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There is a group of people who claim that the United States faked the manned moon landing. They point to anomalies in the photographs as well as the radiation hazard of the trip and landing on te moon itself. Would like to hear opinions on this. Thanx!
Thinking on, the Space Station is probably just outside of the Earth's gravitational influence and therefore a shorter voyage. Add on the fact that, although low, the Moon does have it's own gravitational field to be overcome which all adds to time and spent fuel costs.
Oh, oh - just thought of another problem - it's hard enough getting the Shuttle back down here - so some other type of transport would have to be invented that could do a "soft-landing" on the Moon and return to Earth and would have to be at least the size of the Shuttle.
Up to 20% of the American Public Believes We Did Not Go To The Moon
Is this the same American public that regularly wrote angry letters to Dave Barry when he said stuff like the Leaning Tower of Pisa was in Paris, or that the Czech Republic and Slovakia used to go by the name "The Netherlands?" That wrote in saying they were afraid to stuff turkeys because he once wrote a column saying that giblet snakes lived inside? That American public?
There is no idea on God's green earth so dumb that you can't get a big chunk of the American public to buy it. These are the same people who believe you can cut taxes but expand services, and who believe you can extract oil from the ground indefinitely without running out of it.
And if 20% believe we didn't go to the moon, that means 80% do, right? Why are the 20% more worthy of being taken seriously than the 80%?
No Stars Are Visible
The Apollo astronauts all landed on the day side of the moon, and all the videos they shot from orbit were over the day side, so the exposure settings were all for daylight. Set your camera to 1/125 at f/8 (a setting typical of the slower films in use in 1969). Aim it at the night sky and shoot pictures. Tell me how many stars you see. Aim your camcorder at the sky and see how many stars you can film.
Even with the eye you'd have difficulty seeing stars from the daytime lunar surface unless you stood in a shadow and shielded yourself from any light reflected from the ground, for the same reason you can't see stars from a brightly lit parking lot at night.
The Flag Waves
Sure it does. The flag had a stiffening rod on the upper side so it would stand out from the staff. When the astronauts moved the pole, the free corner lagged behind by simple inertia. The flag actually flops unnaturally quickly because there is no air resistance to impede it.
No Dust on the Lander Footpads
Dust on the airless moon won't behave like dust on the earth. It won't hang in suspension. Even the tiniest dust particle will travel a ballistic path like a thrown baseball. So any dust kicked up by the landing will fly away from the lander and fall to the surface some distance away.
When the astronauts walk, the dust they kick up doesn't hang in a cloud but plummets like a stone - literally. There's no air to keep it suspended.
No Engine Noise is Audible
None is audible on transcripts of Space Shuttle launches, either. Nor do you hear engine noise when an airline pilot speaks over the loudspeaker, even though it's plainly audible in the passenger compartment. The blast noise goes mostly out and back. The proximity of the microphone to the speaker's mouth means that voice will drown out whatever engine noise there is.
Temperature Contrasts
One criticism of the Apollo landings was that no provision was made for the huge temperature contrasts between the sunlit and shaded areas on the Moon.
I could scarcely believe that anybody who claimed to have an engineering background would confuse temperature and heat, but that's what happened in the program. Temperature is how fast atoms are moving in a material. Heat is how much total energy those atoms have. You can stick your hand in a 500-degree oven without injury, but touch any solid object in the oven and you'll burn. Everything has the same temperature, but the amount of heat in the air isn't enough to burn you quickly, whereas the amount in the grill or pan will be. Also the solid conducts heat a lot faster than the air, but a vacuum is the poorest conductor of all.
So it may be plus 200 degrees in the lunar sunlight and minus 200 in the shade, but in a vacuum there is no heat. The only way to cool off in a vacuum is by radiating away heat - there's no surrounding material to conduct heat away. It doesn't take much insulation to protect an astronaut in a vacuum. So an astronaut on Pluto would not freeze to death instantly, indeed, with a little insulation to retain the 80-100 watts of heat the human body radiates, he wouldn't freeze at all. It would be much easier to protect an astronaut on Pluto from freezing than someone in a blizzard in the Antarctic.
And by the way, it won't be 200 degrees in the sunlight. The sun would strike an astronaut no more fiercely than on earth. The only reason the lunar surface gets that hot is that it gets continuous daylight for two weeks at a time and there's no atmosphere to carry heat away. (There's also no atmosphere to store heat - without an atmosphere, earth would be below freezing.) Just after lunar sunrise, the lunar surface will still be pretty cold. It will take a while to warm up. By lunar midday the surface will be hot but not blisteringly so, and it doesn't take very thick gloves to handle rocks even at 200 degrees. Geologists on earth work all the time handling rocks in deserts where surface temperatures approach 200 degrees. And things in shadows will take a while to cool down. In the shadow of the lunar lander it was not 200 degrees below zero. It would have taken a long time for the surface to radiate away its stored heat and get that cold.
Lighting and Shadow Discrepancies
There's a slight difference between being in a shadow and in front of one. Some of the Apollo photographs were criticized for showing brightly-illuminated astronauts in the shadow of the spacecraft, but it's clear the sun was shining obliquely in the scene, and the astronauts were above or in front of the shadow.
One celebrated picture shows an astronaut with the sun behind him, and the lunar lander and American flag reflected in his visor. According to critics, the astronaut should have been merely a silhouette. And so he should, if he weren't surrounded by brightly-lit ground. If the full moon can brightly illuminate the earth from 250,000 miles away, just imagine what it can do to an astronaut standing on it.
A number of photos show what are claimed to be shadows pointing in different directions. But the comparison is between well-defined shadows in the foreground and very oblique shadows in the background. Shadows lie on parallel lines pointing away from the sun. Because of perspective, they will appear to radiate away from the point on the horizon directly under the sun. It's simply incredible that people who claimed to have backgrounds in photography and engineering would not know this. Close examination shows that the apparently mismatched shadows are also being cast on uneven surfaces. For example, one rock is clearly higher than the surface where its shadow falls. Between perspective, uneven surfaces, and no attempt whatever to find the real explanation, there's no mystery whatever about the "mismatched" shadows.
A brief look around outdoors on a sunny day will show that shadows of nearby objects do not line up with more distant ones, or even point directly away from the sun. The reason is that you don't line up the base of the object with its shadow, as was done in the program. You draw a line from a point on the edge of the shadow through the object that casts that part of the shadow. So it's simply ridiculous to draw lines from the base of the Lunar Module through its shadow. To see if the shadows were consistent, you'd have to draw lines from objects on the Lunar Module to their corresponding shadows. These lines should converge on the Sun.
The most preposterous argument involves photos taken on Apollo 17 at the base of the lunar Apennines. The background, it is claimed, is faked because one photo of the mountains shows the Lunar Module in the picture and another showing the same mountains does not. Here's a simple exercise. Drive to Mount Rushmore, Yosemite, or some other scenic spot. Park at a scenic overlook. Take a picture with your car in the foreground. Now walk around your car and take another picture. Compare the distant backdrop in the two pictures.
Doctored Photos?
One sequence in the program quite convincingly shows that two scenes supposedly filmed on different days at different locations were actually filmed at the same spot. Maybe this proves the missions were filmed on earth on a set. Or maybe it merely shows that whoever edited the film mixed up the footage.
Another couple of photos shows that crosshairs etched on the camera lens appear to be behind objects in the foreground. There's no question about it - the crosshairs disappear abruptly at the edge of the objects. One in particular appears to be in front of the American flag but behind an astronaut's arm.
Now this makes absolutely no sense at all from a conspiracy viewpoint. If you're going to stage the landings on earth, why put crosshairs on the camera at all? If we assume the photos were shot with the calibrated cameras that would have gone to the moon, and NASA went to the time and trouble to build stage sets and have people in spacesuits act out the landings, why not just shoot the scenes you need? Cutting and pasting makes no sense at all - nobody would have missed the apparently doctored shots if they weren't made.
On the other hand, somebody editing out distracting crosshairs for press release makes perfect sense and is just as consistent with all the data. The question is, what's on the original film? And none of the conspiracy theorists have apparently bothered to find out.
Another angle: I personally am VERY skeptical of any conspiracy that would have to have more than a small handful of people involved...and remains secret for this long.
A consipiracy of this magnatude would have to involve dozens of people...and I just don't believe it's possible for that many people to stay mum for so long...especially knowing that anyone with evidence for it could sell it for millions.
Used to think conspiracy theories were amusing diversions, but as a resident of lower Manhattan, I realize how hurtful they can be when I started seeing the one about the U.S. gov't bombing the Trade Center, and then finding out some people I know actually believe that. These theories now seem akin to the mob mentality that gets innocent teachers indicted and ruined for supposed ritualistic child molestation. Hysteria of the masses.
I do agree - that's a basic marketing technique.
But, how do you explain the 30+ year gap in manned moon missions?
That's the point that really gets me.
Who would have thought that in the year 2006 we would still be wallowing in low earth orbit as the late Carl Sagan described it. Funny how they televise these space walks as if they were a novelty when this was being done back in the sixties. Imagine thirty more years going by and when we look why, there they still are wallowing in low earth orbit, televising it and expecting us to say WOW!
BTW
The film 2001 A Space Odyssey envisioned us with an extensive moon base,
a spacious space station and shuttle craft capable of taking us to the moon and back to earth orbit. Also a spaceship where people aren't packed like sardines as they still are. What a letdown!
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