Did we really land on the moon?

Question

When John F. Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon, we were in a race with Russia to lead space exploration. Scientific advancement in this area was a metaphor for which nations idea of civilization was most beneficial to the human race. In my eyes, it would have been more than possible to fake a moon landing at that time. Since then, I have heard nothing about lunar exploration until Bush's state of the union where he stated we would be back on the moon in 10 years, and on mars in 25. I bring up none of the conspiracy theories, only ask why in the age we are in cannot obtain a goal any faster than the 60's.

Answer 1

Back then, there was a goal to beat the Russians to the moon. Ever since the US achieved the goal, they have no more interest and stop.

Answer 2

Its been shown time and time agin, we did land on the Moon. would I additionally remind you that there became into 6 Moon Missions that landed on the lunar floor throughout the Apollo era. None of those Apollo Moon landing's have been hoaxed. i'm going to communicate and disprove the conspiracy theories you would be able to nicely be attentive to. think of roughly it logically; The spacecrafts have been extremely released by ability of NASA, that's difficult to faux. 2d the Apollo crafts ought to not have orbited the Earth for 8 days as lots of the conspiracy theorists have claimed. If NASA had of performed that they could have been caught on their lie, exceedingly in the event that they did it six situations. The Russians tracked the Apollo missions very heavily and that they knew for a incontrovertible fact that not one of the missions have been faked. in the event that they only had the slightest clue that the Moon landing became into faked it could have been the excellent propaganda weapon for use against the U. S. and to Capitalism. The flag waves via fact it became into planted in the soil and Armstrong twisted the poles. it is obtrusive via fact in different photos you will discover the flag isn't moving while he walks previous it. additionally the rationalization there is not any blast crater below Apollo 11 is with the help of the fact while the craft landed it decreased velocity upon landing on the Moon's floor, so all that it did became into blow away airborne dirt and dust. the comparable is with driving right into a carpark in view which you do not stress in at 30 miles an hour. Over 3 quarters of a million human beings have been engaged on the undertaking in finished. it could have been impossible for each a million of them to maintain a secret. Even filming the landing could have been harder than landing on the Moon itself. think of with regard to the style of human beings they might have necessary to shoot the Moon landing in a movie studio. ultimately if the Moon landing became into faked, we would have found out years in the past. those issues do not final 40-one years without an answer.

Answer 3

We screwed up. We fickle humans really have no idea what human civilization exists for and fail to grasp opportunities to advance, usually because we're scared of being responsible for our own future...IMHO anyway.

A moon landing could have been faked, and this of course is borne by the excellent lunar mockups and simulators that NASA created prior to landing on the moon, and the much better live TV pictures you could get of those (compared to grainy B&W pictures of Niel Armstrong's spacesuited behind.) But there are a number of pieces of evidence that show NASA did not fake the Apollo landings, the most obvious of which is the Soviet Union's perspective. If NASA had actually faked the lunar landings, do you think the Soviet Union wouldn't call our bluff? Not only didn't they, they abandoned and covered up their own huge efforts, including the most expensive Fourth of July fireworks show ever put on (more specifically the N1-5L launch test of the Soviet Union's Saturn V class booster, the N1, on 4 July 1969 (their time.))

There are thousands of witnesses to the launches who can't be muzzled, hundreds more for the recoveries (they can be muzzled, but it would be very expensive and unlikely to succeed) and most importantly, thousands of witnesses to some of the TLI maneuvers, which proved that the spacecraft were sent on their way to the moon. As civilians, they can't be muzzled. Finally, there are telescopic observations (including those of Apollo XIII's O2 tank two venting, the most distant) that prove the missions were on their way. No telescope can resolve the actual landers on the surface from Earth...at least not yet. Finally, Apollo XII's upper stage, thrown into a heliocentric orbit and rediscovered after visiting Earth in 2002. This strange asteroid was identified after telescopic spectrometers revealed it was apparently made of a titanium based white paint. It has since departed Earth again, presumably to revisit in a couple more decades.

A comment on a previous post: it's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, not Joint Propulsion Laboratory.

Answer 4

If you haven't heard of anything about resuming manned exploration beyond earth's orbit until Bush's speech, you weren't listening.

And as far as the idiotic conspiracy theorists are concerned, none of them has yet coe up with any real evidence that the lunar missions were faked--and they never will. For the simple reason that the lunar landings were real.

And common sense should tell you that. As you say, we were in a space race. Don't you think if NASA tried to fake it, the Russians would have said SOMETHING? Get real.

Answer 5

We have rocks that came from the moon, the ship carrying the astronauts was tracked by more than just nasa all the way to the moon and the reason we're going back is for a completely different reason than why we went in the first place. We first went to the moon to try to discover it's origin. (which we believe was from a collision with a mars sized planet that blew out debris from the earth into a disk that coalesced into the moon. The reason we're going back now is to explore the possibility of setting up a space station on the moon to observe the heavens(no atmosphere on the moon) and to use it as a leaping off point to longer missions (the first being mars) because launch from hte moon takes much less feul than from earth ( much less gravity)

Answer 6

It's much too costly to send a man to the moon today for no real scientific gain whne it's much more cheaper to send unmanned probes.

Also the space program technology hasn't progressed much since the end of the Cold War due to the lack of incentive and funding. Most of the funding that went into NASA were used for keeping the program running and not to develop new technologies.

Hopefully it seems like the private sector spaceareonautics are taking the lead here and are developing new and more cost efficent ways of space travel.

The idea that the moon landing was faked is mainly discredited and not taken seriously by most historians and scientists who've looked at the facts.

Answer 7

So $28 billion is way too expensive?? It's funny how we can spend $5 billion per month on war -- something that tears nations and peoples apart -- and not have money for the advancement of mankind.

I agree with you. The claim that "we'll do it in 10 years" only feeds my suspicion that we most likely did not go in the first place. That's why NASA is the shameful bore that it is now, lackluster and dull; too busy covering its lies.

We should've had a moon base long ago. The argument "been there done that" has no merit. This is not a family picnic trip to the Yosemite! It's the moon! Why build a space station when we could've had a moon station? Blaming it on money is a cheap excuse. Going back (assuming we went) and establishing a permanent base on the moon is only a natural step towards expanded space exploration.

Here are some news stories about how the original moon landing tapes got lost and found and lost again and found again. It's ludicrous.

(And get this....where were the original video tapes of the moon landing found?? Of all places, in AUSTRALIA!! Of course! That's believable!)

Audio Tapes related to moon landing discovered? Hence they were lost some time ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1552367.stm (9/19/01)

Lost Again??

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1715780.htm (8/2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4791883.stm (8/2006)

Lost Moon Landing Tapes Discovered?

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/818 (11/2006)


(Note: Those original tapes differed from the copies we currently have mainly in that the original were higher-quality pieces...and thus they could be used to give better data to verify the landings. It's hard to believe that the most extraordinary achievement of mankind could end up getting lost over and over again.)
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Just because people saw them "going up" and that they indeed "went up" doesn't mean they reached the destination. Naughty kids that skip school do indeed set out on a trip to go to school; whether they get there or not is another matter.

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Just because we have moon rocks doesn't prove that we went there and got 'em. We have rocks from Mars! Remember the big commotion a little over a decade ago about the probability of life on Mars? (http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9608/06/mars.life/index.html) Well that meteorite which contained that evidence was taken from Antarctica, not Mars... it simply fell to the Earth.

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Recently, a European spacecraft orbiting the moon was supposed to "kill" this "conspiracy theory" by simply photographing the Apollo landing sites -- a very good idea that I support.

But guess what?

According to these newstories, even though those sites were photographed, those pictures haven't been released... Well at least not yet. Note: It's been over 2 years since that story was released and as far as I know, those pictures haven't yet been released...

If anyone knows if they have been released, I'd appreciate them posting that evidence, for my edification, in order to finally put a nail in the coffin for this "myth."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7091082/
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-03-04-moon-landing-snoop_x.htm


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I'm not saying that I believe with certainty that the moon landing was a hoax. I simply don't know; I'd like to believe it happened. But I can't simply accept that it happened based on the good intentions of the people involved (or of the bad intentions of governments, local and foreign) nor on anecdotal evidence. Most people simply aren't trustworthy. Hence the need for verifiable, unbiased evidence. This is not a matter of proving that the landing never took place, its about proving that it happened. The onus is on the believers to prove it.

Still, I think the retroreflectors placed there are probably the best evidence. But those can be placed via unmanned probes, right? I just believe the opposition has some credible points that still haven't been resolved.

Dismissing conspiracy theorists by categorizing them as crazy and throwing insults doesn't prove anything. The truth should be irrefutable. I'll wait until 2008 for the trailblazer to put this matter to rest or until some real evidence surfaces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_moon_landing_hoax_accusations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings

Answer 8

At this time, returning men to the moon just isn't cost effective. For one thing, we don't have any boost vehicles capable of making the trip. Mars needs to be our next deep-space target 'cause we've never been there, and there have already been six manned landings on the moon.

Answer 9

I would say, "Yes." Problem "is" that we haven't done it "since" because those who went on the lunar mission came close to not making it. Even with the advancements in technology, the cost is not worth the "effort," just as it wasn't the first time. Spending billions just for "bragging" rights?, you tell me. It is why Nasa has involved itself in more productive endeavors since. Space exploration is more benefical when done by robotic spacecraft rather than subjecting men to long flights in space.........UNLESS in the future we find a BETTER and FASTER way to travel from one place to another in space......

Answer 10

Sure we did. But now its a "been there done that" kind of thing. When it was a complete unknown, there was great percieved value in every piece of new informnation.

After visiting there, the percieved value of returning goes down. How much are we going to learn from looking in every pothole that we can extrapolate from what we already know and can see from telescopes?

Familiarity breeds contempt. So the interest is in doing something new like visiting Mars but that would require a much greater committment of time and resources than the current economy warrants.