Did NASA fake the moon landing??

Question

Please give serious answers.

Answer 1

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN TO PROVE, ONCE AND FOR ALL, THAT WE ARE NOT BEING TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NASA FILM FOOTAGE OF THE APOLLO MISSIONS. THIS WILL ASTOUND EVEN THE MOST HARDENED SCEPTIC AND CONVINCE MANY PEOPLE THAT THE WHOLE APOLLO MOON PROJECT OF THE LATE 1960's AND EARLY 70's WERE A COMPLETE HOAX. VIDEO LINKS ARE PROVIDED SO YOU CAN WATCH WITH YOUR OWN EYES THE 'OFFICIAL NASA FOOTAGE' THAT PROVES THAT WE REALLY HAVEN'T BEEN TOLD THE WHOLE TRUTH!!!

Answer 2

No - and this is NOT a serious question and hasn't been since before you were born!

Instead of looking for microscopic anomalies in photographs taken by cameras that had to be designed by guesswork for an unknown but certainly harsh environment (and taken by men who were obviously not professional photographers!), applying simple logic would make the correct answer as obvious as the Moon itself.

The country once known as the USSR would have LOVED to have had the ability to cry foul . . . but radar tracking doesn't lie, and the USA wasn't the only country at the time to have space tracking systems; the Soviet's Kama-E distance measuring system had a 100 MILLION km range in the mid 1960's. They used it to track the Apollo missions just like our NORAD systems did - and the only time anyone lost radar lock on the spacecraft was when it passed behind the moon.

In addition, it would be simplicity itself to build an accurate radio direction finding system to track the origin of the voice and telemetry signals detectable to anyone with a radio built for the frequencies used. A bright 10-year-old could build a simple one with readily obtainable parts even in the 1960's. Both the USA and the USSR had the capability to send very sophisticated versions of such units into low earth orbit by the late 1960's - and did. Such signals intelligence satellites (SIGINT) were used even before visual space surveillance was possible. Any such unit could not be fooled into thinking that such signals came from anywhere else BUT that big rock orbiting us 384,401 km up (+/- 5.49%).

Conspiracy theory buffs are all paranoid fools - or worse.

Answer 3

Im not really sure about this but i have seen the video which showcases the controversy regarding this moon landing. The points put up by those people and the proofs do make you believe that nasa had faked the moon landing and that the whole thing was shot somewhere in america.

But i do have a doubt about the whole thing.

So, can't say...if you get the video from somewhere, do watch it...it does set you thinking!!

Answer 4

i think the people that try to debunk the landing either are ,jealous,ignorant in science, cant think critically, hate the USA,or feel smarter. Ive read up a little on some of the debunking facts, kinda reminds me of conspiracy that the twin towers were demolished by high explosives,stupid. the flag "waved" be cause ive read it was made of card board or semi rigid material with a rod also along the top ridge of the flag so it would stay out and could be photographed. it looks like its flapping when hes inserting it,plus the film rate and shadows give it more "flapping" effect. there's another theory that the belt they passed through would have microwaved the astronauts, and yes it would have if they weren't going through it at only 20,000 miles per hour.

Answer 5

I'm amazed that people can be so shallow thick and slow about this. No NASA did not fake the moon landings.

Answer 6

I think the moon landing was real. After all, we've harnessed the power of the atom, can clone animals and thousands of other equally impressive feats. Landing on the moon, in the grand scheme of things, is impressive, but not a huge deal to me.

Answer 7

Seriously, the landings were genuine! See the source for lots of detail, including thousands of pictures, hundreds of video clips and complete, annotated transcripts of all the radio traffic.

Answer 8

Ugh not another one...
Honestly if you need an explanation as to why and how the moon landing happened, then you need to go back to grade school.

Answer 9

some people think so but NASA still claims that people did land on it.

Answer 10

Where have you been? It is after 6 in the morning, this question usually appears about 6 or 7 times time a day so you are going to have to get a earlier start than that.

As to what takes me so long to answer a question I have already answered a hundred times, well, I have decided to upgrade my standard answer and throw in a few more facts and since it wasn’t brought up, remove a few.

On Thursday, February 15th 2001 (and replayed on March 19), the Fox TV network aired a program called ``Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?'', hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. The program was an hour long, and featured interviews with a series of people who believe that NASA faked the Apollo Moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s. The biggest voice in this is Bill Kaysing, who claims to have all sorts of hoax evidence, including pictures taken by the astronauts, engineering details, discussions of physics and even some testimony by astronauts themselves. The program's conclusion was that the whole thing was faked in the Nevada desert (in Area 51, of course!). According to them, NASA did not have the technical capability of going to the Moon, but pressure due to the Cold War with the Soviet Union forced them to fake it.

Now, for this answer, we are only going to address the points brought up here and not all the other points that have been brought up before (we’ll save those for the afternoon crowd who will undoubtably raise them).

Flag waving:

When the astronauts are assembling the American flag, the flag waves. Kaysing says this must have been from an errant breeze on the set. A flag wouldn't wave in a vacuum.

Of course a flag can wave in a vacuum. In the shot of the astronaut and the flag, the astronaut is rotating the pole on which the flag is mounted, trying to get it to stay up. The flag is mounted on one side on the pole, and along the top by another pole that sticks out to the side. In a vacuum or not, when you whip around the vertical pole, the flag will ``wave'', since it is attached at the top. The top will move first, then the cloth will follow along in a wave that moves down. This isn't air that is moving the flag, it's the cloth itself. This follow the laws of motion set down by Sir Isaac Newton (you may have heard of him, I believe he was Fig’s cousin and Wayne’s uncle)

Many hoax believers show a picture of an astronaut standing to one side of the flag, which still has a ripple in it. The astronaut is not touching the flag, so how can it wave?

The answer is, it isn't waving. It looks like that because of the way the flag was deployed. The flag hangs from a horizontal rod which telescopes out from the vertical one. In Apollo 11, they couldn't get the rod to extend completely, so the flag didn't get stretched fully. It has a ripple in it, like a curtain that is not fully closed. In later flights, the astronauts didn't fully deploy it on purpose because they liked the way it looked. In other words, the flag looks like it is waving because the astronauts wanted it to look that way. Ironically, they did their job too well. It appears to have fooled a lot of people into thinking it waved.

This explanation comes from NASA's wonderful spaceflight web page. For those of you who are conspiracy minded, of course, this doesn't help because it comes from a NASA site. But it does explain why the flag looks as it does, and you will be hard pressed to find a video of the flag waving. And if it was a mistake caused by a breeze on the set where they faked this whole thing, don't you think the director would have tried for a second take? With all the money going to the hoax, they could afford the film!

One more thing, if the flag is blowing in a breeze, why don't we see dust blowing around too? Somehow, the conspiracy theorist argument gets weaker the more you think about it.

The next thing mentioned is shadows. Well, there are two thing conspiracy theory believers say about shadows, since the person here was not specific (you never have to be specific when accusing the government of anything, you just say shadows and everyone runs for cover) I will address both common points:

The next evidence also involves pictures. In all the pictures taken by the astronauts, the shadows are not black. Objects in shadow can be seen, sometimes fairly clearly, including a plaque on the side of the lander that can be read easily. If the Sun is the only source of light on the Moon, the conspiracy theorist say, and there is no air to scatter that light, shadows should be utterly black.

This is one of my favorite conspiracy theorists claims. They give you the answer in the claim itself: "...if the Sun is the only source of light..." It isn't. Initially, I thought the Earth was bright enough to fill in the shadows, but subsequently realized that cannot be the case. The Earth is a fraction of the brightness of the Sun, not nearly enough to fill in the shadows. So then what is that other light source?

The answer is: The Moon itself. Surprise! The lunar dust has a peculiar property: it tends to reflect light back in the direction from where it came. So if you were to stand on the Moon and shine a flashlight at the surface, you would see a very bright spot where the light hits the ground, but, oddly, someone standing a bit to the side would hardly see it at all. The light is preferentially reflected back toward the flashlight (and therefore you), and not the person on the side.

Now think about the sunlight. Let's say the sun is off to the right in a picture. It is illuminating the right side of the lander, and the left is in shadow. However, the sunlight falling beyond the lander on the left is being reflected back toward the Sun. That light hits the surface and reflects to the right and up, directly onto the shadowed part of the lander. In other words, the lunar surface is so bright that it easily lights up the shadows of vertical surfaces.

This effect is called heiligenschein (the German word for halo). You can find some neat images of it at here, for example. This also explains another Conspiracy theorists claim, that many times the astronauts appear to be standing in a spotlight. This is a natural effect of heiligenschein. You can reproduce this effect yourself; wet grass on a cool morning will do it. Face away from the Sun and look at the shadow of your head. There will be a halo around it. The effect is also very strong in fine, disturbed dust like that in a baseball diamond infield. Or, of course, on the Moon.

This is also the reason the full moon is so much brighter than the half moon. During a full moon, the moon, sun and earth are almost in a direct line so the light from the sun, reflected from the moon come almost straight back to the earth.

Another argument by the Conspiracy theorists deals with shadows. Several photos from the Moon are shown where objects on the lunar landscape have long shadows. If the Sun were the only light source, the program claims, the shadows should be parallel. The shadows are not parallel, and therefore the images are fake.

This is an interesting claim on the part of the conspiracy theorist, because on the surface (haha) it seems to make sense. However, let's assume the shadows are not parallel. One explanation is that there are (at least) two light sources, and that is certainly what many conspiracy theorist are trying to imply. So if there are multiple light sources, where are the multiple shadows? Each object casts one shadow, so there can only be one light source.

Another explanation is that the light source is close to the objects; then it would also cast non-parallel shadows. However, a distant source can as well! In this case, the Sun really is the only source of light. The shadows are not parallel in the images because of perspective. Remember, you are looking at a three-dimensional scene, projected on a two-dimensional photograph. That causes distortions. When the Sun is low and shadows are long, objects at different distance do indeed appear to cast non-parallel shadows, even here on Earth. An example of that can be found at a debunking site (http://www.apollo-hoax.me.uk/strangeshadows.html). The scene (near the bottom of the above-linked page) shows objects with non-parallel shadows, distorted by perspective. If seen from above, all the shadows in the Apollo images would indeed look parallel. You can experience this for yourself; go outside on a clear day when the Sun is low in the sky and compare the direction of the shadows of near and far objects. You'll see that they appear to diverge. Here is a major claim of the Conspiracy theorists that you can disprove all by yourself! Don't take my word for it, go out and try!

Incidentally, the bright Earth in the sky will also cast shadows, but those would be very faint compared to the ones made by the Sun. So in a sense there are multiple shadows, but like not being able to see stars, the shadows are too faint to be seen against the very bright lunar surface. Again, you can test this yourself: go outside during full Moon and you'll see your shadow. Then walk over to a streetlamp. The light from the streetlamp will wash out the shadow cast by the Moon. You might still be able to see it faintly, but it would difficult against the much brighter landscape.