Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Jack by the hedge]

Are you prepared to say that you do realise the Apollo moon photos are day photography and not night photography?

I note that so far, the answer appears to be no.

 

[JayUtah]

Whoops, erratum now corrected.

No one who knows anything about physics would think that K means anything other than Kelvin, or use it that way. The number you gave was for miles, to which K doesn't even remotely apply. We don't apply SI prefixes to EES or common English units. And "250,000K" would not mean two hundred and fifty thousand miles even if you interpreted the K wrongly to mean a kliosomething. That would instead be two hundred and fifty million miles.

Just stop pretending you know what you're talking about. You're fractally wrong.

 

[Vixen]

But you do need to say it. You claim you photographed stars with a film SLR. What was your shutter speed?

I'd estimate a good ten seconds on a tripod. Much longer than that and one would be subject to star trail due to Earth's rotation.

 

[Vixen]

No one who knows anything about physics would think that K means anything other than Kelvin, or use it that way. The number you gave was for miles, to which K doesn't even remotely apply. And "250,000K" would not mean two hundred and fifty thousand miles even if you interpreted the K wrongly to mean a kliosomething. That would instead be two hundred and fifty million miles.

Just stop pretending you know what you're talking about. You're fractally wrong.

It has been corrected to 250K because that is how we accountants speak.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Er, the sun rays on the horizon causing glare..?

how does a polarising filter help?

 

[JayUtah]

I'd estimate a good ten seconds on a tripod. Much longer than that and one would be subject to star trail due to orbit rotation.

15-30 seconds is more common, and yes you get rotational orbital motion.

Now if you photographed a daylit object using ISO 160 film and a 15-second shutter speed at, say, f/16, what would the picture look like?

 

[Steve]

15-30 seconds is more common, and yes you get orbital motion.

Now if you photographed a daylit object using ISO 160 film and a 15-second shutter speed at, say, f/16, what would the picture look like?

Something like this?: --->

 

[JayUtah]

It has been corrected to 250K because that is how we accountants speak.

Do accountants also frequently say 250,000 when they mean 250? If so, you don't get to do my company's payroll.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Erm no. Earth is protected the Moon is not.

How is it protected?
What is the difference in brightness?

 

[Axxman300]

Given these were astronauts primed by precise astronomical detail, it could be said filming the stars would be of keen interest, so the fact the skies appear blacked over and the crew of three avoiding the question, is understandably seen by those interested, as a deliberate policy, to avoid star-spotters from identifying exactly where the photography was taken. So I am curious to understand this, too.

Let me clue you in: MAN HAD BEEN LOOKING AT THE STARS SINCE PREHISTORIC TIMES. WALKING ON THE MOON WAS A NEW EXPERIENCE IN HUMAN HISTORY.

It's the equivalent of an American traveling to Japan, London, or France, and choosing to eat at McDonalds.*

Photographing the stars from the lunar surface would have been a waste of film, and time.

*I hear the Samurai Burger in the Japanese McDonalds is pretty good.

 

[Axxman300]

Sorry, are you assuming daylight on Earth is the same as daylight on the Moon? Oh dear.

Well, it's the same star, so...

 

[steenkh]

Of course it'd be of keen interest to an astronaut. My ex, who only did a double Physics degree because he became interested in astronomy, could point to the sky and say, 'There's Andromeda, or there's Cassiopeia...etc'. The idea you'd go on a 250K mile trip to the Moon and not care a darn about the stars is utterly bonkers.

This is the worst possible argument you could come up with. I can assure you that if I was walking on the Moon, I would certainly not be considering gazing at the stars, which I could do at home.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Of course it'd be of keen interest to an astronaut. My ex, who only did a double Physics degree because he became interested in astronomy, could point to the sky and say, 'There's Andromeda, or there's Cassiopeia...etc'. The idea you'd go on a 250K mile trip to the Moon and not care a darn about the stars is utterly bonkers.

The stars would be exactly the same.
Plus it would be bright sunlight, you wouldn't see them.
Plus you are there for a limited time with specific jobs to do.

 

[Axxman300]

This is the worst possible argument you could come up with. I can assure you that if I was walking on the Moon, I would certainly not be considering gazing at the stars, which I could do at home.

As I recall, the astronauts had a bunch of equipment to set up and test. I think they performed a couple of experiments (maybe not Apollo 11, but its been a while), but they had limited time outside the LM, and their primary focus was looking for a variety of rock and soil samples. To a man, all the Apollo crews wish they'd had more time to enjoy the view.

 

[Andy_Ross]

No, this has nothing to do with your imaginary pearl-clutching.

The reason you can't see stars in Apollo photos is plainly evident to anyone who understands photography. That does not include you. You tried to co-opt Marcus Allen's sensational claims to make yourself seem smart. You got caught. This has nothing to do with your critics' "value system," although your unwillingness to admit error does tell us something about yours.


You can't really see much of the interior looking through the hatch. Besides, what would a typical museum viewer learn about the authenticity of
Apollo by looking through the door? What would you expect to see or not see?

An Apollo command module hatch weighs 350 lbs. If you leave it open it's hanging on those hinges, not for the hour or so that the engineers contemplated would be needed to load and unload the crew, but for decades. Those hinges will fatigue, crack, and eventually fail. So you either have to shut the hatch or remove it if you want to preserve it as a viable museum specimen. Some like the National Air and Space Museum have opted to remove the hatch and display it separately. Millions of visitors get to see through the open hatch, since the ship is displayed tiled to allow for easier viewing.

Because of the deterioration we've seen over time, and because the burnt parts of the heat shield are toxic, most command modules are now displayed in a clear sealed enclosure. This is true of most other non-Apollo spaceships. The one on display in San Diego (Apollo 9 Gumdrop, enclosed in plastic) used to be in Michigan and was there displayed unenclosed with its hatch open. Because I was an engineer with special expertise in Apollo, I was allowed to climb into it and the curator allowed me to carefully flip one switch. (Anyone who knows their Apollo 12 history knows which switch that was.) It was very cramped and I had to be careful not to touch the couches. That's all that an expert was allowed to do. Now imagine generations of school kids spilling their ice cream, picking their noses and wiping it on the walls, and generally misbehaving. How long do you think those artifacts would last?

Adam Savage was involved in building a replica of a command module hatch for the Smithsonian

 

[Foster Zygote]

If I said I took night photos with an SLR then it is true.

The thing that sticks out about that statement is the difference between night time photographs and photographs of stars.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I'd estimate a good ten seconds on a tripod. Much longer than that and one would be subject to star trail due to Earth's rotation.

and yet you think the Apollo photographs should show stars.

 

[JayUtah]

This is the worst possible argument you could come up with. I can assure you that if I was walking on the Moon, I would certainly not be considering gazing at the stars, which I could do at home.

Bill Kaysing made that argument originally decades ago. And for decades people have just mindlessly parroted it with apparently no original thought. Kaysing wrongly believed the stars should be very numerous and very bright as seen from the daylit lunar surface. Turns out it's Kaysing who wasn't very bright, but the expectation persisted.

When asked, the crew reported that they don't remember seeing any stars from the lunar surface. To someone laboring under Kaysing's misconception, this would seem to be a very suspicious answer. According to Kaysing they should have been unmistakable and quite remarkable. We know why Kaysing's expectations are wrong, and it's roughly the same misconception that leads people like Marcus Allen wrongly to say there should have been stars in the photos.

Now we have to carefully distinguish those questions from the one Sir Patrick Moore asked. The Apollo 11 trajectory created the same opportunity as on Artemis II to see a manufactured solar eclipse. Moore asked the crew whether they could see stars under those conditions. Moore being an experienced astronomer and presenter, he knew that was a reasonable question. The crew could reasonably be expected to see stars during an eclipse with the sun taken out of the equation.

 

[JayUtah]

Adam Savage was involved in building a replica of a command module hatch for the Smithsonian

The last time I spoke with Adam was right after he had done this. I wanted to talk more about his build, but our conversation ended up devolving into talking about Apollo 1.

 

[Andy_Ross]