Posts: 26 From: Garrison Iowa 52229 Registered: Jun 2009
posted 03-11-2010 04:20 AM
My son is doing a project in school about if we really landing on the moon or if it was a hoax. Are there any good websites for him to go to to do his research?
I told him that we did and explained it to him told him there we so many non-believers and I wasn't one and we had a long discussion about it last night.
Paul23 Member
Posts: 836 From: South East, UK Registered: Apr 2008
posted 03-11-2010 04:45 AM
Not sure about websites but I seem to remember Mythbusters doing quite a good program which debunked a lot of the hoax theories.
Rick Mulheirn Member
Posts: 4562 From: England Registered: Feb 2001
posted 03-11-2010 06:27 AM
Look no further than this posting on this very site.
I guess die hard hoax protagonists would insist this was also a con, photo-shop or some such. But shots taken that depict Apollo hardware and even foot prints on the lunar surface make a good starting point.
Lunar rock nut Member
Posts: 916 From: Oklahoma city, Oklahoma U.S.A. Registered: Feb 2007
posted 03-11-2010 08:06 AM
The best site is Moonbase Clavius. Everything he will need to read!
posted 03-11-2010 08:55 AM
Put "Moon landing conspiracy theories" into the Wikipedia search box for a great overview.
Spacefest Member
Posts: 1168 From: Tucson, AZ Registered: Jan 2009
posted 03-11-2010 12:16 PM
The best and most cogent arguments have always been on Dr. Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 51891 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 03-11-2010 12:36 PM
quote:Originally posted by Paul23: Mythbusters doing quite a good program
Indeed, they did. Here's our interview with them about the episode. It's out now on DVD; might be worth renting and even showing the entire class.
kennedyone Member
Posts: 26 From: Garrison Iowa 52229 Registered: Jun 2009
posted 03-11-2010 12:57 PM
Wow, thank all of you for the great help. Son should get an A plus for sure.
I think the American space program was an incredible undertaking and have loved reading about it from an early age. Thanks again for all your help.
kennedyone Member
Posts: 26 From: Garrison Iowa 52229 Registered: Jun 2009
posted 03-11-2010 02:32 PM
Was interesting talking to the son after school today.
He was telling me that they watched a film today trying to prove that the landing never happened and nothing to try to give the students an theory that it did. Sounds one sided to me and I can't even think of a teacher that wouldn't show both sides.
Funny how times changes what people think.
Paul23 Member
Posts: 836 From: South East, UK Registered: Apr 2008
posted 03-11-2010 02:58 PM
I remember a teacher at school doing a similar thing with us, he stood at the front of the class and said things like the Earth was flat, dinosaurs never existed, that sort of thing.
When we all laughed at him and said he was talking rubbish he asked us to prove it which of course none of us could. I don't think for a second he believed anything he was saying, it was just his way of getting us to think for ourselves rather than just accepting what other peoples told us.
tegwilym Member
Posts: 2339 From: Sturgeon Bay, WI Registered: Jan 2000
posted 03-11-2010 04:15 PM
It would be interesting to hear the students' opinions on this. Seems that from what I have read, there was a horrifying amount of under 25 years old people that don't believe the truth.
Spacefest Member
Posts: 1168 From: Tucson, AZ Registered: Jan 2009
posted 03-11-2010 10:30 PM
The major point that started all this business is that we could not have had the technology to get men on the moon. Given that 25-year olds see the frozen political and economic systems, and that we can't go today, they wonder how we could have had it so together in the 1960s and do it in such a short period of time.
I might doubt it too, if I hadn't seen it myself.
I'm sure the truth will become so plain, that it may become the most valuable lesson in critical thinking for these kids, and we could have generations of kids who don't believe every conspiracy theory.
Obviousman Member
Posts: 438 From: NSW, Australia Registered: May 2005
posted 03-11-2010 10:54 PM
Clavius is the place to visit, but there are a number of sites you can also visit.
Posts: 2339 From: Sturgeon Bay, WI Registered: Jan 2000
posted 03-12-2010 01:13 PM
A little off topic, but I did do a "Intro to the Night Sky" lecture last night at the visitor center of one of our city parks. Skies were to cloudy to show the sky though.
I did briefly bring up the hoax topic but showed a photo of the Apollo 14 landing site taken from the LRO spacecraft and commented that the hoaxers will have problems coming up with excuses now.
Spacefest Member
Posts: 1168 From: Tucson, AZ Registered: Jan 2009
posted 03-12-2010 01:31 PM
Of course hoaxers will claim continued NASA conspiracy, but that can be countered by informing them that it would take a multi-generational effort, and that LRO photos are received and processed by students at ASU, without NASA.
Besides, we already won the cold war.
mjanovec Member
Posts: 3811 From: Midwest, USA Registered: Jul 2005
posted 03-12-2010 01:55 PM
The problem is that logic rarely works on someone who truly wants to believe in a hoax scenario. They will always develop a more complex story to work around any logical argument.
At some point, I fully suspect they will claim those artifacts at the landing sites were later planted on the moon by unmanned vehicles to fool future generations into accepting the hoax. As crazy as that sounds, they will probably accept that idea more readily than they will accept the truth.
Spacefest Member
Posts: 1168 From: Tucson, AZ Registered: Jan 2009
posted 03-12-2010 04:24 PM
I think those people are in the minority, like flat-earthers. Those people will become oddities of evolution.
The majority of hoaxers are on the fence because of peer pressure. As they age, either they'll figure it out, or THEIR kids will rebel against parental beliefs (as kids do).
Either way. I see the hoax talk quieting down soon. Even true "non-believers" will clam up, lest they get laughed at.
Posts: 3811 From: Midwest, USA Registered: Jul 2005
posted 03-13-2010 01:23 AM
Well, the true wackos have moved on to other hair-brained ideas. So I think they will always exist out there, just in different incarnations.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 51891 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 03-13-2010 10:26 AM
quote:Originally posted by tegwilym: ...there was a horrifying amount of under 25 years old people that don't believe the truth.
Good news! A new poll shows children actually believe that Armstrong and Buzz have walked on the Moon, although there's clearly still some work to do.
According to one in ten children, it was Buzz Lightyear and Lance Armstrong...
BJWest Member
Posts: 38 From: San Francisco, CA 94110 Registered: Feb 2010
posted 03-19-2010 01:21 PM
One of these days I'm going to put up a website using the same "logic" and photo analysis techniques to prove conclusively that we've never been to Earth.
Jay Chladek Member
Posts: 2272 From: Bellevue, NE, USA Registered: Aug 2007
posted 07-29-2010 05:30 PM
Gotta love British humor for this one. Apparently it is up on the "Bad Astronomy" website as well.
gleopold Member
Posts: 32 From: Reston, VA, USA Registered: Jun 2010
posted 07-29-2010 05:57 PM
Irrefutable proof: The Apollo 11 landing site from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Not only can you see all four ascent stage footpads, but you can make out nearly all the human activity on the surface, including Neil Armstrong's little jaunt to the nearest small crater.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 51891 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 07-29-2010 06:00 PM
Irrefutable to those who are reasonable, intelligent individuals, i.e. people who don't believe in the hoax.
Hoaxers believe we faked the moon landing -- one of the largest, most complex undertakings in the history of humankind. They can easily refudiate the LRO data as being photoshopped.
Gregster New Member
Posts: 8 From: Rochester, NY, US Registered: Jul 2010
posted 07-31-2010 09:16 AM
While one may question his theories on other subjects, Richard C. Hoagland has helped prepare a comprehensive debunking of the moon landing hoax theory: Who Mourns For Apollo? Part I, Part II.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 51891 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 07-31-2010 10:32 AM
quote:Originally posted by Gregster: Richard C. Hoagland has helped prepare...
From "Who Mourns for Apollo?"
Let us be clear; we are all uniformly, unabashedly, "conspiracy theorists" here. We are 100-percent convinced that there has been a cover up by NASA of some extraordinary discoveries made in the course of the agency's 40-year year history. That said, one thing they did not do, unquestionably, was fake the Moon landings.
Credit for being upfront here, but one wonders why self-described conspiracy theorists need to defend the moon landings...
As you will see, some of these charges can actually be more easily explained not just by a complete rejection of the Moon Hoax theory, but a combination of conventional explanations and our own "glass ruins" model of the Moon...
If NASA is eventually forced to admit that there was more to the Face on Mars than meets the Eye, that maybe they missed something "the first three times around," or that there is truly something "ancient and extraordinary on the Moon" ... then it will be crucial to have thoroughly discredited the "conspiracy theorists" out there (read: us).
In other words, the argument being put forth here is that the moon hoax is in fact a government conspiracy to discredit all conspiracy theorists to hide... get ready for it... the giant glass alien ruins floating over the Moon.
With friends like these, who needs enemies...
Gregster New Member
Posts: 8 From: Rochester, NY, US Registered: Jul 2010
posted 07-31-2010 11:11 AM
Point taken. I see that this thread was started by someone who's son was working on a project. Had I thought more about it I probably wouldn't have included the piece in my post.
eurospace Member
Posts: 2681 From: Berlin, Germany Registered: Dec 2000
posted 09-09-2013 08:12 AM
An acquaintance of mine tells me over and over that the Moon Landings have been a gigantic fake operation.
I am trying with a paradoxal intervention: Yes, the Moon Landing by the Americans was a gigantic fake, and for the simple reason that America does not exist. The discovery of America was just a giant hoax by which Spanish Queen Isabel tried to cloak the endless pleasure cruises she was undertaking with her respective lovers (Christopher Columbus etc.) which cost the Spanish state a lot of money. A sort of diversion that still works today (such as telling people that spying all their e-mails serves to protect their security).
Now the guy is bombarding me with "indisputable evidence" that America would actually exist. Pffttt...
garymilgrom Member
Posts: 2131 From: Atlanta, GA Registered: Feb 2007
posted 09-09-2013 09:23 AM
Don't lower yourself to their level with your reply. Recommend a good book on the science involved like "How Apollo Flew to the Moon." If they're not convinced you may need to edit your list of acquaintances.
moorouge Member
Posts: 2486 From: U.K. Registered: Jul 2009
posted 01-27-2016 09:10 AM
There is an article in today's edition of the UK newspaper Daily Telegraph by an Oxford University physicist Dr. David Grimes.
Grimes has evolved a mathematical formula for how long a hoax will last based on the number of people involved. For the Moon landings, with an estimated 411,000 working on Apollo, he calculates that any hoax would have been found out in 3 years and 8 months.
Posts: 1784 From: Olympia, WA Registered: Sep 2011
posted 01-27-2016 11:29 AM
I've posted this elsewhere on this forum, but had to laugh while watching a scene from "From the Earth to the Moon" episode, "Is That All There Is" where Bean is messing around with the camera, to the right it looks clearly to me like a corner in the backdrop on the set way behind him. Somehow that seemed ironic for this topic.
My late Uncle (one of the chief geologists for the state of Florida in the past, and a well-educated and respected man) used to say they were faked, but I think he said it to come across as a "character" as he had a very odd sense of humor. Looking back, I now doubt he really believed that.
I served in the Army with a Sergeant under me who firmly believed it. We talked about it from time to time and really discussed it while sitting around one day at a gunnery exercise in the desert. I used pure logic and human behavior to turn him around.
He'd been in Desert Storm and I asked if they'd faked the use of fuel air bombs (they dropped a few right in front of him on the Iraqi lines before the ground war started), wouldn't that get out? He said of course it would because someone would have talked. I then pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people had their hands in the Apollo program and using his logic, several of them by then would have come forth or had deathbed confessions that they helped fake the landings.
Also, someone involved surely would have written a book by that point to make money for their kid's college fund or something like that. I also pointed out how gleefully the Russians would have busted such a hoax as they would have been able to track the flights and they said nothing, and the fact that people all over the world were tracking the flights. The Russians, for sure, would have loved to tell the world they tracked the missions and confirmed they never landed, yet they never did, in the height of the Cold War.
He mulled it over for a moment and said, "Sir, that makes a lot of sense. I never thought about that but you're right. Someone in the know would have said something by now, wouldn't they?" and that was that. He later said he felt foolish for even thinking that the landings didn't happen.
Tom Hanks was asked about conspiracy theories and he replied, "We live in a society where there is no law [against] making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity."
I would have loved to have seen Buzz Aldrin punch Bart Sibrel over this issue! Better yet was that nobody would prosecute Aldrin over the incident.
posted 01-28-2016 08:55 AM
This is terrible news...my Moon exploration collection is worth nothing.
David C Member
Posts: 1426 From: Lausanne Registered: Apr 2012
posted 01-28-2016 09:17 AM
I rather liked that, and I appreciated his brevity. What a character.
Wehaveliftoff Member
Posts: 2343 From: Registered: Aug 2001
posted 01-28-2016 06:51 PM
Why hasn't the space observatory (telescope) taken photos of all the Apollo landing sites to help refute the non-believers?
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 51891 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 01-28-2016 07:32 PM
The answer is both it can't and it has.
If by "space observatory," you mean the Hubble Space Telescope or any instrument on or orbiting around the Earth, then the Apollo equipment is far too small to be resolved.
An object on the Moon 4 meters (4.37 yards) across, viewed from HST, would be about 0.002 arcsec in size. The highest resolution instrument currently on HST is the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 0.03 arcsec. So anything we left on the Moon cannot be resolved in any HST image. It would just appear as a dot.
If by observatory, you mean any instrument pointed at the moon, then it has. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, in orbit about the moon, has imaged all six landing sites.
Ronpur Member
Posts: 1260 From: Brandon, Fl Registered: May 2012
posted 01-28-2016 08:07 PM
Of course, if you don't believe we went to the moon, you are not going to believe photos from a hoax spacecraft...
Solarplexus Member
Posts: 133 From: Registered: Jan 2014
posted 01-30-2016 11:03 AM
Gizmodo: Why the moon landings could have never ever been faked: The definitive proof.
SpaceAholic Member
Posts: 5322 From: Sierra Vista, Arizona Registered: Nov 1999
posted 02-15-2016 08:55 PM
quote:Originally posted by moorouge: Grimes has evolved a mathematical formula for how long a hoax will last based on the number of people involved.
"Science thrives on being open and gradually self-correcting, and a willingness to be guided by evidence rather than dogma," Grimes said in an email. This means criticism and questions are an inherent part of the scientific process. However, Grimes thinks conspiracies, especially large one, go too far and should be separated from science.
NJ CO Member
Posts: 23 From: Greenwich, NJ, US Registered: Mar 2008
posted 02-17-2016 06:31 PM
When I "debate" this (mostly at work of all places), I keep my position very simple in that I ask the idio... I mean non-believer this: Who were we racing against to get to the Moon? The response is always the correct answer.
And my simple reply is "don't ya' think they would've said nyet, we didn't do it"?
RichieB16 Member
Posts: 630 From: Oregon Registered: Feb 2003
posted 02-17-2016 07:04 PM
I have often wondered how many of these hoax conspiracy theories were originally inspired by the movie "Capricorn One."
posted 03-11-2010 04:20 AM
advertisement