50 yrs ago ....

[Shuffler]

The original tapes were just sold at auction for 1.87 million. The guy bought them in crates from NASA back some time ago. He was a young fella that had worked at NASA. He paid something like $287 for several crates of film and the original three rolls were in there.

[Chalenge]

The astronauts planted corner reflectors on the moon. They are used for reflecting lasers back to the source with minimal scatter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

Many people have used it already. The reflectors are definitely up there.

The first "laser" was actually the "MASER," which was microwave amplification through stimulated emission of radiation (where the name comes from). The first reflected signals were microwave signals and they are still used to this day, though mostly by amateur radio operators talking from opposite ends of the world. You would think they would have switched to cell phones by now, but if that fails at least someone still knows how.

[zack1234]

The moon is a projection and the Earth is flat

The landings were filmed at Pinewood Studios

[Arlo]

[Nwbie]

I am firmly on the fence here.  I do not think we did it however willing to listen to both sides of the discussion.

My opinion is it was a cold war propaganda must have and am not sure it was actually achieved.

It's obvious you never heard about this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZgD89VYkVc

[perdue3]

Throughout the night, the BBC covered the event. In the wee hours was a show that featured a panel of scientists as well as a jam session by a young band from Cambridge called Pink Floyd. If you were up at that time watching the BBC, you saw footage of the moon landing while listening to Pink Floyd jam out this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2HHT7txFQ0

[Vraciu]

I am firmly on the fence here.  I do not think we did it however willing to listen to both sides of the discussion.

My opinion is it was a cold war propaganda must have and am not sure it was actually achieved.

I had Charlie Duke on my jumpseat for three hours.   After listening to him and asking him questions—including directly as to whether or not it was a hoax—I am absolutely convinced we did it. 

As Duke noted, faking it would have been harder than actually doing it.  Also, the Soviets had moles inside every nook and cranny of the program.   If they had possession of evidence that proved it was a fraud we would have seen it then. 

[AAIK]

Before you believe anything you should be warned of the following:

1. People make stories up to intentionally trick other people.
2. People make ideas up that are destructive to others.
3. People make laws that destroy people's lives and future.

This world is not all good advice, sometimes its just nonsense to make people look stupid (the ones who made it just laugh at those who believe it).

[redcatcherb412]

If it was all fake it was a good one.

I spent weeks in an Army frequency monitoring station at Fort Huachuca in the Arizona desert at the Mexican border locked in a concrete building. The radio traffic was impressive and vast if it was faked. The monitoring was 24/7 for setup thru launch and the entire mission till splashdown.

Enlisted housing back in '68 was the old cavalry officers quarters clapboard housing.

[pembquist]

With regard to fake moon landings flat earth etc. etc. I just watched the Netflix "documentary" Bob Lazar Area 51 and Flying Saucers and I guess I had an epiphany in that it became absolutely clear to me that people want to believe in spooky woo to a degree that suggests to me a fundamental bias in human cognition that must have had some evolutionary advantage in the way back. If you put two explanations side by side for an event or series of events  a large number of people are going to disbelieve the more straightforward and plausible story in favor of believing the more convoluted long winded and implausible story. In effect the more implausible the explanation the more plausible it appears.

I personally remember being confounded by coin flips in that I could not understand why after a series of heads coming up it wasn't more likely that tails would come up on the next flip. I mean confounded in that while I could understand that coins don't have a memory and the odds of any given coin flip are 50 50 I couldn't get rid of an intuitive sense that it was time for heads to come up and that some how it was more likely than not that it would. This isn't the same mistake that people who believe in a flat earth fall prey to but to my ear it kind of rhymes.

[Arlo]

I'm more of the mind that it's a desire become belief thing. If someone wants to believe something badly enough there's no amount of actual proof to deter them. Likewise the smallest fraction of imagination becomes proof to them.

Their biggest downfall is the apparent inability to keep their delusions to themselves.

[pembquist]

Arlo I don't think it is an either or thing in that I would agree and enfold what you describe into what I was trying to describe. I am not sure that you can really separate the phenomena of starting with a belief in magical explanations for phenomena and then torturing evidence to maintain that belief despite the evidence on the one hand and the basic human drive to explain things and recognize patterns on the other. Simultaneously this style of cognition both drives scientific/technological development and heavy betting losses at the horse track. The key element missing in the magical thinkers understanding is any real application of the principles of scientific inquiry or even those principles dilute form of common sense. Still, common sense itself should always be suspect as intuition is informed by experience and that is actually very limiting in terms of understanding, at least in my opinion. There was some nice video shot in the ISS about failures of intuition in a zero G environment which really illustrated this for me. Increasingly I believe our brains were built for the wild and have remarkably created all this culture and civilization where some of our most valuable cognitive mechanisms are somewhat sub-optimal.

Clearly I have too much time on my hands avoiding another tenant turnover repaint etc.

[Vraciu]

I'm more of the mind that it's a desire become belief thing. If someone wants to believe something badly enough there's no amount of actual proof to deter them. Likewise the smallest fraction of imagination becomes proof to them.

Their biggest downfall is the apparent inability to keep their delusions to themselves.

https://youtu.be/y4hieHY0jHM[/youtube]

What I still revel at is that Buzz nearly dropped the guy.    Imagine being waylaid by someone almost twice your age (who happens to be in his late-60s or early-70s).   Lol.