Nasa challenges Moon hoax claims

BBC News Online ^ | 11/07/02 | Dr. David Whitehouse

[GeneD]

For years there have been rumours that the Apollo lunar landings were faked, staged on a movie set to convince the world that the US had beaten the Soviets to the Moon.

And, despite evidence to the contrary, the belief that the "one small step for man" was a sham continues to spread.

Now, having tried to stay above the rumours, the US space agency (Nasa) has finally got fed up with the conspiracy theorists and asked James Oberg, a leading aerospace writer, to produce a book that it hopes will settle the issue.

But will it work, or will it just add a certain credibility to the hoax theory?

Flags that ripple on the airless Moon, discrepancies in the part numbers of lunar lander components, shadows that point in the wrong direction, the lack of stars seen in the sky - these are all "facts" that have fuelled the conspiracy theory.

It is claimed that the six Apollo landings took place in a hangar on a secret military base.

Over the years, every one of the lines of evidence has been discredited but the rumours refuse to go away.

In September, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, punched a man in the face after he had confronted the former astronaut at a Beverly Hills hotel.

Bart Sibrel - who has made a film questioning the Apollo Moon missions - had demanded that Mr Aldrin, 72, swear on the Bible that he had in fact walked on the Moon.

Prosecutors declined to file assault charges against Mr Aldrin.

Truth out there

Tackling the conspiracy theory head-on in an official book was the idea of Nasa's former chief historian Roger Launius.

He says that hardcore conspiracy theorists are not the book's main audience, as they will never be convinced of the truth.

Instead, it will be aimed at the general public and especially teachers, giving them the science to answer questions in class.

Doubters will no doubt dismiss the new book as just another attempt by the establishment to cover up the truth.

Nasa says the rippling flag is easily explained by the fact that the astronauts twisted it as they planted it in the soil.

The stars are not visible in the lunar sky because of the bright landscape and the light from the Earth drowning them out.

In a few years a definite answer could be possible.

A private company, Transorbital, will place a private high-resolution satellite into orbit around the Moon. It should have the power to see the Apollo hardware left on the surface.

[Seruzawa]

If you really want to attract the tinfoilhat crowd, post a thread denying the existence of chemtrails.

[babygene]

In the mid sixties I was on the USS Godridch, and we were part of the Gemni recovery team.

(Project Gemini was a transitional step between the pioneering Mercury Program and the actual landing a man on the moon)

Many a space capsule we hoisted out of the ocean. Months an months of practice. Lots and lots of pictures. It's intresting to me that never did we pick up a capsule with anyone in it.

All of the real space shots seemed to land in a different ocean. It's odd to me that a few years before we landed on the moon (and got back) we couldn't bring the damm thing down in the right ocean. Remember, that at that time, we didn't have computers like we have today. We used slide rules.

In the seventies I was involved with RCA Astro, and was responsible for maintaining the computers at Cape Kennedy that were used for satilite launches. These machines were multiple HP 2116s that weighed 275lbs each and had 16K of core memmory. Along with all of the instrumentation, they weighed probably 10,000 lbs.

This equipment was needed to get the bird in orbit around the earth.

Could this feat have been aconplished with a sliderule ten years earlier, involving an orbit around the moon? I guess it is possible. A lot of luck had to have been involved. As for myself, I don't believe it.

[narby]

The sad thing is, it doesn't need to be that expensive to go to orbit or the moon. I firmly believe that the spacefairing countries want to keep their capabilities to themselves. Lest Osama or Saddam buys the same capability to drop things on us.

Don't know the links, but check out the "X Prize" on the net. It's a 10 million dollar prize for someone to fly 75 miles up. That's a long ways toward orbit/moon.

An idea I really like was submitted by an ex-Air Force fighter pilot. Build a jet aircraft with heat tiles like the shuttle and a rocket engine. Launch it without full fuel on the jets, and refuel with a tanker lots of kerosene. Fire up the rocket and boost to mach 12-15 and about 75 miles. Pop open a cargo door, dump out a third stage (stage 1=jet, stage 2=rocket, stage 3=cargo) which fires a small rocket to boost to final orbit speed. Then the aircraft re-enters.

You could launch such a thing with minimal crew every day. Might need to overhaul the rocket every dozen or so flights. Big deal.

Once you get orbital flight cheap enough, everything else gets cheaper. Even the spacecraft get cheaper, because you can afford to "mess up", and don't have to spend the megabucks during the design phase.

[TomB]

If NASA really wants to settle this once and for all, all they need to do is aim the Hubble telescope to the Sea of Tranquility and focus in on the decarded lower lunar module and the flag. Great that they would rather piss more tax payer money away on something that could be either proved or debuncked with a simple turn of a space telescope.

Every thread about the moon hoax comes along there MUST be at least one person mention the HST. Sorry, but the resolution wrt to the lunar surface is (I believe) around 50 meters, much too large to image a piece of Apollo debris.

[narby]

All the Gemini capsules were picked up by carriers, except Neal Armstrongs flight, which went out of control and came down early.

It doesn't surprize me that NASA ground computers were prehistoric in the 70's. Once NASA rates something, they never change it. Not even to update the OS. It's a reliability thing. They probably kept those computers until the late 80's. The JPL computers I worked with in the 1980's were in the room with the Voyager machines, which were second hand ModComp computers taken from Polaris submarines.

The computers in the LEM and CM were very small (maybe 4k, I don't know), and required much human interaction. The pilots basically had to load each program for each flight phase. The program monitored conditions, and computed angles and burn times. The last of the modern HP calculators were way more powerful. But the Apollo computers were enough. Just barely.

[TomB]

Could this feat have been aconplished with a sliderule ten years earlier, involving an orbit around the moon?

What feat? The only things the computers had to do was orbital mechanics. It's something easily done on a sliderule, the computer on the spacecraft only sped up those calculations.

[babygene]

"I don't think the Hubble can resolve objects that small at that distance"

Of course they can. Spy satilites can read a license plate from a geosyncrous orbit 23K miles above the earth, through the earth's atmosphere.

The moon is in an elliptical orbit ranging from 220,000 to about 252,000 miles from Earth. Only ten times the distance, and you don't have to contend with our atmosphere.

[babygene]

Ever use a slide rule?

[TomB]

The moon is in an elliptical orbit ranging from 220,000 to about 252,000 miles from Earth. Only ten times the distance, and you don't have to contend with our atmosphere.

You are WAY off here. The size of a telescope's mirror limits it's resolution. I copied this off this webiste:

The wavelength of visible light is around 550x10^-9m.

The diameter of Hubble's mirror is 2.4m.

Highest ever physically possible resolution = 1.4 x 550 x 10^-9 /2.4 m = 3.2 x 10^-7 radians

At a distance of 350,000km this works out as about 124 metres.

Ever use a slide rule?

Yep, many "moons" ago. Ever do orbital mechanics?

[DAnconia55]

One way they could stop all this (But they won't for other reasons..) ....

Is to release all images taken by all and any craft or device to the public, instead of selectively releasing images and editing...

[RightWhale]

Something the tinfoilers could do is go to the moon and stand on the very spot where Armstrong's lander stage still supposedly sits and take a panorama showing nothing there except the tinfoiler and his own lander.

[forsnax5]

"I don't think the Hubble can resolve objects that small at that distance"

This is correct.

Of course they can. Spy satilites can read a license plate from a geosyncrous orbit 23K miles above the earth, through the earth's atmosphere.

Spy Satellites are not geosynchronous -- they orbit around 400 miles up.

The highest resolution commercially available is one meter. If the military can read license plates, they're not doing it from 23k miles away.

[babygene]

" Yep, many "moons" ago. Ever do orbital mechanics?"

That was good, and no...

So you think it would be trivial to do such caclucations with the equipment avaviable at the time?

[babygene]

The Goodrich was a destroyer. A carrier was involved in our operation along with several other ships, but it was not equiped to pick up a capsule.

[RightWhale]

it would be trivial to do such caclucations with the equipment avaviable at the time?

I will answer, yes. I did work in that general specialty in those days. The hard part is knowing where you are so you can plug in various quantities to your program at the appropriate time. Apollo relied on a certain amount of pilot intervention just in case, but orbital mechanics was well-known even then.

[El Sordo]

It always amazes me that people fall for the "Moon Hoax" hype.

But, it also amazes me that people vote Democrat.....

[geopyg]

I love conspiracy theories! Most (all) of them probably aren't true, but they are still interesting. Awhile back I saw one of the shows on the moon landings being faked. Some of the show's evidence (lighting, shadows, etc.) seem plausible (at least on the face of it). However, there's no way they could fake the landings with thousands of people involved.

So - perhaps there are some fake photos mixed in with the real ones. The original pupose of the program was to beat the Russians, to prove American superiority. Getting a nice crisp picture of an American flag, or of a lunar lander with an American flag on it was the main point of the first landing. The ones they shot up there may have not been all that great, so they filled in with a few fakes. (What do you mean you forgot to take the lens cap off?)

Lots of photos are staged. (I heard this election some Republican drove 200 miles to get on Air Force 1 so he could land in his hometown with the Prez! Not exactly fake, but you get the idea.) And what about the old cold war bunker with the replica of the Oval Office for speeches in times of trouble? So I think there's a possibility that there are some fake photos, which NASA would obviously want kept secret.

[SamAdams76]

A private company, Transorbital, will place a private high-resolution satellite into orbit around the Moon. It should have the power to see the Apollo hardware left on the surface.

So a private company is going to the moon to prove that we went to the moon. Isn't that just a little absurd?

[El Sordo]

It looks like they want to open the tourist trade.

http://www.transorbital.net/

[steve-b]

They'd just say the picture was faked. They're like the DemocRat minions who would still worship the SinkEmperor if you showed them a video tape of him selling nuclear secrets to a ChiCom spy with one hand, shooting Vince Foster in the head with the other hand, and getting "serviced" under the desk with his little bent protruberance.