moon landing

bozo the clown

Are you sure Bush announced plans to send man to moon then mars, I heard specualation that he would announce this in one of his speeches this summer but I didnt hear anything yet.

TALewis

Here is the text of President Bush's January 14, 2004 speech:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040114-3.html

Nenad

honestly, like I said befoure, I do not know who to believe. you guyes sound soo convinced, but theres a lot of fishy business going on out there.

Nenad

and by the way, almost everybody in europe thinks the whole thing was a fake.

neutroncount

Well who cares what europe thinks? They must all be idiots then. They're just mad because they're not the ones that did it. Let me ask you this. Do you think the Russians, who were also listening to the mission telemetry every mission, would keep quiet if they had found out? We couldn't even keep the atomic bomb from them...and that was a secret project.

How bout the fact that they would have had to create a low gravity, vacuum chamber the size of a large warehouse....hell we can't even do that today.

They would have had to fake all the rocks that they brought back. They would have had to launch 7 Saturn Vs, the most powerful rocket in the world, just for the hell of keeping the hoax look real (not to mention that the russians were tracking us the whole time).

I can keep on going but you had a whole website to read through.

russ_watters

I don't buy that - do you have a source?

Integral

I am amazed that anyone can have a realistic doubt that the landings occurred. I can say this based purely on a POLITICAL argument. Perhaps some you remember reading in your history books about the Cold War. As a reminder the cold was was a 30yr period of extreme political tension were the US and the USSR (check your history book for the meaning of that acronym!) following a doctrine call MAD. Which meant that a war would mean the end of civilization as we know it. To most of you kids this is all ancient history and is probably associated with WWII (more ancient history... Which means it all happened at the same time right??? ) In reality the Cold War lasted from 1945-1990 (plus or minus a few years) Notice that the entire Apollo program happen right smack in the middle of the Cold war. The USSR had an advanced technology which enabled it to have a space program of its own. This means that it had the ability to monitor signals transmitted from space, further they had the ability to know WHERE in space the signals were coming from. The would not have been fooled for even a second by a earth based hoax. The fact that the USSR never ONCE suggested that these missions were faked is testimony to the reality of the moon landing. Given the political atmosphere of the day had they NOT been monitoring signals from the MOON they would have screamed bloody murder. The Moon landings occurred as surely as the sun rose yesterday.

Janus

Just to add to what Integral has already said. If the Soviet Union could have raised even a shadow of a doubt that the moon landings were real, they would have. IOW, if they thought that any of the so-called evidence that the moon landings were fake would hold up in the court of international scientific opinion, they would have been the first to point it out. (And don't believe for one minute that they were less capable of finding said evidence than those who go around today claiming hoax). The fact that they didn't shows that they could not find any such evidence.


Another point is that much of the so-called evidence assumes that NASA was very sloppy in its fakery.

We are talking about experts here. If there were supposed to be stars in the lunar sky, they would have made sure that they were in the photos. If there should have been dust on the landing pads, they would have thown dust on them (How hard could that be?) etc.

If they were going to fake it, they would have made sure that they got all the details right (and not leave all kinds of clues for people to find).

TALewis

Unless--the Soviets were in on the hoax too! OMG, global conspiracy!

Phobos

We had the technology & drive to get there.
Our competitor/adversary/enemy at the time agreed that we got there.
We planted mirrors on the moon that you can still "see" by bouncing lasers off them.
We brought back moon rocks which are unlike anything to be found on Earth.
And each of the lines of argument for a "moon landing hoax" don't stand up to scrutiny.
We got there several times (for a hoax, once would be a safer bet).
Most of the thousands of people involved in the landing are still alive and are not indicating a hoax.

Artman

Forgive me if this has been said already (I have not read the entire thread). I just finished reading the book "October Sky" (great book. i highly recommend it!) a story about Rocket Engineer Homer Hickam's life in the coal mining area of West Virginia in the late 1950's.

In the book it talks about Senetor John F. Kennedy visiting the area during a very troubled economic period. He was campaigning and was speaking about bringing in government assitance to help the people. This was not what they wanted. They wanted to work and they were quickly losing interest in his speech.

Homer Hickam happened to be at the location where the future president was speaking and Kennedy asked for questions. Homer had been experimenting with rockets for a couple of years and was interested in knowing whether Kennedy had any interest in sending an astronaut to the moon. Kennedy saw the interest this question generated in all of the people and turned it to his favor by saying that we could work together as a nation to make it happen, yes he would pursue sending a man to the moon.

Kennedy saw then that this as a way of putting government money into the economy without it being a handout, as well as the feeling of national pride such a project could create.

bozo the clown

Was wondering the purpose of putting mirrors on the moon and why didnt they build a machine with solar pannels for energy supply. And do diff kind of experiments ( dont know what ) we could still be talking to this machine today.

neutroncount

The mirror was used to determine the changing distance from the earth to the moon very accurately. I don't know about power supplies.

Integral

The missions to the moon were planed to the ounce they took EVERYTHING they could. Of course since most of the payload (thats the total mass that could be carried by the rocket) was devoted to men and life support systems they had little room for meaningful science equipment. This is the trouble with sending men into space. The limited payload available is devoted to the men and keeping them alive, not to useful equipment.

Certain things have not changed and no amount of technology will over come them. It requires a certain amount of energy to transport a kg of mass into space, the more mass lifted the more energy required, this is a physical fact which cannot be altered. If we wish to put man into space we must sacrifice the scientific equipment needed to obtain the data that should be the primary objective of the mission. Men is space are a wasteful extravagance which impede the true purpose of going to space in the first place.

bozo the clown

well they made space for a lunar rover, what purpose was that supposed to serve

Integral

You wonder why they did not plant some complex mechanism in stead of a simple mirror. If you want to know why they took the rover instead of an 18 wheeler...Think about it... As I said every OUNCE was planned, they took what they could. Back then they did not have the remote sensing capability so a robotic mission was not possible. Now we can leave behind the humans and accomplish MORE for less money. Simply because the space craft need only be structural enough to survive the trip though the atmosphere, the ENTIRE payload can be devoted to science.

enigma

They couldn't bring anything which relied on solar power because the moon has a 28 day 'day'. That includes a 14 day night. The batteries to keep that thing powered would weigh almost as much as the Eagle itself.