Moon landing faked? Lets take a look...

[rpm]

Andy Kaufman of course!

[Holden McGroin]

2.  A camera panned upwards to catch Apollo 16's Lunar Landerlifting off the Moon.  Who did the filming?

A more interesting phenomenon is apparent in the footage of the lift off.  All the debris follows ballistic trajectories...  very difficult to fake in 1970, without one hell of a big vacuum chamber.

Inside an atmosphere, debris would follow turbulent fluid flow paths, not the simple trajectories witnessed in the film.  I have yet to see anyone's explanation on how they could have faked that.

It always breaks the illusion for me when I watch some sci fi movie and they show turbulant flow patterns in explosions into a vacuum.  I think they should look different from the way George Lucas shows them.

[Mini D]

Was thinking the same thing about the "turbulent air flow".  Depending on how high the dust from the lander was blown, it would have taken no longer than 15 seconds for it to settle completely.  Especially with no atmosphere to keep it "floating".

MiniD

[GRUNHERZ]

These guys are the same as the 911 CIA/PNAC conspiracy degenrates - when you get to the bottom of it they simply hate America!

[Frogm4n]

no thats not it grunz. they are people that are just nuts.

[Hortlund]

I always thought that the conspiracy theory was that only the first landing was faked. This to meet JFKs challenge. The yanks went there afterwards and collected their rocks and took their real pictures.

[Mini D]

Originally posted by Hortlund
I always thought that the conspiracy theory was that only the first landing was faked. This to meet JFKs challenge. The yanks went there afterwards and collected their rocks and took their real pictures.

No... that doesn't work at all.  Maybe it just makes it an easier pill to swallow?

This scenario would be the easiest of all to prove or disprove.  You'd simply have to compare footage taken from the "faked" landing wiht footage taken from the "real" landing.  Having never been there before, there is little to no chance of them getting everything (or even anything) right.

MiniD

[Hortlund]

and I have yet to hear a good explanation on the shadows in that first picture btw...You skipped that one muckmaw.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Mini D
No... that doesn't work at all.  Maybe it just makes it an easier pill to swallow?

This scenario would be the easiest of all to prove or disprove.  You'd simply have to compare footage taken from the "faked" landing wiht footage taken from the "real" landing.  Having never been there before, there is little to no chance of them getting everything (or even anything) right.

MiniD

I so dont want to get into this, but that is the original conspiracy theory as I have heard it, and there are a couple of unexplainables with that first lunar landing.

[Mini D]

I know you don't want to get into it, because you'd get your bellybutton kicked on this one.

There is absolutely no way they could fake the first lunar landing and have all the real ones look exactly the same.  Absolutely ZERO.

MiniD

[Dowding]

There is also the issue of radiation shielding on the vehicles used in all parts of the mission.

The modern Shuttle doesn't leave Earth's amosphere completely and does get some protection from it. The Apollo capsules didn't have the kind of shielding the shuttles have and neither did the astronaut suits and are supposed to have survived the unprotected space between the moon and the Earth.

There is also some photographic evidence that is anomolous, such as the the identical rock formations visible on two separate landings which supposedly occurred in entirely different locations.

It's hard to believe it was faked though. There were so many people involved that would be quite a feat, nevermind keeping it from the Russians.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Dowding
There is also the issue of radiation shielding on the vehicles used in all parts of the mission.

The modern Shuttle doesn't leave Earth's amosphere completely and does get some protection from it. The Apollo capsules didn't have the kind of shielding the shuttles have and neither did the astronaut suits and are supposed to have survived the unprotected space between the moon and the Earth.

 

It is the magnetic feild of the earth that affords us solar radiation protection, and Apollo missions were conducted at a rather low solar activity cycle.  As the shuttle was designed for low earth orbit missions only, it has virtually no radiation sheilding.  The recent tether experiments to generate electricity passed a wire tether through the earth's magnetic feild to create a current.  The Shuttle does not venture past the 'magnetosphere'

James Mitchner's (sp?) novel 'Space' deals with a solar flare radiation exposure accident during an Apollo mission.

While the lander provided little if any protection, (the thickness of the LEM pressure hull was on the order of foil) the ablative reentry sheild of the command module would have provided some protection for a 2 or 3 day earth - moon transit.

Some thoughts from Mars mission planners speak of radiation 'bunkers' where the crew could hide out during solar flare activity for a multiple month transit to Mars.  Turns out water is one of the better sheilding materials, and crews would be sheltered in the shadow of water tanks.  As Mars has no (or at most a very small) magnetic feild, radiaition sheilding on the surface is of critical importance throughout a multi year mission.

[Mini D]

BTW... a pretty good site that answers the questions posted here:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#mt_anim

[AKIron]

Hortlund, if the Russians could have proved the '69 moon landing was faked don't you think they would have been all over it? I'm fairly certain they had the means to verify that a spacecraft went to the moon, landed, and returned.

If the whole thing had been unmanned there would have been some evidence of remote control signals being sent to the craft. If the mission had been unmanned and the whole trip computer controlled, well, that's almost as remarkable as a manned mission, considering the state of computers in '69.

Bottom line, Russians offered little opposition to the proclaimed event and no evidence.

[muckmaw]

Hortland-

I only answered the questions I could offer explanations to with a rudimentary knowledge of science.

I do not have the photo in front of me to examine it.

As for the problem radiation, that's a question for a scientist, not me.

I do know a good portion of the LEM was made of a metallic substance, about as think as 3 sheets of aluminum foil.

We actually have a real LEM at the Cradle of Aviation museum where I volunteer. It was slated to go up, but the program was cancelled.

Either way, it was built by Grumman, and I believe it is the only real LEM on earth. (The rest, well, you know where they are).

We've got rolls of that foil laying around the museum. Pretty amazing stuff.