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Fake Moon Landing.....

SquishyDave

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In all the discussions on whether the moon landing has been faked, I never saw the most conclusive footage on the matter mentioned, but I just happened to see on the weekend a piece of footage that seemed to be final note in the whole fake moonlanding debate.

It showed footage of an astronaut on the surface of the moon, holding a hammer, and a feather. That's right, he dropped them, and they both hit the ground at the same time. It was the greatest thing I ever saw.

The reason they did it was to show that Galileo was right when he said gravity pulled on everything equally, but at the same time showed with no doubt that they were in a vacuum. Now this vacuum may have been created on earth, but we still can't create a vacuum that big today, so it probably wasn't.

I was really pleased to see that footage, perhaps more than I should have been. I thought it was just such an elegant demonstration of gravity not being effected by friction.
 
Nice one. :)

Actually, the smiley face you put in your post took ages to load, so at first I thought you were serious, :) I thought you had forsaken your skeptical ways, but it's all good.
 
I have to thank the FOX network for sacrificing the last of its integrity for a minor bump in ratings (AGAIN?!?!). Thank you FOX network, you have systematically made dumber everyone who witnessed your fine programming by a collective 12,000,000 IQ points.
 
SquishyDave said:
In all the discussions on whether the moon landing has been faked, I never saw the most conclusive footage on the matter mentioned, but I just happened to see on the weekend a piece of footage that seemed to be final note in the whole fake moonlanding debate.

It showed footage of an astronaut on the surface of the moon, holding a hammer, and a feather. That's right, he dropped them, and they both hit the ground at the same time. It was the greatest thing I ever saw.

The reason they did it was to show that Galileo was right when he said gravity pulled on everything equally, but at the same time showed with no doubt that they were in a vacuum. Now this vacuum may have been created on earth, but we still can't create a vacuum that big today, so it probably wasn't.

I was really pleased to see that footage, perhaps more than I should have been. I thought it was just such an elegant demonstration of gravity not being effected by friction.
Click to expand...

I agree, remember this from 1969 as a wide-eyed 12-year-old.
IIRC the astronaut was worried that static electricity would stick the feather to his glove or slow it down and ruin the demonstration, how the moon hoax idiots would have loved that!
 
Obviously (now), the moon landings weren't faked. But what annoys me about the whole thing, and made it difficult for me at first to make up my mind about it all, is the fact that NASA wouldn't answer what were ostensibly very answerable questions put by the 'it-was-hoaxed' brigade.

Stuff to do with the effects of the radiation beyond the van Allen Belt on the astronauts and their cameras, and stuff like that - I remember thinking, as a non-physicist, that it sounded like quite a convincing argument to me. I like to suspend my disbelief sometimes with these theories and think "what if", but I spent a while just being genuinely not very sure. I don't think NASA did themselves any favours with the way they approached it.

I mean, this is an agency funded by public money (not mine, but most of the hoax theorists') - surely if the public have legitimate questions about certain aspects of their activities, they should earnestly answer them, not laugh it off and make fun of the people asking.

I sometimes wonder if NASA likes these kooky conspiracy theories. Like when they promised to post the 1998 MGS pictures of Cydonia straight from the camera to the web with no processing of any kind, and then they took a weekend and processed it a bit anyway. Or like when they finally commissioned that book refuting the hoax arguments, then changed their minds about it and pulled the plug.

And to be quite honest, I only came across evidence answering the conspiracy theorists by going out and looking for it, and even then it's tricky. It really was, in my mind, a question of science: governmental honesty is hardly the default position to assume in many matters, and their motives for hoaxing were convincing.

Kudos to people like the Bad Astronomer who actually did look to inform the public about the whole deal, and who's done a far better job than NASA themselves.
 
Re: Re: Fake Moon Landing.....

Dragon said:
I agree, remember this from 1969 as a wide-eyed 12-year-old.
Click to expand...
From one wide-eyed 12-year-old in 1969 to another:

Psst, Dragon, it was Dave Scott of Apollo 15 in 1971!

;)

bPer
 
Re: Re: Re: Fake Moon Landing.....

bPer said:

From one wide-eyed 12-year-old in 1969 to another:

Psst, Dragon, it was Dave Scott of Apollo 15 in 1971!

;)

bPer
Click to expand...

I was a wide-eyed 11-year old, remember where and when I watched that more vividly than most childhood memories...
 
Re: Re: Re: Fake Moon Landing.....

bPer said:

From one wide-eyed 12-year-old in 1969 to another:

Psst, Dragon, it was Dave Scott of Apollo 15 in 1971!

;)

bPer
Click to expand...

Oops - wide eyed 14-year-old then.
(Who now has a defective memory, apparently.)
 
Babylon Sister said:
My ex-mil didn't believe the moon landing. Afterall, the moon is too small to stand on.

True story.
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What's an "ex-mil?" And I find that story to be outrageous.
 
SquishyDave said:
Now this vacuum may have been created on earth, but we still can't create a vacuum that big today, so it probably wasn't.
Click to expand...
There's an awfully big vaccuum chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. I would guess that it's at least 50 feet high and 20 feet wide. Big enough to pull off the stunt, I would think.
 
SquishyDave said:
It showed footage of an astronaut on the surface of the moon, holding a hammer, and a feather. That's right, he dropped them, and they both hit the ground at the same time. It was the greatest thing I ever saw.

The reason they did it was to show that Galileo was right when he said gravity pulled on everything equally, but at the same time showed with no doubt that they were in a vacuum. Now this vacuum may have been created on earth, but we still can't create a vacuum that big today, so it probably wasn't.
Click to expand...
How do we know the feather was a feather and not a hammer carved to look like a feather? Doesn't it seem more likely that they'd buy a $12 hammer and make it look like a feather then to spend $100 billion going to someplace as boring as the moon?
 
Babylon Sister said:
My ex-mil didn't believe the moon landing. Afterall, the moon is too small to stand on.

True story.
Click to expand...

Totally off topic, but in the same vein, a couple years ago the space shuttle was docked with space station. This made it bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. My father in law and I watched it mosey along one night while we were at his parents house. After we came in we told my father in law's dad what we had been doing. Grandpa asked how high up it was. I said I didn't know, but at least hundreds of miles. He said no, no, it couldn't have been more than 500 feet. My father in law tried to tell him otherwise, but this 80 some-odd year old farmer who had barely been 60 miles from his house in decades just wouldn't hear it.
 
Re: Re: Fake Moon Landing.....

Michael Redman said:
There's an awfully big vaccuum chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. I would guess that it's at least 50 feet high and 20 feet wide. Big enough to pull off the stunt, I would think.
Click to expand...
15 metres high and 6 metres wide. Bigish, so for the wide action shots they used a studio with air in it, then to get the hammer and the feather to fall they moved in to this chamber. :)

I guess there is always a way to convince yourself of anything you want if you put your mind to it.
 
SquishyDave said:
It showed footage of an astronaut on the surface of the moon, holding a hammer, and a feather. That's right, he dropped them, and they both hit the ground at the same time.
Click to expand...
Fun fact: That demonstration wasn't part of the original Apollo 15 mission plan. I believe Dave Scott had to sneak the feather aboard the spacecraft, just like Alan Shepard had to sneak a golf club and a couple of golf balls on board Apollo 14.
 
The best answer to the 'fake' idiots I've ever seen was a description of the moon rock they bought back. I'm trying to find the site at the moment.

The article describes the inherent differences between rock actually from the surface of the moon and rock which has fallen from the moon to the surface of the earth through our atmosphere. In conclusion, the auther explains how it would actually be easier and cheaper to send a man to the moon than it would be to fake the samples they bought back.

I'll post the article as soon as I can find it.

I don't actually think the feather and hammer thing is that convincing. It could very easily be reproduced on earth.
 
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