Reasons the Moon Landing May Have Been a Hoax?

SeaBreeze

SeaBreeze

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Some people still think the moon landing was a hoax, here are some of the reasons. What do you think?

"The theory that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia, is something which has grown in popularity over time.

Recent polls indicate that approximately 20% of Americans believe that the U.S. has never landed on the moon. After the Apollo missions ended in the seventies, why haven’t we ever been back? Only during the term of Richard Nixon did humanity ever land on the moon, and after Watergate most people wouldn’t put it past Tricky Dick to fake them to put America in good standing in the Cold War.

In this list I have presented some of the proposed evidence to suggest that the moon landings were hoaxes. I tried to include NASA’s explanations to each entry to provide an objective perspective.
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http://listverse.com/2012/12/28/10-...e=cbpicks&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=direct
flag-waving-moon-landing_9803_600x450.jpg
 

Here's an old news video clip with a brief debate.

 

Some debunking of the hoax theories, read more here. http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm


"On February 15, 2001 the FOX television network aired a program titled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon? This program showed alleged evidence that NASA faked the moon landings. This hoax theory has been around for several years, but this is the first time it has been presented to such a wide audience. Since this Website, Rocket and Space Technology, is dedicated to the men and women who brought the moon landings to fruition, I feel the time is right for me to speak out on this topic.

This TV program capitalizes on America's fixation with government conspiracies by sensationalizing the notion that NASA perpetrated a multi-billion dollar hoax on the world. In my opinion, the FOX network acted irresponsibly by airing this program.

What they produced is a TV show filled with sloppy research, scientific inaccuracies and erroneous conclusions. To support such an absurd theory and to cast doubt in the minds of the American public is an insult to the courage of the astronauts and the brilliance of the engineers who worked to achieve mankind's greatest technological feat. FOX is apparently only concerned with ratings while exhibiting total disregard for the integrity of America's true heroes.

Some of the most prominent advocates of the hoax theory are Bill Kaysing, author of We Never Went To The Moon, Ralph Rene, author of NASA Mooned America, David Percy and Mary Bennett, co-authors of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle Blowers and, more recently, Bart Sibrel, producer of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon.

These people, and other hoax advocates, usually point to alleged anomalies in the Apollo photo and video record as evidence of their claims. The FOX program featured many of these claims while providing very little refuting evidence or testimony. Below are my comments refuting both the evidence presented in the TV program and many other common hoax allegations. I invite you to draw your own conclusions, but I suspect you will find the facts speak for themselves.

The likelihood of success was calculated to be so small that it is inconceivable the moon landings could have actually taken place.

Bill Kaysing has claimed that the chance of a successful landing on the moon was calculated to be 0.0017% (1 in 60,000). The source of this information appears to be a report prepared by the Rocketdyne company in the late 1950s. This assessment was, of course, based on understanding and technology existing at the time of the report. As tremendous resources were poured into the problem over the next decade, the reliability studies improved dramatically.

During the mid-1960s the Apollo Support Department of the General Electric Company in Florida conducted extensive mission reliability studies for NASA. These studies were based on very elaborate reliability models of all of the systems. A reliability profile over the course of a mission was generated by computer simulation, and a large number of such simulations were carried out for different scenarios. Based on those studies, the probability of landing on the moon and returning safely to earth never dropped below 90%.

Every Apollo mission before number 11 was plagued by about 20,000 defects apiece. Yet, with the exception of Apollo 13, NASA claims there wasn't one major technical problem on any of their Moon missions.

This is the claim of hoax advocate Ralph Rene. Although I am unfamiliar with the source of this information, Mr. Rene's assertion is clear; the early missions had so many insurmountable problems that NASA decided to abandon the moon landings and fake it. Even if the data is accurate, there is a big difference between a "defect" and a "major technical problem".

None of the Apollo missions, with the exception of number 13, experienced a major technical problem that prohibited the crews from successfully completing their missions. Also, the early Apollo flights were test missions designed specifically to shake out bugs in the hardware and procedures. Finally, the moon landings were far from flawless. There were numerous technical problems but, thanks to the skill of the flight controllers, engineers and astronauts, the problems were either corrected or circumvented such that the crews were able to complete their missions with amazing success.

The poor video quality of the first moon landings was a deliberate ploy so nobody could properly examine it.

Television pictures of the Apollo 11 landing were sent directly to Earth from the surface of the Moon using the Lunar Module's antenna and power supply. This placed a restriction on the amount of bandwidth that could be transmitted. Apollo 11 was thereby limited to using a black-and-white, slow-scan TV camera with a scan rate of 10 frames-per-second at 320 lines-per-frame.

In order to broadcast the images to the world, the pictures had to first be converted to the commercial TV standards. In the US, this was the EIA standard of 30 frames-per-second at 525 lines-per-frame. The pictures transmitted from the Moon were displayed on a 10-inch black-and-white monitor and a vidicon camera was pointed at the screen and the pictures were scanned at the EIA standard.

A number of peculiar image artifacts were seen on the images. One set of artifacts was produced by sunlight reflecting off the astronauts and the LM onto the TV camera's lens. These reflections produced the ghostly effects perceived by the public. Other prominent artifacts were the result of spots burnt into the monitor screens from which the optical conversions were produced.

Apollo 11 was only a first step in what was to be increasingly ambitious missions, thus it was lacking in some capabilities. Among these was the ability to transmit high-quality TV pictures. Later missions, starting with Apollo 12, had enough time in the schedule to permit the astronauts to erect large freestanding dish antennas. This increased the amount of bandwidth that could be transmitted, thus allowing complex color TV pictures to be sent directly to Earth."
 
These moon landing conspiracy theories sound like something written for the Jesse Ventura TV show...entertaining, but hardly factual. They fall into the same category as the conspiracy theories surrounding the WTC destruction on 9/11...IMO. I look at it this way...given the number of people who were involved in the planning and execution of these Apollo missions, and the inability of most people to keep a secret for very long...if this was all a fake, someone would have spilled the beans a long time ago.
 
I don't believe it was a hoax, for a number of reasons.

If it were a hoax, why would it be done over and over? It would have been much safer and just as effective to do it once and be done with it.

There were over 400,000 people directly associated with the moon landings, and no one on the inside has disputed it. The odds that every single one of them could keep it secret are impossibly remote.

Rock samples are clearly non-terrestrial, and have been studied by thousands of scientists.

The sheer number of photographs that don't show anything unexpected. Much has been said about light sources, errant shadows and so forth, but this is all based on how light behaves in Earth’s atmosphere. The lunar module was covered in reflective paneling, and would have had a major effect on the way light was reflected onto the surface. The cameras were also set to photograph the lunar surface and with the tremendous amount of sunlight would have had difficulty picking up stars in the sky.

The Soviets never disputed it. If there were a shred of real evidence that it was faked, the Soviets would have embarrassed us with it.

And to top it off, with a decent telescope you can see the landing sites and the items we left on the moon.
 
People just love conspiracy theories. Watched too many movies I think.

A few years ago a Scot came up to me at work and said she'd just watched a programme on tv and did I know that my country's moon landing was a hoax? :pfff:
 
I don't think for a second the Moon landing was a Hoax..and believe me I'm a very cynical person at times..I have always, always said the same as Don M..that there were far too many people involved to not have everyone keep a secret so huge that it was a fake...nope I absolutely believe it happened.

However I think they reason they haven't put anyone back up there is because they know that's where Elvis is living and running his own burger bar ..and everyone knows that burgers are bad for you..
 
In 1962 the original astronauts visited our plant to see where the Atlas Missile was built. I was a photographer at that time with our company, General Dynamics. Here is a photo from then.

ASTRON_1.jpg
 
Ameriscot said:
How very cool, Jim!!
Click to expand...

Here is a picture of Glenn's bird leaving our plant on it's way to then Cape Canaveral Florida. I shot this just as the truck pulled out. The following is another pic of how we ended up sending them there. The last is me on right and a fellow photographer holding a piece of the Glenn birds skin after reentry to earth, recovered in Africa.

John_Glenns_109D.jpgGoing__Going[1]......jpgJim w 109D skin.JPG
 
When we lived in Jax FL my dad retired from the navy having his 20 years in. We took a family trip to Cape Canaveral where my dad was applying for a job. 1964. While there we saw many cars pulled over to the sides of the road looking up at the sky. A rocket had been launched (a Gemini?). Exciting.
 
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See? SEE?!?

No stars in the second picture, just like the shot from the "moon"! :p

I don't know ... some of the points brought up in the article are interesting mental exercises and their official explanations aren't all that satisfactory, but I still believe we actually landed on the moon.
 
How very cool Jim to get to photograph all that.
 

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