Were the Apollo moon landings faked?

Question

I just read on Yahoo Answers where someone maintained that the argument that the the observation that stars do not appear in the photos taken by Apollo crews shows that the moon landings were faked is invalid in that the ambient light from the sun and earth would have drowned out the faint light of distant stars, rendering them invisible for the purpose of photography. However, I have noticed that there is at least one photo from the moon landings that does show globes of light that, for all I know, resemble stars. Does this latter observation, then, undercut the above argument that seeks to debunk claims of a conspiracy theory?

I've also read that one of the Apollo photos captured a rock with a letter from our alphabet inscribed in it? Do you believe in the authenticity of this photo? If so, do you think the this apparent letter was just an outgrowth of some natural process?

Answer 1

Well thats still controversial issue. Some people think that we never landed on moon. Also the photos and videos and quite suspicious. Have look into the video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1138935117048624484

Its upto you to decide....

Answer 2

Stars cannot be exposed on film with the short exposure times needed to correctly capture the sunlit lunar surface activities. In fact, you won't see stars in any picture of a sunlit object in space, for precisely that reason.

As for the photo that shows 'stars', and the rock with the letter on it, reproduction flaws are the answer. A star cannot appear in a photo, but a piece of dust on the scanner used to reproduce the pictures can. Internal reflections in the camera itself can also sometimes cause spurious points of light to appear.

The rock with the letter on it appears to have a C engraved on it. However, there are many arguments against that being an actual mark on the rock.

Leaving out the technical, no-one who maintains it is an actual letter carved into the rock itself has been able to come up with a decent explanation as to why they would carve such an obvious marking on something and have it in such a prominent place in the photo, then actually release that picture to the public at large with such a glaring error on it. This is actually quite common among hoax theories: NASA is at once sufficiently brilliant that they can pull off the greatest hoax of all time, and yet at the same time stupid enough to make schoolboy errors that anyone can spot.

Getting to the more technical aspect, one thing that hoax proponents never tell you (probably because they don't know) is that there are actually TWO photographs taken that show that rock with the C on it, and one of them has never appeared anywhere with the C present on the rock. The one that does have the C on the rock exists in two forms: with and without the C. Analysis of a high-resolution picture showed that the C was a small fibre that presumably was on the scanner when the picture was reproduced for publication. Apollo pictures have been reproduced many times, and it is a very rare thing for a hoax proponent to work from an early reproduction or anything like the original when 'analysing' the pictures. A low-res jpeg on a website is not a good starting point for a photo analyst!

So I believe the photo was authentic, but the C was nothing but a reproduction artefact.

Answer 3

The Apollo 11 crew brought a corner cube reflector array to the moon. It bounces back light like a mirror - except that the light is returned directly to where it came from instead of at an angle that is equal to but opposite of the angle that the light hit the mirror.

The corner cube reflector is still on the Sea or Tranquility and it can be used by anybody in the world with a strong laser to measure the time it takes for light to bounce back from the moon and thereby determine the distance to the moon.

However, people who want to try to convince themselves that the moon landings could have been faked, should see the IMAX 3D movie, "Magnificent Desolation" - In this movie, some of the moon walks were reproduced in high resolution 3D stereo in a studio. On the screen, the original low resolution footage is shown inset in the high tech 3D pictures. This movie really gives the viewer the sense of being on the moon, more than any other moving pictures have done.

Answer 4

We landed on the Moon, don't worry. How else could we get those shots of Earth taken from the Moon's surface? I heard that photo is the world's #1 most published and reproduced photo. How else could we get all those moon rock samples? I haven't heard about the moon rock with a letter inscribed on it, but I have an alternate theory for it, that moon rock IS a moon rock but it was later letter-stamped by NASA for inventory/catalogging purposes. Another thing, is that they had a live TV feed going when they did the landings, how do you broadcast a hoax worldwide in real time all the while not having any technical glitches? How did they mimick 1/6 gravity? We were there! End of story.

Answer 5

Unless they were faked in a vacuum, no, not faked.

You can't get dust to act that way in a non-vacuum. Watch the film of it. The dust kicked up follows a simple ballistic trajectory. Air would prevent this. It didn't.

Also those people that utilize a mirror left on the moon to bounce lasers off of (shot from earth) would be very confused that the laser light wasn't being effectively returned like a mirror would do.

The Russians monitored the radio and tv traffic from the landing, if it were fake, don't you think they would have raised the most amazing stink? Trust me, their scientists were quite good enough to figure out where the signals were coming from and if the time delays were accurate.

Use a little common sense here. Christ!!

Answer 6

It all depends on the prime exposure. If it were in very dim light, it might catch a very bright star. Go to the beach and have a riend face you. Note you r friend and all the stars behind them. Snap a picture ... voila no stars.

The argument for a fake was started by the Flat Earth Society to discount photo's of a round earth. Perhaps you should join and then join the conspiracy theory that Columbus never made it to North America.

Answer 7

I don't think the moon landings were faked. Just think about the sheer numbers of people who would have had to keep their mouth shut for the process to be kept secret. Astronauts, engineers, analysts, Congressmen who oversaw the budget the President, the camera crew who would have allegedly filmed the fake landing, the media people who broadcast the video of the moon landing and also the rockets blasting off. That alone makes me doubt it was faked.

Answer 8

I haven't seen the "letter" photograph, but for a very detailed discussion of the moon landings and information verifying that they did take place, please visit http://www.clavius.org.

Answer 9

One word...no!