Okay, Engineer Kimov brought this up in a different thread, so I thought I would expand on it, since I want to see his evidence:


So, the questions for debate are:

1. Does anyone else believe that we did not land on the moon?

2. If America didn't land on the moon, why do you believe we faked it?

3. What evidence do you have to support your belief?

1. Does anyone else believe that we did not land on the moon?

Not me. I am a firm believer in the lunar landings.

A friend of mine, who is far more knowledgable on these matters once went over all the points with me, and he had a clear and credible explanation for every point raised.

Clearly we landed on the moon.

1) The Apollo project involved thousands of people.
2) Many of those people would have had access to material that would have proven the existence of a 'fake moon landing' plot.
3) By stealing that evidence someone could have become a very rich person.

Since this chain of events did not transpire, it is clear, by basic logic that we did in fact land on the moon. Providing "evidence" to the contrary is merely an exercise in making up “facts” to suit a conclusion.

(I find it hard to tell if Kimov is playing make-believe or if Kimov realizes that this is a forum for real debate about real issues.)

Well, my husband is a rocket scientist, among other things. Yes, we have landed on the moon. I did a defending the indefensible on this one.


The fact is, anyone could ascertain that the landings were faked. Videos can be doctored, moon dust and moon rocks can be fabricated. My father-in-law worked for Nasa during that time, and yes, I've actually met people who walked on the moon. The vicissitudes associated with hiding that degree of conspiracy are beyond comprehension.

General agreement here.

It is simply not possible to keep a hoax of this magnitude secret. The same goes for the claim that the US government has an alien spaceship that crashed near Roswell. All it takes is one person to blow the whistle; and a conspiracy of this size would have had a huge number of people in on the joke.

Just think of the much smaller secrets which were revealed rather easily:

Watergate
Monica Lewinsky

Fortunately, the US government has a poor track record at keeping secrets of this magnitude from its citizens. (I suppose there are some exceptions during a full-scale war.)

Yes, I claim that videos are fake. I will make a small article and post it here. Wait a few hours...

I generally agree that the government would not be capable of pulling off such a big lie, but I couldn't resist responding to the quote above...

How do we know the US government has a poor track record at keeping secrets - we only know about the ones they couldn't keep!

Maybe they let a few out every once and awhile to make us think they're bad at keeping secrets...

Of course it happened! We've been to the moon several times, landed a probe on Mars and have circled most planets in our Solar System. I'm sorry that the USSR fell behind in the space program and that it will take you hours to come up with a good story of how the US faked it. By the way, other satellites that have passed the moon while enroute to where ever have snapped photos of our presence on the moon of over thirty years ago.

Ha! Very funny. I know you are kidding, but in defense of my earlier statement and for the benefit of the conspiracy theory nuts reading this thread...

...Do we know that the government isn't keeping secretes for sure? Well, yes, if you think that 99.99995% accuracy is for sure. What I am saying is that, you could imagine a scenario where the government was lying about Apollo and Aliens and leaked the Monica thing as a disguise, but acceptance of such a theory would also require a total revamping of how us 'normal' Americans see society.

I know for sure that the people in the government are just normal Americans like everyone else. Having worked at NASA and in DC, for an agency, I know this from experience.

Now some of you may say, "Well fine, but how do we know you're not in on it?" To that I can provide no answer. But I will say, that if you ask this question, I will access the U.S.A super-computer and send a bunch of men in black suits to silence you. (Ha! Kidding. Sorry.)

The point is, you can always say "Well yes, but..." And to a point that is good, but eventually you have to accept truth as truth.

Except, it isn't simply government agents who would be keeping the secrets, but thousands of civilians as well. Even if, by willing suspension of disbelief, a case could be made for a government conspiracy to stage a fake landing on the moon. Why repeat it another five times, using different civilian scientists, engineers, and astronauts?

I will try to be short.

1.Gravity

Accelerated replay of Moon videos shows that their movement are equal to such moves on Earth and, what is more important, height of jumps is not even a fraction greater than height of jump on Earth, even though Moon gravity is 1/6 of Earth gravity. Pebble, which fell out of wheels of American moon rover does not flies up higher than it was supposed to be on Earth, AND NOT AS EVEN NEARLY THAT HIGH AS IT FLIED OUT OF WHEELS OF SOVIET MOON ROVER!

2.Wind

By moment of installation of American flag on Moon, the flag fluttered because of air fluctuations. Armstrong tried to fix it and made several steps back. But flag didn't stop fluttering. All explanations about "inner energy" and "inner fluctuations" have nothing to do with real mechanics.

3.Stars

On absolute majority of photos of American moon landing there is no stars, while Soviet moon landing provided lots of them, including videos. Black background is easily explained by problems of modelling star sky in 60ies - the fake would be obvious for any astronomer.

4.Spacesuits

With heating of light side of the Moon up to 120 degrees, spacesuit should be cooled by at least 4.5 liters of water for the period of time astronauts were on Moon, at least according to American sources. Spacesuits of "Apollo" had only 1 liter of water and were absolutely not prepared for work in Lunar conditions. Moreover, spacesuits were not protected against radiation (with only rubber layers, which are good only for working on well-protected atomic power plants), even less protected than spacesuits that are used by America in use of Earth atmosphere for SHORT periods of time! Next. Even using modern technologies it is IMPOSSIBLE to place oxygen for four hours, radio, life support and thermoregularion into such suit - while according to "Apollo" legend, American astronauts had even more of that than modern ones.

5.Fuel

In 1969 year Armstrong and Aldrin heroically landed "Apollo-11" (102 kg), spending all fuel. And "Apollo-17" (514 kg) landed on the Moon without problems with THE SAME amount of fuel. According to Americans, no "economy on maneuring" could save more than five times more fuel.

6.Landing

Under Moon gravitation, jet stream of Moon lander would have blown away all dust in radius of hundreds of meters, moving it kilometers out of landing zone, AND THAT WAS OBSERVED DURING ALL SOVIET MOON LANDINGS. While American astronauts make "historical" steps in the dust, which violate laws of physics.

IF AT LEAST ONE OF THESE FACTS TOOK PLACE, MOON LANDING IS FAKE!

And finally: in 1967, under unknown circumstances, 11 (eleven!!!) NASA astronauts died, seven died in car "accidents", three died in test chamber (!), the last I don't remember. According to American investigators, that was those "disagreers", who were likely to tell the truth to public if they learn out that it would be fake.

Oh, yes! I forgot LIGHT! The light source was too close, just few meters away, while we know that distance between moon and sun is approximately 1 AU (distance between Earth and Sun; Luna is moon of Earth). CARE TO EXPLAIN???

PS: Sorry for double-post...

http://www.thursdaysclassroom.com/15mar01/proofpositive.html




There are additional links at the site with more facts and proof.

All of his (Kimov's) points are factually refuted at:

A Debunking of the Moon Hoax Theory

Here is an excerpt from this very long point-for-point refutation of the moon hoax:



Rather than including responses to all Kimov's points, maybe he should read this website and point out innacuracies in the refutations that appear there...

edited to clarify that I was referring to Kimov's points in the opening line: Billy Jean snuck her post in while I was adding mine

Dear Mr Kimov et al.

The whole point is not something that you can say happened 30 years ago and you cannot check it out yourself. All you need to do is plan a vacation to Clearlake (Houston) in Texas, and go to the Lunar and Planetary Institute, see for yourself.

The few pictures presented in the media, as well as the few rocks, anecdotes etc. are nothing compared to the wealth of data you'll find there.

But if that is not enough consider... if anyone had suspected a fake:

* The Soviets would have jumped all over the videos as proof of American failure if they had just a wink of an opportunity back then -- it was the Cold War Era! Remember?

* The Republican party would have jumped all over the Democratic party, had they even found the slightess excuse to accuse Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, whose names are all over the Apollo program.

* NASA knew that the Soviets were about to go to the moon, manned or by robots. Do you think NASA didn't know that the Soviets -- or any other Nation -- could -- even today -- see by themselves if there were remains of the human visitation to the Moon?

The best part about this debate is that -- someone, someday -- International, Russian, American, Chineese, or who knows from where -- will go back to the Moon and those artifacts, and human tracks will still be there!

Occam's Razor:
"Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily"

Basically, given that we know that men could go into space prior to 1967, and we know that men could go to the moon (if we listen to our engineer friend, Soviets could do it), there's no need to invent complicated conspiracy theories. The simplest explanation is that the Apollo landings put real people onto the real Moon, so why, apart from scoring some conspiracy-theorist or resurrecting-the-Cold-War points, is there any need to invent other explanations?

For those out there that do see a need for such abstruse speculations, may I draw your attention to Hanlon's Razor in my sign-off, with perhaps a suggestion that the stupidity in question applies to the conspiracy theorists themselves in this particular instance.

Wow, did this guy had numbers or comparisions on things he explained. Seems that he didn't see Soviet videos from Moon.

OK, let's check the score.

The gravity evidence was NOT disproved: object on American videos behave not like they behave on Soviet videos.

The wind was not disproved as well, but since I have no comparisions to back my claim, I remove this point. Besides, it is possible to make vacuum enviroment in studio.

Stars evidence was not disproved: it was not explained why stars are abundant on all Soviet videos.

The fuel evidence was NOT disproved.

The landing evidence was NOT disproved: dust on American videos is not blown away, while on Soviet videos it is blown away. Explanation why dust wasn't blown away because of lack of atmosphere is laughable - the jet stream would form gas enviroment as long as it worked, and it DID so on Soviet videos.

Spacesuits evidence was NOT disproved.

Light evidence was NOT disproved, at least from point of optics.

Witness evidence was not disproved as well - NASA killed 11 astronauts in 1967 (because it is MATHEMATICALLY UNLIKELY that 11 astronauts will die in TWO TYPES of accidents in ONE year (365 days)), and only those who agreed to be part of hoax survived.

However, there were claim that flight can be proved because of amount of moon stones and dust collected. Well, that is simplest thing. After taking small amount of non-complex inorganic material and analyzing its chemical structure, it is easy to synthesise as more of it as you wish.

As for why Soviet leaders never claimed that "Apollo" is lies, here's fun-fact: IN 1969 AMERICA STARTED SELLING GRAIN TO SOVIET UNION BY PRICES WHICH WERE BELOW MARKET PRICES, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS COLD WAR. That can be explained only as one of the biggest bribes in history.

Whether Americans did or did not flied to Moon, the videos are pre-recorded fake.

And visiting Lunar and Planetary Institute is good idea, thanks, I will definetely do it once I visit America next time.

Actually, no. Playing with film speeds really doesn't prove anything.

There's an easy explanation for this. An object in free flight will follow a ballistic trajectory in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. The only force acting on the object is gravity, which, on Earth, has an acceleration of 32 ft/s2. On the Moon gravity is much less, 5 ft/s2. If the ballistic flight of an object on the Moon is sped up by a factor of 2.457 it will mimic almost exactly ballistic motion on Earth, and vice versa. The 2X speed the hoax advocates claim is very close to this 2.457 ratio; hence, the motion looks almost "normal" because it is what our eyes and brains are accustomed to seeing. Additionally, the astronauts on the moon moved slowly because of their bulky spacesuits. Spacesuits, which on earth weighed about 250 lbs, all told.

The Apollo video is exactly what it appears to be, man on the Moon. The convincing evidence is in the dust, which is apparent in the video of the Lunar Rover. If this video were shot on Earth there would be clouds of dust thrown everywhere into the atmosphere by the Rover's wheels But, there is no evidence of this. The dust falls almost immediately back to the surface as it would in an airless environment.


Umm, yes they do. Of course a flag can wave in a vacuum. How can that be? There's no breeze on the Moon. But then, there's no atmosphere, either. When the astronauts planted the flagpole they twisted it back and forth to sink it into the lunar soil. On the Earth, that would have made the flag "wave" for just a second, then stop. But that's because the flag pushes against air as it flaps, and the air slows it down.

On the Moon, there was no air to stop the flag's motion, so it continued, just as Newton's First Law of physics says it would. The flag is mounted on one side on the pole, and along the top by another pole that sticks out to the side. In a vacuum or not, when you whip around the vertical pole, the flag will "wave'', since it is attached at the top. The top will move first, then the cloth will follow along in a wave that moves down. This isn't air that is moving the flag, it's the cloth (actually nylon) itself.

And if it was a mistake caused by a breeze on the set where they faked this whole thing, don't you think the director would have tried for a second take? With all the money supposedly going to the hoax, they could certainly afford the film!

One more thing. if the flag is blowing in a breeze, why don't we see all that moon dust blowing around too? Somehow, this argument just gets weaker and weaker the more you think about it.


Wrong again. Why aren't there stars in the Apollo pictures? Pretend for a moment you are an astronaut on the surface of the Moon. You want to take a picture of your fellow astronaut. The Sun is low off the horizon, since all the lunar landings were done at local morning. How do you set your camera? The lunar landscape is brightly lit by the Sun, of course, and your friend is wearing a white, reflective spacesuit also brightly lit by the Sun. Now, ask any photographer. To take a picture of a bright object with a bright background, you need to set the exposure time to be very fast, and close down the aperture setting, to avoid over-exposure of the film.

So the picture you take is set for bright objects. But, compared to these bright objects you are trying to shoot, stars are faint objects! In the fast exposure and closed down aperture, they simply do not have time to register on the film. It has nothing to do with the sky being black or the lack of air, it's just a matter of exposure time. If you were to go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used, you won't see any stars either!

Now, it's possible that Russian cameras, taking only lunar surface shots, and not of reflective instruments or astronauts in the foreground, ran a longer exposure time, or a wider aperture. There's no way to know without comparing actual settings, if available. Also, I haven't seen any of the Soviet moon photos, so I only have your word that stars are in them, unless you can direct me to valid links?


First, I'd like to see some valid links for your assertions of how much coolant was required vs coolant used.

Second, the astronaut's spacesuits weren't white just because it looked good, white reflects the most heat radiation, thereby minimizing the amount absorbed.
The suits were also cooled using a system that sprayed small amount of water onto a cooling element on the rear of the spacesuit. The water would freeze over the element, and then the water of the spacesuit was then pumped through this element. The heat of the suit water melted the ice which rapidly boiled off into space taking the unwanted heat with it.

Third, it may be impossible for you to place four hours of oxygen in a space suit, but it wasn't for the Apollo scientists, at all. The Apollo life-support systems were designed for lunar surface excursions lasting up to eight hours. Furthermore, back inside the lunar lander the life-support system could be recharged with more oxygen and battery power for additional Moonwalks.
The average moon walk after Apollo 11 (which was about 3 hours) was about 5 hours at a time.

On Dec. 12, 1972, the world’s record for the longest space walk (7 hours and 37 minutes) was set by Apollo 17 Astronauts Cernan and Schmitt using the Apollo Backpack. The record stood until 1992 when a new record was set by the newer Shuttle backpacks, at 8 hours and 29 minutes. And I think there was one of over nine hours in the last few years, but I couldn't find the Info. The rest of the times are easy to verify. Really, a short Google search could have saved you the trouble of this one.


Ahh, so you admit that they landed!
Again, I can't answer this, because I can find no relevant links to information. Please site your sources so I can verify them.


It doesn't violate anything. American scientists were indeed concerned that the propulsion from the lunar module might provoke a dust storm on the moon. This concern, however, proved groundless. For the sake of clarity, a few calculations are necessary This from a site that explains it better than I can:


Also, you must remember that there is a vacuum on the moon's surface; gases from the propulsion would expand very rapidly in all directions. When the exhaust gas contacted the lunar surface, its pressure was well under ten percent of the atmospheric pressure on earth. This would blow up some dust, but not to create a large blast area where all dust and debris would have been removed. Dust on the moon (again) strictly adheres to Newton's law of gravity: it falls back to the surface in the form of a parabolic curve. There is no "whirling up" of dust, as we know it on earth. Because of the relatively low exhaust gas pressure of the module's nozzle, the disturbed dust would actually fall back to the surface in the immediate vicinity of the nozzle. And it did.


So far, I haven't seen any facts. Just some pretty poor assertion, with no backup (as usual).


This is just a flat out lie by someone. There were only three astronaut deaths in 1967. Grissom, Chaffee, and White, training in Apollo 1. It was a fire in the command module, sparked by faulty wiring, in an environment of 100% oxygen in the cabin. It's well documented, and forced changes in the air mix before Apollo 11's flight. There are NO other deaths of astronauts during that year, under suspicious circumstances or otherwise. If you have information that differs, please provide the link.


I would if I knew what you were talking about. Again, it's easy to just say something, how about some verifiable links, so that I can see what it is you mean? Then I can reply to it.

And yes, let's really check the score here. Your last post says none of your "evidence" was refuted. What evidence????? You've given no evidence! You made assertion after assertion after assertion, with not one shred of evidence to back any of it up, other than because you say so. A few of us here have actually taken the time to show our evidence, through links, quotes, and mathmatics. Please be so kind as to do the same.

Niteguy - As I'm sure you know, much of your post is taken verbatim from the website I included in an earlier post, with a few tweaks here and there.

You should point out when you take words verbatim from another source. Otherwise, people might get the idea that you are smarter than you are.

Is there a plagerism policy here?

There is a policy on copyrights in the Rules and guidelines:

Quoting snippets from other sources is allowed, and NiteGuy should have included a link.

For all: Please do include a link when backing up your argument with quotes or sources.

My fault. I was looking this stuff up on about a half dozen sites, actually. Moving stuff over to notepad, where I had all of Kimov's questions, so I could easily cut and paste the answers. I was so glad to be finished with the back-and-forth, I forgot to list links or set up quotes from the links.

Believe me, no one is going to think I'm that smart, unless we're talking accounting. I'll be more careful.

By the way...

Kimov is right in one thing: Our spacecraft automation was not as good as theirs during the Apollo era.

That is actually why Neil Armstrong used so much fuel in the first landing. They were having problems with the ranging radar and he took manual control of the landing. At the last moment he realized he was going to land inside a crater and had to manuever to get away from the crater, spending practically all the remaining fuel of the landing stage of the Lunar module.

There's a whole documentary and book about the whole Apollo effort by one of the many surviving astronauts (Lowell I think?) that is shown in Discovery channel and Discovery wings every now and then. With tons of film and photos of the era... many of them with stars and the whole nine yards.

Neil Armstrong was chosen for the first landings, not because he was a good old american boy, but because he was the best at the lunar landing simulator (he almost died in it! -- I'm talking about the one that looks like a spider with a huge turbine engine on it) He had also survived a near disaster in one of the Geminis when a thruster would not stop firing/ Thanks to his cool head he saved the mission and his co-pilot. He had also survived been a test pilot in the X-15.

Sorry if I don't put the links, I'm new at this forum posting thing... just check Google or Yahoo for Neil Armstrongs biography, and the Apollo program in general...

-- my two cents --

I'm interested to see which spacecraft has a "turbine engine" on it. Unfortunatly, turbine engines require air, and there's not much of that on the moon. The engine on the bottom of the LEM is a rocket, not a turbine.

Aeronaut is referring to the LEM trainer which was used to train our moon astronauts here on earth. It did have a turbine engine instead of a rocket engine. Another reason though that Neil Armstrong was chosen was because he was a civilian and the US didn't want it to look like we were establishing a military base on the moon.