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Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion - continuation thread

frenat said:
I'd say Jack White is up there too. Although with him it was more stubbornness. Mistaking which side is which of the LM is one thing. Persisting after being shown multiple ways how you are wrong is something else.
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White had a particularly odious brand of ignorance in that he was almost completely inept at spatial reasoning. That's an important skill to have if one wants to be a photographic interpreter.
 
One of the aspects about certain conspiracy theories that interests me is that people with no technical knowledge at all are willing use their blatant ignorant misunderstandings to challenge the conclusions of the real experts. And this approach doesn't bother them at all! "Rockets have nothing to push against outside of the atmosphere so they can't work in space." "It would be impossible to get astronauts past the heat shield on the Apollo Lunar Module" "It is impossible to control a rocket engine," "The radiation in the Van Allen Belts would have instantly fried the astronauts." Etc. It's not just the stupidity of these comments that bugs me, but the willingness of their adherents to confidently put these ignorant comments forward to negate both the experts and documented history. Isn't there the smallest part of the brains of the conspiracy theorists that wonders "Hey- I don't really understand rockets, so maybe I should look into my proposal a bit more before I use it to try to overturn 80 years of rocket science and 10,000 rocket scientists"?
 
Giordano said:
Isn't there the smallest part of the brains of the conspiracy theorists that wonders "Hey- I don't really understand rockets [...]"?
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No, not really. Within the conspiracism construct, there is no such thing as legitimate expertise, therefore the conspiracist doesn't think the "experts" have any more knowledge than he. He thinks the "experts" are faking it, which is why, e.g., they have to fake things like going to the Moon. Comparisons have been made to the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I think in the case of conspiracism there's more to it.
 
JayUtah said:
No, not really. Within the conspiracism construct, there is no such thing as legitimate expertise, therefore the conspiracist doesn't think the "experts" have any more knowledge than he. He thinks the "experts" are faking it, which is why, e.g., they have to fake things like going to the Moon. Comparisons have been made to the Dunning-Kruger effect, but I think in the case of conspiracism there's more to it.
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Yeah. It's Dunning-Kruger fused with a persecution complex and a morbid fascination with evil.
 
JayUtah said:
He's a Brit, and he's never been to the United States. So it's comical to watch him confuse NASA's Langley research center with Langley, Virginia (quite far away) where CIA is headquartered. And also his contention that the "top secret" giant crane at (CIA/NASA headquarters in Langley) was used to stage the landing video, apparently not realizing that a major highway runs right past the crane site.
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That's funny. NASA Langley and the CIA Langley don't even have a common etymology

Langley VA (where CIA Headquarters is located) is named after Langley in Shropshire, England, the historical home of Thomas Lee, the Crown Governor of the Colony of Virginia in the mid 1700s.

NASA Langley research centre is located in Hampton VA, (300km away) and is named after Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American astronomer, physicist and aviation pioneer. Mr Langley's name is also given to a USAF Air Base, a university Hall and a High School in Pittsburgh, three USN Ships, a Smithsonian achievement medal, a mountain in the Sierra Nevada and (oh, the irony) a unit of solar radiation.
 
Giordano said:
One of the aspects about certain conspiracy theories that interests me is that people with no technical knowledge at all are willing use their blatant ignorant misunderstandings to challenge the conclusions of the real experts. And this approach doesn't bother them at all! "Rockets have nothing to push against outside of the atmosphere so they can't work in space." "It would be impossible to get astronauts past the heat shield on the Apollo Lunar Module" "It is impossible to control a rocket engine," "The radiation in the Van Allen Belts would have instantly fried the astronauts." Etc. It's not just the stupidity of these comments that bugs me, but the willingness of their adherents to confidently put these ignorant comments forward to negate both the experts and documented history. Isn't there the smallest part of the brains of the conspiracy theorists that wonders "Hey- I don't really understand rockets, so maybe I should look into my proposal a bit more before I use it to try to overturn 80 years of rocket science and 10,000 rocket scientists"?
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It takes a special kind of stupid for someone to think he's that smart.
 
It wouldn't be the first time some publication has scraped the web for content and stumbled into one conspiracy theorist's web site or another. I reached the author of one of those articles many years ago. Basically they just need content. The publication in question was a community newspaper published by a charity as a way to provide work for homeless people (i.e., printing and distributing it). The author naturally had no nefarious intent or conspiratorial leanings. He just needed something to fill the pages, and ran across one of Ralph Rene's offerings.
 
In other words, Ralph was the information equivalent of an empty pop can on the ground. That's terrible!
 
dudalb said:
Slightly off topic, but looks as though the Apollo Hoax theory via Rush Limbaugh,has a offspring:

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/29/rus...ng_water_on_planet_to_advance_leftist_agenda/
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"He admitted that he doesn’t “know what it is, I would assume it would be something to do with global warming,” speculating that NASA would “find a graveyard” from “an advanced civilization” that crumbled because of climate change.


OH....MY...GOD!!!

Is this guy for real?
 
JayUtah said:
No. But that doesn't mean he can't maintain a devoted following among conspiracy-addled political arch-conservatives.
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Limbaugh has only really started the conspiracy crap in the past few years,probably because he got scared with the sucess of Glen Beck pushing conspiracy theories,and threatening Rush's postion as the most popular media personality on the far right.
Limbaugh is not even mainstream conservative anymore;he is fringe.
 
dudalb said:
Limbaugh has only really started the conspiracy crap in the past few years,probably because he got scared with the sucess of Glen Beck pushing conspiracy theories,and threatening Rush's postion as the most popular media personality on the far right. Limbaugh is not even mainstream conservative anymore;he is fringe.
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I always thought he was on the fringe, but I agree with your assessment that his conspiracy rants are a new thing.

This disappoints me. I think that any viable political system needs to have at least two well-supported but different policy views, all building on a solid foundation of fact. It seems that in the United States, the political right has devolved into religious, apocalyptic handwaving based on trumped up fears and conspiracy theories. It cheapens and demeans the whole political discourse.
 
JayUtah said:
I always thought he was on the fringe, but I agree with your assessment that his conspiracy rants are a new thing.



This disappoints me. I think that any viable political system needs to have at least two well-supported but different policy views, all building on a solid foundation of fact. It seems that in the United States, the political right has devolved into religious, apocalyptic handwaving based on trumped up fears and conspiracy theories. It cheapens and demeans the whole political discourse.
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[emoji106] Take that into USA politics or, heck, try the UK version.
A simple, obvious, concept that flys above heads.
I dare you. :P
 
Well, to drag this back to the topic...

I've always found it amusing when people invoke Richard Nixon as evidence the Apollo missions were hoaxed. They figure the stigma of Watergate should be enough to indict him as the mastermind of the Apollo hoax. But they forget that Apollo was Johnson's idea. (Not so much Kennedy's, but Kennedy got to issue the challenge as President.) It was during Johnson's administration that all the construction and buildup happened. By the time Nixon took office, all the hard work -- either of a real mission or of a hoax -- had already been done.

And Nixon was no lover of the Kennedy/Johnson dynasty. Imagine what would have happened if Johnson were setting up scam NASA missions and Nixon found out about it. How likely do you think it would have been for Nixon simply to carry on such fraudulent shenanigans (and thereby also incriminate himself) rather than exploit it for partisan gain?
 
Sunstealer said:
8,400 images from NASA's Moon missions have been uploaded to Flickr at a resolution of 1800 dpi.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums

All faked of course. ;)
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[imgw=600]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5648/21709978761_e333658d82_k.jpg[/imgw]

The camera couldn't pick up the shadow of the pack on this man's back? I mean, maybe it's a bad angle, but there's a rod sticking out. Couldn't you AT LEAST see that shadow?
 
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