Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Andy_Ross]

There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it's all dark.

If the dam breaks open many years too soon
I'll meet you on the...

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

...dork side of this pun.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Photographers had been taking pictures of the sunlit moon's surface against a black sky from Earth for generations before Apollo. Apollo 8 had carried its human photographers to just 60 nautical miles from the moon's surface.

It's hard to imagine how any aspect of the lighting conditions could have come as a baffling surprise for the Apollo landings.

 

[Foster Zygote]

It's amazing what googling "Soviet space program" and "US space program" will throw up, isn't it.

And BTW, the lunar module trainer(s) - cue the famous footage of Armstrong's ejection just prior to ground collision - were entirely different from what ended up being the lunar module itself (not least because the real LM operated in 1/6 Earth gravity). So, as so very often, you don't know what you're talking about.

ETA NInja'd by Jay.....

The LLTVs and LLRVs also made around 900 combined flights.

 

[jimbob]

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.

A former colleague is related by marriage to Michael Collins (aka)

the third guy who stayed inside the capsule

And her mum has a photo from the Apollo 11 families briefing room.

She is quite sarcastic* about conspiracy theorists (and not just about the moon landing)

*TBF, also very sarcastic in general.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

The moon's surface is actually very bright so simply taking a camera designed for earthly parameters - depth of field, focal point, contrast, etc., - is going to be extremely tricky on the moon,

If only NASA had recruited people with a proven track record of handling tricky gadgets (like, say, test pilots and/or engineers who had astronauted before), and then had them train and practice with said gadgets...

It's not hard to see why Allen was curious about the Apollo photography. Hardly makes him a scoundrel.

No, but *pretending* to be curious while making scurrilous accusations does make him one. Allen isn't actually curious. Had he been, he would have quickly found out that film had been regularly used in space by both the Americans and the Soviets throughout the '60s, for example.

 

[Vixen]

If only NASA had recruited people with a proven track record of handling tricky gadgets (like, say, test pilots and/or engineers who had astronauted before), and then had them train and practice with said gadgets...



No, but *pretending* to be curious while making scurrilous accusations does make him one. Allen isn't actually curious. Had he been, he would have quickly found out that film had been regularly used in space by both the Americans and the Soviets throughout the '60s, for example.

The problem is as I see it from Allen's POV is that the debunking explanations re his queries about shadows, lighting and dark skies seem to be on a level of insulting the intelligence of a primary school class. For example, Dr. Tony Cook in the OP video brushes it off by showing us pix of shadows going every which way in a local street and then we are given the facile, oh try taking a pic of the night sky whilst standing under a street lamp, as if the average photographer doesn't understand how lighting and apertures work. Please! I've taken pics of the night sky. No problem in catching the stars.

 

[Mojo]

Please! I've taken pics of the night sky. No problem in catching the stars.

How about the day sky?

 

[Andy_Ross]

The problem is as I see it from Allen's POV is that the debunking explanations re his queries about shadows, lighting and dark skies seem to be on a level of insulting the intelligence of a primary school class. For example, Dr. Tony Cook in the OP video brushes it off by showing us pix of shadows going every which way in a local street and then we are given the facile, oh try taking a pic of the night sky whilst standing under a street lamp, as if the average photographer doesn't understand how lighting and apertures work. Please! I've taken pics of the night sky. No problem in catching the stars.

Try taking one of the stars in bright sunlight without overexposing the actual subject of the picture.

 

[catsmate]

The problem is as I see it from Allen's POV is that the debunking explanations re his queries about shadows, lighting and dark skies seem to be on a level of insulting the intelligence of a primary school class.

Allen's idiotic questions are insulting to the intelligence of a primary school class.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I used to own a Mamiya 645/1000s. Wicked box, mounted a 2000mm lens on it and took a picture of a Ruissian cruiser captain flipping us off. It was mounted in Reeves' wardroom when I returned to the US.

 

[JayUtah]

The moon's surface is actually very bright...

No.

so simply taking a camera designed for earthly parameters - depth of field, focal point, contrast, etc., - is going to be extremely tricky on the moon,

Rubbish. There is no such thing as "earthly parameters" when designing cameras. Depth of field, focal length, and film response curves work just as well on the Moon as they do on Earth.

especially with thick gloves, limited head movement, resulting in limited field of vision - seems rather optimistic in 1969.

Did you watch the film? I explained how all those problems were solved.

Who remembers compact cameras? Awful! Absolutely awful.

Irrelevant.

It's not hard to see why Allen was curious about the Apollo photography.

If he were merely curious he could have easily found out the answers to his questions. Instead he pretended they were unsolved and unsolvable so that he could entertain his audience with lurid tales of hoaxes.

Hardly makes him a scoundrel.

Hardly makes him a scientist or a journalist.

 

[Pixel42]

If only NASA had recruited people with a proven track record of handling tricky gadgets (like, say, test pilots and/or engineers who had astronauted before), and then had them train and practice with said gadgets...

No, but *pretending* to be curious while making scurrilous accusations does make him one. Allen isn't actually curious. Had he been, he would have quickly found out that film had been regularly used in space by both the Americans and the Soviets throughout the '60s, for example.

A lot of conspiracy theories seem to spring from the belief that highly qualified and experienced professionals don't know how to do their jobs, and need to be told how to do them by random bozos on the internet.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Rubbish. There is no such thing as "earthly parameters" when designing cameras. Depth of field, focal length, and film response curves work just as well on the Moon as they do on Earth.

You and your 'physics'!

 

[JesseCuster]

Please! I've taken pics of the night sky. No problem in catching the stars.

It wasn't night-time when they were on the moon. It was very much daytime. And they were concerned with getting the correct exposure for the lunar surface, not for the sky.

You really havent a clue.

 

[Helen]

I don't think it's fair that we have Jay here, I think he should be made to argue with one hand tied behind his back. Or both. And his legs. And only get to use his brain once a week. In the night-time. Still not fair, of course. Can someone get him drunk? And asleep?

 

[kookbreaker]

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

Even Mitchell & Webb are calling you out on that one:

 

[JayUtah]

The problem is as I see it from Allen's POV is that the debunking explanations re his queries about shadows, lighting and dark skies seem to be on a level of insulting the intelligence of a primary school class.

Allen's point of view never rose above saying, "I don't believe it, I don't believe it." His questions were based on ignorance of basic principles. When you display the depth of understanding of a primary school student (or pretend to), the explanations to restore those basic principles necessarily sound elementary.

Your approach to purported authority seems to be that anyone who puts pen to paper is an honest soul just trying to get it right, or performing a valuable public service by holding powerful authority to account. Then anytime someone shows just how bad your authors are at basic research and basic thinking, you pivot to trying to shame the critics for "insulting" your brave authors. Marcus Allen wasn't a scientist or a journalist just trying to "get it right" or "ask the hard questions." He ignores basic principles and basic logic because he's trying to tell his own story instead of uncovering the truth. Yes, having to explain simple things to a grown man who should know better may seem like condescension, but that's not the critics' fault.

...we are given the facile, oh try taking a pic of the night sky whilst standing under a street lamp, as if the average photographer doesn't understand how lighting and apertures work.

Some people don't know how cameras work. Marcus Allen assures us he does, but then demonstrates he doesn't.

Please! I've taken pics of the night sky. No problem in catching the stars.

Post them, then, along with your ISO and shutter speed settings. Then take a picture of a sunlit object with those same settings and see what you get.

The sky in Apollo photos is not the night sky. It's the day sky. The settings you need to use to photograph sunlit objects will not capture stars. I demonstrated this in the video, if you recall.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The problem is as I see it from Allen's POV is that the debunking explanations re his queries about shadows, lighting and dark skies seem to be on a level of insulting the intelligence of a primary school class. For example, Dr. Tony Cook in the OP video brushes it off by showing us pix of shadows going every which way in a local street and then we are given the facile, oh try taking a pic of the night sky whilst standing under a street lamp, as if the average photographer doesn't understand how lighting and apertures work. Please! I've taken pics of the night sky. No problem in catching the stars.

Your mistake here is thinking the Apollo photos were night photography. They were not. It was full daylight. The sky was black instead of blue due to the lack of an atmosphere, but otherwise the exposure was set for objects in full sunlight.

If you set your camera for daylight photography, then come back out at night and take a picture of the stars without changing the exposure, you won't see any stars in your photo. It's as simple as that. An experienced photographer would completely understand that and I am not inclined to believe he simply didn't grasp it.

 

[JayUtah]

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_760118

Funny story. So we're out in the desert at night with the camera. This was the same location, by the way, as the God Planet in Star Trek V. I have the Apollo-modified Hassy, which was one of the backup cameras for Apollo 14. The lens cap was connected to the body by a little chain and screw. The cap kept swinging around and hitting the camera body, and the sound guy said it was wrecking the audio. So we went to take off the cap and chain and we dropped the little screw! Imagine trying to find a tiny little screw on the desert floor with nothing but a single studio light. We thought we had lost part of a priceless historic artifact. Luckily the grips had a screw in their truck that was the right size.