Coaxed by the Hoax

[Andrew*]

My dad's a conspiracy fanatic. He spends a lot of his time making very thorough investigations to find the truth, mostly about health matters, but also loves a good conspiracy.

As I feared, he's just caught on to the moon hoax. He was particularly interested in a video of a press conference in 1969 where three Apollo astronauts were asked by none other than Sir Patrick Moore whether they could see stars while standing on the moon. Two of them said "No" and the other didn't reply.

Anyway, the first time I saw the moon conspiracy video on Channel 5, I admit to having been convinced. I was probably about 13. Now that I've read Bad Astronomy and threads on SGL on the subject I realise that it was simply typical entertaining Channel 5 program.

I've just sent Dad this e-mail:

Dad,

here is the moon hoax conspiracy debunking. Some conspiracies I can accept as plausible. This conspiracy is frankly pathetic and is no longer worth arguing. As you say, the media can be misleading, even conspiracy media.

Fact: We landed on the moon.

http://www.hardyart.demon.co.uk/pages-extra/moonhoax.html

This site gives 100 links where all sorts of people prove the conspiracy wrong:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html

and here's some thoughts from real astronomers that I've met:

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,13272.msg136779.html#msg136779

a convincing fact on this post, but read the entire thread - everyone has a good stab at it:

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,17750.msg184256.html#msg184256

love!

Andrew

Please don't let this thread get political or personal as previous moon hoax threads have done.

Cheers

Andrew

[John]

... He was particularly interested in a video of a press conference in 1969 where three Apollo astronauts were asked by none other than Sir Patrick Moore whether they could see stars while standing on the moon. Two of them said "No" and the other didn't reply.

If it was the 3 Apollo 11 crew members then only 2 of them had actually stood on it's surface !.

Nice reply to your Dad

John

[iancandler]

I'll never forget that day as long as I live.. I was old enough to understand what was going on and the enormity of it.. you can imagine what it was like for a young boy who always gazed skywards..

[John]

I'll never forget that day as long as I live.. I was old enough to understand what was going on and the enormity of it.. you can imagine what it was like for a young boy who always gazed skywards..

Nicely put Ian

I was 9 years old when Neil and Buzz made the 1st landing. I can remember sitting in my back garden the evening they landed, looking up at the moon and thinking "wow ! there are men up there right now !".

John

[iancandler]

I'm glad I wasnt the only one staring syward in the hope that I would catch a glimpse of them..

[Sam]

I am absolutely fascinated by the moon landings - I was only a glimmer in my parents eyes at the time. The thing that stands out for me was that we stopped going there. It's a real shame that the political will was lost to keep exploring the moon but with the new plans coming out of NASA there's going to be some exciting times ahead! As for the conspiracy theory about the moon landings...... each to their own I suppose. It's amazing to think all of the stuff left up there during the Apollo programme will be in a moon base museum on day.

Sam

[John]

The thing that amazes me is that we went from the Wright brothers flight in 1903 (I was NOT around for that one ) to the firstmoon landing in 1969 - huge progress in just 66 years. What's not so encouraging is the seeming loss of momentum, at least for human exploration in space, since then. I do acknowledge though that robotic space exploration has continued to develop and achieve successively more and more since the 1960's. I guess the debate is Human V's Robotic exploration - but that's probably for another thread

John

[supernova]

:moon:

Well I taught my Parrot to say---

ITS ONE BIG STEP FOR A PARROT BUT ONE SMALL ONE FOR A BLOKE !!!

That gets everybody talking

[beamish]

If I remember correctly Sir P had the rare opportunity of meeting both the Wrights or one of them at least and of course the first men on the Moon .Now that's something.

[gromit54]

I've always been a bit of a conspiracy fanatic myself ( still think Lady Diana was murdered), however i have no dowt in my mind that the moon landings happened, I'm just not 100% convinced we saw the actual footage from the moon.Maybe some of it was done in a studio for what ever reason. The truth will out one day

Phil

[Talitha]

Many of the hoax enthusiasts weren't even alive when we walked on the Moon, and others were too young to realize what was happening in the global arena at that time. The Cold War and the Space Race were in full throttle, and the Soviets would have quickly blown the whistle on us if we tried to fake the Apollo missions.

Btw, did you know that a robotic Soviet craft was orbiting the Moon when Apollo 11 was there?

Luna 15 launched on July 13th, reached the Moon on July 17th, and crash landed on July 21st.

Apollo 11 launched on July 16th, reached the Moon on July 19th, and lifted off on July 21st.

Google it.. it's pretty interesting stuff.

The Moon hoax is 'sensationalistic journalism', and the inventors (whom I refuse to call 'journalists') are very crafty at creating tales which depend on the gullibility of the general public in order to survive and spread. They're so set in their beliefs, that even if you sent them to the Moon to see the Apollo artifacts for themselves, they'd claim we faked THEIR trip.

"When you're sitting on the launch pad with a Saturn V strapped to your butt, you know you're going somewhere!"(Gene Cernan)

"We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity. There are a lot of things you can say never happened. You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the Moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened." (Tom Hanks)

[supernova]

The moon landings happened OK or if your dyslexic like me KO.

[Sam Bo]

I saw that programme too Andrew and was also convinced at first that it was a hoax. But they showed the debunking, scientific programme directly after and im glad to say that that was even more convincing. We definetly landed on the moon. Its a similar story to the Great Global Warming Swindle..completely lame on the science.

[Talitha]

Speaking of Moon hoaxes, this one didn't take long:

Chang’e-1 probe

[Stephen Green]

I remember the moon landings very well because my neighbours asked if they could see the Astronauts on the moon in my telescope

Stephen

EAS East Sussex

[tenbyfifty]

A while back I came up with quite a neat way of proving once and for all that men went to the Moon:

Back in the 60s and 70s there was none of the 3 dimensional data available to build an accurate terrain map

of the Moon, so given that we know exactly where the astronauts landed and today we have that 3d terrain data,

the photography from the Apollo landings should match up exactly.

You should be able to accurately reproduce in a 3d modelling program renderings of the moon landing sites which exactly match the Apollo photos. I don't think it was possible to do this back then so making a fake Moon in a studio that matched the real Moon would have been very prone to error.

Besides they probably wouldn't have worried too much about the technology of 30 years hence that could prove it was all a fake. They would only have worried about fooling the people around at the time.

Anyway, if it was a fake why did they do it 6 times!!!!

[supernova]

I have been to NASA, Florida, and seen the Saturn V and all the rest of the bits not used.

I do not have any doubt, the place is mind blowing.

The truth is over there.

[The Warthog]

I have walked through the Rocket Garden, and seen the big buildings, but I never doubted, from the moment the big rocket took off, that we went to the moon. The fact that some things look anomalous are proof to me that the landings were real. Nothing looks perfect in real life.

[Astroman]

Having visited Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and stood beneath the full-size mock up of a Saturn 5, it brings home the reality of the magnitude of accomplishment that was the Manned Space Flight Program. Along with the Saturn 5, Marshall has a planetarium for their astronomical society. The "theatre" holds ~100 seats and is housed inside one of the spare fuel tanks from the first stage of an S-5 rocket. The thing is enormous. Anyone that doubts we've been to the Moon should seek therapy, and perhaps consider a brain graft. Faking it is simply impossible, especially given the technology at the time.

[Tedward]

Bit of an avid book reader. Many recently have been the chaps that stood on our cheesy neighbor and the people involved. And on a recent Sky at Night CD, it was interesting that Mr Armstrong didn't see any stars but a Mr Cernan did. In saying that Cernan had to try hard and probably Armstrong was not too worried about it but more about other things, paraphrasing from the interview if I read it right.

On top of that is some superb reading from the NASA history section like "Chariots for Apollo"

Then the Google moon site. Its had a rather good update recently. No more cheese when you zoom in.

[The Warthog]

Then the Google moon site. Its had a rather good update recently. No more cheese when you zoom in.

Awwwww! It was the wrong kind of cheese, though. 'Green' cheese is unripe cheese, not Swiss.