Fake NASA moon landing?

1. Mar 21, 2006

Ian

I know this particular cons-theory has been done to death already, but does anyone on this forum have the means to examine the rate of fall of dust from the lunar rovers wheels as seen on NASA film footage?
If the whole thing was filmed on earth the one thing no one can fake is gravitational acceleration.
The rate of fall of the lunar dust on the film footage must coincide with being physically on the moon, and I think if you are expert enough with video you could possibly either debunk this one or debunk NASA.

Is anyone out there?

2. Mar 21, 2006

chroot

Staff Emeritus
The gravitational acceleration due to any mass M, at distance r, is

$a = \frac{{GM}} {{r^2 }}$

Pick up a freshman physics book.

- Warren

3. Mar 21, 2006

Ian

cheroot,
what on earth are you on about? or smoking?
Look, when those films are shown to us, in order for them to be showed in 'real-time' the astronaut who was filmed jumping up and down must fall back to the surface of the moon at moon g, not earth g (9.8m/s-2). This also applies to the dust off the rovers wheel trails. All the footage must have continuity of this basic fact. If we examine that continuity we can either prove or disprove whether they went or not.
Simply put, if you set the rate of fall of the dust from the wheels in the films according to lunar g, a fake film will run in slow motion but the real Mcoy will not.
Its not a very complex concept to understand.

4. Mar 21, 2006

Staff: Mentor

Fine dust on earth doesn't fall, it billows-up in a cloud. The very fact that you can see the dust arcing - regardless of an attempt to measure the arc - tells you you are looking at a vacuum.

5. Mar 21, 2006

chroot

Staff Emeritus
I understand the concept, Ian. You asked if anyone had the means to examine ballistic trajectories in moon-landing footage, so I provided the relevant expression of the Moon's acceleration due to gravity. It's about 1.63 m/s^2.

Go for it.

- Warren

6. Mar 21, 2006

loseyourname

Staff Emeritus
Well, I think his point is that you can fake a vacuum - or at least get very close to it. You can't fake the moon's gravitational pull. As far as I know, there is also no way to film in slow motion, only playback. So if the film is shown at full speed, and the men and dust are falling at the rate they should according to the acceleration due to gravity on the moon, the film is authentic, end of story.

7. Mar 21, 2006

loseyourname

Staff Emeritus
It's even easier than what you posted. At least in my freshman physics book, they have the quantity for the moon's gravitational acceleration. No need to even calculate.

8. Mar 21, 2006

Pengwuino

Well you just film at 60 or 120 frames per second or something like that and when you are "releasing" the film to the public, you set it at 30fps so that the action will be going at 1/2 or 1/4 speed. That's how they do it in slow-motion scenes in movies.

Of course, i remember shots where, if this were happening, the astronauts would have had to have been doing some other things 2x or 4x as fast as normal people could to keep up the cherade.

9. Mar 21, 2006

chroot

Staff Emeritus
For record, things fall about 1/6 as fast on the moon as they do on Earth.

- Warren

10. Mar 21, 2006

Staff: Mentor

Can you really? on something as big as a sound stage? Or bigger? We have lots of video of the rovers and they traveled kilometers from their landers.

I have a lot of trouble with the slowing-the-video thing too, because of Penguino's point.

11. Mar 21, 2006

George Jones

Staff Emeritus
Because the Apollo missions actually landed on the Moon, we know with certainty when the Hittites invaded Babylon.

Regards,
George

12. Mar 22, 2006

Phobos

Staff Emeritus
As russ is already no doubt aware, astronomer Phil Plait touched upon this (emphasis mine)...

13. Mar 23, 2006

George Jones

Staff Emeritus
I was referring to the reflectors left on the moon by the atronauts. Astonomers use them to meausure the round-trip time for light that goes from the Earth to the Moon to the Earth. This has allowed astronomers to meaure very accurately changes in the size of the Moon's orbit over the last 35 years.

If these reflectors were not actually left by the astronauts, the conspiracy would have to be huge, involving astronomers, professors, postdocs, grad students, technicians, etc. over the last 35 years.

These accurate measurements have allowed the position of the Moon to be retrodicted and compared to eclipse data recorded at the time of ancient Babylon, thus giving accurate information about when the Hittites invaded.

I read this in a 2001 (plus or minus a year) Sky and Telescope. If anyone's interested, I could probably find the out which exact issue the article's in.

Regards,
George

14. Mar 23, 2006

Mattara

Well, bringing to mind the NASA antigravity chamber(s) and the fake gravity at MIR, this could actually be possible.

15. Mar 23, 2006

Jonny_trigonometry

This is not a valid theory because it isn't based on facts that it can explain better than the true story.

You also have to understand that the first moon landing was broadcast live, so how are you gonna tape something at high speed at the same time that it's playing at normal speed?

Lets not forget the huge problem with all those saturn V rockets that we launched into space with all those witnesses. Were they all brainwashed or something? What about all the news channels which covered these stories through the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs? Remeber all that footage with Walter Cronkite? Were the saturn rockets really just tiny model rockets which the government also taped at high speed and then slowed down in order to make them look more massive?

What about all the radio chatter in between the space capsules and the ground? All those transmissions were recieved by third party obervers too. radio transmission in planes is pretty much line of sight, and I'd imagine it works that way for spacecraft too because spacecraft were evolved from planes, including thier instrumentation, so why did such a broad area of people recieve transmissions from the spacecraft if the spacecraft wasn't in space? Did the government rig huge antenna arrays around the globe to fake all these transmissions?

And also taking into account all the points brought up by the good people of pf in this thread, how can anyone believe that the moon landings were fake? The only way someone would believe that is if they just can't understand our reality (that it truely is possible to leave the planet and visit other ones), or they have a hefty proficiency of denial. Granted I'm a huge conspiracy nut; I don't arrive at my conclusions without common sense, reason, the scientific method, objective judgment, etc.

Thats funny Mattara... anti-gravity chambers...

16. Mar 23, 2006

Mattara

That might not be the official title for it, but how do you think they train astronouts at NASA?

Also, remember the laser measurements that can be done to measure the distance from earth to the moon. There are mirrors up there placed by an apollo crew. Try to counter that one :)

17. Mar 23, 2006

Jonny_trigonometry

they train them in an airplane. They nick named it the "vomit comet". It's a modified boeing of some kind i think (707? not sure). You've noticed that if you drop a penny while going over a hump in a roller coaster that it tends to almost float right? Thats the same principle, you just fly an airplane in a much bigger "hump" and you have artificial zero gravity within the inertial frame of the plane for a period of time. If you throw a baseball up in the air, in it's inertial frame it is at zero g.

yes, as George mentioned, the mirrors are a big thing to consider. If he didn't mention them, I would've because they are very important. Along with all the other things mentioned in this thread, I hope there is enough to put this to rest. Just use your imagination, there are many more ways to show that this is not a valid conspiracy theory. arghhh!!:grumpy:

Last edited: Mar 23, 2006
18. Mar 23, 2006

chroot

Staff Emeritus
There's both the vomit comet and the neutral-buoyancy lab, which is underwater.

- Warren

19. Mar 24, 2006

Vincent Vega

The people that believe we didn't land on the moon, are any of them planetary scientist?

Hundreds of people have images of the spacecraft closing in on the moon from Earth bound telescopes. We have pics of the darkside of the moon. Granted we have found rocks from Mars on Earth from exsplotions, did they think we found these samples from the moon(chemical makeup/radioactive dating) already on Earth? I still can't fathom this silly impugn.
Armstrong and Aldrin taking part in some type of fakery? After 30+ years of open evidence? The fact of the matter is, if Armstrong and Aldrin were to take off their helmets, their spit would boil in that vacuum.

Last edited: Mar 24, 2006
20. Mar 24, 2006

loseyourname

Staff Emeritus
What I mean is you can detect that by examining the film. The only way to cover that up would be to never let anyone look at the film itself.