Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Andy_Ross]

It's very silly because you are assuming vision on the Moon is the same as that on Earth, when of course, our eyes have evolved to suit our unique Earthlyconditions (compare and contrast the eye of a bumble bee to that of a crepuscular animal such as a cat or a fox). When I go for a walk in sub-zero winter my vision soon distorts thanks to the effect of frost. The temperatures on the Moon are extreme, as is the brightnness of the Sun. Simply saying, oh they had special visors isn't really a debunk, more of a rationalisation.

Are you rehearsing your Edinburgh show?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Which animals?

Astronauts

 

[threadworm]

Of course, there will always be 'nutters'. But Trevor Weaver doesn't strike me as one. Simply calling someone names doesn't make them so. I am simply a member of the audience, as it were, evaluating the claims versus the debunks. To claim Kaysing, Allen and Weaver are idiots doesn't debunk anything, as they are obviously not. That is not to say they are right of course. Hence the debunking needs to be plausible and not just a volley of name-calling and sentimentality based on childhood memories of happy Moon Landings.

Nothing wrong with sentimentality - I am sentimental over lots of things. But fierce loyalty to a cause is not necessarily an exact correlation with reality.

Truth remains the truth regardless of argument.

Work on your reading comprehension. I didn't call them idiots. I called people who believe them idiots. The debunking is plausible, unless you're invested in the landings not happening and it turns out you're a failure, not the system.

My absolute conviction that the landings happened as documented has nothing to do with sentimentality and childhood memories and everything to do with actually verifying for myself what has been documented, rather tham the wholesale uncritical swallowing of a highly profitable grift put forward by liars and charlatans.

I've checked my facts and sources, I've found evidence few (if any) people bothered to even consider. You've barely managed to read responses in this thread.

 

[Steve]

Well, according to the (admittedly) incomplete list on Wikipedia, the 'animals' include silkworms, fruit flies and tardigrades. Oh, and humans.

There's a start, V, want to add to it?

Makes a person wonder how those things got to the moon, and back again. And if those can go to the moon and back why not humans?

 

[SteveAitch]

Makes a person wonder how those things got to the moon, and back again. And if those can go to the moon and back why not humans?

The tardigrades didn't come back - probably didn't even survive. Though knowing the awkward little buggers, they probably did, mutated and are waiting to eat the next humans who turn up...

 

[W.D.Clinger]

It's very silly because you are assuming vision on the Moon is the same as that on Earth, when of course, our eyes have evolved to suit our unique Earthlyconditions (compare and contrast the eye of a bumble bee to that of a crepuscular animal such as a cat or a fox).

Thinking the astronauts' eyes would, within minutes of arriving at the moon, evolve to suit lunar conditions would be every bit as silly as thinking the astronauts' muscles would be able to exert only a sixth as much force on the moon as on earth, because they would weigh only a sixth as much.

I doubt whether 0.1% of the world's population could be that silly. But @Vixen is special.

When I go for a walk in sub-zero winter my vision soon distorts thanks to the effect of frost.

OMFG!

NASA forgot to account for moon frost!

The temperatures on the Moon are extreme, as is the brightnness of the Sun.

Are you talking about the temperatures of air on the moon? Or are you talking about the temperatures of the moon's surface?

Did NASA forget to give the astronauts special sandals that could protect against those temperatures?

The sun's output of electromagnetic radiation is about 1361 W/m² at 1 AU. Because both the earth and the moon are at a distance of 1 AU from the sun, the sun's irradiation is the same for the moon as for earth. Earth's atmosphere attenuates that irradiation to about 1000 W/m² at equatorial noon on a sunny day. So the sun appears about 36% brighter on the moon than on the earth.

Simply saying, oh they had special visors isn't really a debunk, more of a rationalisation.

The special visors are a fact, not a rationalization.

 

[Lithrael]

(...) here is an image of the sun rising on a Moon surface dawn which was amongst the first to come up on BING. (...) it is digitally enhanced (...)

Vixen!! No!! Stop that!! I cannot pretend you are for real when you do that ◊◊◊◊. Please do not ruin your own game. I mean, if you're that bored that you want to play 'do they actually think I'm for real, come on' instead of whatever you usually play, I can't stop you, but it's infinitely less fun (for me).

(...) Because suppose you did 'cheat' and release studio pictures, then of course, you'd leave out the stars which could expose the location and time as being incorrect and (...)

No, if you were hoaxing the moon landings you'd do your best to make the photos you faked look like the Apollo photos look. With no stars. And that would be one of the easier details to fake. So, stars not being visible in the photos is consistent with both real moon surface photos and with moderately competent fakery.

If they put stars in the Apollo photos of sunlit subjects, experts (and amateurs) would rightly be all over them as incompetent fakes. It's a silly argument.

But not as silly as MOON MOON moonrise! You stop that! You're ruining it! *grumps*

 

[JayUtah]

Of course, there will always be 'nutters'. But Trevor Weaver doesn't strike me as one. Simply calling someone names doesn't make them so. I am simply a member of the audience, as it were, evaluating the claims versus the debunks.

Nonsense. As with every other conspiracy theory you trot out, you're firmly in the conspiracy camp—or whichever camp gets the grown-ups to pay attention to you. You don't have the relevant skills, temperament, or honesty to sit in credible judgment over whether people accomplished a technical feat.

To claim Kaysing, Allen and Weaver are idiots doesn't debunk anything, as they are obviously not.

No one said they were idiots. The claim was that any who believed them would have to be.

That said, you don't know any of these people. You had no idea who they were just a few scant months ago. Have you spoken with any of them? Corresponded with them? Directly asked them questions about their claims? Seen how they act "behind the scenes," as it were? No, you haven't. You're in no position to tell anyone who these people are or whether they should be believed. They tell you stories that help you drive your attention addiction, and that's why you're starry-eyed about them.

That is not to say they are right of course. Hence the debunking needs to be plausible and not just a volley of name-calling and sentimentality based on childhood memories of happy Moon Landings.

Then it's a good thing that's not what the debunking consists of.

The debunking consists of first explaining the actual science in contrast to the simplistic, made-up nonsense the hoax claimants tell you should be the case; then in actually demonstrating it live on camera for an audience. No stars in photos? I can easily explain why. Then I can take an identical camera and film and show you that I'm right. No name-calling, no sentimentality—just facts.

You couldn't be bothered to watch the video where I did that. Yet somehow you think you get to be the scorekeeper.

 

[JayUtah]

It's very silly...

Indeed, it's hard to believe this post was written by an adult.

...because you are assuming vision on the Moon is the same as that on Earth...

Nope. The function of the human eye in space was thoroughly tested during the Mercury and Gemini programs. No assumption necessary.

When I go for a walk in sub-zero winter my vision soon distorts thanks to the effect of frost. The temperatures on the Moon are extreme, as is the brightnness of the Sun. Simply saying, oh they had special visors isn't really a debunk, more of a rationalisation.

PPE is witchcraft?

I need to revise my thinking. I used to say that the "no stars in photos" was the stupidest hoax argument. There's a new contender: "The sun is bright, but it's pure rationalization to imagine that sunglasses would have helped."

 

[JayUtah]

At no point have I said humans could not have gone to the moon.

Are you conceding that the Van Allen belts etc. were not the problems you claim they are?

In any case the idea that polaroid raybans from Boots is just the thing for a trip to the Moon is patently absurd, no debate even needed.

Yes, most straw men need no debate.

Shielding the human eye against bright light, including ultraviolet light, is not rocket science. Sunlight is exactly the same on the lunar surface as it is in Earth orbit. Therefore it's possible to develop and test solutions before actually going to the Moon. People have been flying above Earth's atmosphere since the late 1950s. Yes, by 1969 it's possible to study the problem and provide completely effective solution. The notion that the lunar surface is a terrifying unknowable environment is just projection from ignorant people.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The tardigrades didn't come back - probably didn't even survive. Though knowing the awkward little buggers, they probably did, mutated and are waiting to eat the next humans who turn up...

They'll be wearing tiny silk suits, and then we'll know what happened to the silkworms.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Am I the one one who has had to lower their sun visor while driving at dawn due to the BLINDING SUN AT THE LOW ANGLE OF THE HORIZON?

Nope.

 

[JayUtah]

The sun's output of electromagnetic radiation is about 1361 W/m² at 1 AU. Because both the earth and the moon are at a distance of 1 AU from the sun, the sun's irradiation is the same for the moon as for earth. Earth's atmosphere attenuates that irradiation to about 1000 W/m² at equatorial noon on a sunny day. So the sun appears about 36% brighter on the moon than on the earth.

At sea level. Where I live, that attenuation factor drops to about 20%. Where I hike, the factor is only 10-15%. The sun is very bright. We wear AO Aviators and apply lots of sunblock. Solar radiation in and around the visible spectrum is the same in low Earth orbit as it is on the lunar surface. We've been sending pilots up into that environment since the late 1950s.

Way too many hoax claimants think that all the problems associated with space travel and lunar EVAs just sprang up unexpectedly and unknowably for Apollo 11, and therefore that solving them required some unprecedented effort.

The special visors are a fact, not a rationalization.

Nor was their ultimate progenitor, the Type P4 helmet introduced in the mid 1950s. It featured a smoked full-face visor to reduce glare. The same treatment was used for the space suit designed for the X-15, although that helmet used a fixed full faceplate.

What's different on the lunar surface is infrared re-radiation. We know the spectrum of light striking the lunar surface. But as the surface heats, it radiates significantly in the infrared spectrum. This makes your face feel hot. The smoked Plexiglas doesn't attenuate enough of that. The gold coating on the LEVA does. The attenuation factor can be measured on Earth in the lab. We don't need to wait for flight test to know that it works. The notable IR reflective properties of gold were well known to scientists.

That's not to say there weren't problems. The visor substrate is Lexan polycarbonate. While Lexan is highly impact resistant, it's soft and scratches easily. Apollo 17 scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt accumulated enough scratches to his visor that he found it difficult to see through. He was constantly raising it to get a better look at what he was doing, prompting Mission Control to order him to keep it down.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Thinking the astronauts' eyes would, within minutes of arriving at the moon, evolve to suit lunar conditions would be every bit as silly as thinking the astronauts' muscles would be able to exert only a sixth as much force on the moon as on earth, because they would weigh only a sixth as much.

Also, because of the lower gravity, light only bends about one sixth as much on the moon, so the refraction inside the eye's vitreous fluid would be all wrong.

 

[JayUtah]

At no point have you said that stars should not be visible in the Hasselblad photos. But you know it's true. And we know you know.

...and therefore that Marcus Allen doesn't know what he's talking about. He copied the claim from Bill Kaysing, who knew practically nothing about photography.

The point @Vixen made that you are responding to is David Percy's fallback. His book and video claim the astronauts never went to the Moon. The corrections from professionals over his factual and scientific incompetence was so withering that he tried to walk it back on sentimental grounds. He thought that if he conceded that at least some astronauts went to the Moon and relaxed his argument to say only the photography was faked, he could avoid having his head repeatedly handed to him over his evidentiary claims. It didn't work.

Percy does not believe in the "no stars" claim. Or rather, he advocates a different version. Percy claims to be a professional photographer. And to some degree he can demonstrate knowledge consistent with that claim. As such he knows about exposure and knows not to repeat the Kaysing/Allen nonsense.

As I wrote before, Percy does a sort of tap dance where he cites a mechanical engineer from Hasselblad saying that the Apollo film had two stops of exposure latitude. Percy then says that at least some of the brightest stars might show up faintly. Except that the mechanical engineer is wrong. He's an expert on the mechanical aspects of cameras, not the behavior of film. Ektachrome E-3 at ISO 160 has an infamously narrow exposure latitude of about half a stop. Since thousands of photographers the world over were using this very popular film stock, it's not something Percy (or NASA) could easily lie about.

And in fact Percy doesn't lie about it. In the section of his book where he claims the cameras would have been too difficult to operate and that the pictures are suspiciously good, he correctly reports the film exposure latitude as half a stop. He knows he has no reason to believe Hasselblad's engineer, but this is David Percy's m.o. He just says whatever he wants to be true to make whatever point is at hand and makes sure his books and video are too tedious and lengthy for you to notice the contradictions.

 

[Matthew Best]

Animals have been sent there so I dare say scientists will have looked into the matter.

Those weren't animals - they were humans in animal suits. I can't believe you fell for that one!

 

[Foster Zygote]

The context is, the 'Hoaxers' side claims that the photos were taken other than on the Moon and I can't see anything by the 'Debunkers' side that disproves this claim. So, if we for arguments sake take the claim seriously (that the pictures were a quick PR fix ATT to beat the Soviets) then the lack of stars, indications of secondary lighting, etc., supports their claim more than the debunkers'.

Ah yes, the "lack of stars". Remember when you admitted that it's impossible to photograph stars with ISO 160, f-5.6 and 1/125 sec. exposure time? I bet you wish you hadn't done that, because it must be awkward pretending you never acknowledged that fact.

And then there's the secondary lighting that magically doesn't cast a secondary shadow.

Your hoax proponents are no more qualified to evaluate the photographic evidence than you are, and you posted this thinking it was a real photograph taken from the moon:

Because suppose you did 'cheat' and release studio pictures, then of course, you'd leave out the stars which could expose the location and time as being incorrect

Except for the fact that if you can determine where the stars should be located, as an astronomer could, then you can determine where to place said stars in the images, as an astronomer could. And they wouldn't even need to worry about the positions of the stars relative to each other, because they'd be actual photographs of the stars, as I previously pointed out. Maybe the reason you keep painting yourself into corners with your own ignorance is because you actively avoid learning anything new from others, because you feel a resentment toward someone who knows something you don't?

But then this is all moot, because you can't photograph stars with a film camera set to take photos in bright sunlight. I know Jay is rethinking whether the "no stars" hoax argument is the stupidest element of the whole conspiracy theory, but it's got to be in the top three stupidest elements.

and likewise you would drill the astronauts involved in the operation on what to say at press interviews bearing in mind you know that in the future any mistake will certainly be revealed in the future, so when asked about stars they can't 'blag it' as NASA is aware any blagging would soon be revealed as such.

Or you could just let them answer honestly, because when your eyes are adapted to bright light, you can't see stars

That is the logic.

There's nothing logical about it, because yours is a conclusion based on ignorant assumptions, not physical realities.

Yet the debunkers can't seem to debunk this...

Vixen, we've debunked the living ◊◊◊◊ out of this. You just stick your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and shout "NAANAANAANAANAA!!!" to avoid learning anything new that contradicts what you already believe about your investigative genius.

(whilst it might be 'obvious bunk' to JayUtah and Foster Zygote, it doesn't follow it therefore must be 'bunk' if they have bought into it as Nixon wanted ATT).

Still pretending that anyone gives a flying ◊◊◊◊ what Richard Nixon thought about the Apollo Program, eh? You're just going to cling to that straw man like one of Harry Harlow's baby monkeys clinging to the cloth mother.

IOW they have a belief it happened because the press said it happened yet the only way they can 'debunk it' is to rattle on about 'the human eye' and rationalise (=philosophy not science) that the lack of stars is to do with normal technical issues that go with photography. However, these technical issues surely must have been known of in advance and with money no object, easily overcome, or at least attempted to overcome.

Are you really going to pretend that a human eye that's been exposed to bright light will be able to see stars? Surely you've been alive long enough to realize the absurdity of this self-delusion. You're just proving that you'd rather invent an imaginary reality for yourself than admit that yet another conspiracy theory you've hitched your ego to is made of nothing more substantial than sunshine and farts.

They were well aware of the technical limitations of the cameras when it came to photographing stars, and what would be necessary to do so. But they weren't there to photograph stars. And if they had done, they would have been photos of just the stars - no Aldrin on the lunar surface with stars in the sky behind him - because if you set the cameras up to take star photos, they'll massively over expose anything illuminated by the sun, like this:


So, again, why would they waste time from their very busy EVA schedules to set up specially configured cameras on tripods to take long exposure photos that would show nothing they couldn't see from earth?

And what technical issues were they going to address to make it possible to see stars with the naked eye while adapted to bright lighting conditions? Maybe a bionic eye, or some extremely advanced genetic engineering?

 

[catsmate]

Animals have been sent there so I dare say scientists will have looked into the matter.

Answer the question, if you can....

 

[Foster Zygote]

It's very silly because you are assuming vision on the Moon is the same as that on Earth, when of course, our eyes have evolved to suit our unique Earthlyconditions (compare and contrast the eye of a bumble bee to that of a crepuscular animal such as a cat or a fox). When I go for a walk in sub-zero winter my vision soon distorts thanks to the effect of frost. The temperatures on the Moon are extreme, as is the brightnness of the Sun. Simply saying, oh they had special visors isn't really a debunk, more of a rationalisation.

Please tell us exactly how vision on the moon (or in low earth orbit) is different than on earth.

You still don't understand the concept of heat energy in a vacuum. The problem the astronauts had to deal with in their A7L suits was keeping cool, not being cold.

With most people I'd just ask them to think about how a thermos works, but I'll assume I need to explain it to you. A theromos, or vacuum flask, has inner and outer vessels, connected to one another at their rims, and with a decent vacuum drawn in the sealed space between them. This limits any heat energy transfer from or to the inner bottle to mostly IR radiation, except at the rim/cap, where some conduction can take place. Since the process of transferring heat energy through radiation is slow, if you put hot coffee into a thermos, it stays hot for hours longer than if placed in a cup.

So no, extreme cold was not a concern, for vision or anything else. And the shades and tinted visors on the visor assemblies are still just as relevant to the lighting argument as they've already been.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Animals have been sent there so I dare say scientists will have looked into the matter.

No. Other than the twelve Apollo astronauts, no animals have been sent to the lunar surface.

You clearly have no idea what these "differences" are supposed to be. You're just looking for excuses to ignore the realities of physics.