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Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

As long as we're talking about progress outside the United States, we have to talk about Avro. When the Avro Arrow was canceled, its top engineers came to the U.S. to work on Apollo spacecraft. Owen Maynard and Jim Chamberlin come to mind.

Again these are named individuals, many of whom were—pay attention, dear reader—considered legends in their field. These were people at the top of their game when the game was being played at its best. Sure, it's easy to poke fun at Richard Nixon. But that's an ongoing distraction. These people with impeccable credentials and demonstrable success are the ones @Vixen says must either be lying or have been fooled by shadowy unnamed forces.

Or maybe they suddenly came down with "mean standard deviation" in the U.S. Can I get a "Shee-eesh!" for our poor contributors from the Commonwealth?
 
You need to up your medication.

Apollo was set in motion long before Nixon even thought about running for President. It was budgeted and paid for well before Johnson bowed out of re-election. Did he use the event to promote himself, and get his name in the history books (the one that will really count)? Sure, and good politician would have done the same thing, and landing on the moon was a huge deal. Hell, he hadn't even begun to bomb Cambodia yet.

Nixon was many things, but a strawman is not one of them.

A straw man of Nixon on Earth weighs the same as the real Nixon on the Moon. If properly stuffed.
 
I didn't say it was impossible. It was very much a PR stunt but I shan't try and disabuse you further as I know it is important to people to believe in it.

AIUI the plan is for a refuelling docking station.

You may not have declared it impossible, but you absolutely did imply it was ridiculous and that a cover story had to be cobbled together to explain it away. That appears to be based on absolutely nothing. Unless of course you'd like to have another try to explain yourself.

Disabuse me of what, exactly? If you had anything of value to say on the subject I'm quite certain you would have said it by now. Clearly, you have nothing.

May we take it you accept that your claim the ISS might act as an Artemis refuelling depot was just a flight of your imagination?
 
I didn't say he was either.
Then clarify your position, please.

Tom Kelly vigorously maintained that he built a working lunar module that flew to the Moon and landed on it. Did he do that or not? You maintain the technology "wasn't ready" for Apollo 11, but Kelly adamantly claims that Eagle, LM-5, was not only ready but functioned admirably as claimed and documented.

Was Tom Kelly fooled? Was Tom Kelly lying? Was his whole career nothing but the mediocre effects of "mean standard deviation?"
 
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My post #4192

"Artemis is not comparing like for like. For example, we have the ISS in place for refuelling and docking. We have digital technology, computer and sateliite systems a million times more advanced and developed than in 1969. The entire Houston computer servers of 1969 are equivalent to the entire technology you now have in your smart phone. Calculators were as thick as a brick. President Nixon claimed to have rung up the astronauts on the Moon direct from his White House telephone because he was too dim to realise there were no telephone wires on the Moon. Telephone all used to be by wires, remember. So a story had to be conjured up that er, his 'direct line to Apollo 11' went via bouncing around various radio stations instead. Well, it has plausible deniability."

So not wrong at all. Sorry to disappoint you. AGAIN.
"[To the uninitiated] Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

You can't even decide whether to commit to the argument that you accept the technological realities of transmitting voice communications through a network involving both land lines and radio, but reject it as proof of the Apollo 11 landing, or that you find the idea of said technology to be unbelievable.
 
I didn't say it was impossible.
You didn't say anything relevant to the topic at hand, which was radiation. You said Marcus Allen was confused about the difference between the Apollo design and what you now might correctly understand to be the Orion design. You blabbered something about radiation and the Saturn V and then ignored every attempt to get a coherent statement out of you by frantically waving your hands at Richard Nixon's phone bill.

AIUI the plan is for a refuelling docking station.
No, that's not the plan. And "docking station" doesn't mean what you think it means.
 
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I didn't say it was impossible. It was very much a PR stunt but I shan't try and disabuse you further as I know it is important to people to believe in it.

AIUI the plan is for a refuelling docking station.
Here's the plan: We're going back to the moon so we can launch to Mars from there.


And wait, there's more:



So while you're babbling conspiracy theories, NASA is hard at work doing super cool stuff. I know this bothers you, which is why I mentioned it.
 
@Vixen obviously isn't going to answer the questions I put to her, so I will put her out of our misery.

There is a clear statement as fact in the OP video that there are no stars in "Any Apollo photos". Any.

This is not true. Even ignoring the UV photos, there are several magazines of star photos taken in lunar orbit and in cislunar space. The person making the claim either doesn't know this and is making an argument from a position of ignorance, or they do know this and they are lying. I know that these photographs exist because I checked. If vixen supports that claim, then she has also either not checked, or has checked but is happy to carry forward the lie.

The other claim I pointed out is one that states NASA handed over topgraphic data to Stanley Kubrick so that he could make lunar sets on which to fake the photographs.

This is simply a conflation of several claims.

One, that Kubrick was somehow involved in faking the Apollo missions. There is absolutely no evidence to support this, and quite a lot to contradict it.

Two, that there was a moon set. There is no absolutely no evidence to support this, and quite a lot to contradict it.

The final element of the claim is that NASA had topographic data. This is partially true. NASA did have maps. Those maps were made using data collected by lunar orbiter prior to the missions. Those maps, and the photos used to make them, did not contain the level of detail seen in Apollo's photographs - details subsequently confirmed by modern probes. In one of Weaver's books he mentions the existence of models used to practise landing approaches. He even mentions a computer model of Apollo 17 made by Bell. The models and that computer image have never been a secret, and the enormous fly in the ointment of his argument is that the later models and maps were made using data collected by the actual Apollo missions.

I know all of this because I checked. I downloaded the lunar orbiter imagery. I bought copies of original lunar orbiter images. I checked the topgraphic maps and the sources they used, likewise the 3D models. I looked at what surface features were not visible in those, but can be found in Apollo photography. I downloaded data from modern probes, and built 3D computer models of my own to see how they compare with Apollo imagery. Vixen did none of those things. Neither did Trevor Weaver, but it didn't stop him making his statement as if it was a fact. It is not. All Weaver did was compile several claims made by others without checking them for veracity and then declare that "this is how what was done". Anyone who accepts that without checking is a gullible idiot.

Vixen is keen to remind us all about the premise of the thread: comparing the relative merits of two opposing sides of an argument. The problem is that she is not interested in looking at the merits of the hoax claims, she's just taking them as fact without questioning them, while at the same time expecting everyone else to question their own viewpoint. That's dishonest hypocrisy.
 
Readers of Dan Brown might very well need him to do that.
Speaking as an author, Dan needs to mention Mona Lisa's status. He can't assume everyone knows the painting and it's history, so he'll give it a sentence...unless someone steals it, then we get four really fast paragraphs on the history. I found this out the hard way when I mentioned a character was armed with an MP-5. I assumed everyone knew what that was as it's a common weapon, but no. So the fix from then on was to add "sub machine gun" the first time I mention the weapon to clue the reader in, and now everyone's happy.
 
As long as we're talking about progress outside the United States, we have to talk about Avro. When the Avro Arrow was canceled, its top engineers came to the U.S. to work on Apollo spacecraft. Owen Maynard and Jim Chamberlin come to mind.
Wait, so maybe Prince Phillip is mixed up in this conspiracy too. I smell a book deal.:yahoo
 
Seriously though, when you use terms like 'legendary' you are informing your reader how they are supposed to think. Rather like Dan Brown telling readers that the Mona Lisa is 'world famous'. That might work for teenagers but your telling us 'Kelly is legendary' doesn't actually settle the debate.
It doesn't settle the debate, but it does inform the debate.

Tom Kelly literally wrote the book on the Apollo Lunar Module. Having served as project engineer and engineering manager for the first manned vehicle to land on the moon, his life and work is an important counter to your efforts to misinform the debate.

@JayUtah also mentioned Maxime Faget, whom NASA describes as "an engineering genius, who developed many of the innovative ideas and design concepts that have been incorporated into all of the manned spacecraft flown by the United States."

Mentioning those two men did more to inform this debate than all of your efforts over the past two months to cast doubt upon the moon landings they and thousands of others worked so hard, and so successfully, to achieve.

No, I'm accurately reporting his reputation in my field.

You're the one accusing him of being either an ignoramus or a fraud. Was he also suffering from "mean standard deviation?" Tell your readers which one he is and provide the evidence that supports your characterization.
No, I haven't accused him at all. I am sure he is as legendary as you say he is.

Looks to me like he was considered no "mean standard deviation" by people also outside my industry. So, @Vixen, which is he according to you: ignoramus or fraud?
The floor is yours. Debate away. By all means tell us how incompetent the Grumman engineers were and what a hash they made of the F-14.

Or don't. I can't help but suspect you have nothing of value to contribute except further unintended hilarity.
I didn't say he was either. Dry your tears. I haven't knocked your legendary heroes at all.
Then clarify your position, please.

Tom Kelly vigorously maintained that he built a working lunar module that flew to the Moon and landed on it. Did he do that or not? You maintain the technology "wasn't ready" for Apollo 11, but Kelly adamantly claims that Eagle, LM-5, was not only ready but functioned admirably as claimed and documented.

Was Tom Kelly fooled? Was Tom Kelly lying? Was his whole career nothing but the mediocre effects of "mean standard deviation?"
 
The last Victors in service were the K2 in flight refueling tankers withdrawn in 2009.

View attachment 73487
One thing I particularly enjoy about that era of military aviation is that each nation's designs seemed to have a signature "look". U.S., British, Soviet - each had a distinctive aesthetic, almost like designs from a sci-fi series. The Victor is particularly British looking, to my eye.

It's hard to get much more Soviet looking than the early Tu-22.
Энгельс_Ту-22РДМ-18_фото_1.jpg
 
One thing I particularly enjoy about that era of military aviation is that each nation's designs seemed to have a signature "look". U.S., British, Soviet - each had a distinctive aesthetic, almost like designs from a sci-fi series. The Victor is particularly British looking, to my eye.

It's hard to get much more Soviet looking than the early Tu-22.
View attachment 73490
The Blackburn Buccaneer used by the Fleet Air Arm had the same crescent wing, high tail and 'area rule' fuselage as the Victor. It had a rotating bomb bay to keep the lines clean in an attack and a legendary low level capability.

1784050055912.jpeg
 
Had nothing to do with you abject ignorance of radio communications.

This is more stupidly, the ISS isn't used (for obvious reasons) for refuelling.
The ISS certainly is developing it, as I said.

Hydrogen and oxygen could be separated from water found on the moon then used as fuel. RRM-3’s cryogen replenishment techniques could be ued to refuel a spacecraft at Mars via in-situ resource utilization. Liquid oxygen maintains astronaut life support systems in space.
NASA Robotic Refueling Mission 3 - NASA https://share.google/vSjTR7aa7aYjQGxKy

Perhaps in future acknowledge I might be better informed than you.
 

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