Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[W.D.Clinger]

The thing is, Earth is not like-for-like re photography because whilst the Sun's rays on the Moon are incredibly fierce, by the same token, if you step into a shadow in that same landscape, you are in pitch blackness. As you know, here, we can be in a shade and still see.

Oh, do go on! Tell us more about how light behaves differently on the moon. Is it due to less gravity, or less atmosphere? Or some other phenomenon?

@Vixen is telling us she has even less personal experience with photography on the moon than she has with photography on earth.

 

[JayUtah]

...hundreds of thousands of Americans conspired to fake the moon landings and have remained uniformly and resolutely silent about it all these years.

David Percy thought he had an answer for this. Everyone else posited the "errors" in the photo record as mistakes or things that were just too hard to get right. Percy hypothesized that these "errors" were instead intentional whistle-blows. He thinks the people working on fabricating or altering the photos were doing so against their conscience, but feared speaking out directly because NASA would have them killed. He says these whistle-blowers left clues for future generations by intentionally introducing subtle errors that would pass unnoticed by the NASA handlers approving the work. Later scholars would see them and figure them out.

This is really no better. The scenario goes from,

"Hey Ted, I can't get these stars to look right."​

"Just leave them out. No one will miss them."​

to,

"I'm finished faking my photos, Mr. NASA Goon."​

"Shouldn't there be stars in the sky?"​

"Um.... no."​

The scenario still requires putatively smart people to be amazingly stupid when the story calls for it. It just shifts that to different people. But also in Percy's version the stakes are much higher because the second scenario ends with,

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you now."​

That scenario calls for NASA inspectors who are evil enough to put the fear of death into their underlings if they misbehave, and also stupid enough to completely fail at the one job they had.

Someone smart enough to figure out how to sneak missing crosshairs and wonky shadows past their NASA handlers is not likely to stop there. Yes, such people are said to fear for their lives in the story. But if they feel so strongly against what they're being forced to do that they're going to risk being caught (with fatal consequences), why stop at a subtle clue that might be missed by "future scholars" but caught by NASA goons. You have to do something so subtle that NASA goons will miss it, but that will be unmistakable to "future scholars." That's a narrow target to aim at with those strong feelings and your life on the line. Better to leave something else that will spring the trap after you're already dead and NASA can't touch you. Something like, "I'm the guy who faked the crosshairs, and here's the way I did it, and here is the evidence that it really was faked the way I said." But no, Percy's whistle-blowers risked everything for subtle telltales.

And what if "future scholars" found your stuff too early, say, in 1976 while you're still alive and maybe even still working for NASA? Oops, that's exactly what happened. Bill Kaysing blew the whistle on the purported whistle-blowers while Apollo technology and practice was still the only game in town. It was only a couple years after the last Skylab mission, which used Apollo spaceships and photographic equipment.

The real problem with Percy's whiste-blower hypothesis is that in order for it to work, the telltale "errors" have to be unambiguously recognized by future scholars as legitimate problems with the record. Everyone has to agree there should have been stars in the pictures. Instead we find that the "future scholars" who found them are invariably idiots and frauds. The purported "errors" aren't really errors. They're just things the hoax claimants are either too clueless to understand or too dishonest to report accurately.

"There are no stars in the photos. The people who faked the photos were trying to tell us something."​

"Um, no, any photographer can tell you why there are no stars in the photos."​

"Oh."​

 

[JayUtah]

What about the many thousands of people working for all the companies that designed and built the hardware for NASA?

@Vixen's alleged counterexamples fail because the vast numbers she's talking about weren't directly involved. The Lord Mandelson scam involved only a few individuals in government. Pointing out that hundreds of thousands of other people also incidentally worked for that government doesn't matter. Similarly tens of thousands of people in Tiananmen Square were directly involved in the military clearing operation, and hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens didn't know about it because they weren't there and can get their information only through tightly controlled channels.

When we talk about hundreds of thousands of Apollo workers, we're talking about people who were directly involved in building and operating Apollo. They are either competently doing their jobs to build a real Apollo, or they were faking it and have to be silenced universally for decades.

For example, were Grumman in on the hoax when the designed and built the landers? Their engineers built them to do the job.

That's the sticky wicket. If thousands of contractors were in on the hoax then you have to explain how thousands of those workers were kept silent. If thousands of workers were just doing their jobs to build an actual lunar lander, then you have to explain how you know it wouldn't have worked if they were doing the job right. Hoax claimants generally try to say that only a few higher-ups knew about the hoax and that the lower-level engineers wouldn't know they aren't actually working on a functioning spacecraft. Needless to say this is a pretty comically naive view of how engineering companies actually operate.

 

[JayUtah]

Oh, do go on! Tell us more about how light behaves differently on the moon. Is it due to less gravity, or less atmosphere? Or some other phenomenon?

Gee, if only someone had thought to go out into a pitch-black desert at night with one big, bright light at a 15º elevation and document what happens when photographing shadows and stuff under those conditions.

Nah—too lame.

 

[JayUtah]

@Vixen is telling us she has even less personal experience with photography on the moon than she has with photography on earth.

Indeed. And less knowledge of how light works in general, how gravity works in general, how temperature works in general, how numbers work in genera, how the solar system works in general, and pretty much everything that pertains to being able to figure out if space missions were real.

A big round of applause for our resident triple-niner.

@Vixen, if you don't want your level of understanding made the subject of discussion and criticism, stop making it the basis of your argument. If you want to talk about applied radiometry, don't pretend you understand it when you can't demonstrate that you do. Cite to some well-known authorities or perform an actual empirical demonstration that proves you understand it. If you don't want your ignorance of determinate statics paraded before the world, don't claim to be competent at it when you can't show that you are. I showed that I was competent not just by referring to my professional credentials and experience in the subject, but by demonstrating the proper way to solve the problem and to cite to an appropriate authority to substantiate that my solution was the accepted method.

 

[threadworm]

The thing is, Earth is not like-for-like re photography because whilst the Sun's rays on the Moon are incredibly fierce, by the same token, if you step into a shadow in that same landscape, you are in pitch blackness. As you know, here, we can be in a shade and still see.

Light still reflects off things and illuminates things not in direct sunlight.

 

[PSXer]

Sometimes light even reflects off of two bodies before it hits your eyes.

Earthlight - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[JayUtah]

Light still reflects off things and illuminates things not in direct sunlight.

We do have to acknowledge the obvious difference in that daylight on Earth includes blue-sky diffuse illumination. We count on this to fill in light in shaded and shadowed areas. And if we're paying careful attention to our photography, we know that this light is hue-shifted toward blue and preferentially filled with UVA wavelengths, so we take precautions.

Because we're used to this on Earth, we tend to think that all indirect light is the result of this sky fill. That's actually far from true. Reflected light from surfaces is also responsible for quite a lot of shadow and shade fill. You can demonstrate this to lay people using studio lights, etc. But experienced photographers have already figured it out. They know how to fill in shadows using white or silver panels to reflect light diffusely into places where it's needed. My set designs for theater have to account for lighting reflecting off the stage floor or set walls.

Although the front of the lunar module was facing directly away from the sun, you can see the shaded side in photos because it's 7 meters tall and thus has a view factor to the sunlit lunar surface to the north and south of the LM's shadow. The lunar surface preferentially retroflects, so you get even more light.

Shadow is different. To be accurate, shade is what happens when a surface is facing away from light sources. No light from the light source reaches it directly, so it's shaded. Shadow is what happens when something is between a surface and a light source. Sometimes the difference matters and sometimes it doesn't. But both require the viewer to understand the concept of view factors.

Shadows cast in sunlight onto the lunar surface often don't have a view factor to any other lit surface. This is because the shadowed surface is flat ground with a view factor only to the black sky, the sun being obscured by the object casting the shadow. Sometimes the shaded side of the shadow-casting object will be indirectly lit, and this indirect light will fall further indirectly into the shadow. But this wasn't enough, for example in the LM, to allow detail in the LM's shadow to be easily photographed. The earthshine photo just posted above illustrates this—not only that, but earthlight is optically significant on the lunar surface. Earth was waning gibbous during the Apollo missions.

But when you go to photograph a shadow, it's possible for you to be the fill. If you're standing over a limited shadowed area, and you yourself are sunlit, you can provide shadow fill. This didn't happen too often in Apollo photography; most shadows are, in fact, pitch black. This is because the side of you that's facing the shadow is usually your shaded side. If I shoot directly down-sun, the shaded side of my suit is facing the shadow. Any fill into the shadow would need to be a double diffuse reflection: surface to suit and back to surface.

Here's Aldrin carrying some equipment.



The shadow he casts on the lunar surface is essentially featureless black. That part of the lunar surface has a view factor mostly upward. There's a partial view factor to him and the equipment, but to the shaded side of it. Therefore any detail that might be illuminated by the shady side of Aldrin's suit is lost in the brutally narrow Ektachrome exposure latitude.

But Aldrin is also casting a shadow on the equipment he's carrying in his right hand. You can see detail in this shadow because the vertical surface onto which the shadow is being cast has a view factor to the brightly lit lunar surface around him. Diffuse reflection from the lunar surface thus fills in that shadow.

This principle is widely known among all photographers whose experience goes beyond, "Point lens away from you for best results." Every photographer who has actually studied and practiced the art learns the principle of "filling in shadows" using these principles of diffuse reflection.

How to Modify a One Light Portrait Setup to Get the Look You Want - PictureCorrect

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www.picturecorrect.com

 

[Foster Zygote]

For goodness sake, it was a generalised comment in which I considered all eventualities such as different cultures using different measures both historically and colloquially but as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. It really doesn't change the thrust or substance of what was being conveyed.

Right. Like someone from Chicago saying, "Why, New York City is tens, if not hundreds of miles from here", because maybe people from Michigan say "ten" to refer to what everyone else refers to as "hundred".

There is no historical precedent for any English speaking culture using "hundreds" to mean what others call "thousands". As previously mentioned, it used to be common in the U.K. to refer to 10¹² as a "billion", while most other English speaking countries called it a "trillion". But that convention was fading out by the 20th century, and was officially dropped in 1974, so that for the entire English speaking world "billion" means 10⁹ and "trillion" means 10¹², and has for the last fifty two years.

 

[Steve]

Right. Like someone from Chicago saying, "Why, New York City is tens, if not hundreds of miles from here", because maybe people from Michigan say "ten" to refer to what everyone else refers to as "hundred".

There is no historical precedent for any English speaking culture using "hundreds" to mean what others call "thousands". As previously mentioned, it used to be common in the U.K. to refer to 10¹² as a "billion", while most other English speaking countries called it a "trillion". But that convention was fading out by the 20th century, and was officially dropped in 1974, so that for the entire English speaking world "billion" means 10⁹ and "trillion" means 10¹², and has for the last fifty two years.

Vixen is a child of the 60's. And remains there to this day.

 

[Foster Zygote]

See my analogy earlier about 'How come 550K UK civil servants didn't know about Mandelsson's vetting problems?'.

That line of argument doesn't actually prove anything. It's appealing to credulity. For example, 'If Tiananmen Square happened, how come none of the billions of Chinese people ever mention it?'

But, again, we're talking about the entirety of the fields of engineering and physics. Not just the people in them, but the entire fields of knowledge themselves. You're above analogy betrays the same mistake as made by the conspiracy theorists whom you're parroting. Namely that it's just the thousands of people who actually worked on Apollo having to remain complicit (still a ludicrous proposition) and not the millions (that's the 10⁶ million, in case you're confused) worldwide, who for the last half century have had access to the knowledge that should blow the lid off the hoax. The budding conspiracy theorist is left to infer that the nefarious conspiracy is so far reaching that it has secured the complicity of all the fresh physics and engineering undergraduates, all over the world since, at bare minimum, Apollo 8. To reference one of your earlier analogies regarding Santa Clause, the conspiracy theorist is left explaining how Santa can personally deliver toys to all the good little boys and girls in the world in one night.

 

[threadworm]

See my analogy earlier about 'How come 550K UK civil servants didn't know about Mandelsson's vetting problems?'.

That line of argument doesn't actually prove anything. It's appealing to credulity. For example, 'If Tiananmen Square happened, how come none of the billions of Chinese people ever mention it?'

The vetting problems that are now public knowledge just a few years after they were written down in memos?

 

[JayUtah]

The vetting problems that are now public knowledge just a few years after they were written down in memos?

That illustrates just how hard it is to keep a scandal secret in government for very long even when only a few people are initially involved. No, of course half a million U.K. public servants didn't know about it when it was going on. They do now.

...the millions ... worldwide, who for the last half century have had access to the knowledge that should blow the lid off the hoax.

There's no magic science in Apollo, nothing that a properly educated engineer can't understand even though he works in a different field now. It's just done really, really well with a prodigious budget. But there were no black boxes, no secret files that haven't been opened. We kept the astronaut debriefs confidential for 25 years, as is normal, because the astronauts divulged personal health information. That, and one radar experiment that actually had nothing to do with the missions, is all that was ever classified.

The Russians infiltrated Apollo and that's how they figured it it was going to work and that they should just give up.

And today absolute reams of the original documentation are available and are being actively pored over by practicing engineers who naturally are really, really interested in this stuff. If it's fake, sooner or later you're going to see that it's fake. But if someone can, say, get the original plans for the computer, actually build one from scratch, and actually run the software on it, it's really hard to argue that Apollo never would have worked or that modern engineers wouldn't know if it did or not.

The budding conspiracy theorist is left to infer that the nefarious conspiracy is so far reaching that it has secured the complicity of all the fresh physics and engineering undergraduates, all over the world since, at bare minimum, Apollo 8.

People actually claim this. They actually claim that the physics being taught today is somehow doctored to cover up for how Apollo would never have worked. And thousands upon thousands of engineers have embarked on their professions building life-safe designs with this supposedly faulty science.

It boggles the mind how frankly desperate some people are to believe that they're the smartest ones in the room.

 

[LondonJohn]

It boggles the mind how frankly desperate some people are to believe that they're the smartest ones in the room.

This, I believe, has more than a small amount of relevance to the "fiasco" side* of this thread.


* As opposed to the rather excellent "education & enlightenment" side of the thread.

 

[Foster Zygote]

The thing is, Earth is not like-for-like re photography because whilst the Sun's rays on the Moon are incredibly fierce...

No more fierce than they are in, say, the Atacama desert, Mauna Kea, or anywhere else astronomers like to put observatories - regarding photography.

by the same token, if you step into a shadow in that same landscape, you are in pitch blackness. As you know, here, we can be in a shade and still see.

Only if that shadow is isolated from all reflected light.

 

[Foster Zygote]

It's an egg - I watched the documentary.

It's only a model.

 

[Foster Zygote]

People actually claim this. They actually claim that the physics being taught today is somehow doctored to cover up for how Apollo would never have worked. And thousands upon thousands of engineers have embarked on their professions building life-safe designs with this supposedly faulty science.

It boggles the mind how frankly desperate some people are to believe that they're the smartest ones in the room.

Yikes! There must be a significant Venn diagram overlap between them and the "airplanes don't exist - those are demons" types.

 

[PSXer]

Airplanes exist, but the pilots have been secretly told how to navigate on a flat Earth, and managed to keep that training away from everyone who doesn't directly need it.

 

[jimbob]

So, if you stand in a shadow on the moon, you are blind!? LOL

◊◊◊◊ knows what the implication is supposed to be

 

[JesseCuster]

I said 'hundreds of thousands if not millions'. It could not be more clear.

I pointed out that your scale is WAY off, the planets never get remotely close to being within "hundreds of thousands of miles" to each other. They never get closes than 10s of millions of miles.

When this was pointed out to you, you tried to defend your hopeless out of scale numbers, with the following:

I said 'hundreds of thousands if not millions' to allow for the fact Brits and Americans don't always mean the same thing!

How does describing millions of miles as "hundreds of thousands of miles" "allow for the fact that Brits and Americans don't always mean the same thing!"

"Hundreds of thousands" does not mean millions of tens of millions, to a Brit or American, it never has. So how is describing tens of millions of miles as "hundreds of thousands of miles" allow for language differences between Britain and America?