Viewing Distant Celestial Objects: Could Hubble Have Seen the Moon Landings?

[sophiecentaur]

Mentors' note: This thread has been split off from https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/viewing-distant-celestial-objects.997168/

Significantly more than 3x3 m. I have often seen 200x200 m but this ESA Hubble page says about 40x40 m best case after post processing etc.

If it were possible for Hubble to have seen evidence of Moon landings, those batty conspiracies about the landings being fake would have died long ago.

 

[TeethWhitener]

If it were possible for Hubble to have seen evidence of Moon landings, those batty conspiracies about the landings being fake would have died long ago.

You have far more faith in humanity than I do.

 

[Nugatory]

If it were possible for Hubble to have seen evidence of Moon landings, those batty conspiracies about the landings being fake would have died long ago.

No, we'd have even battier conspiracy theories about the Hubble hoax.

 

[vincenzosassone]

If it were possible for Hubble to have seen evidence of Moon landings, those batty conspiracies about the landings being fake would have died long ago.

In my opinion it will not be possible discover this, not even in a very far future. I'm only saying: If the man had gone truly there there could be some evidence, but this evidence are so small compared to the moon that we cannot be sure to find them in the first attempt, thus, for this reason there will always be people that deny the landing. After all this kind of people aren't wrong at all, the USA in that period only wanted to show to the other country to be the best. Anyways, I'm that kind of person that strongly believe that the landing is true, I have the same opinon in this topic, I only want to say this, we will never know it surely.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I only want to say this, we will never know it surely.

Perhaps there would be sufficient proof if they find traces of DNA on some of the tools that the guys carried out of the lander and left outside.
As for the landing site being set up a long time later, by whom and when? Anything but a totally covert moonshot would have been tracked by 'other powers'. US haven't been in a position to do that without help for decades so who would have helped them?
But there are people who believe that a Presidential Election can be rigged so I guess there's no limit to gullibility.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The Hubble Telescope Hoax | Aplanetruth.info. Link is clearly not peer reviewed link.

Makes good reading. Some very daft remarks about Temperature being a factor that would prohibit Hubble's operation. They clearly don't know how temperature is defined in the context of space or the concept of Specific Heat Capacity and heat energy flow. Still, it sold some copy I guess.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If the man had gone truly there there could be some evidence

What nonsense is this? 800 pounds of rocks isn't evidence? The retrorelectors left on the moon aren't evidence? The photographs on the landing sites - not with Hubble, but with a different telescope - aren't evidence?

 

[russ_watters]

What nonsense is this? 800 pounds of rocks isn't evidence?

The 2,100 lb or so of dude we sent there and brought back are pretty compelling too. Just ask Buzz Aldrin...nicely.

 

[Vanadium 50]

But there are people who believe that a Presidential Election can be rigged so I guess there's no limit to gullibility.

Election of 1876. (And 1824 was not so great either)

 

[russ_watters]

Apropos: Chinese probe returned today from New Mexico the Moon with 2kg of rocks:
https://www.inquirer.com/science/china-moon-rocks-debris-earth- spacecraft -20201216.html

 

[sophiecentaur]

Why do people want, so much, that the landing didn't happen? They must be angry or hurting about something else that they feel they can't challenge. (Like how they voted or poor economic circumstances?)

There is no total proof (yet) that they landed (at the time) but there is total corroboration about the fact that someone went to the Moon, orbited it and then returned. There is no other way that disinterested Comms Engineers all around the World could have been presented with the radio communications they all monitored without a comms link having existed between such a mission and Earth. You just can't fake the arrival of signals from the Apollo craft from the Moon's direction and with the appropriate delays. It takes more than a film set out in the desert to 'present' a fake mission that will fool everyone else. (Except the conspiracy theorists, of course)

 

[vincenzosassone]

Before to be forced to fight against all of you I want to say I strongly believe in the landing.

Perhaps there would be sufficient proof if they find traces of DNA on some of the tools that the guys carried out of the lander and left outside.

Here there is a stuff which i have already spoken: this proof are very small compared to the whole moon. I'm not saing that we cannot find them, I only want to say that this is a waste of money and time. No one will spend his money and his time only to show that the landing was true.

What nonsense is this? 800 pounds of rocks isn't evidence? The retrorelectors left on the moon aren't evidence? The photographs on the landing sites - not with Hubble, but with a different telescope - aren't evidence?

I don't want to wrong, but in that period was already possible to make some fake proof thanks to technology, and about rocks, I don't think that in a lab of that age wasn't possible to make some lunar rock, I mean, I think that at this age in the labs was possible to create an environment very close to that in the moon.
By the way, have you ever asked why, after 50 years, there is still these conspiractions? Maybe becase is very difficult have a certain proof.

 

[Vanadium 50]

but in that period was already possible to make some fake proof thanks to technology, and about rocks, I don't think that in a lab of that age wasn't possible to make some lunar rock

I don't believe that. Please provide a reference. Othwerwise, I will likely conclude you just made this up.

Making a fake rock is not easy. Concrete is not a rock. Rocks are typically composed of grains of different minerals, and making an artificial rock (of any kind) requires solving the problem of how you get these grains to aggregate the same way as they do in nature.

To make things harder, moon rocks contain minerals that had not been found on Earth at the time of discovery.

To make things harder still, moon rocks contain different isotopic ratios than most Earth rocks.

To make things harder still, these rocks conatin no hydrates - unlike practically everything on earth.

I don't think we could make 800 pounds of moon rocks today, much less in 1969.

By the way, have you ever asked why, after 50 years, there is still these conspiractions?

Because some people are idiots?

 

[sophiecentaur]

By the way, have you ever asked why, after 50 years, there is still these conspiractions

Evidence or the lack of it has never been a reason for people to drop loopy theories.
Afaiac, my argument about the public availability of the radio traffic between the mission and Cape Canaverall is actually a rock solid piece of evidence. There is no possible way to mimic signals from a craft that 1. Goes into Earth orbit,
2 Follows a path intercept the Moon some time later (not a simple low orbit round the Earth)
3. Transmits from a location right by the moon (28 day orbit - or part of it)
4. Returns by another path from lunar orbit to Earth orbit.
5. Does a circuit of Earth and then lands.

Even if they tried to get away with putting the craft into simple low Earth orbit, receiving stations would get signals every 90minutes or so and not on a daily basis. The geometry of the total path is a clincher.
Can you imagine any conspiracy managing to control the legions of (blabbermouth) amateur radio enthusiasts and international engineers so that no one spilled the beans.

To my mind, that's even better evidence than the rocks. And they had perfectly good mass spectrometers in those days which would spot a fake rock, instantly.

Did you see Capricorn 1 (the film launched just before the time of the Moonshots). Or Countdown, made in 1967?. They had no idea about the way people would walk on the Moon. The first actual landing was so full of surprises, all of which have been confirmed since.

Why am I spending time justifying all this?

 

[stefan r]

... amateur radio enthusiasts...

Can amateur radio sets track the direction of a source?

Suppose several of us go to a large dome. Maybe some mega-church or the capital building in D.C. if you want it more secular. I can take a red laser pointer and shine it at some point on the dome. Various people from physics forums that we bring along can take independent measurements of red light. All of the measurements will agree on the location of the red dot.

Flat Earthers have to accommodate the moon and its' phases. I bet most of their models will leave open a way for someone to stick a radio transmitter up there. If you can fake GPS and satellite TV then a lunar command module should be fairly easy to fake too.

...You just can't fake the arrival of signals from the Apollo craft from the Moon's direction and with the appropriate delays. ...

A communication delay has to be about the easiest thing to fake ever. Especially since a "real" event would have a slight variation in delay because each party has to think for more than zero seconds before responding.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Can amateur radio sets track the direction of a source?

Absolutely. There is the obvious "which side of the earth" but antennas have high gain in some directions and low gain in others. You will see such antennas mounted on rotors for earth-based communication. Furthermore amateur operators were bouncing signals off the moon in 1953. Many were quite used to receiving signals from the moon.

While we can't image the landing sites with earth-based telescopes, we certainly can see the five retroreflectors placed on the moon. That seems like pretty good evidence.

Furthermore, Apollo 12 brought back parts from Surveyor 3. That seems pretty good evidence to me. And if you want to argue that everything was faked and nothing went to the moon, how did the retroreflectors get there?

 

[Nugatory]

We do not discuss conspiracy theories even to debunk them.
This is because, as this thread shows, these discussions rapidly expand to crowd everything else out.

So, although it has been fun, this thread is closed.