The Apollo FAQ (moon landings were faked)
From: Nathan Jones <physicist_at_they.never.set.foot.on.the.moon>
Date: 3 Feb 2004 17:14:45 +0100 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 THE APOLLO HOAX FAQ version 4.1 - November 2003 Written by Nathan Jones Subject: (1) Forward and Intent
In recent years there have been many criticisms and
refutations made in various media of the Apollo record, the
so called proof of the Apollo space missions that allegedly
landed astronauts onto the surface of the Moon during the
period 1969 to 1972. The criticisms and refutations by authors
such as David Percy, Ralph Rene, the late James Collier, Bill
Kasing and others take the form of analysis of the photographic
record and video footage shot by NASA astronauts and questions
about the viability of other aspects of the operation such as
the flight worthiness of the Lunar Module (LM) and the
radiation risk posed to astronauts who venture outside of the
Earths protective shield - the Van Allen belts.
Critiques of the Apollo record have sprung up all over the
internet in various websites and in the form of books,
television documentaries and video presentations such as James
Colliers "Was it only a Paper Moon?".
Subject: (2) Table of Contents.
(1) Forward and Intent Subject: (3) What does it take to prove we went to the Moon? I would remind the reader that It's up to scientists and claimants of this or that fact to provide proof of their claims. That's how it works in science and to do this scientists use something called "the scientific method". When they are done presenting their case anyone may examine it for errors and so forth. If we find flaws or errors in their method or in the results of their scientific work then we may call in to question the validity of their claims. It's just not up to us to prove that man did or did not walk on the Moon. We are only to show that the evidence as presented to us is faulty, contrived or in some way unrepresentative of what we know and we may then throw the evidence out. Claims based on discredited evidence have no scientific validity and may be ignored or discarded altogether. Subject: (4) The public are dumb, they'll buy into any idea.
Many of the NASA "believers" (aka debunkers some of them) that
swallow the NASA story hook line and sinker usually end up making
remarks of this kind or worse.
Subject: (5) No stars are visible in the images, where are they? In order to capture stars on film you need very long exposures in comparison to "daylight" scenes even if the sky is pitch black. Just try and take a photo of stars for yourself whilst including some brightly lit scene (say a lighted car park at night) and you should find that the car park images are "burned out" when the stars begin to show in the pictures. Though it's correct that stars will have been absent from the Lunar photographic images it is strange that none of the astronauts remarked on the stars in the sky. The stars really will have been a magnificent sight at all times from the Moon Subject: (6) The flag waves. The only footage I have seen where the flag waves or flaps about is when the astronaut is adjusting the flag pole. Because he had his hand on the flag pole and was making adjustments to it then I would expect the flag to wave around for a time. Subject: (7) There's no dust on the lander footpads The Moon has no atmosphere in which eddies and such can cause the dust to swirl and "float around". Dust is "shot" away when there is no atmosphere. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the foot pads would have been covered in dust with any certainty. The chances are that some hollows and crevices will contain trapped dust but all of the images I have seen look remarkably clean. Nothing conclusive here in my opinion though. Subject: (8) Why is no engine noise audible in the LM radio broadcasts?
Hmm... Your guess is as good as mine. At least we should hear the
sound of the attitude control thrusters right?
The LM was pressurized to about 5 psi (oxygen rich atmosphere)
during the landing and ascent phases of the missions so that the
astronauts could breath the cabin atmosphere. The LM cabin will
have been filled with the sound from the engine and control
thrusters. The following website has an account from a book about
the shuttle describing the noise from the engines on the space
shuttle orbiter; http://internet.ocii.com/~dpwozney/apollo1.htm
Quote: "The forward primary thrusters sound like exploding
cannons at thrust onset". Each primary thruster produces a thrust
of only 870 pounds. The LM engine produced a 3000 pound thrust
and would have made much more violent sounds and actions.
"jets of flame shoot out from the orbiter's nose. ...The orbiter
reacts to the primaries' shove by shaking slightly and moving
very noticeably. For the crew on board, a series of attitude
changes using primaries resembles a World War I sea battle,
with cannons and mortars firing, flashes of flame shooting in
all directions, and the ship's shuddering and shaking in
reaction to the salvos". How come the Lunar Modules attitude
control thrusters were not heard as they were fired on and off
during flight corrections? They were 110 lb thrusters each and
there were 16 of them. Debunkers claim that once in constant
burn that the LM motors were very quiet and they would not have
been heard. Even if that were true and I'm not personally
convinced that it is what happened to the noise from the
attitude control thrusters which will have been firing
intermitantly? The ascent engine was mounted inside the cabin
only inches away from the astronauts and there was no noise
pick up by the astronauts microphones, not even after they had
been actuated by the astronauts own voice during comms.
Remember that the Lunar Module was of a metal construction and
any engine sounds or vibration will have easily been
transmitted through the structure just like road noise from
your car tyres is transmitted into the passenger compartment
where the driver is seated.
Subject: (9) Where are the flames from the landers engines?
The Lunar Module engine and the Space Shuttle Orbiter both use
hypergolic fuel engines of the same type and fuel and yet the
Space Shuttle Orbiter does produce a visible exhaust flame but
the Lunar Module never did.
Subject: (10) What about the shape of the exhaust and its effects?
It is often claimed that in space the exhaust spreads out
greatly immediately it exits the exhaust nozzle but that is
wrong. Take a look at the photograph at the url
http://internet.ocii.com/~dpwozney/apollo1.htm and see
how much the flame spreads. It spreads only a little. Also the
exhaust bell on the LM will have been only a couple of feet
above ground as the LM touched down and given that the bell
was five feet in diameter the ground just below will have felt
the full effects of the engine as it set down. From a couple
of feet away the LM motor should have left unmistakeable marks
on the Lunar surface where it blasted the surface powder
Subject: (11) Was the Lunar Module (LM) tested on Earth?
Basically, no. The Lunar Module was the vehicle that was
supposed to take the astronauts down to the Moons surface and
allow them to take off again back up to rendezvous with the
command Module. The LM just wasn't designed for reuse and for
flight in Earths gravity where it's weight would have been six
times what it would have been on the Moon. That's why they
developed simulator vehicles for training. NASA had Lunar
Module "simulators" built for astronaut training but four out
of the five training/research vehicles crashed.
NASA experimented again with VTOL (vertical take off and landing)
rockets during the 90's and had some successes but cancelled the
program in 96 just after it's last test ended in a crashed
landing. NASA claims that the LM underwent successfull "testing
and manouvers" out in space and in orbit around the Moon.
Given the record of the training vehicles that would have
been risky. On Earth the pilot could (and did) eject in cases
of failure but in space it would almost certainly mean curtains
for the astronauts flying the LM.
Subject: (12) Where's the blast crater? The Moon is covered in powdered rock and rubble. The dust has a consistency described as being like cornflour. The blast emitted by the descent engine 3000 or so pounds and averaged out over the exit area of the exhaust "bell" came to about 1.5 pounds per square inch. That's some draft. In some instances it is known that the rocket motor was still firing when the LM set down. There should have been a lot of evidence of disturbed surface soil. There should have been a "star burst" type of pattern on the ground made by the relocated powder but there was none. See this image: as11-40-5921.jpg. It's not a blast crater, it's more like someone swept up with a broom just underneath the bell. All the pictures I have seen showing the ground under the bell are like that. Subject: (13) Dust kicked up by the Rover wheels acts strange. A claim on the badastronomy dot com website said; "you will see dust thrown up by the wheels of the rover. The dust goes up in a perfect parabolic arc and falls back down to the surface. Again, the Moon isn't the Earth! If this were filmed on the Earth, which has air, the dust would have billowed up around the wheel and floated over the surface. This clearly does not happen in the video clips; the dust goes up and right back down. It's actually a beautiful demonstration of ballistic flight in a vacuum". So, badastronomy dot com tells us how it is supposed to be, what is supposed to happen on the Moon, however frames from NASA's own footage of the Lunar rover show us a very different picture. It reveals the presence of atmosphere. In parts of the rover footage "vertical walls" or "curtain" formations of dust are seen to form in the wake of the dust kicked up by the rear wheels. Look at http://www.empusa.demon.net/Lunar/Lunar6.jpg and notice that clouds of dust form behind the rover's wheels. It looks just like there is an atmosphere! It is easy to get the curved arc effect driving on sand for example so a few ballistic looking dirt trails proves nothing here but the impeding effect of an atmosphere is absolutely conclusive. Subject: (14) Radio telemetry proves man went to the Moon right? Jodrell Bank and various scientists around the world might have pointed their antennae at the Moon and received signals from that direction in space but that does not prove that man set foot on the Moon. Subject: (15) Laser ranging reflectors on the Moon are proof right? No, they are not proof that astronauts put them there. NASA and debunkers have claimed that astronauts placed reflectors on the surface of the Moon so that astronomers may bounce laser beams off of them in order to better determine various Lunar parameters, distance from Earth, period and so on. That fact is often incorrectly cited as a proof. There may well be reflectors on the Lunar surface but that doesn't prove anyone set foot on the Moon. The Russians deposited a reflector during their Luna (Lunakhod) series of unmanned missions to the Moon some time in the early nineteen seventies. In fact the Russians were first with the ability to "soft land" instrument packages on the Moon in February 1966 with the Luna 9 mission. The Soviet success was closely followed by the American Surveyor missions which also "soft landed" instrument packages. No proof of a manned Moon landing there then. Subject: (16) Why don't they point the HST at the landing sites? Even today, the largest telescopes in the world and the Hubble space telescope (HST) do not have the resolving power to identify the LM or what would be left of it on the Moon's surface. The smallest object they can discern is something about the size of a football pitch at the distance of the Moon and even then it would be hard to tell exactly what it was they were looking at. In order to make a specific determination you will need more information than size alone. Subject: (17) The Russians had to be in on it right? No, the Russians would have exposed the Missions if they could have. The 60's was the peak of the propaganda wars between the US and the USSR as it was known then. There was no known technology available that could detect the presence of humans aboard a capsule from a distance. The only means of detecting a hoax would have been from the "leakage" that may have resulted in relaying communications from the Earth to the capsule in order to make it appear to originate from the capsule or from the Lunar surface. That would not have proven a problem however as microwave links are highly directional and thus inherantly very "leak proof" and when that is coupled with secure communications methods such as frequency hopping, spread spectrum techniques, encryption and any other unusual modulation methods it's virtually certain that an outsider of that time would not have detected it. Subject: (18) What about Apollo 8, 9 and 10? Apollo 8 orbited the Moon and returned to Earth. Apollo 9 never left Earth orbit. The astronauts allegedly practiced deploying and docking with the LM. Apollo 10 practiced everything but the landing itself. Lunar orbit, deployment and docking with the Lunar Module. If they were "real" then there's no technical reason we could not have gone on to land astronauts on the Moon is how the argument goes. The answer to that is, why should the deployment and docking trials of the LM be any more real than the Moon landings? If the LM wasn't fit to land on and takeoff from the Moon with then why would anyone risk any space manouvers with it? It would have been illogical to do so. Apollo 8, 9 and 10 don't prove astronauts landed on the Moon. Subject: (19) The radiation hazards facing the missions.
Subject: (20) The Lunar surface brightness misconception.
It is sometimes argued by Apollo yes men that the surface
of the Moon is so bright that it accounts for all the so
called fill-in lighting that critics of the Apollo record
claim has been used. For example it has been argued that,
"One celebrated picture shows an astronaut with the sun
behind him, and the Lunar lander and American flag reflected
in his visor. According to critics, the astronaut should have
been merely a silhouette. And so he should, if he weren't
surrounded by brightly-lit ground. If the full Moon can
brightly illuminate the earth from 250,000 miles away, just
imagine what it can do to an astronaut standing on it".
That argument is about as wrong as it can get.
Here's what NASA had to say about the Moons surface brightness.
From: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/Academy/UNIVERSE/MOON.HTML
"Next to the sun, the full Moon is the brightest object in the
heavens. However, its surface is rough and brownish and
reflects light very poorly. In fact, the Moon is about the
poorest reflector in the solar system. The amount of light
reflected by a celestial object is called the albedo (Latin:
albus, white). The Moon relects only 7% of the sunlight that
falls upon it, so the albedo is 0.07."
Subject: (21) Photographic anomalies, heiligenschein, shadows and perspective.
Note, all the images referred to here used the same file name
as that used in the NASA online archive and were easily located
with Google <filename> or alternatively at the following
websites:
The following images all contained "photographic"
anomalies or inconsistencies. In aS11-40-5903.jpg there is a
strong lighting hot spot very near the subject and the brightness
of the ground fades rapidly into the distance to nothing. The hot
spot is indicative of spot lighting and may not have been caused
by the Sun which illuminates all the ground equally and nor is
it caused by reflections from Lunar Module panels or altered surface
characteristics due to the ground being swept by the landing engine
exhaust gases (see section 28 for more about this). Neither is the
hotspot due to a curious phenomena that goes by the name of
"heiligenschein" effect. Lighting has to originate from behind the
observer in order for heiligenschein to be visible but in this case
the Sun is almost 90 degrees to the right of the camera.
Some of the shaded areas of the astronauts suit is brighter than
the Lunar ground which if it is the only source of fill in (light
reflecting from the ground acting as fill in light) is not
possible. Why is the brightness of the astronauts suit (his right
ankle/calf) so bright near the ground? There should be much less
reflected light reaching him down there and yet the brightness is
the same as it is at the top of his suit.
Try looking at as11-40-5902.jpg for all the same anomalous
features and inconsistencies. What about the following images,
10075741.jpg and 10075742.jpg. In these images Mt Hadley is
the back drop but with a small change in veiwing position and
a slight increase in camera height of a couple of feet the top
of Mt Hadley has completely changed it's angle relative to the
horizontal. Mt Hadley is 3 miles in back so a small shift of a
few feet in camera position ought not to produce such a large
shift of perspective at the top of Hadley.
Many images look like the background is dropped in to the
foreground and some are obviously air brushed just like
10075841.jpg. There are many more examples of images that are
not right and which may be described as fakes.
In some NASA film footage included in the late Jim Collier's
video "Was it only a paper Moon?" Young and Duke of Apollo 16
can be seen against exactly the same backdrop on two different
EVA's (EVA1 and EVA2) which were on different days at alleged
different places and in different directions from the LM base
camp. On EVA2 Young describes the scene as "absolutely unreal".
On another EVA to and from a site near Hadley Young makes a
similar remark about the scenery being unreal during the return
journey when exactly the same backdrop (which should have been
laterally reversed with respect to the origin but which was
not) was displayed as that used in the forward (to) journey.
Of course the whole debacle is explained away as human error in
the editing room by debunkers.
Subject: (22) What still film was used?
Subject: (23) In a vacuum there is no heat?
"So it may be +200F in the Lunar sunlight and -200F in the
shade, but in a vacuum there is no heat". Wrong!
There is plenty of heat in the vacuum and especially close in to
a star. Heat is energy and there is plenty of it in the "vacuum"
of space in the form of an energy flux. The sun pours out massive
amounts of heat energy and other radiation. We can feel this heat
energy often termed infra-red when we feel the Sun warming our
skin. At the distance of the Earth (and this goes for the Moon too)
the amount of heat energy in the "vacuum" of space amounts to 1.36Kw
per square metre also known as the solar irradiance. Both the Earth
and the Moon receive this amount of energy from the Sun but at the
Earths surface you can sometimes subtract about 30% from the solar
irradiance figure due to reflection by clouds in the atmosphere.
What people often confuse is temperature with energy. Things can
have high temperatures but very little heat. Or even low
temperatures but have large amounts of heat. That is because heat
is energy and not temperature. Hot and cold are measures of
temperature not heat. So, again things can be hot and have very
little heat if they have small specific heat capacities. The amount
of heat an object or material may hold varies with it's specific
heat capacity and has nothing to do with its temperature or how
hot it is.
Subject: (24) The noon day temperature misconception.
It is often said or implied that it takes 14 days for
temperatures to reach +200F on the Lunar surface. That is
plainly wrong. Claims that astronauts landed on the Moon
during the "Lunar morning" in order to "avoid noon day heat"
are ridiculous. They might say they landed at that time but
it would not have helped them to avoid any heating problem
that they will have faced.
While we are on this particular topic I will mention that I have started considering the functionality and suitability of the astronauts cooling system. Whether it was up to the job especially in the light of new NASA information implying that water ice may not sublimate when in Lunar shadow thus blocking the final heat exchanging process that the cooling system relied on. Note that the porous plate which served as the "radiator" or cold end of the heat exchanger was enclosed inside the back pack in order to keep it in the shade where presumably it was cold. Subject: (25) How much insulation does it take to keep an astronaut warm?
Not much. The biggest problem is in keeping him cool. However,..
In order to maintain a normal temperature (37C) the human body
Subject: (26) Can the Moon rocks be faked? They don't need to be faked - see section (27) While I do not offer an opinion on the authenticity of the samples I think it is important to "tidy up" a couple of related issues.
The curator at JSC claims that sample sizes are of the order of a few tens of milligrams. That's sugar lump size. There's no need to manufacture "hundred pound lots at once or in single pieces. I'd think the manufacture of small sample sizes is easier and faster than large ones. "All I did to get the Moon rock specimens (on loan) was write in and sign an agreement to keep the materials secure when not in use. NASA had no control over any non-destructive tests I might do when I had the specimens. I could have, for example, zapped the rock with X-rays to get its chemical composition. So the faked specimens would have to stand up to any kind of scrutiny that researchers might give them". Researchers had to supply a protocol to the curator at JSC that described exactly their intentions. If anything "funny" happened or showed in undisclosed testing then they broke protocol. "Whoever came up with the faked specimens would have to have devised a story of Lunar evolution to fit the samples". Lunar evolution is still undecided. We still aren't sure exactly how the Moon formed. Whether it is a piece of the Earth broken away after a collision with a small Mars sized planet or whether the Moon evolved on its own in an orbit near ours and was captured. The former hypothesis was not even publicly proposed until the Kona conference in 1984! "And you'd have to put in exactly the right amounts of radioactive elements and daughter products to get the rocks to date radiometrically at 4 billion years old - older than any terrestrial rocks. And you'd have to anticipate the development of new dating methods not in use in 1969 and make sure those elements are present in the correct abundance. And it's not like adding carrots to a stew, either. To mimic the results of potassium-argon dating, you'd have to add inert argon gas and trap it just in the potassium-bearing minerals, and in exact proportion to the amount of potassium". K-Ar dating is often unreliable. Volcanoes that errupted only a few hundred years ago yeild dates of millions of years! And another thing, K-Ar dating is patched with fixes up to its neck and some. Depending on what you think happened to the rock sample you apply factors because of the mobility of the argon. I'm not saying K-Ar dating is total hogwash you understand but....
More info on moon rocks can be found at:
http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/Lunar/Lunar10.htm
http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/
apollo_moon_rocks_010326.html
Subject: (27) Unmanned retrieval of Moon rocks possible?
Lets not forget that the Russian unmanned mission actually
brought back about 100 grams or so of Lunar rock so it wont
have been beyond the wit or wisdom of NASA to do it bigger and
better will it? In the light of the above and when you take into
account all the anomalies and flaws in the Apollo record that
have been demonstrated to exist why should we believe that the
samples were retreived manually just because they say so?
All claims require evidence and extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence (favourite skeptic/debunker terms of
evidential proof).So where is it?
Subject: (28) The Eagle landing site anomalies.
Serious discrepancies in the photographic evidence still remain
to be explained by the "pro Apollo" fanatics. All images may be
viewed or located by google at the NASA archive as described in
section 21.
Subject: (29) Some sceptics websites. http://www.empusa.demon.net/lunar/lunar1.htm http://internet.ocii.com/~dpwozney/apollo1.htm http://www.aulis.com/nasa.htm http://www.apollohoax.com/ http://www.grade-a.com/moon/ http://www.moonmovie.com/ http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/2666/MoonHoax2.html http://www.geocities.com/nasascam/
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