There those among us who believe that man has never been to the moon. They believe that the U.S. government, NASA, the U.S. Navy and Air Force, with over 400,000 people working on the Apollo/moon projects for almost ten years, along with the 12 men who walked on the moon's surface carried out a cover up and conspiracy in which they convinced the world that they had been to the moon when they really y had not.
Below I will show what has been put out by the non believers and those who dispute the hoax and conspiracy theorist.
Before I begin, I want to address an absurd statement said to me concerning this topic. I was told that 'man could never go to the moon and never went to the moon because the so called white man lacked melanin'. Melanin is a what gives people of color their pigmentation or skin color. It also provides people of color with protection against the sun's deadly rays. Whites have very little to none. This why they tend to develop skin cancer when exposed to the direct rays of the sun.
First of all, if the white man could stay on the continent of Africa knowing that his life span was greatly shortened because of the sun just to make money from the slave trade, then why not attempt to go to the moon or outer space for that matter?
His lack of protection from the sun would not stop him from trying. This would naturally cause him to develop something that would protect him from the deadly rays of the sun and what is called Van Allen radiation belts, cosmic rays, and even space dust. Have you ever heard of a "space suit"?
To the good sister who told me about her reason she believes that man never made it to the moon I must say this: "Never dispute anything until you have researched the topic thoroughly. Also, never allow your pro-blackness to cloud your judgement. This will cause you a lack of true vision, a loss of sight when it comes to reasoning & logic, and have you making emotional statements which lack facts and data."
Apollo Moon Landing hoax
conspiracy theories are claims that some or all elements of the
Apollo Moon landings were faked by
NASA and possibly members of other involved organizations. Some groups and individuals have advanced various theories which tend, to varying degrees, to include suggestions that the Apollo
astronauts did not land on the
Moon, that NASA and possibly others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos,
telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples, and that the deception continues to this day.
There is abundant
independent evidence for Apollo Moon landings and these conspiracy theories have been generally discredited. Many commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims. A 1999 poll by
The Gallup Organization found that 89% of the US public believed the landings were genuine, while 6% did not, and 5% were undecided.
Origins and history
The first book dedicated to the subject,
Bill Kaysing's self-published We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was released in 1974, two years after the Apollo Moon flights had ceased.
Folklorist Linda Degh suggests that the 1978 film
Capricorn One, which depicts a hoaxed journey to
Mars in spacecraft that look identical to the Apollo craft, may have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post-
Vietnam War, post-
Watergate era when segments of the American public were disinclined to trust official accounts. Degh writes: "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance."
[4]In his book
A Man on the Moon, published in 1994,
Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of
Apollo 8's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968 similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation.
Public polling
A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6 percent of the American public doubted the moon landing happened and 5 percent had no opinion.
[5][6] These figures roughly matched those of a 1995 Time/CNN poll.
[5] Officials for
Fox television stated that such skepticism increased to about 20 percent after the February 15, 2001, airing of that network's TV show titled "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?", which was seen by approximately 15 million viewers.
[6] The 2001 Fox special was seen as promoting the hoax claims.
[7][8] Predominant hoax claims
A number of different hoax claims have been advanced that involve
conspiracy theories outlining concerted action by
NASA employees, and sometimes others, to perpetuate false information about landings that never occurred or to cover up accurate information about the landings that occurred in a different manner than that publicized. No one has proposed a complete narrative of how the hoax could have been perpetrated, but instead believers focus on perceived gaps or inconsistencies in the historical record of the missions. Several of these ideas and their most readily identifiable proponents are described below:
Complete hoax — The idea that the entire human landing program was completely falsified from start to finish. Some claim that the technology to send men to the Moon was insufficient or that the
Van Allen radiation belts,
solar flares,
solar wind,
coronal mass ejections and
cosmic rays made such a trip impossible.
[9]Partial hoax / unmanned landings —
Bart Sibrel has stated that the crew of Apollo 11 and subsequent astronauts had faked their orbit around the Moon and their walk on its surface by trick photography, and that they never got more than halfway to the Moon. A subset of this proposal is advocated by those who concede the existence of
retroreflectors and other observable human-made objects on the Moon. British publisher
Marcus Allen represented this argument when he said "I would be the first to accept what [telescope images of the landing site] find as powerful evidence that something was placed on the Moon by man." He goes on to say that photographs of the lander would not prove that America put men on the Moon. "Getting to the Moon really isn't much of a problem –
the Russians did that in 1959, the big problem is getting people there." He suggests that NASA sent robot missions because radiation levels in space would be lethal to humans. Another variant on this is the idea that NASA and its contractors did not recover quickly enough from the
Apollo 1 fire, and so all the early Apollo missions were faked, with Apollo 14 or 15 being the first authentic mission.
[10]Manned landings, with cover-ups
William Brian believes that the astronauts may have used "a secret zero gravity device" derived from technology found on a "captured extraterrestrial spaceship," but that NASA was compelled to cover up these facts and others relating to the gravity and the presence of atmosphere on the moon in order to maintain secrecy surrounding the alien space ship.
[11]Philippe Lheureux, in Lumières sur la Lune (Lights on the Moon), said that astronauts did land on the Moon, but that, in order to prevent other nations from benefiting from scientific information in the real photos, NASA published fake images.
[12] Suggested motives for a hoax
Several motives are given by hoax proponents for the
U.S. government to fake the Moon landings.
Cold War prestige — The U.S. government considered it vital that the U.S. win the
space race against the
Soviet Union. Going to the Moon would be risky and expensive. (
John F. Kennedy famously said that the U.S. chose to go because it was hard).
[13] Bill Kaysing maintained that, despite close monitoring by the Soviet Union, it would have been easier for the U.S. to fake it, and consequently guarantee success, than for the U.S. actually to go.
[9] p. 29
Money — NASA raised approximately $30 billion to go to the Moon. Bill Kaysing claims that this amount could have been used to pay off a large number of people, providing significant motivation for complicity.
[9] p. 71
Risk — This argument assumes that the problems early in the space program were insurmountable, even by a technology team fully motivated and funded to fix the problems. Kaysing claimed that the chance of a successful landing on the moon was calculated to be 0.017%.
[9] pp. 26–40
Distraction — According to hoax proponents, the U.S. government benefited from a popular distraction from the Vietnam war. Lunar activities suddenly stopped, with planned missions cancelled, around the same time that the U.S. ceased its involvement in the Vietnam War.
[14] (However, the Apollo program was cancelled several years before the Vietnam War ended.
[15])
Delivering the promise — To seemingly fulfill President Kennedy's 1961 promise "to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
[16] Critiques of hoax accusations
Main article:
Independent evidence for Apollo Moon landingsThe Apollo Moon landing hoax accusations have been
debunked. An article in the German magazine
Der Spiegel places the Moon hoax in the context of other well-known 20th century conspiracy theories which it describes as "the rarified atmosphere of those myths in which
Elvis is alive, John F. Kennedy fell victim to a conspiracy involving the Mafia and secret service agents, the Moon landing was staged in the Nevada desert, and
Princess Diana was murdered by the British intelligence services."
[17] Scientific method applied to the available evidence
Application of the
scientific method to the available evidence. The scientific method allows each explanation of an event to be presented as a separate
hypothesis, such as:
Real landing hypothesis
NASA's portrayal of the Moon landing is fundamentally accurate, allowing for such common errors as mislabeled photos and imperfect personal recollections.
Hoax hypothesis
NASA's portrayal of the Moon landing is an orchestrated hoax.
In this type of evaluation, any hypothesis that is contradicted by the observable facts may be rejected.
[18] The lack of narrative consistency in the hoax hypothesis occurs because hoax accounts vary from proponent to proponent. The 'real landing' hypothesis is a single story, since it comes from a single source, but there are many hoax hypotheses, each of which addresses a specific aspect of the Moon landing.
Impossible size and complexity of the requisite hoax conspiracies
The size and complexity of the alleged
conspiracy theory scenarios described by the hoax claims would be impossible to contain.
[19] More than 400,000 people worked on the moon landing project for nearly ten years, with a dozen men who walked on the moon returning to Earth to recount their experiences.
[19] Hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians and skilled laborers would have had to have kept any such secret, along with the astronauts themselves.
[19] Moreover, it would have been significantly easier to actually land on the moon than to generate such a massive conspiracy to fake such a landing.
[19] Specific hoax claims examined
As mentioned above, many hoax claims focus on perceived problems with specific portions of the historical record surrounding the moon landings. Below is an overview of these claims as well as associated debunking from various sources:
Missing data
Photo of the high-quality SSTV image before the scan conversion
Photo of the degraded image after the SSTV scan conversion
Blueprints and design and development drawings of the machines involved are missing. Apollo 11 data tapes containing
telemetry and the high quality video (before scan conversion) of the first moonwalk are missing.
[20] For more information see
Apollo program missing tapes.
a) Dr. David Williams (NASA archivist at
Goddard Space Flight Center) and Apollo 11 flight director
Gene Kranz both acknowledged that the Apollo 11 telemetry data tapes are missing. Hoax proponents interpret this as support for the case that they never existed.
[21]Only the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes made during the moonwalk are missing—and not those of Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17.
[22] For technical reasons, the Apollo 11
Lunar Module (LM) carried a
Slow-scan television (SSTV) camera (see
Apollo TV camera). In order to be broadcast to regular television, a scan conversion has to be done. The
radio telescope at
Parkes Observatory in Australia was in position to receive the telemetry from the Moon at the time of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk.
[23] Parkes had a larger antenna than NASA's antenna in Australia at the
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, so it received a better picture. It also received a better picture than NASA's antenna at
Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. This direct TV signal, along with telemetry data, was recorded onto one-inch fourteen-track analog tape there. A crude, real-time
scan conversion of the SSTV signal was done in Australia before it was broadcast around the world. The original SSTV transmission had better detail and contrast than the scan-converted pictures.
[24] It is this tape made in Australia before the scan conversion which is missing. Tapes or films of the scan-converted pictures exist and are available. Still photographs of the original SSTV image are available (see photos). Also, about fifteen minutes of the SSTV images of the Apollo 11 moonwalk were filmed by an amateur
8 mm film camera, and these are also available. Later Apollo missions did not use SSTV, and their video is also available. At least some of the telemetry tapes from the
ALSEP scientific experiments left on the Moon (which ran until 1977) still exist, according to Dr. Williams. Copies of those tapes have been found.
[25]Others are looking for the missing telemetry tapes, but for different reasons. The tapes contain the original and highest quality video feed from the Apollo 11 lunar landing which a number of former Apollo personnel want to recover for posterity, while NASA engineers looking towards future Moon missions believe the Apollo telemetry data may be useful for their design studies. Their investigations have determined that the Apollo 11 tapes were sent for storage at the US National Archives in 1970, but by 1984 all the Apollo 11 tapes had been returned to the Goddard Space Flight Center at their request. The tapes are believed to have been stored rather than re-used, and efforts to determine where they were stored are ongoing.
[26] Goddard was storing 35,000 new tapes per year in 1967,
[27] even before the lunar landings.
On November 1, 2006
Cosmos Magazine reported that some one-hundred data tapes recorded in Australia during the Apollo 11 mission had been discovered in a small marine science laboratory in the main physics building at the
Curtin University of Technology in
Perth, Australia. One of the old tapes has been sent to NASA for analysis. The slow-scan television images were not on the tape.
[28]Apollo 16 Lunar Module
b) Hoax proponents say that blueprints for the Apollo Lunar Module,
rover, and associated equipment are missing.
[29]There are some diagrams of the Lunar Module and
Moon buggy on the NASA web site as well as on the pro hoax web site Xenophilia.com.
[29] Grumman appears to have destroyed most of the documentation.
[30][31]Despite the questions concerning the existence or location of the
LM blueprints, an unused LM is on exhibit at the
Cradle of Aviation Museum.
[32][33] The Lunar Module designated LM-13 would have landed on the Moon during the
Apollo 18 mission, but was instead put into storage when the mission was canceled: it has since been restored and put on display. Other unused Lunar Modules are on display: LM-2 at the
National Air and Space Museum and LM-9 at
Kennedy Space Center.
[34]Copies of the blueprints for the Saturn V exist on microfilm.
[35]Apollo 15 Lunar Rover
Four mission-worthy
Lunar Rovers were built. Three of them were carried to the Moon on
Apollo 15, 16, and 17, and left there. After Apollo 18 was canceled (see
Canceled Apollo missions), the other lunar rover was used for spare parts for the Apollo 15 through 17 missions. The only lunar rovers on display are test vehicles, trainers, and models.
[36] The "Moon buggies" were built by
Boeing (the New
Encyclopædia Britannica Micropedia, 2005, vol 2, p 319).
[37] The 221-page operation manual for the Lunar Rover contains some detailed drawings,
[38] although not the design blueprints.
[
edit] Technological capability of USA compared with the USSR
At the time of Apollo, the Soviet Union is claimed by Bart Sibrel to have had five times more manned hours in space than the US. They had achieved:
First manmade satellite in orbit (October 1957,
Sputnik 1).
First living creature to enter orbit, a female dog named
Laika, (November 1957,
Sputnik 2).
First to safely return living creature from orbit, two dogs
Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats (August 1960,
Sputnik 5).
First man in space,
Yuri Gagarin, also the first man to orbit the Earth (April 1961,
Vostok 1).
First to have two spacecraft in orbit at the same time (though it was not a
space rendezvous, as frequently described) (August 1962,
Vostok 3 and
Vostok 4).
First woman in space,
Valentina Tereshkova (June 1963,
Vostok 6, as part of a second dual-spacecraft flight including
Vostok 5).
First crew of three cosmonauts on board one spacecraft (October 1964,
Voskhod 1).
First spacewalk (
EVA) (March 1965,
Voskhod 2).
On January 27, 1967, the three astronauts aboard
Apollo 1 died in a fire on the launch pad during training. The fire was triggered by a spark in the oxygen-rich atmosphere used in the spacecraft test, and fueled by a significant quantity of combustible material within the spacecraft. Two years later all of the problems were declared fixed. Bart Sibrel believes that the accident led NASA to conclude that the only way to win the Moon race was to fake the landings.
[39] In any case, the first manned Apollo flight,
Apollo 7, occurred in October 1968, 21 months after the fire.
Before the first Earth-orbiting Apollo flight, the USSR had accumulated 534 hours of manned spaceflight whereas the US had accumulated over 1,992 hours of manned spaceflight. By the time of Apollo 11, the US's lead was much wider than that (see
List of human spaceflights, 1960s.)
NASA and others say that these achievements by the Soviets are not as impressive as the simple list implies; that a number of these firsts were mere stunts that did not advance the technology significantly, or at all (e.g. the first woman in space).
[40]A close examination of the many flight missions reveal many problems, risks, and near-catastrophes for both the Soviet and American programs. A negative first for the Soviets was the first in-flight fatality, in April 1967, three months after the Apollo I fire, as
Soyuz 1 crash-landed. Despite that disaster, the Soyuz program continued, after a lengthy interval to solve design problems, as with the Apollo program.
Most of the firsts above were done by the US within a year afterwards (sometimes within weeks). In 1965 the US started to achieve many firsts which were important steps in a mission to the Moon. See
List of Space Exploration Milestones, 1957-1969 for a more complete list of achievements by both the US and USSR. The USSR never developed a successful rocket capable of a Moon landing mission — their
N1 rocket failed on all four launch attempts. They never tested a lunar lander on a manned mission.
[41][
edit] Photographs and films
Main article:
Examination of Apollo moon photosMoon hoax proponents devote a substantial portion of their efforts to examining NASA photos. They point to various oddities of photographs and films purportedly taken on the Moon. Experts in photography (even those unrelated to NASA) respond that the anomalies, while sometimes counter-intuitive, are in fact precisely what one would expect from a real Moon landing, and contrary to what would occur with manipulated or studio imagery. Hoax proponents also state that whistleblowers may have deliberately manipulated the NASA photos in hope of exposing NASA.
1. Crosshairs appear to be behind objects.
Overexposure causes white objects to bleed into the black areas on the film.
2. Crosshairs are sometimes misplaced or rotated.
Popular versions of photos are sometimes cropped or rotated for aesthetic impact.
3. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high.
There are many, many poor quality photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts. NASA chose to publish only the best examples.
[42][43]4. There are no
stars in any of the photos. The Apollo 11 astronauts also claimed in a press conference after the event to have not remembered seeing any of the stars.
The sun was shining. Cameras were set for daylight exposure, and could not detect the faint points of light.
[44], pp. 158–160Even the brightest stars are dim and difficult to see in the daytime on the Moon.
Harrison Schmitt saw no stars from the Moon.
[45] The astronauts eyes were adapted to the brightly sunlit landscape around them so that they could not see the relatively faint stars. Camera settings can turn a well-lit background into ink-black when the foreground object is brightly lit, forcing the camera to increase shutter speed in order not to have the foreground light completely wash out the image. A demonstration of this effect is
here.
5. The color and angle of shadows and light are inconsistent.
Shadows on the Moon are complicated by uneven ground, wide angle lens distortion, light reflected from the Earth, and lunar dust.
[44], pp. 167–172 Shadows also display the properties of vanishing point perspective leading them to converge to a point on the horizon.
This theory was demonstrated to be unsubstantiated on the
MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing".
6. Identical backgrounds in photos which, according to their captions, were taken miles apart.
Shots were not identical, just similar. Background objects were mountains many miles away. Without an atmosphere to obscure distant objects, it can be difficult to tell the relative distance and scale of terrain features.
[46] One specific case is debunked in Who Mourns For Apollo? by Mike Bara.
[47]7. The number of photographs taken is implausibly high. Up to one photo per 50 seconds.
[48]Simplified gear with fixed settings permitted two photographs a second. Many were taken immediately after each other. Calculations are based on a single astronaut on the surface, and does not take into account that there were two persons sharing the workload during the EVA.
8. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock and on the ground.
The "C"-shaped image was from printing imperfections not in the original film from the camera.
[49][50]9. A resident of
Perth, Australia, with the pseudonym "Una Ronald", said she saw a
soft drink bottle in the frame.
No such newspaper reports or recordings have been verified. "Una Ronald"'s existence is authenticated by only one source. There are also flaws in the story, i.e. the emphatic statement that she had to "stay up late" is easily discounted by numerous witnesses in Australia who observed the event to occur in the middle of their daytime, since this event was an unusual compulsory viewing for school children in Australia.
[51]10. The book
Moon Shot contains an obvious composite photograph of
Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the Moon with another astronaut.
It was used in lieu of the only existing real images, from the TV monitor, which the editors of the book apparently felt were too grainy to present in a book's picture section. The book publishers did not work for NASA.
11. There appear to be "hot spots" in some photographs that look like a huge spotlight was used at a close distance.
Pits in moon dust focus and reflect light in a manner similar to minuscule glass spheres used in the coating of street signs, or dew-drops on wet grass. This creates a glow around the photographer's own shadow when it appears in a photograph. (see
Heiligenschein)
If the photographer is standing in sunlight while photographing into shade, light reflected off his white spacesuit produces a similar effect to a spotlight.
[52]12. Footprints in the extraordinarily fine lunar dust, with no moisture or atmosphere or strong gravity, are unexpectedly well preserved, in the minds of some observers – as if made in wet sand.
The dust is silicate, and this has a special property in a vacuum of sticking together like that. The astronauts described it as being like "talcum powder or wet sand".
[47]This theory was demonstrated to be unsubstantiated on the
MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing".
The original Buzz Aldrin photograph.
Photo of Earth taken from behind the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.
The photo mockup made for the book Moon Shot. The second astronaut is located in the fold in the middle of the scanned photo.
TV image of the actual scene.
Ionizing radiation and heat
Challenges and responses
1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the
Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see
Radiation poisoning). Some hoax theorists have suggested that
Starfish Prime (high altitude nuclear testing in 1962) was a failed attempt to disrupt the Van Allen belts.
The Moon is ten times higher than the Van Allen radiation belts. The spacecraft moved through the belts in just 30 minutes, and the astronauts were protected from the ionizing radiation by the aluminium hulls of the spacecraft. In addition, the orbital transfer trajectory from the Earth to the Moon through the belts was selected to minimize radiation exposure. Even Dr.
James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, rebutted the claims that radiation levels were too dangerous for the Apollo missions.
Dosimeters carried by the crews showed they received about the same cumulative dosage as a chest
X-ray or about 1
milligray.
[53] Plait cited an average dose of less than 1
rem, which is equivalent to the ambient radiation received by living at
sea level for three years.
[44], pp. 160–162 The spacecraft passed through the intense inner belt in a matter of minutes and the low-energy outer belt in about an hour and half. The astronauts were mostly shielded from the radiation by the spacecraft. The total radiation received on the trip was about the same as allowed for workers in the nuclear energy field for a year.
[54]The radiation is actually evidence that the astronauts went to the Moon. Irene Schneider reports that thirty-three of the thirty-six Apollo astronauts involved in the nine Apollo missions to leave Earth orbit have developed early stage
cataracts that have been shown to be caused by radiation exposure to cosmic rays during their trip.
[55] However, only twenty-four astronauts left earth orbit. At least thirty-nine former astronauts have developed cataracts. Thirty-six of those were involved in high-radiation missions such as the Apollo lunar missions.
[56]2. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation.
The film was kept in metal containers that prevented radiation from fogging the film's emulsion.
[44], pp. 162–163 In addition, film carried by unmanned lunar probes such as the
Lunar Orbiter and
Luna 3 (which used on-board film development processes) was not fogged.
3. The Moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted.
There is no atmosphere to efficiently couple lunar surface heat to devices such as cameras not in direct contact with it. In a vacuum, only radiation remains as a heat transfer mechanism. The physics of radiative heat transfer are thoroughly understood, and the proper use of passive optical coatings and paints was adequate to control the temperature of the film within the cameras; lunar module temperatures were controlled with similar coatings that gave it its gold color. Also, while the Moon's surface does get very hot at lunar noon, every Apollo landing was made shortly after lunar sunrise at the landing site. During the longer stays, the astronauts did notice increased cooling loads on their spacesuits as the sun continued to rise and the surface temperature increased, but the effect was easily countered by the passive and active cooling systems.
[44], pp. 165–67 The film was not in direct sunlight, so it wasn't overheated.
[57]Note: all of the lunar landings occurred during the lunar daytime. The
Moon's day is approximately 29½ days long, and as a consequence a single lunar day (dawn to dusk) lasts nearly fifteen days. As such there was no sunrise or sunset while the astronauts were on the surface. Most lunar missions occurred during the first few earth days of the lunar day.
4. The
Apollo 16 crew should not have survived a big
solar flare firing out when they were on their way to the Moon. "They should have been fried."
No large solar flare occurred during the flight of Apollo 16. There were large solar flares in August 1972, after Apollo 16 returned to Earth and before the flight of
Apollo 17.
[58][59]Transmissions
Challenges and responses
1. The lack of a more than two-second delay in two-way communications at a distance of a 400,000 km (250,000 miles).
The round trip light travel time of more than two seconds is apparent in all the real-time recordings of the lunar audio, but this does not always appear as expected. There may also be some documentary films where the delay has been edited out. Principal motivations for editing the audio would likely come in response to time constraints or in the interest of clarity.
[60]The relative sizes of, and distance between, Earth and Moon, to scale, with a beam of light travelling between them at the speed of light.
2. Typical delays in communication were on the order of half a second.
Claims that the delays were only on the order of half a second are unsubstantiated by an examination of the actual recordings. It should also be borne in mind that there should not be a straightforward, consistent time delay between every response, as the conversation is being recorded at one end - Mission Control. Responses from Mission Control could be heard without any delay, as the recording is being made at the same time that Houston receives the transmission from the moon.
3. The
Parkes Observatory in
Australia was billed to the world for weeks as the site that would be relaying communications from the Moon, then five hours before transmission they were told to stand down.
The timing of the first Moonwalk was moved up after landing. In fact, delays in getting the Moonwalk started meant that Parkes did cover almost the entire Apollo 11 Moonwalk.
[61]4. Parkes supposedly provided the clearest video feed from the Moon, but Australian media and all other known sources ran a live feed from the United States.
While that was the original plan, and, according to some sources, the official policy, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) did take the transmission direct from the Parkes and
Honeysuckle Creek radio telescopes. These were converted to
NTSC television at
Paddington, in Sydney. This meant that Australian viewers saw the Moonwalk several seconds before the rest of the world.
[62] See also
The Parkes Observatory's Support of the Apollo 11 Mission, from "Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia" (The events surrounding the Parkes Observatory's role in relaying the live television of man's first steps on the Moon were portrayed in a slightly fictionalized 2000 Australian
film comedy
The Dish.)
5. Better signal was supposedly received at Parkes Observatory when the Moon was on the opposite side of the planet.
This is not supported by the detailed evidence and logs from the missions.
[63]Mechanical issues
Challenges and responses
1. No blast crater or any sign of dust scatter as was seen in the 16 mm movies of each landing.
[9], p. 75
No crater should be expected. The Descent Propulsion System was throttled very far down during the final landing. The Lunar Module was no longer rapidly decelerating, so the descent engine only had to support the module's own weight, diminished by the 1/6 g lunar gravity and by the near exhaustion of the descent propellants. At landing, the engine thrust divided by the nozzle exit area is only about 10
kilopascals (1.5
PSI).
[44], p. 164 Beyond the engine nozzle, the plume spreads and the pressure drops very rapidly. (In comparison the Saturn V F-1 first stage engines produced 3.2
MPa (459 PSI) at the mouth of the nozzle.) Rocket exhaust gases expand much more rapidly after leaving the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an atmosphere on rocket plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth; as the rocket rises through the thinning atmosphere, the exhaust plumes broaden very noticeably. To reduce this, rocket engines designed for vacuum operation have longer bells than those designed for use at the Earth's surface, but they still cannot prevent this spreading. The Lunar Module's exhaust gases therefore expanded rapidly well beyond the landing site. However, the descent engines did scatter a lot of very fine surface dust as seen in 16mm movies of each landing, and many mission commanders commented on its effect on visibility. The landers were generally moving horizontally as well as vertically, and photographs do show scouring of the surface along the final descent path. Finally, the lunar soil is very compact below its surface dust layer, further making it impossible for the descent engine to blast out a "crater".
[44], pp. 163–165 In fact, a blast crater was measured under the Apollo 11 Lunar Module using shadow lengths of the descent engine bell and estimates of the amount that the landing gear had compressed and how deep the lander footpads had pressed into the lunar surface and it was found that the engine had eroded between 4 and 6 inches of soil out from underneath the engine bell during the final descent and landing.
[64],pp. 97-98
2. The launch rocket (Lunar Module ascent stage) produced no visible flame.
The Lunar Module used
Aerozine 50 (fuel) and
dinitrogen tetroxide (oxidizer) propellants, chosen for simplicity and reliability; they ignite
hypergolically –upon contact– without the need for a spark. These propellants produce a nearly
transparent exhaust. The same or similar hypergolic fuels are used by several space launchers: the core of the American
Titan, the Russian
Proton, the European
Ariane 1 through 4 and the Chinese
Long March. The transparency of their plumes is apparent in many launch photos. The plumes of rocket engines fired in a vacuum spread out very rapidly as they leave the engine nozzle (see above), further reducing their visibility. Finally, rocket engines often run "rich" to slow internal corrosion. On Earth, the excess fuel burns in contact with atmospheric oxygen. This cannot happen in a vacuum.
Apollo 17 LM leaving the Moon; rocket exhaust visible only briefly.
Exhaust flame may not be visible outside the atmosphere, as in this photo. Rocket engines are the dark structures at the bottom center.
The launch of a
Titan II, burning hypergolic Aerozine-50/N2O4. Note the near-transparency of the exhaust, even in air. (Water is being sprayed up from below.)
Atlas uses non-hypergolic kerosene (
RP-1) fuel which gives a bright and very visible exhaust
3. The rocks brought back from the Moon are identical to rocks collected by scientific expeditions to
Antarctica.
Chemical analysis of the rocks confirms a different oxygen isotopic composition and a lack of volatile elements. There are only a few identical rocks, and those few fell as meteorites after being ejected from the Moon during impact cratering events. The total quantity of these lunar meteorites is small compared to the more than 840 lb (380 kg) of lunar samples returned by Apollo. Also the Apollo lunar soil samples chemically matched the Russian
Luna space probe’s lunar soil samples. In addition, unlike the Antarctic lunites, the rocks recovered from the moon do not exhibit the effects of atmospheric friction.
4. The presence of deep dust around the module; given the blast from the landing engine, this should not be present.
The dust is created by a continuous rain of micrometeoroid impacts and is typically several inches thick. It forms the top of the lunar regolith, a layer of impact rubble several meters thick and highly compacted with depth. On the earth, an exhaust plume might stir up the atmosphere over a wide area. On the moon, only the exhaust gas itself can disturb the dust. Some areas around descent engines were scoured clean.
[44], pp. 163–165
Note: In addition, moving footage of astronauts and the lunar rover kicking up lunar dust clearly show the dust particles kicking up quite high due to the low gravity, but settling immediately without air to stop them. Had these landings been faked on the earth, dust clouds would have formed. (They can be seen as a 'goof' in the movie
Apollo 13 when
Jim Lovell (played by
Tom Hanks) imagines walking on the moon). This clearly shows the astronauts to be (a) in low gravity and (b) in a vacuum.
5. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts flapped despite there being no wind on the Moon.
[65] Sibrel said "The wind was probably caused by intense air-conditioning used to cool the astronauts in their lightened, uncirculated space suits. The cooling systems in the backpacks would have been removed to lighten the load not designed for Earth’s six times heavier gravity, otherwise they might have fallen over".
The astronauts were moving the flag into position. Without air drag, these movements caused the free corner of the flag to swing like a pendulum for some time. A horizontal rod, visible in many photographs, extended from the top of the flagpole to hold the flag out for proper display. The flag's rippled appearance was from folding during storage, and it could be mistaken for motion in a still photograph. The top support rod telescoped and the crew of Apollo 11 could not fully extend it. Later crews preferred to only partially extend the rod. Videotapes shows that when the flag stops after the astronauts let it go, it remains motionless. At one point the flag remains completely motionless for well over thirty minutes. (See
inertia.) See the photographs below.
Cropped photo of Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag (Note the fingers of Aldrin's right hand can be seen behind his helmet).
Cropped photo taken a few seconds later, Buzz Aldrin's hand is down, head turned toward the camera, the flag is unchanged.
Animation of the two photos, showing that the flag is not waving.
The flag is not waving, but is swinging as a
pendulum after being touched by the astronauts. Here
[66] is a three-minute video from Apollo 15 showing that the flag does not move except when the astronauts move it. Here
[67] is a thirty-minute Apollo 11 video showing that the flag does not move.
6. The Lander weighed 17 tons and sat on top of the sand making no impression but directly next to it footprints can be seen in the sand.
The lander weighed less than three tons on the Moon. The astronauts were much lighter than the lander, but their boots were much smaller than the 1-meter landing pads. Pressure, or force per unit area, rather than force, determines the extent of soil compression. In some photos the landing pads did press into the soil, especially when they moved sideways at touchdown. (The bearing pressure under the lander feet, with the lander being more than 100 times the weight of the astronauts would in fact have been of similar magnitude to the bearing pressure exerted by the astronauts' boots.)
7. The air conditioning units that were part of the astronauts' spacesuits could not have worked in an environment of no atmosphere.
The cooling units could only work in a vacuum. Water from a tank in the backpack flowed out through tiny pores in a metal sublimator plate where it quickly vaporized into space. The loss of the heat of vaporization froze the remaining water, forming a layer of ice on the outside of the plate that also sublimated into space (turning from a solid directly into a gas). A separate water loop flowed through the LCG (Liquid Cooling Garment) worn by the astronaut, carrying his metabolic waste heat through the sublimator plate where it was cooled and returned to the LCG. Twelve pounds of feedwater provided some eight hours of cooling; because of its bulk, it was often the limiting consumable on the length of an EVA. Because this system could not work in an atmosphere, the astronauts required large external chillers to keep them comfortable during Earth training.
Radiative cooling would have avoided the need to consume water, but it could not operate below body temperature in such a small volume. The
radioisotope thermoelectric generators, could use radiative cooling fins to permit indefinite operation because they operated at much higher temperatures.
Surveyor 3 with Apollo 12 LM in background.
8. Although
Apollo 11 had made an almost embarrassingly imprecise landing well outside the designated target area,
Apollo 12 succeeded, on November 19, 1969, in making a pin-point landing, within walking distance (less than 200 meters) of the
Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed on the Moon in April 1967.
The Apollo 11 landing was several kilometers to the southeast of the center of their intended landing ellipse, but still within it. Armstrong took semi-automatic control
[68] of the lander and directed it further down range when it was noted that the intended landing site was strewn with boulders near a moderate sized crater. By the time Apollo 12 flew, the cause of the large error in the landing location was determined and improved procedures were developed and were demonstrated by the pin-point landing next to Surveyor III made by Apollo 12. Apollo 11 fulfilled its purpose by simply landing safely on the lunar surface and a pin-point landing was not a requirement on that mission.
The Apollo astronauts were highly skilled pilots, and the LM was a maneuverable craft that could be accurately flown to a specific landing point. During the powered descent phase the astronauts used the PNGS (Primary Navigation Guidance System) and LPD (Landing Point Designator) to predict where the LM was going to land, and then they would manually pilot the LM to a selected point with great accuracy.
9. The alleged moon landings used either a sound stage, or were put outside in a remote desert location with the astronauts either using harnesses or slow-motion photography to make it look like they were on the moon and acting in lunar gravity.
While the HBO Mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon", and a scene from "Apollo 13" used the sound-stage and harness setup, it is clearly seen from those films that dust kicked up did not quickly settle (some dust briefly formed clouds). In the film footage from the Apollo missions, dust kicked up by the astronauts' boots and the wheels of the lunar rovers shot up quite high (due to the lunar gravity), and settled immediately to the surface in an uninterrupted parabolic arc (due to there being no air to support the dust). Even if there had been a sound stage for hoax moon landings that had had the air pumped out, the dust would have nowhere near the height and trajectory as the dust shown in the Apollo film footage because of terrestrial gravity.
*This video from
Apollo 15 shows that they were in low gravity and in a vacuum:
10. All six lunar landings occurred during the first presidential administration of Richard Nixon and no other national leader of any country has even claimed to have landed astronauts on the moon, even though the mechanical means of doing so should have become progressively much easier after almost 40 years of steady or even rapid technological development.
Other nations and later presidential administrations were evidently less interested in spending large sums to be merely the second nation to land on the moon or to explore the barren moon further. Had Nixon faked the moon landings, the Soviets would have been happy to argue for a hoax as a propaganda victory, but the Soviets never did. Further exploration by the U.S. or U.S.S.R., such as establishing a moon base, would have been much more expensive and perhaps too provocative to be in any nation's self-interest during the Cold War arms race.
Moon rocks
The Apollo Program collected a total of 382 kilograms of
Moon rocks during the
Apollo 11,
12,
14,
15,
16, and
17 missions. Analyses by scientists worldwide all agree that these rocks came from the Moon—no published accounts in peer-reviewed scientific journals are known that dispute this claim. The Apollo samples are easily distinguishable from both meteorites and terrestrial rocks
[69] in that they show a complete lack of hydrous alteration products, they show evidence for having been subjected to impact events on an airless body, and they have unique geochemical characteristics. Furthermore, most are significantly older than the oldest rocks found on Earth (by over 600,000,000 years). Most importantly, though, they share the same characteristics as the Soviet lunar samples that were obtained at a later date.
[70]Hoax proponents argue that
Wernher von Braun's trip to
Antarctica in 1967 (two years prior to the Apollo missions) was in order to study and/or collect
lunar meteorites to be used as fake
Moon rocks. Because von Braun was a former
SS officer (though one who had been detained by the Gestapo),
[71] hoax proponents have suggested
[21] that he could have been susceptible to pressure to agree to the conspiracy in order to protect himself from recriminations over the past. While NASA does not provide much information about why the MSFC Director and three others were in Antarctica at that time, it has said that the purpose was "to look into environmental and logistic factors that might relate to the planning of future space missions, and hardware".
[72] An article on Sankar Chatterjee at Texas Tech University states that von Braun sent a letter to F. Alton Wade, Chatterjee's predecessor, and that "Von Braun was searching for a secretive locale to help train the United States’ earliest astronauts. Wade pointed von Braun to Antarctica." Even today, NASA continues to send teams to work in
parts of Antarctica that are very dry and mimic the conditions on other planets such as
Mars and the Moon.
It is now accepted by the scientific community that rocks have been ejected from both the Martian and lunar surface during
impact events, and that some of these have landed on the Earth in the form of
Martian and
lunar meteorites.
[73][74] However, the first Antarctic lunar meteorite was collected in 1979, and its lunar origin was not recognized until 1982.
[75] Furthermore, lunar meteorites are so rare that it is very improbable that they could account for the 382 kilograms of Moon rocks that NASA obtained between 1969 and 1972. Currently, there are only about 30 kilograms of lunar meteorites in existence, even though private collectors and governmental agencies worldwide have been searching for these for more than 20 years.
[75]The large combined mass of the Apollo samples makes this scenario implausible. While the Apollo missions obtained 382 kilograms of Moon rocks, the Soviet
Luna 16,
20, and
24 robotic sample return missions only obtained 326 grams combined (that is, less than one-thousandth as much). Indeed, current plans for a Martian sample return would only obtain about 500 grams of soil,
[76] and a recently proposed
South Pole-Aitken basin sample return mission would only obtain about 1 kilogram of Moon rock.
[77] If a similar technology to collect the Apollo Moon rocks was used as with the Soviet missions or modern sample return proposals, then between 300 and 2000 robotic sample return missions would be required to obtain the current mass of Moon rocks that is curated by NASA.
Concerning the composition of the Moon rocks, Kaysing asked:
Why was there no mention of gold, silver, diamonds, or other precious metals on the Moon? It was never discussed by the press or astronauts.
[9], p. 8
Geologists realize that gold and silver deposits on Earth are the result of the action of hydrothermal fluids concentrating the precious metals into veins of ore. Since even in 1969 water was known to be absent on the Moon, no geologist would bother discussing the possibility of finding these on the Moon in any significant quantity.
Deaths of key Apollo personnel
In a television program about the hoax allegations,
Fox Entertainment Group listed the deaths of ten astronauts and of two civilians related to the manned spaceflight program as having possibly been killed as part of a cover-up.
Ted Freeman (
T-38 crash, 1964)
Elliott See and
Charlie Bassett (T-38 accident, 1966)
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (
Apollo 1 fire, January 1967). His son Scott Grissom said the accident was a murder.
[78] Bill Kaysing also makes this claim.
[9], p. 41
Edward Higgins "Ed" White (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
Edward "Ed" Givens (car accident, 1967)
Clifton "C. C." Williams (T-38 accident, October 1967)
X-15 pilot
Michael J. "Mike" Adams (the only X-15 pilot killed during the X-15 flight test program in November 1967 - not a NASA astronaut, but had flown X-15 above 50 miles).
Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr., scheduled to be an Air Force
Manned Orbiting Laboratory pilot, who died in a jet crash in December 1967, shortly after reporting for duty to that (later canceled) program.
NASA worker
Thomas Baron (automobile collision with train, 1967 shortly after making accusations before Congress about the cause of the Apollo 1 fire, after which he was fired). Ruled as suicide. Baron was a quality control inspector who wrote a report critical of the Apollo program and was an outspoken critic after the Apollo 1 fire. Baron and his family were killed as their car was struck by a train at a train crossing.
[78][79]Brian Welch, a leading official in NASA's Public Affairs Office, died a few months after appearing in the media to debunk the Fox pro-moon hoax television show cited above. (James Oberg, "Lessons of the 'Fake Moon Flight' Myth,"
Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2003, pp. 23, 30.)
All but one of the astronaut deaths (Irwin's) were directly related to their job with NASA or the Air Force. Two of the astronauts, Mike Adams and Robert Lawrence, had no connection with the civilian manned space program. Astronaut James Irwin had suffered several heart attacks in the years prior to his death. There is no independent confirmation of Gelvani's claim that Irwin was about to come forward. All except two of the deaths occurred at least one or two years before Apollo 11 and the subsequent flights.
Involvement of the Soviet Union
Main article:
Soviet space program conspiracy accusationsA primary reason for the race to the Moon was the
Cold War. The Soviets, with their own competing
Moon program and a formidable scientific community able to analyze NASA data, could be expected to have cried foul if the USA tried to fake a Moon landing,
[44], p. 173 especially as their program had failed. Successfully pointing out a hoax would have been a major propaganda coup.
Bart Sibrel responded, "the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were
abruptly canceled."
[80]However, Soviet unmanned spacecraft had been landing on the Moon since 1959,
[81] and in 1962, "deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in
Ussuriisk and IP-16 in
Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14",
[82] the latter having a 100 million km range.
[83]However, Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled on September 2, 1970 due to budget cuts by the
US Congress.
[84] Apollo 20 had already been canceled on January 4, 1970.
[85]Large telescopes and the Moon hoax
Another component of the moon hoax theory is based on the argument that professional observatories and the
Hubble Space Telescope should be able to take pictures of the lunar landing sites. The argument runs that if telescopes can "see to the edge of the universe" then they ought to be able to take pictures of the lunar landing sites. This implies that the world's major observatories (as well as the Hubble Program) are complicit in the moon landing hoax by refusing to take pictures of the landing sites.
A telescope's
angular resolution (ignoring the muddying effects of Earth's atmosphere) is limited by the diffraction of light in the optics. This diffraction limit depends linearly on the telescope's aperture so that at visible wavelengths the resolution is about 14.1/D arcseconds where D is the aperture of the telescope in centimeters. For the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in low Earth orbit whose mirror is 2.4 metres (7.9 ft) across, the diffraction limited angular resolution is about 0.059 arcseconds which corresponds to about 110 metres (360 ft) at the distance of the Moon. In order to resolve an object 1 meter across into a single fuzzy spot would require a telescope 110 times larger than the HST, or about 250 metres (820 ft) across. But to resolve such an object with enough detail to recognize what the object is would require perhaps 100 times more resolution still, or a telescope whose aperture is some 25 kilometres (16 mi) across. Additionally, any ground-based telescope would have to mitigate against the effects of
seeing, beyond what is currently possible with
adaptive optics.
Leaving aside the issue of maximum resolution, the Hubble Space Telescope was, in fact, used to image the surface of the moon in 1999. A gallery of the pictures that were taken can be seen
here.
Individuals featured in the controversy
Main article:
Apollo Moon landing hoax accusersMajor hoax proponents and proposals
There are no known confessions by perpetrators of the alleged hoax.
Flat Earth Society - The Flat Earth Society were one of the first organizations to accuse NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood and based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke.
[86]Bill Kaysing (1922-2005) an ex-employee of
Rocketdyne,
[87] (the company which built the
F-1 engines used on the
Saturn V rocket). Kaysing was not technically qualified, and worked at Rocketdyne as a librarian. Kaysing's self published book, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle
[9][44], p. 157, made many allegations, effectively beginning the discussion of the Moon landings possibly being hoaxed. NASA, and others, have debunked the claims made in the book.
Bart Sibrel, a filmmaker, produced and directed four films for his company AFTH,
[88] including a film in 2001 called
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon,
[89] examining the evidence of a hoax. Again, the arguments put forward therein have been debunked by numerous sources, including svector's video series Lunar Legacy
[90] which attempts to disprove the documentary's primary argument that the Apollo crew faked their distance from the Earth
command module, while in low orbit. Sibrel believes that the effect on the shot covered in his film was produced through the use of a transparency of the Earth. Sibrel was also famously
punched in the face by Buzz Aldrin while accusing the
former astronaut of being "a coward, and a liar, and a thief." Sibrel attempted to press charges against Aldrin but the case was thrown out of court when the judge ruled that Aldrin was within his rights given Sibrel's invasive and aggressive behavior.
[91]William L. Brian, a nuclear engineer who self-published a book in 1982 called "
Moongate: Suppressed Findings of the U.S. Space Program," in which he disputes the Moon's surface gravity.
David Percy, TV producer and expert in audiovisual technologies and member of the
Royal Photographic Society, is co-author, along with
Mary Bennett of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers (
ISBN 1-898541-10-8) and co-producer of What Happened On the Moon?. He is the main proponent of the "whistle-blower" accusation, arguing that the errors in the NASA photos in particular are so obvious that they are evidence that insiders are trying to 'blow the whistle' on the hoax by deliberately inserting errors that they know will be seen.
[92]Ralph Rene - An inventor and 'self taught' engineering buff. Author of NASA Mooned America (second edition
OCLC 36317224).
Charles T. Hawkins - Author of How America Faked the Moon Landings,
Philippe Lheureux - French author of Moon Landings: Did NASA Lie?, and Lumières sur la Lune (Lights on the Moon): La NASA a-t-elle menti?.
James M. Collier (d. 1998) - American journalist and author, producer of the video Was It Only a Paper Moon? in 1997.
Jack White - American photo historian known for his attempt to prove forgery in photos related to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Marcus Allen (publisher) - British publisher of
Nexus magazine said that photographs of the lander would not prove that the US put men on the Moon. "Getting to the Moon really isn't much of a problem - the Russians did that in 1959 - the big problem is getting people there."
[93]Aron Ranen - Directed Did We Go? (co-produced with Benjamin Britton and selected for the 2000 "New Documentary Series" Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the 2000 Dallas Video Festival Awards and the 2001 Digital Video Underground Festival in San Francisco). He received a Golden Cine Eagle and two fellowships from the National Endowment for Arts. Ranen states in Did We Go? that the chances that America landed men on the moon is about 75% certain.
Clyde Lewis - Radio talk show host.
[94]Dr. David Groves - Works for Quantech Image Processing and worked on some of the NASA photos. Notably he has examined the photo of
Aldrin emerging from the LM. He said he can pinpoint the exact point at which an artificial light was used. Using the focal length of the camera's lens and an actual boot, he has calculated (using ray-tracing) that the artificial light source is between 24 and 36 cm to the right of the camera.
[95][96]Individual people accused of involvement in the hoax
Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton, NASA Chief Astronaut in 1968: Some hoax proponents (for example, the 'NASA Scam'
[97] website, and Clyde Lewis
[98]) say that Slayton was one of the primary leaders of the hoax. He visited the film set of
2001: A Space Odyssey, in the UK, which he referred to as "NASA East."
Stanley Kubrick is accused of having produced much of the footage for Apollo 11 and 12.
[94] It has been claimed, without any evidence, that in early 1968 while
2001: A Space Odyssey (which includes scenes taking place on the Moon) was in
post-production, NASA secretly approached Kubrick to direct the first three Moon landings. In this scenario the launch and splashdown would be real but the spacecraft would have remained in Earth orbit while the fake footage was broadcast as "live" from the lunar journey. Kubrick did hire
Frederick Ordway and
Harry Lange, both of whom had worked for NASA and major aerospace contractors, to work with him on 2001. Kubrick also used some 50 mm f/0.7 lenses that were left over from a batch made by
Zeiss for NASA. (However, Kubrick only acquired this lens for
Barry Lyndon (1975). The lens was originally a still-photo lens and required modifications to be used for motion filming.)
Wernher von Braun, head of NASA during the moon landings, is accused of covering up the hoax and obtaining moon rocks on at least one antarctic expedition in the years before Apollo 11. The documentary film Did We Go? documents an antarctic expedition by von Braun but stops short of accusing von Braun of hoaxing or conspiracy, though the film does document von Braun's role as a Nazi who controlled up to 60,000 slaves during WWII. von Braun's Nazi past was not generally known at the time of Apollo 11 and beyond, and so would make it possible to blackmail von Braun into participating in a hoax or conspiratorial coverup. The film Did We Go? estimates that the chance Americans landed on the moon is about 75% certain.
Other evidence and issues
NASA book commission and withdrawal
In 2002, NASA commissioned
James Oberg $15,000 to write a point-by-point rebuttal of the hoax claims, and, in the same year, cancelled their commission in the face of complaints that the book would dignify the accusations. Oberg said that he intends (funding allowing) to finish the project.
[99][100] In November 2002
Peter Jennings (ABC’s World News Tonight anchor) said "[NASA] is going to spend a few thousand dollars trying to prove to some people that the United States did indeed land men on the Moon." Jennings said "[NASA] had been so rattled, [they] hired [somebody] to write a book refuting the conspiracy theorists."
Academic work
In 2004, Drs Martin Hendry and Ken Skeldon at
Glasgow University were awarded a grant by the UK based
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council to investigate 'Moon Hoax' proposals.
[101]In November of that same year, they gave a lecture at the
Glasgow Science Centre where the top ten lines of evidence advanced by hoax proponents were individually addressed and refuted.
[102]Attempts to view the landing site
Leonard David published an article on
space.com,
[103][104] on 27 April 2001 showing a picture taken by the
Clementine mission which shows a diffuse dark spot at the location that NASA says is the Lunar Module Falcon. The evidence was noticed by
Misha Kreslavsky, of the Department of Geological Sciences at
Brown University, and
Yuri Shkuratov of the
Kharkov Astronomical Observatory in
Ukraine.
The
European Space Agency's modern Moon probe, the
SMART-1 unmanned probe, sent back imagery to the ESA of the Apollo Moon landing sites, according to
Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist of the ESA Science Program.
[105] Given SMART-1’s initial high orbit, however, it may prove difficult to see artifacts, said Foing in an interview on the website "
space.com'. No photos have so far been released, according to the website.
The
Daily Telegraph published a story in 2002 saying that European astronomers at the
Very Large Telescope (VLT, the most powerful telescope in the world) would use the
telescope to view the remains of the Apollo lunar landers. According to the article, Dr. Richard West said that his team would take "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites". Marcus Allen, a Moon hoax believer, pointed out in the story that no images of hardware on the Moon would convince him that manned landings had taken place.
[106] (Allen believes robot missions placed objects there.) As the VLT is capable of resolving equivalent to the distance between the headlights of a car as seen from the Moon
[3], it may be able to directly image some features of the Apollo landing site. Such photos, if and when they become available, would be the first non-NASA produced images of the site at that definition.
The
Hubble Space Telescope can resolve objects as small as 280 feet (86 m) at the distance of the Moon; again, not good enough to settle this issue.
Alex R. Blackwell, of the University of Hawaii has pointed out that photos taken by Apollo astronauts
[104] are currently the best available images of the landing sites; they show shadows of the lander, but not the lander itself. NASA's
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (launched in June 2009) is slated to produce better pictures as part of its mission.
[107][108][109]The
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched their
SELENE lunar orbiter on September 14, 2007 (JST) from Tanegashima Space Center, a main orbiting satellite at about 100 km altitude and two small satellites (Relay Satellite and VRAD Satellite) in polar orbit. In May 2008 JAXA reported detecting the "halo" generated by the Apollo 15 lunar module engine exhaust from a Terrain Camera image.
[110] A 3-D reconstructed photo also matched the terrain of an Apollo 15 photograph taken from the surface, see
Independent evidence for Apollo Moon landings#SELENE photographs.
MythBusters special
Main article:
MythBusters (2008 season)#Episode 104 – "NASA Moon Landing"An episode of
MythBusters in August 2008 was dedicated to NASA and each myth was related to the moon landings, such as the pictures and video footage. A few members of the MythBusters crew were allowed into a NASA training facility to test some of the myths. All of the hoax-related myths tested were demonstrated as false, favoring the landing.
Quotes
"I decided I did not believe that Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin or anyone else was going to the moon. And consequently, I could not generate the least enthusiasm for watching a phony performance. ... Somehow I seemed to have perceived that the Apollo project had become a gigantic hoax and that nobody was leaving earth for the moon, certainly not in July 1969. ... Call it a hunch, an intuition: information coming from some little understood and mysterious channel of communication, a metaphysical message. While tenuous and ephemeral at its source, it was strong and vivid in its form. In short, a true conviction." -
Bill Kaysing[9] p. 7
"We've been to the Moon nine times. Why would we fake it nine times, if we faked it?" —
Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, in the documentary
In the Shadow of the Moon.
[111][112][113]"The truth needs no defense. Nobody can ever take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me." —
Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan, in the documentary
In the Shadow of the Moon.
Apollo hoax in popular culture and parody
Main article:
Apollo hoax in popular cultureSee also
Jim Lovell - was unsuccessfully sued by Kaysing for libel.
Astronauts Gone WildIn the Shadow of the MoonDark Side of the Moon (documentary)MythBusters NASA Moon Landing episodeSoviet space program conspiracy accusationsConspiracy theoryReferences
^ Bad Astronomy, by
Philip Plait, 2002,
ISBN 978-0-471-40976-2, pp 154-73
^ "Did Men Really Land on the Moon?". Gallup.com.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1993/Did-Men-Really-Land-Moon.aspx. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Landing a Man on the Moon: The Public's View". Gallup.com.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/3712/Landing-Man-Moon-Publics-View.aspx. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ van Bakel, Rogier (September 1994).
"The Wrong Stuff" (
magazine).
Wired.
Condé Nast Publications.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/moon.land.html?pg=5&topic=. Retrieved on 2007-05-09. "Are you sure we went to the moon 25 years ago? Are you positive? Millions of Americans believe the moon landings may have been a US$25 billion swindle, perpetrated by NASA with the latest in communications technology and the best in special effects. Wired plunges into the combat zone between heated conspiracy believers and exasperated NASA officials."
^
a b Plait, Philip C., Bad astronomy: misconceptions and misuses revealed, from astrology to the moon landing "hoax" , John Wiley and Sons, 2002,
ISBN 0471409766 page 156
^
a b Borenstein, Seth,
"Book to confirm moon landings",Knight Ridder Newspapers, Deseret News, November 2, 2002
^ One giant leap of imagination,
The Age, December 24, 2002
^ American Beat: Moon Stalker,
NewsWeek September 16, 2002
^
a b c d e f g h i We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, Bill Kaysing, Pomeroy, WA, USA: Health Research Books, 2002.
ISBN 1-85810-422-X.
^ "Irrefutable proof [Archive] - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum". Bautforum.com.
http://www.bautforum.com/archive/index.php/t-1180.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Rogier van Bakel.
"Wired 2.09: The Wrong Stuff". Wired.com.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/moon.land.html?pg=3&topic=. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Lheureux, Philippe (2000).
Lumières sur la Lune. Editions CARNOT.
ISBN 2912362490.
http://lheureux.free.fr/.
^ "We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things – not because they are easy, but because they are hard." - President John Kennedy, speaking at
Rice University, September 12, 1962. From A Man on the Moon, by Andrew Chaikin, p. 2, (c) 1994, 2007,
ISBN 978-0-14-311235-8^ "Was The Apollo Moon Landing Fake?". Apfn.org.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "The Apollo Program (1963 - 1972)".
Nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Kennedy speech to Congress, May 1961. Chaikin, p. 1
^ Cziesche, Dominik; Jürgen Dahlkamp, Ulrich Fichtner, Ulrich Jaeger, Gunther Latsch, Gisela Leske, Max F. Ruppert (2003).
"Panoply of the Absurd". Der Spiegel. Der Spiegel.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,265160,00.html. Retrieved on 2006-06-06.
^ Calder, Vince; Johnson, Andrew P.E. (
2002-
10-12).
"Ask A Scientist". Newton "Ask a Scientist", General Science Archive. "Newton", Argonne National Laboratory.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen01/gen01278.htm. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^
a b c d Longuski, Jim, The seven secrets of how to think like a rocket scientist, Springer 2006,
ISBN 0387308768, page 102
^ Apollo Moon landings tapes reported missing, Wikinews, August 5, 2006.
^
a b "Did We Go? The Evidence Is In!". Moonhoax.com.
http://Moonhoax.com/site/evidence.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ SolarViews.com^ a peer-reviewed paper in "Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia"^ "On Eagle's Wing: The Story of the Parkes Apollo 11 Support".
Parkes.atnf.csiro.au.
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/Parkes_Apollo11_TV_quality.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Amalfi, Carmelo.
"Lost Moon landing tapes discovered COSMOS magazine". Cosmosmagazine.com.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/818. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Search for SSTV tapes, PDF^ http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19670010532_1967010532.pdf^ Carmelo Amalfi,
Lost Moon landing tapes discovered,
COSMOS Magazine, November 1,2006
^
a b "Xenophilia - Moon Hoax Debate". Xenophilia.com.
http://www.xenophilia.com/zb0003c.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "The Collier article - a critique".
Pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu.
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/collier.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Clavius: Bibliography - the Collier article". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/bibcollier.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "The Cradle of Aviation Museum". Cradleofaviation.org.
http://www.cradleofaviation.org/. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ LM-13^ [1]^ SPACE.com - Saturn 5 Blueprints Safely in Storage^ "The Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle".
Nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_lrv.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ by Anthony YoungMonday, April 5, 2004.
"The Space Review: Lunar rovers past and future (page 1)". Thespacereview.com.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/127/1. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Lunar Rover Operations Handbook".
Hq.nasa.gov.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/lrvhand.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Bart Sibrel
^ "Clavius: Technology - beating the soviets". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/techsoviet.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Soviet Lunar Landing". Astronautix.com.
http://www.astronautix.com/flights/sovnding.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Clavius: Photography - image quality". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/photoqual.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Clavius: Photography - crosshairs". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/photoret.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^
a b c d e f g h i j Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax", Dr. Philip Plait,
John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
ISBN 0-471-40976-6. See esp. chapter 17.
^ Astronomy magazine, August 2008, p 75
^ "Apollo Moon Photos: a Hoax?". Iangoddard.net.
http://www.iangoddard.net/Moon01.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^
a b Who Mourns For Apollo?, part II, by Mike Bara.^ "AULIS Online – Different Thinking". Aulis.com.
http://www.aulis.com/skeleton.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "C" rock analysis^ "C" rock^ "Fly Me to the Moon: Astronomy: School: Education: Web Wombat".
Webwombat.com.au.
http://www.webwombat.com.au/careers_ed/education/fly-to-moon.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Clavius: Photo Analysis - buzz's hot spot". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/bootspot.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "MAD19".
Spider.ipac.caltech.edu.
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad19.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ W. David Woods, How Apollo Flew to the Moon, 2008, Springer,
ISBN 978-0-387-71675-6, p. 109
^ See Ms. Irene Schneider on the
November 20, 2005 episode of
The Space Show.
^ Patrick L. Barry.
"Blinding Flashes".
Science.nasa.gov.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/22oct_cataracts.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Clavius: Environment - heat". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/envheat.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Patrick L. Barry.
"Sickening Solar Flares".
Science.nasa.gov.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/27jan_solarflares.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Cull, Selby (July 12, 2006).
"SkyandTelescope.com - News from Sky & Telescope - Predicting Solar Eruptions". Skyandtelescope.com.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3422566.html?page=1&c=y. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Radio Lag".
Redzero.demon.co.uk.
http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/Radio.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Apollo 11 Mission Summary^ "Apollo 11 TV – as seen in Australia". Honeysucklecreek.net.
http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/Australian_TV.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "On Eagle's Wings: The Story of the Parkes Apollo 11 Support".
Parkes.atnf.csiro.au.
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/one_giant_leap.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Apollo 11 Preliminary Science Report, NASA SP-214,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1969
^ Bart^ "YouTube - Apollo 15 waving flag at 2:37". Youtube.com.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1UEv2PIzl4. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "YouTube - Lunar Legacy Episode 1, Part 2 (Did we land on the moon?)". Youtube.com.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrI3iQqTdns. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Mindell, David A (2008). Digital Apollo. MIT Press. pp. 195–197.
ISBN 978-0-262-13497-2.
^ Tony Phillips.
"The Great Moon Hoax: Moon rocks and common sense prove Apollo astronauts really did visit the Moon". Science@NASA.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast23feb_2.htm.
^ James Papike, Grahm Ryder, and Charles Shearer (1998). "Lunar Samples". Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry 36: 5.1–5.234.
^ "Wernher von Braun in SS uniform".
http://www.reformation.org/wernher-von-braun.html.
^ "Marshall Highlights for 1967". Marshall Space Flight Center History Office.
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/yy/y1967.html.
^ James N. Head, H. Jay Melosh, and Boris A. Ivanov (2002). "High-speed ejecta from small craters". Science 298: 1752–1756.
doi:
10.1126/science.1077483.
PMID 12424385.
^ Bill Cooke (2006). "The Great Interplanetary Rock Swap". Astronomy 34 (August): 64–67.
^
a b Randy Korotev (2005). "Lunar geochemistry as told by lunar meteorites". Chemie der Erde 65: 297–346.
doi:
10.1016/j.chemer.2005.07.001.
^ "Aurora exploration programme: Mars sample return". European Space Agency.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Aurora/SEM1PM808BE_0.html.
^ Michael Duke (2002). "
South Pole-Aitlen basin sample return mission". COSPAR.
^
a b "Comments on the FOX special on the Hoax".
Pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu.
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/FOX.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "NASA Apollo Mission Apollo-1- Baron Report".
History.nasa.gov.
http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/barron.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Moon Hoax MOONMOVIE.COM Frequently Asked Questions". Moonmovie.com.
http://www.moonmovie.com/faq.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Soviet Lunar Programs^ Russia's space command and control infrastructure^ Soviet Space Tracking Systems^ Apollo 18^ Apollo 20^ Schadewald, Robert J. The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet. Science Digest, July 1980.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm^ "Clavius: Bibliography - bill kaysing". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/kaysing.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ AFTH, LLC website^ "Moon Hoax MOONMOVIE.COM A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon DVD - Front Cover & Bart Sibrel". Moonmovie.com.
http://moonmovie.com/afthft.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "index". Geocities.com.
http://www.geocities.com/wideflare/. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Bancroft, Colette. "
Lunar Lunacy", St. Petersburg Times, 2002-09-29. Retrieved on 2007-02-13.
^ "Clavius: Bibliography - dramatis personae". Clavius.org.
http://www.clavius.org/bibcast.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Telescope to challenge moon doubters - smh.com.au".
Smh.com.au.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982142.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^
a b "Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky!". Groundzeromedia.org.
http://www.groundzeromedia.org/dis/gorsky/gorsky.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "The Apollo Hoax".
Ufos-aliens.co.uk.
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ [2][
dead link]
^ "Apollo Truth". Geocities.com.
http://www.geocities.com/apollotruth/. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "The New Moondoggle". Groundzeromedia.org.
http://www.groundzeromedia.org/dis/moondoggle/moondoggle.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ http://www.jamesoberg.com/042003lessonsfake_his.html^ "
Nasa pulls Moon hoax book".
BBC News. 2002-11-08.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2424927.stm. Retrieved on 2008-08-05.
^ "Cafe Scientifique". Cafescientifique.org.
http://www.cafescientifique.org/glasgow1.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "November 2004". Dimaggio.org.
http://www.dimaggio.org/Glasgow/SPST/nov_2004.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "Apollo 15 Landing Site Spotted in Images". Space.com.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apollo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^
a b "Can we see Apollo hardware on the Moon?". Tass-survey.org.
http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/lunar_lander.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "SPACE.com - End of Conspiracy Theories? Spacecraft Snoops Apollo Moon Sites". Space.com.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050304_moon_snoop.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ World's biggest telescope to prove Americans really walked on Moon, Robert Matthews,
The Daily Telegraph (online), November 23, 2002
^ "NASA - Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies".
Science.nasa.gov.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ Astro picture of the day^ Abandoned spacecraft^ JAXA/SELENE site^ McKie, Robin.
"The movie has landed and US basks in the moonglow World news The Observer".
Guardian.co.uk.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/02/film.spaceexploration. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ by Anthony YoungMonday, January 22, 2007.
"The Space Review: Generation Y and lunar disbelief". Thespacereview.com.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/787/1. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
^ "You couldn't make this up". Canada.com.
http://www.canada.com/cityguides/toronto/story.html?id=d30c4111-291b-4b5b-b61b-7a18a80887ab. Retrieved on 2008-11-25.
External links
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Photos, audio, video and complete communication transcriptions of the six successful landings and Apollo 13
Hoax: Lunar Landing at the
Open Directory Project"
A Moon Landing? What Moon Landing?".
New York Times.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20F12F739581B7493CAA81789D95F4D8685F9. Retrieved on 2008-08-05. , John Noble Wilford, The New York Times, December 18, 1969, p. 30.
Television specials
Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? (2001) (TV) at the
Internet Movie DatabaseOpération lune (2002) (TV) at the
Internet Movie DatabaseThe Great Moon Hoax
Moon rocks and common sense prove Apollo astronauts really did visit the Moon.
Listen to this story (requires
RealPlayer)
February 23, 2001 -- Last week my phone rang. It was my mother ... and she was upset.
"Tony!" she exclaimed, "I just came from the coffee shop and there's an [adjective omitted] man down there who says NASA never landed on the Moon. Everyone was talking about it ... I just didn't know what to say!"
That last bit was hard to swallow, I thought. Mom's never at a loss for words.
But even more incredible was the controversy that swirled through her small-town diner and places like it across the country. After a long absence, the "Moon Hoax" was back.
Above: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon in 1969. [
more information]
All the buzz about the Moon began on February 15th when Fox television aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? Guests on the show argued that NASA technology in the 1960's wasn't up to the task of a real Moon landing. Instead, anxious to win the Space Race any way it could, NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios. Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on another world, the rollicking Moon Buggy rides, even Al Shepard's arcing golf shot over Fra Mauro-- it was all a fake!
Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS deliveryFortunately the Soviets didn't think of the gag first. They could have filmed their own fake Moon landings and really embarrassed the free world.
Shows like Conspiracy Theory ought to be as tongue-in-cheek as they sound. Unfortunately, there was an earnest feel to the Fox broadcast, enough to make you wonder if the program's makers might have fallen under their own spell.
According to the show NASA was a blundering movie producer thirty years ago. For example, Conspiracy Theory pundits pointed out a seeming discrepancy in Apollo imagery: Pictures of astronauts transmitted from the Moon don't include stars in the dark lunar sky -- an obvious production error! What happened? Did NASA film-makers forget to turn on the constellations?
Most photographers already know the answer: It's difficult to capture something very bright and something else very dim on the same piece of film -- typical emulsions don't have enough "dynamic range." Astronauts striding across the bright lunar soil in their sunlit spacesuits were literally dazzling. Setting a camera with the proper exposure for a glaring spacesuit would naturally render background stars too faint to see.
Here's another one: Pictures of Apollo astronauts erecting a US flag on the Moon show the flag bending and rippling. How can that be? After all, there's no breeze on the Moon....
Not every waving flag needs a breeze -- at least not in space. When astronauts were planting the flagpole they rotated it back and forth to better penetrate the lunar soil (anyone who's set a blunt tent-post will know how this works). So of course the flag waved! Unfurling a piece of rolled-up cloth with stored angular momentum will naturally result in waves and ripples -- no breeze required!
Left: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin deploy a U.S. flag on the Moon in 1969. [
more]
The Fox documentary went on with plenty more specious points. You can find detailed rebuttals to each of them at
BadAstronomy.com and the
Moon Hoax web page. (These are independent sites, not sponsored by NASA.)
The best rebuttal to allegations of a "Moon Hoax," however, is common sense. Evidence that the Apollo program really happened is compelling: A dozen astronauts (laden with cameras) walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Nine of them are still alive and can testify to their experience. They didn't return from the Moon empty-handed, either. Just as Columbus carried a few hundred natives back to Spain as evidence of his trip to the New World, Apollo astronauts brought 841 pounds of Moon rock home to Earth.
"Moon rocks are absolutely unique," says Dr. David McKay, Chief Scientist for Planetary Science and Exploration at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). McKay is a member of the group that oversees the
Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at JSC where most of the Moon rocks are stored. "They differ from Earth rocks in many respects," he added.
"For example," explains Dr. Marc Norman, a lunar geologist at the University of Tasmania, "lunar samples have almost no water trapped in their crystal structure, and common substances such as clay minerals that are ubiquitous on Earth are totally absent in Moon rocks."
"We've found particles of fresh glass in Moon rocks that were produced by explosive volcanic activity and by meteorite impacts over 3 billion years ago," added Norman. "The presence of water on Earth rapidly breaks down such volcanic glass in only a few million years. These rocks must have come from the Moon!"
Right: A glass spherule (about 0.6 mm in diameter) produced by a meteorite impact into lunar soil. Features on the surface are glass splashes, welded mineral fragments, and microcraters produced by space weathering processes at the surface of the moon. SEM image by D. S. McKay (NASA Photo S71-48109).
Fortunately not all of the evidence needs a degree in chemistry or geology to appreciate. An average person holding a Moon rock in his or her hand can plainly see that the specimen came from another world.
"Apollo moon rocks are peppered with tiny craters from meteoroid impacts," explains McKay. This could only happen to rocks from a planet with little or no atmosphere... like the Moon.
Meteoroids are nearly-microscopic specks of comet dust that fly through space at speeds often exceeding 50,000 mph -- ten times faster than a speeding bullet. They pack a considerable punch, but they're also extremely fragile. Meteoroids that strike Earth's atmosphere disintegrate in the rarefied air above our stratosphere. (Every now and then on a dark night you can see one -- they're called meteors.) But the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere to protect it. The tiny space bullets can plow directly into Moon rocks, forming miniature and unmistakable craters. "There are plenty of museums, including the Smithsonian and others, where members of the public can touch and examine rocks from the Moon," says McKay. "You can see the little meteoroid craters for yourself."
Right: Nick-named "Big Muley," this 11.7 kg Moon rock was the largest returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts. One side of Big Muley was peppered with meteoroid "zap pits." Below right: A close-up view of 1 mm diameter zap pits shows tiny craters lined with black glass surrounded by a white halo of shocked rock. [
more]
Just as meteoroids constantly bombard the Moon so do
cosmic rays, and they leave their fingerprints on Moon rocks, too. "There are isotopes in Moon rocks, isotopes we don't normally find on Earth, that were created by nuclear reactions with the highest-energy cosmic rays," says McKay. Earth is spared from such radiation by our protective atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Even if scientists wanted to make something like a Moon rock by, say, bombarding an Earth rock with high energy atomic nuclei, they couldn't. Earth's most powerful particle accelerators can't energize particles to match the most potent cosmic rays, which are themselves accelerated in supernova blastwaves and in the violent cores of galaxies.
Indeed, says McKay, faking a Moon rock well enough to hoodwink an international army of scientists might be more difficult than the Manhattan Project. "It would be easier to just go to the Moon and get one," he quipped.
And therein lies an original idea: Did NASA go to the Moon to collect props for a staged Moon landing? It's an interesting twist on the conspiracy theory that TV producers might consider for their next episode of the Moon Hoax.
"I have here in my office a 10-foot high stack of scientific books full of papers about the Apollo Moon rocks," added McKay. "Researchers in thousands of labs have examined Apollo Moon samples -- not a single paper challenges their origin! And these aren't all NASA employees, either. We've loaned samples to scientists in dozens of countries [who have no reason to cooperate in any hoax]."
Even Dr. Robert Park, Director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society and a noted critic of NASA's human space flight program, agrees with the space agency on this issue. "The body of physical evidence that humans did walk on the Moon is simply overwhelming."
"Fox should stick to making cartoons," agreed Marc Norman. "I'm a big fan of The Simpsons!"
Parents and Educators: Please visit
Thursday's Classroom for lesson plans and activities related to the Moon Hoax.
SEND THIS STORY TO A FRIENDWeb Links
BadAstronomy.com - A point-by-point rebuttal of claims in Fox's Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? (external site)
NASA's Moon Hoax -- This thorough site addresses recent and older claims that the Moon landings were faked (external site)
Comments on the FOX Moonlanding Hoax special -- from the University of Arizona's Jim Scotti.(external site)
JSC's Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility Tour -- see more pictures of Moon rocks in the Pristine Sample Laboratory Display Cabinet
Moon Rocks -- lots of Moon Rock links from NASA Spacelink
