Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[P.J. Denyer]

Being ill is no clue as to quality.

Ill as a short plank to quote Shakespeare.

 

[GlennB]

Not at all. I can only imagine some people feel rage about a perfectly ordinary debate because they see it as a great opportunity to give vent to whatever it is they are unhappy about. Alternatively, they might have all kinds of insecurities. If certain people feel angry about
my intellectual interests, it really is nothing to do with me.

** giggle **

 

[MostlyHarmless]

I actually want to thank Vixen for this thread. We rarely have a good Apollo hoax thread anymore. I mean, I couldn't put myself out there as a misinformed goober in front of the whole board just for a the good of the conversation. I guess my ego won't let me denigrate myself in that way. So, good on you Vixen!!!

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Not at all. I can only imagine some people feel rage about a perfectly ordinary debate

This thread is not, and has never been, a perfectly ordinary debate.

It began when you posted a video of "deniers, such as Marcus Allen ~vs~ Dr Tony Cook of Aberystwyth University, explaining their arguments re: gravity, photography, shadow, wind, stars, radiation, craters, computers and lasers."

You did not make any meaningful claims until the next day, when you tried to attack the credibility of the USSR (which should have been easy) by saying two newspaper articles you had photographed were "identical", when they were obviously not the same.

Half an hour later, taking care "Not to detract from the the achievements of Armstrong & Aldrin and the third guy who stayed inside the capsule," you were saying "of course, it is undeniably factual it all happened." And then you asked "how did the capsule manage to take off again, and in the right direction? It's pointed out that there is more computer technology in one's smart phone than in the entire banks of computers at NASA at the time."

The following day, you began to talk about photography. You've been revealing remarkable ignorance of photography ever since. Who could forget "Apollo 11 took 123 surface pics in 151 minutes does the maths work?" Your discussion of photography only got worse from there.

You have posted hundreds of similar howlers. You have rarely gotten any facts right, and most of the facts you got right were irrelevant or altogether off-topic attempts to distract attention from your mistakes.

If this has been a debate at all, it has been a ridiculously one-sided debate. You are the only one who has tried to argue that the Apollo 11 moon landings were faked, and the ineptness of your arguments has been a reliable source of amusement ever since the first few days of this thread.

because they see it as a great opportunity to give vent to whatever it is they are unhappy about. Alternatively, they might have all kinds of insecurities.

No, they have seen it as a great opportunity to laugh at the deniers and their arguments.

Apart from their comedic value, your efforts here have served only as an extended demonstration of the intellectual and (at times) moral bankruptcy of the deniers' arguments. Except for you, everyone who has read this thread has learned some interesting facts about the moon landings and is now more aware than ever of how ridiculous it is to deny them.

If certain people feel angry about my intellectual interests, it really is nothing to do with me.

It is to be expected that denying "the achievements of Armstrong & Aldrin and the third guy who stayed inside the capsule" might anger those who honestly recognize their achievements as "undeniably factual", but your own efforts at denying those achievements have been so hilariously ineffectual that being angry at you would be like being angry at Mel Brooks for writing "Don't be stupid, be a smarty; come and join the Nazi party."

Your efforts at "debate" have served only to highlight the foolishness of denying one of the greatest and most inspiring technological feats of the twentieth century.

But if anyone really is angry at your "intellectual" interest in being wrong about almost everything almost all the time, it really does have everything to do with you.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Some posts in this thread make me feel like I'm trapped in one of those Borges stories in which all the purported "facts" and their supporting references and surrounding literature are actually totally fictional.

And then I read the posts by everyone else...

If only certain parts reached the sophistication of certain of Italo Calvino's playing with narrative structure or questioning the role of the author in such as Invisible Cities or If On A Winter's Night...But there is no such delicacy of touch nor wit.

Mebbe I need to go re-read Cosmicomics...Lem's Cyberiad...

 

[Axxman300]

I can only imagine some people feel rage about a perfectly ordinary debate because they see it as a great opportunity to give vent to whatever it is they are unhappy about.

But this has never been a true debate. We landed on the moon six different times, we had five Apollo missions that sent men around the moon to test equipment, and 13 couldn't land due to a catastrophic failure, and Apollo had three uncrewed flights before all that to test the whole system (Saturn V and its stages, etc), and sadly Apollo 1. You've chosen to back a losing horse with Allen and Co, and your "arguments" all center around Apollo 11, as if nothing happened before it, and nothing but Apollo 15 happened after it with those rooster-tail dust clouds you think the lunar rover generated. The Apollo 1 fire set NASA back two years. We didn't rush to get to the moon - we were late. And all of those Apollo test-flights added to NASA's database, and training of the crews was adjusted in real time.

There is nothing to debate, we went.

You could debate the space program's existence, or if the money we spent on Apollo was worthwhile (it was), and other issues that have actually been debated because there is no right or wrong answer. But to jump on board the Moon Landing Hoax CT is a fool's errand. Your source material is based on a book published by a company that also publishes books that claim JFK was murdered because he was going to reveal the truth about UFOs. So you can't swim in a cesspool and then get upset because nobody wants to stand next to you.

Alternatively, they might have all kinds of insecurities.

We are secure in the knowledge that Apollo landed men on the moon.

And insecurity is not being able to admit when you are wrong to the point of compounding your wrongness.

If certain people feel angry about my intellectual interests, it really is nothing to do with me.

It's not your interests, it's you unwillingness to learn...anything. Film, shutter speed, and now radiation has been explained to you in both simple terms, and graduate-level detail. Instead of acknowledging your mistake, you double down, and then make more mistakes that you refuse to admit to.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Some posts in this thread make me feel like I'm trapped in one of those Borges stories in which all the purported "facts" and their supporting references and surrounding literature are actually totally fictional.

Some people want to learn about the moon landings. Others want Tlön about the moon landings.

 

[JayUtah]

It is to be expected that denying "the achievements of Armstrong & Aldrin and the third guy who stayed inside the capsule" might anger those who honestly recognize their achievements as "undeniably factual"...

It's not unreasonable to suggest that when someone accuses an entire industry of large-scale fraud from a position of ignorance, the people in that industry might respond with something akin to rage.

That's not really what's happening here. I have no problem explaining why hoax claims or wrong. I have no problem patiently explaining how space exploration works. It's a favorite subject of mine. Yes, I have a low opinion of people like Marcus Allen, but that's the result of having determined first that their claims are wrong and then that they are probably deliberately lying in making them. The operative principle is that they are wrong and I can give the right answer. Pointing out that the television pictures they claim are stationary aren't really stationary is the sort of thing you would find in a perfectly ordinary debate. Ditto pointing out that no, you shouldn't expect to see stars in the lunar surface photos. An emotional response to people who profit by insisting such things in the face of facts is probably inevitable. It's probably inevitable to have an emotional response to accusations against brave and skilled people. But that response is not the goal. Setting the record straight is the true justice.

What @Vixen is baiting—and what people are most frustrated or amused by—is a response to her bad behavior. It doesn't matter what topic she's discussing. Straw-manning people's arguments, insisting that she was never wrong, arrogantly pretending to educate her betters, evading explaining herself by suggesting she's just that much smarter and people should go look it up... These are all behaviors designed to evoke an angry response to her personally, not to her as the representative of some point of view or set of facts.

I've had many debates with many people—including Vixen's sources—over the question of a hoaxed Apollo. I know very well what a perfectly normal debate on the subject looks like. It looks an awful lot like the OP video, in fact. Even if the face of the worst trolls, the debate has never descended into Vixen's particular brand of attention-baiting. Only here, with her, do we routinely get a half dozen pages of obviously disinterested provocation in place of any material discussion of the claims and facts.

Vixen is now trying very hard to rewrite an appropriate reaction to her incessantly arrogant and immature behavior writ large as if it were an inappropriate emotional response to a proper challenge of some legitimate target. She wants to gaslight everyone into thinking her childish behavior (regardless of topic) is perfectly normal and that anyone who has a problem with it is irrational and mean-spirited. Of course the forum rules forbid us from explaining behavior as deliberate trolling. But however we explain it, her bad behavior constantly gets in the way of the perfectly ordinary debate everyone else is trying to have, and that's what she seems to prefer baiting in place of the debate.

 

[Axxman300]

I actually want to thank Vixen for this thread. We rarely have a good Apollo hoax thread anymore. I mean, I couldn't put myself out there as a misinformed goober in front of the whole board just for a the good of the conversation. I guess my ego won't let me denigrate myself in that way. So, good on you Vixen!!!

The best part is this thread has stretched through the anniversary of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 15 landings, so I click out of here to one of my social media pages where NASA is posting, "57 years ago today, Apollo 11...". Like yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the tickertape parade in NYC, and Nixon presenting the crew with the Medal of Freedom:



And I re-watched The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, and I'm digging through my DVD collection looking for the HBI series, From the Earth to the Moon, and an Apollo documentary I bought years ago. I guess that's a plus.

 

[Mojo]

Not at all. I can only imagine some people feel rage...

You can only imagine it, rather than observing it, because they aren't actually enraged.

The term "rage bait" in the post you were replying to referred to your intent, not the reaction to it.

 

[JayUtah]

...the HBI series, From the Earth to the Moon,

I wish this series would get more traction. My friend, the photographer 'Lijah Hanley, has completed a photo set for which he used the same space suits we used in the OP video, which in turn were made for this series by Global Effects.

"Buzzed"

"Buzzed" - Edition of 35 This image is almost completely sold out! We are down to our last few 40x40s available in the edition of 35. This is the image that launched our entire space series. We wanted to play off the words “Buzz Aldrin” and "happy hour,” and so Buzzed was born. We rented an...

hanleyfineart.com

When I talked to him last weekend, he was completely unaware that the series existed and has put it on his watch list.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Some people want to learn about the moon landings. Others want Tlön about the moon landings.

We really, really, really do need that mega groan emoticon...

 

[JesseCuster]

If you use the search function you can see what I already said about the issue.

I used the search function to find your previous posts on what you have to say on the phrase “geopositioned”. It is not an actual scientific or technical phrase that makes any sense in the context(s) you have repeatedly used it, it does not mean geostationary or geosynchronous, and no amount of Google searching has shed any light on what you might mean by it, you have repeatedly…. <snip>, this is getting boring.

Vixen this is getting tedious. Please just tell me, either in our own words, or link to an appropriates definition/explanation, of what you mean by the term “geopositioned” or “geopositioning”? It’ll take you far less effort to answer (and no, you haven’t answered or explain previously) than it will to whinge and complain and provide an excuse for repeatedly refusing to answer.

Prove you’re not as predictable and boring as you appear to be by actually answering the question and not whinging or providing another lame excuse for not answering a simple basic question to clarify what you mean by a word that nobody else knows what you mean by? Do you not want to be understood?

 

[Vixen]

To reiterate, @Vixen doesn't believe that. She has never said she did. I have never said she did. In her desperation to paint her critics as mean-spirited, she tried to accuse me of putting that irrational argument in her mouth.

When she made the infamous "achieve the 'hill'" statement, she put the word in cautionary quotes. We all use that convention. It's a signal not to interpret the word in its literal meaning. It doesn't matter what she might have meant, because the only correct meaning in context is that Hill is just the name of the person who formulated the principle.

Vixen insists that whatever she meant was reasonable—a "colloquailism." But she refuses to explain what exactly she means by "achieve the 'hill,'" so we're left with no better idea of her intent than before. But unless she means George Hill, she's still wrong. Until she consents to explain herself instead of telling her critics to go look at some wiki, we are probably still justified in holding her feet to the fire.

When I discuss the statement, I retain her cautionary quotes. I'm taking great pains to remain faithful to her likely desire not to interpret "hill" as a literal rise in terrain. From context I gather she refers to some phenomenon or property perhaps related to gravity or orbits. I gather that she interpreted the Hill in Hill Sphere not as the proper name of its discoverer but as a reference to some physical phenomenon that she could then reuse in an attempt to look smart. Colloquially we all talk about a "gravity well" and going up or down such a "well." Of course we don't mean a literal well, but merely the need to content with gravity in a certain way. It's possible Vixen means something like that. If so, she has been invited to clarify as much. It would still be wrong, as it would not likely refer to George Hill. But it might make her less of a laughingstock if she could explain her unconventional usage.

It's nothing unusual. We refer to 'watts', 'amperes' and 'ohms', all named after various mathematicians/physicists.

 

[JayUtah]

It is not an actual scientific or technical phrase that makes any sense in the context(s) you have repeatedly used it...

It must be a "colloquialism." If you don't understand what it means then she can't help you.

As we already know, the argument she's ham-fistedly trying to restate is the notion that one of the Apollo 11 telecasts seems to have been shot from a stationary position above the lunar surface.

She seems to have warped this into the notion that a "non-geopositioned satellite" can't "beam" pictures to Earth. And heaven only knows what she really means by that.

 

[Vixen]

The hoax claim is that NASA excuses the absence of stars in the photos by claiming (correctly) that the film used does not allow for exposing stars and sunlit terrain simultaneously. The claimants' response is that since it's "well known" that stars should appear, this must be some kind of magical film that doesn't show stars. They can only make that claim if they claim further that neither NASA nor Kodak will make that film available for inspection. David Percy repeats this when he says that Apollo used "bespoke" film that hoax claimants cannot obtain and test and thereby supposedly expose NASA's purported lies about it.

Of course this is just more Percy doublespeak. As I said, he routinely espouses contradictions when it suits him. Elsewhere in the book he relies upon Ektachrome's known narrow exposure latitude to question how the astronauts could have taken such well-exposed pictures. So the film is utterly unique when Percy needs it to be, and utterly normal and well-known when he needs it to be.

It's arguably unfair to expect @Vixen to answer questions like this because it's obvious she doesn't actually understand the hoax arguments she's repeating. She can't restate them in her own words. She's just deploying them cargo-cult fashion. She simply doesn't have the brains to grasp any of the relevant concepts even if they're just the concept behind the hoax claim.

Well, HJP 'Doug' Arnold claims to have a second copy of this film. If it is any old Ektachrome one can buy in a shop, why would he say that?

 

[JayUtah]

It's nothing unusual. We refer to 'watts', 'amperes' and 'ohms', all named after various mathematicians/physicists.

Those are formal units, not "colloquialisms." We colloquially measure electrical current in "amps," but we all know that's short for "amperes," and we write out the full term when appropriate.

If you are telling me that "achieving its 'hill'" is your colloquial term for something, then I'm asking you to tell me—in formal terms—what you meant by it. Because your usage conflicts with the formal naming of the Hill Sphere, it's not apparent what you mean.

Please do so without all the song and dance.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Vixen is now trying very hard to rewrite an appropriate reaction to her incessantly arrogant and immature behavior writ large as if it were an inappropriate emotional response to a proper challenge of some legitimate target. She wants to gaslight everyone into thinking her childish behavior (regardless of topic) is perfectly normal and that anyone who has a problem with it is irrational and mean-spirited. Of course the forum rules forbid us from explaining behavior as deliberate trolling. But however we explain it, her bad behavior constantly gets in the way of the perfectly ordinary debate everyone else is trying to have, and that's what she seems to prefer baiting in place of the debate.

I understand your point, respect your conclusion, and cannot deny the evidence upon which your conclusion is based.

My own interpretation of that same evidence is that @Vixen really is three standard deviations from the mean, and is therefore unable to present arguments that would appeal to the 99.9% percent of the population possessed of ordinary intelligence.

 

[Mojo]

Those are formal units, not "colloquialisms." We colloquially measure electrical current in "amps," but we all know that's short for "amperes," and we write out the full term when appropriate.

If you are telling me that "achieving its 'hill'" is your colloquial term for something, then I'm asking you to tell me—in formal terms—what you meant by it. Because your usage conflicts with the formal naming of the Hill Sphere, it's not apparent what you mean.

Please do so without all the song and dance.

She can't. It's word salad.

 

[JayUtah]

Well, HJP 'Doug' Arnold claims to have a second copy of this film. If it is any old Ektachrome one can buy in a shop, why would he say that?

Nobody is actually this dense.

Anyone can buy unexposed Ektachrome film stock in any photo shop. What Arnold has is a contact transparency strip of a dupe master from an Apollo mission, made on Ektachrome film. It's the duplication process that makes it significant and important to Arnold, not what film stock was used.