camera guy’s head. After the initial sequence it was up to the camera man to keep the LEM in screen as best as possible. All camera reactions to drift occur a number of seconds after the drift begins.
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It was not blind luck that got the LEM back in shot at the end, it was seen going off the bottom of screen, the camera guy knew he just had to nudge the camera down that way and he would probably pick it up again.
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The final straightening of the LEM at the end was irrelevent (it didn’t stop the LEM from going off screen) and was probably due to accidently introducing some pan into the camera when the LEM was of 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.
Lastly, I don’t know that what you are seeing is dust near the camera. 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.
Very lastly, my only claim to qualification for the words above is that I operate a FLIR turret on aerial surveillance missions and know what it can be like searching for something off screen when you know it’s approx position but sometimes have little if any reference to ground. Of course that’s without any kind of delay!!!
Summary is longer than the body, hehe 
BickByro wrote:
Well, since I’ve already told you: magic. “This appears magical” is a fine turn of phrase, and then we can explain to you why it’s not magical, but might still be anomalous.
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.
II - Evaluating Single Cases Yes, you should examine more than just the footage to determine whether or not you are seeing a dust cloud. You need to, and already have examined something about the lack of atmosphere. You also need to examine the camera supposedly used, along with it’s lens (was there a manual or automatic iris?). Plus (and this is the biggie), 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?”
Consider that many scholars believe that a single, global flood was highly unlikely, and other reasons exist for multi-cultral flood stories.
Sure, but it’s hard to do without invoking the questions of interia, momentum, friction, and a slew of other laws.
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.
III - Ascent Footage Your say-so and mine are equally valid, to some outsider. To me, since you don’t have my experience, you’re not as qualified as I am to comment. To you, who gives a rat’s ass? I could be lying. As to the dust cloud, it’s being discussed.
IV - The Space.com Photo What you’re missing is that you don’t rotate the photo, only the light source. 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.
But, all this speculation is moot, and any proper skeptic would say, “give a hoot about what you think you see, where’s the evidence that you’re correct?” 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. You can find it all here (this page will only be available until 10/15/2001). I still don’t know anything about the space.com photo, though. Perhaps tomorrow.
The basis was that no other photo I’ve ever clicked on at the LSJ site was labelled as a negative, or even looked like a negative. I had doubts regarding that as great as your doubts that the ascent footage did not show a ‘reaction’.
A baseless assumption on your part that is very much mistaken.
Comments like, “…I also can’t find any information that would suggest that the UV range would make bright objects appear black” say it just fine. And, as I said, looking at just the Clementine site is a mistake.
But you forget the fact that we specifically point out the speculation, while it appears that you take the photos at face value (you seem to assume that a black-and-white photo was shot with broad-band visible light, and not some bizarre band of light you’ve never seen with your own eyes). My suggestion to you that you verify your assumptions would help us all - and since you’re the one making the much-less speculative claims (it does or doesn’t look a certain way), it should be your responsibility to do so. Again, a reasonable, plausible counter-argument should prompt you to look deeper, and I don’t see where my latest arguments of “how can you possibly know that?” are anything but plausible and reasonable.
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.
V - The Rover Photo When did I get “upset” at you about the “too close to the sun” remarks? Again, I thought I was very calm and patient.
VI - What Would Constitute Proof? Nothing you can write about your opinions of how things look to you can establish the fact that we’re looking at a dust cloud. You are obligated to find another, verifiable, source for this claim that it is, indeed, a dust cloud. Don’t forget that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Your opinion is not good enough (just as I’ve pointed out that my opinion should not be good enough on the matter of the zigs and zags).
VII - Your Education <grin> I’m sorry the section heading offended you. Again, it wasn’t meant to. The <grin> was meant to emphasize that the heading was not a jab at you. I would have written <evil grin> or some such to let you know that.
And I think, as I’ve shown above, that you are very badly mistaken in using the word “anybody.” I did invert the NASA landing-site image, and what saw I was less ‘satisfying’ as a real Moon photo. I later found confirming evidence that the NASA pics are not negatives (see above).
I tried to be clear, and apparently failed. These two “best points” of yours I happened to feel were the most-difficult ones to apply my suggested method to. If you were unfamiliar with such a method, I asked you not use the two most-difficult examples as starting points. I was attempting to help you by making the challenge something I thought you could more-readily accept. Because what I was proposing was that you answer some question of yours mostly on your own - 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. Heck, I could, with my less-than extensive experience here on the SDMB, see your meeting this challenge seriously as decent grounds for moving this thread back into GQ.
I did, and 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, no, no! The limitations I was imposing were on my participation. In other words, 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. You are, and have always been, free to do whatever it is you want to do, I have no say in that at all. 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 not, I won’t waste any more of our collective time. If you do, then accept or reject the deal as offered, but not because you feel rejected. 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.
In another post, you wrote:
Again, you are the one making the claim, apparently in the face of overwhelming evidence, that NASA faked at least some miniscule part of the footage/photos. In this light, yes the ‘battle’ is lopsided. 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”). You wanted me to be more positive? Well, the hoaxers have yet to point to a single piece of positive evidence for their claims, and instead tend to rely on pointing out “flaws” that high-school-level physics, optics, or astromony lessons will tell many people are not flaws at all.
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.
Bickbyro wrote:
You can see this in a few photos:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/as11-37-5454.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/as11-40-5961.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/as11-40-5962.jpg
Since the ground opposite the sun appears the brightest, this will be responsible for some of the illumination in shaded areas of the LM and astronauts. Some of the conspiracy theorists have said that shaded areas should be completely black, and these photos point out why that’s not true.
About the dust “cloud” in the ascent video, I’m not an expert, but it seems that a simple, likely explanation is that the rocket blasted lots of lunar dust way up off the surface, and it just falls rather slowly because gravity is weak. The video is just shooting through lots of dust that’s falling in a tall, parabolic arc.
There seems to be a disconnect between your way of looking at pro-hoax evidence, and the others’ here. The rest of us see an absolute mountain of evidence that irrefutably demonstrates that the Apollo landings were real. You’re finding a few little details that appear suspicious, but haven’t been explained authoritatively. Because they’re not explained, you keep open the possibility of a hoax. We can’t believe that you would turn your back on the mountain of evidence.
It’s kind of fun speculating on answers to these little unexplained details. 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 thing your early position was that you were convinced they were real, but thought the ascent video was faked. It’s interesting to find these questions and try to find the answers, but I have to tell you that I think it’s a little nutty to think that NASA would fake just the ascent video.
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.
Next!
No, this response suggests you do not understand. A participant in an activity is also a witness to that activity, and can testify to the causation linking the activity to the result of that activity. Someone who witnesses only the result of the activity, but not the activity itself, can only hypothesize about the nature of the activity – not testify to it.
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. If we want to hypothesize that forgery caused those effects, we may. But the evidence that would support such a hypothesis is not the effect itself. If the effect can be caused by a process other than forgery, then we must find other evidence of our hypothesized process – people who participated in it, for example.
No such evidence has ever been presented for the lunar landing conspiracy theory. No one can testify with first-hand knowledge that a process of falsification even existed.
Let’s try an analogy. You are driving down the road with your friend, and you see a wrecked car being attended by emergency workers. Your friend says, “Gee, another drunken driver. When will those people ever learn?”
“How do you know the driver was intoxicated?” you ask.
“Easy,” says your friend. “When drunken drivers wreck their cars, that’s exactly what it looks like.”
The problem with your friend’s reasoning is that many other hypotheses could also lead to the same observed effect: a mechanical failure, a medical problem, a road hazard, a fight between the car’s occupants, etc. Your friend has provided no evidence that his hypothesized process was the one which caused this particular incident.
If you could gather more evidence, you might be able to narrow the field. But you are pressing on to your destination and cannot afford to stop an investigate.
“I really hate drunken drivers,” your friend continues. “I’ve devoted years of my life to raising awareness about the dangers of drunken driving, and as a devout Mormon I despise the consumption of alcohol.” In this statement your friend reveals a possible predisposition which might lead him to favor the DUI hypothesis over others. (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.)
Unless you can provide a witness to the process of the alleged forgery, you cannot credibly argue that there even was a forgery. 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.
In order to make a viable argument that the Apollo photos and films were forged, you first have to establish the proposition
“There was a process of forgery.”
You cannot use the existence of alleged anomalies as the premise for this proposition, since that would be circular.
Then you must establish the proposition
“The process of forgery is causally linked to the observed anomalies to a greater extent than any other cause.”
In this case you have parsimony working very strenuously against you, so this part of the argument must be very amply supported.
When you are able to make that kind of argument, then you’ll find you’ll be taken more seriously.