question regarding the moon landing conspiracy?

Question

First of all i am sure the moon landing happened. MY question is, why do so many people use the argument like "if technology is so much better now, why dont we go up to the moon all the time" or how could they go up to the moon when they didnt even have color television in most of the country. Don't people understand that some fields are easier than others? What does cellphone tech have to do with firing rockets?

Answer 1

People are spoiled by the incredible development of computer technology over the past 40 years since the development of the integrated semi-conducting circuit. As such they expect similar ridiculous progress in all fields. There has been some ripple effect from the development computers, but the rocket motors we fly today are essentially the same ones flown 40 years ago. Building new ones is less of an art and more of a science with the power of numerical modeling of fluid dynamics enabled by current computational power, so maybe we will see some significant development in efficiency in the coming years, however physics is the same so don't expect orders of magnitudes of change like the computers that design them.

I did a calculation once on the cost of the Apollo program in current dollars, adjusted for inflation, and it is something like 3 billion/pop.

Shuttle flights are cheap compared to that, and you hear how politicians complain about how expensive that is. We just don't have the political will to do stuff like that.

Answer 2

I worked 31 years at the company, Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which made the communications radios for the moon shot. So, if it was faked, as some knuckleheads think, why did they spend a very large fortune making just that small part of the vehicle? It was a major project, and a lot of people, including two members of my family, were paid to make complex comm radios just to fake a moon shot in a California desert? Where do they get these imbeciles?

I hired on right after the Apollo project was finished, I think. Later, we did make the glide slope computers for the Space Shuttles, and the original computers are still in use, due to the very expensive certification tests for space equipment.

Hey, that sort of disbelief is not unusual. My best friend, a liberal, wouldn't you know, thinks microprocessors were given to the human race by space aliens because he thinks no human could have designed anything so complex. Sigh!

Well, I started on microprocessors in 1974, on an area navigation computer for business jets. It was the PPS-4, a 4 bit computer almost primitive by today's standards, originally designed for cash registers by Rockwell.

I watched the engineers make peripherals for it, and it was one step at a time, and gradually over the last 28 years, computers have become very complex without exceeding human brain capacity at any single step.

It is true we do not have the capacity to put anyone on the moon. Not because we don't have the ability, but because all the hardware is scrap or in museums, and another shot would have to be built from the ground up, with billions spent just on safety certification procedures, since we would not use the old primitive designs.

NASA has a relatively limited budget, and years ago concluded they needed to do a lot of stuff cheaper than manned space travel. So, we send electronic packages to Mars and Jupiter, many such payloads for the same money as one moon shot.

I don't expect any such moon shot in the next 100 years, and it is strictly a money issue.

Answer 3

The Moon project was canceled by greedy short sighted people and replaced with the Space Station.
Kinda like Columbus after discovering America decided that a raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean would be better. A lot of it had to do with a Democrat Congress that didn`t want to fund the space program. It was a money saving solution without scraping NASA that is why we got the reusable space shuttle. This freed up a lot of money for tax give aways. Congress made the Shuttle underpowered so it would be less expensive freeing up more money. However now it was not able to reach the Spacestation and so here we are today still planning on one day having a space station half way between the Earth and the Moon. With a space shuttle that can`t get to it.

China plans to get there by 2015, they don`t plan to leave.

Answer 4

I always answer the question, "how come we haven't been back to the moon.." with the Concorde example.

The supersonic airliner Concorde was developed in the same era as the Apollo missions. It is now scrapped, and there are no airliners that fly at even half the speed of Concorde (600 mph compared with 1400 mph).

There are no plans to build a supersonic airliner.

Concorde was too expensive. Same as Apollo. Mass air travel has replaced speed. In space, robots have replaced manned missions for the same reason - money.

Answer 5

The retireslash guy above reminds me that most of these conspiracy theories, the moon, the govt behind 9/11, etc. would require an incalculable number of people in on the scam. It doesn't make sense that people are duped by all the conspiracy theories.

Answer 6

We don't at the present time even possess a rocket powerful enough to get a ship to the moon, and all the plans for the Saturn rockets were destroyed by NASA some years ago.

Answer 7

Don't know...but my Great Granny Barr always believed that the moon landing was faked...while pro wrestling (rasslin', as she called it) was real.