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Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

This conspiracy theory nonsense is only going to get worse. Look at this AI generated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ I just came across on Facebook.
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With all the morons in the hoax cult already braying that images from the late '60s and early '70s are "CGI" or "AI", it only muddles things with AI generated "science" sources presenting this ◊◊◊◊ like it's authentic Apollo imagery. Maybe AI is being deliberately directed to make people stupider, or maybe that's just the unintended consequence of focusing almost exclusively on generating engagement with the AI. But either way, crap like this is definitely making people stupider. Especially the ones who are already dim to begin with and think that the simple act of replying "FAKE!!!" or "😂" proves that they're smart, like the kid who's already repeated two grade levels yelling "DORK!!!" at the kid with straight As on the playground during recess.
 
JayUtah said:
Next comes the notion that modern engineering students don't study the Apollo missions and generally don't know much about them. The conspiracy theorists can claim then they have done a deeper dive and can therefore speak with greater knowledge and understanding on whether Apollo was authentic. This fits well into the proposition that people cling to conspiracy theories to make them look smart.
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For a bonus point, can anyone point to an example of that backfiring badly?
 
Steve said:
Asimov also touched on this in several of the Robot novels.
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Even the Dream Park novels got it with a visitor born and raised on "Falling Angel", a colony on an Earth orbit satellite, having to do months of additional exercise in the community's gym to prepare her for our gravity and still having major issues with her knees. It's mentioned that their Earth born parents are physically better prepared provided they've kept up their exercise regimes but those that have failed to do so will suffer muscle attrophy over the years to the point they can no longer safely return to Earth.
 
Innocent fakes were a problem from the 1990s onward. When desktop image editing became common, lots of people tried to "sew" the panoramas together, or copypasted the other surface crew member into existing scenes. Worse, some of these were posted on semi-official sites such as the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. All this was done innocently just for fun. And in most cases they were labeled as compositions or "fun" pictures.

This didn't stop conspiracy theorists from pointing to obviously doctored photos and claiming they were "official" historical records. At best they would say things like, "NASA is obviously doctoring the Apollo photos."

People who were making these fun alterations quickly caught on and started labeling their work more carefully and segregating it from the materials that were expected to be the actual historical record. This is why we started to be so very scrupulous with the Apollo photo control numbers. If someone posted an Apollo-looking photo and asked debunkers to explain it, the first step was to elicit its control number to be sure it was an actual historical photo and not something cobbled together for whatever purpose.

That makes it extra bluff-and-blustery when @Vixen just started making up control numbers thinking no one would be able to tell. It would be like someone claiming to be a U.S. tax accountant trying to tell an IRS agent about "IRS Form 1776" (there is no IRS Form 1776) and then getting blustery and belligerent when the agent calls her bluff.
 
JayUtah said:
People who attempt a technical argument with me generally start out with the typical half-baked claims ("The spacecraft skin was too thin! Ahhh, radiation!") believing that they can bluster their way through the science. As soon as they find out that I'm an engineer and can see through the bluster easily, they usually pivot to saying I'm ideologically compromised first because I believe Apollo was real (circular) and second because I was trained by Establishment sources who fed me a line of technical codswallop designed to prevent me from finding out The Truth. I'm always amused by claims that there exists some secret true physics that only conspiracy theorists know, and that all practicing engineers are taught something that doesn't work—all just to protect Apollo. The delusions get pretty weird with some people.
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The idea that engineers have been fed propaganda and lies about Newton's Third Law always struck me as odd. Rockets exist. Engineers make them and have to know how they really work. If the textbooks are full of lies about that, when and where are engineers supposed to learn how they *really* work? It's not that hard to find out what texts engineering students use. If those are all full of lies, where are the real texts? I can't see Raytheon and Lockheed Martin being all that happy about having to completely retrain their new hires in the basics of *actual* rocket science from scratch, using their secret training manuals to undo all the lies Big Moon Hoax taught them in school.
 
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And then you get conspiracy theorists pointing to the non Apollo image, whether produced artistically or for deception, and pointing in triumph at errors like in the above image and feeling a rush of their own brilliance. And when you explain that NASA has never presented that image as a record of the Apollo Program, how many of them do you suppose will say, "oh! I see. My mistake" and move on?
 
Foster Zygote said:
This conspiracy theory nonsense is only going to get worse. Look at this AI generated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ I just came across on Facebook.
View attachment 72139
With all the morons in the hoax cult already braying that images from the late '60s and early '70s are "CGI" or "AI", it only muddles things with AI generated "science" sources presenting this ◊◊◊◊ like it's authentic Apollo imagery. Maybe AI is being deliberately directed to make people stupider, or maybe that's just the unintended consequence of focusing almost exclusively on generating engagement with the AI. But either way, crap like this is definitely making people stupider. Especially the ones who are already dim to begin with and think that the simple act of replying "FAKE!!!" or "😂" proves that they're smart, like the kid who's already repeated two grade levels yelling "DORK!!!" at the kid with straight As on the playground during recess.
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I especially like the "Lunar Module" sign. You wouldn't want the astronauts getting into the wrong vehicle by mistake.
 
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Reformed Offlian said:
It's good that they labeled it "Lunar Module". You wouldn't want the astronauts getting into the wrong vehicle by mistake.
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Normally it would say "United States" there. The Apollo spacecraft were U.S.-flagged, U.S.-registered sovereign vessels for purposes of international law and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Those markings made the sovereignty of the vessel immediately clear. The descent stages are not considered abandoned. Their official status under the Outer Space Treaty is "awaiting recovery."

This was also true of the space shuttle orbiters, which bear the U.S. flag and the legend "United States." The Orion spacecraft are also U.S.-flagged. The flags are not just decorative. They are legally equivalent to a literal flag.
 
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I am going to attempt to offer Vixen, should they ever return, an explanation. And will welcome corrections etc. by Jay and others.
This will be primarily in "Imperial" units, not so much because I'm a Luddite American (which I probably am) as because those units favor force over mass. And it's force that's important here.
My mass, in metric units, is a bit under 100kg. That's constant. It doesn't matter if I'm here in Port Townsend, on the Moon, on Jupiter, or in zero G. It's constant.
My weight is very dependent on where I am. It's the force exerted on my mass by whatever gravitational (and inertial!) field I'm in.
Here on Earth, I weigh, well, let's call it 210 pounds, because it's easily divided by six.
That's the effect of Earth's gravity on my mass. Every time I take a step, I exert a force of 210 pounds with one leg, just to keep upright.
Human legs are very strong. I can easily support a weight of 20-40 pounds more without even thinking about it. Let's say my one leg can easily push more than 240 pounds.
Now let's teleport me to the moon.
My mass hasn't changed. But my weight, the force exerted on my body by the Moon's gravity, very much has.
In my boxers, if I weight 210 pounds on earth, I only weight 35 pounds on the moon. Carrying a load, maybe I weigh 40 pounds on the moon. But hey, I need a space suit and life support on the moon. That'll double my mass! I now weigh (force, remember, not mass) 80 pounds on the moon.
Did my legs get weaker by being teleported to the moon? Of course not. If one leg could exert a force of 240 pounds on Earth, it can still do so on the moon. That's THREE TIMES the amount of force the moon's gravity is exerting on my mass. I can leap into the (non-existent) air!

Ratios? Ok, let's talk ratios. My legs are just as strong as on Earth. A ratio of 1:1. But the force they have to exert to move something vertically is reduced by 1:6! Whoopee, let's go to the moon!
 
Trebuchet said:
I am going to attempt to offer Vixen, should they ever return, an explanation. And will welcome corrections etc. by Jay and others.
This will be primarily in "Imperial" units, not so much because I'm a Luddite American (which I probably am) as because those units favor force over mass. And it's force that's important here.
My mass, in metric units, is a bit under 100kg. That's constant. It doesn't matter if I'm here in Port Townsend, on the Moon, on Jupiter, or in zero G. It's constant.
My weight is very dependent on where I am. It's the force exerted on my mass by whatever gravitational (and inertial!) field I'm in.
Here on Earth, I weigh, well, let's call it 210 pounds, because it's easily divided by six.
That's the effect of Earth's gravity on my mass. Every time I take a step, I exert a force of 210 pounds with one leg, just to keep upright.
Human legs are very strong. I can easily support a weight of 20-40 pounds more without even thinking about it. Let's say my one leg can easily push more than 240 pounds.
Now let's teleport me to the moon.
My mass hasn't changed. But my weight, the force exerted on my body by the Moon's gravity, very much has.
In my boxers, if I weight 210 pounds on earth, I only weight 35 pounds on the moon. Carrying a load, maybe I weigh 40 pounds on the moon. But hey, I need a space suit and life support on the moon. That'll double my mass! I now weigh (force, remember, not mass) 80 pounds on the moon.
Did my legs get weaker by being teleported to the moon? Of course not. If one leg could exert a force of 240 pounds on Earth, it can still do so on the moon. That's THREE TIMES the amount of force the moon's gravity is exerting on my mass. I can leap into the (non-existent) air!

Ratios? Ok, let's talk ratios. My legs are just as strong as on Earth. A ratio of 1:1. But the force they have to exert to move something vertically is reduced by 1:6! Whoopee, let's go to the moon!
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Excellent! Having just been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my right knee I would love to only have to exert 1/6 of the current force to move around. I will gladly join you on the moon.
 
Trebuchet said:
And will welcome corrections etc. by Jay and others.
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No corrections; that's an accurate explanation of weight versus mass, and of the invariant aspect of strength.

Sometimes instead of treating small objects and planets or moons as different kinds of masses, it's helpful to remember that the Newtonian law of gravity merely describes the strength of an attractive force between two masses. In that way of thinking you can say the Earth weighs 210 lbf in your gravity field.
 
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