Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Skip past the sensationalism and get to the part where experts debunk the claims. That show is ultimately not a pro-hoax program.

Either way I don't need to be convinced. Surely we can stick a fork in this by now?

Meanwhile I'm watching
There must be something masking the satellite cameras.

 

[JayUtah]

Either way I don't need to be convinced.

Nor does anyone who actually knows anything about space, photography, or any of the other topics covered in the video. All the hoax claims are based on rather easily demonstrated errors of fact.

Surely we can stick a fork in this by now?

You'd think, but some people just love lazily clinging to the notion that believing in conspiracy theories somehow makes them smart.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Sounds like another video I'm glad I've ignored.

 

[JayUtah]

Sounds like another video I'm glad I've ignored.

It has some good bits. But the whole topic, and thus the need for those bits, is an exercise in egregious ignorance. I get that not everyone can work through the AE-8 and AP-8 models for trapped radiation, or can work out the attenuation values for a 7 g⋅cm^-2 shielding factor. But anyone can go outside and look at shadows.

 

[Helen]

I'm sorry but I could only watch a few minutes of this ◊◊◊◊.

For the landings to be a HOAX you have to explain (at the very least) why the USSR went along with and how NASA expected not to be exposed if hey did not get everything correct about the Lunar conditions.

I recently said something like that to a denier on a Swedish forum, and was told to wake up, and that all countries are ruled by an international elite, so they were all in on the hoax. I didn't stick around to ask why this elite wanted to fool us all; somehow i doubted that the answer would have made anything clearer...

 

[Norman Alexander]

Wasn't this whole subject debunked in July 1969?

 

[The Common Potato]

There's a UAP in Scunthorpe! (as surely as a man walks into a Tesco)

 

[welshdean]

There's a UAP in Scunthorpe! (as surely as a man walks into a Tesco)


View attachment 71121

What am I supposed to be looking at?

 

[lionking]

What am I supposed to be looking at?

Somebody who drinks disgusting cardboard wine,

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Wasn't this whole subject debunked in July 1969?

I was in boot camp. We "watched" the landing on a TV with rabbit ears in our company lounge. Didn't see ◊◊◊◊, but we knew we'd landed on the Moon.

Lunatic trivia: The "computer screens" Mission Control was watching were actually the same kind of board they used to use for menus at my high school. Plastic letters stuck on the board. The guys in MC were looking at TV screens, computer screens. The number crunching was often done by sliderule or early calculators.

 

[Vixen]

I'm sorry but I could only watch a few minutes of this ◊◊◊◊.

For the landings to be a HOAX you have to explain (at the very least) why the USSR went along with and how NASA expected not to be exposed if hey did not get everything correct about the Lunar conditions.

The argument: 'How come the Russians didn't spot it if it was a hoax' is one of the weaker debunks. The USSR President at the time was Leonid Brezhnev who was more preoccupied in building up USSR military due to intense border conflicts with China and doing the usual schtick of invading Czechoslovakia. I wouldn't give much credence to their levels of technology despite their space explorations. Before a friend's dad set up Finnair*, we used to have to fly on Aeroflot (Russian airline) with bits of plaster falling off the ceiling mid-flight, air stewards looking terrified and yours truly with a perforated eardrum. In any case, the Russians/Soviets are hardly renowned for press integrity themselves. What do you notice in this photograph of two newspaper headlines: one announcing Brehznev's death in 1982, and Andropov's in 1984?

fbi spy museum by Username Vixen, on Flickr


Yes, the articles are identical, with just a name and photo change. (Taken last year at the FBI Museum - actually a hotel - in Tallinn, Estonia.)

So, no, the USSR not 'exposing' it, proves nothing at all. Weaver, in the video, suggests they were 'afraid of showing sour grapes'. Again, pretty lame. Most likely, it never crossed their minds it could be a hoax.

*ETA Finnair Oy set up in 1968; the first Finnair founded in 1923.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Does the video or whatever explain away the radar returns from multiple countries, moving object that bounced a return from, oh, say, around the Moon?

No, but it does interview a former student at the Jodrell Bank, who described how they had listened in on the Astronauts half of the earth-moon communications, picking up the signal directly from the moon with the Lovell Telescope.

 

[Vixen]

[spoiler alert] It ends by saying it would have been easier to actually do it than fake it.

Though I know what you mean. It's agonising to watch the cranks regurgitate their specious claims.

Again, the argument, 'it would have been easier to actually do it than fake it', is a weak one, not dissimilar and on a par with the exhortation: 'Trust me'. The NASA scientists in 1969 hardly had crystal balls whereby they had no idea men walking on the moon hadn't happened again some 55 years later, in their scramble to be first. Okay, so the remit of Artemis II was to circumvent the moon and film its dark side. But why not send a couple of guys to hop off on the way? OK, so the moon is not habitable, but even so...57 years...

 

[Vixen]

The relevant experts are closer than you might think.


It's worth nothing that he passed, and that he was an avowed Moon landing denier. His death doesn't reinvigorate claims or evidence that were provably wrong when he first made them, and proven wrong between when he first made them and when they were captured for the program.

Then again it’s not clear that this muck is being dredged up again because Allen’s death is timely or because Artemis II is timely.


The claims are the same old long-debunked nonsense. As I wrote above, the demonstrative portions of the program were made in 2003. The rebuttals are the same as they have always been, but in this program many of them are demonstrated live on video which had previously never been done. (This was made pre-YouTube.) For example, the presenter shows that it's not impossible to take good photographs with the Apollo Hasselblads without a viewfinder by demonstrating it with an identical camera and lens and then showing the resulting photos. There were a lot of other demonstrations showing that what hoax claimants want to say about light and shadow are just factually wrong.

Similarly in 2008 Mythbusters finally did an episode on the Moon landing hoax, doing even more great demonstrations.

Not to detract from the the achievements of Armstrong & Aldrin and the third guy who stayed inside the capsule, and of course, it is undeniably factual it all happened. However, I have a query: when the two astronauts clambered back into the capsule, via some kind of step ladder (..?), how did the capsule manage to take off again, and in the right direction? It's pointed out that there is more computer technology in one's smart phone than in the entire banks of computers at NASA at the time.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The argument: 'How come the Russians didn't spot it if it was a hoax' is one of the weaker debunks. [...] I wouldn't give much credence to their levels of technology despite their space explorations.

The Soviets sent unmanned probes to the moon and received photographs sent back by radio, before Apollo. So, however primitive you reckon Soviet science was, they definitely could, and demonstrably did, pick up radio signals coming from the moon in the 1960s. So I reject your handwave that they were incapable, or couldn't be bothered, to snoop on their superpower rival and see that it really was sending back radio signals from the moon.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Again, the argument, 'it would have been easier to actually do it than fake it', is a weak one...

I'm agog to see how you reached that conclusion.

Oh, no, wait. There's some fascination paint over there that isn't quite dry.

 

[Vixen]

I'm agog to see how you reached that conclusion.

Oh, no, wait. There's some fascination paint over there that isn't quite dry.

It's retrospective logic, working backwards, rather like, "'e couldn't 've dunnit 'cos 'e wouldn't've'", or "'But 'e can't be a thug as 'e helped an old lady cross the road'". In fact, it is not logical at all.

 

[grmcdorman]

What do you notice in this photograph of two newspaper headlines: one announcing Brehznev's death in 1982, and Andropov's in 1984?

fbi spy museum by Username Vixen, on Flickr


Yes, the articles are identical, with just a name and photo change. (Taken last year at the FBI Museum - actually a hotel - in Tallinn, Estonia.

No they aren't. The layout is similar, and headlines are similar, but if you look closely at the text blocks they have different paragraph sizes in every article. The vertical sizes also differ slightly. The only truly identical text I can spot is the headline on the lower left, but the body text is different.

 

[grmcdorman]

Not to detract from the the achievements of Armstrong & Aldrin and the third guy who stayed inside the capsule, and of course, it is undeniably factual it all happened. However, I have a query: when the two astronauts clambered back into the capsule, via some kind of step ladder (..?), how did the capsule manage to take off again, and in the right direction? It's pointed out that there is more computer technology in one's smart phone than in the entire banks of computers at NASA at the time.

Oh for FSM's sake. The ascent stage only needed to get in roughly the same orbit, and then radar was used to home in. Ground control also knew exactly where both the CM and LEM were (especially the CM via ground based radar). The computers were also specialized units that didn't have fancy graphic displays and the like; they were very well suited to the task.

 

[Vixen]

No they aren't. The layout is similar, and headlines are similar, but if you look closely at the text blocks they have different paragraph sizes in every article. The vertical sizes also differ slightly. The only truly identical text I can spot is the headline on the lower left, but the body text is different.

Okay. Fair enough. Here's a better quality version for those interested.

20251020_120946 by Username Vixen, on Flickr