the moon...did we really land there in 1969?...or have we been fooled again?
TRANSCRIPT
The Moon...did we really land there in 1969?
...or have we been fooled again?
This presentation is in response to the video “Conspiracy: Did We Land On The Moon?”originally aired on FOX in 2001
How many of you were left in doubt about the moon landing after watching it?
Fox Claims....• No stars in photos
• Identical backgrounds
• Missing crosshairs
• No blast crater
• Non- parallel shadows
• Unbalanced lander
• Waving flag
• Van Allen radiation belt
• Dust on lander
• Quiet rockets, not heard on tape
• “Perfect” photographs
Fox Claims....• No stars in
photos
Camera SettingsDaytime sky on Earth: brightbright (atmosphere)Daytime sky on Moon: blackblack (no atmosphere)Landings occur during Moon’s day...Surface very bright (light colored rocks, white
spacesuits)...Cameras set for fast exposure & bright light conditions
to collect least amount of light and avoid overexposure...
STARS TOO DIM TO SHOW UP ON PHOTOS!!...any photographer knows you can’t show both bright
& dim object in the same photo.
Images of Earth and the moon taken from orbit also have no stars
This is a 4 second exposure and stars can be seen
Try it yourself tonight...See if you can photograph stars.
...it even takes a few seconds for your eyes to adjust to see stars at night here on Earth!
Fox Claims....
• Identical backgrounds
• The backgrounds are clearly not identical. If you examine the photos with scrutiny, differences can be easily identified. For example, look closely at the hill on the right of each photo and you will notice that the angles of view are significantly different. It is obvious the photos were taken from different camera positions, thus we see different foreground terrain. In the right photo it appears the LM is off-camera to the left.
Also, The Moon has no atmosphere...
This is Mount Hadley .It’s almost three miles high...There are no visual clues fordistance (atmospheric haze) on the moon...everything is sharp and clear.
Due to parallax, photos taken of objects from different angles against a distant background will not show any change in background.
The Apollo 16 photos were not fakes taken against a backdrop...they were simply taken from different angles.
Fox Claims....Missing crosshairs
FOX narrator: "For reference, crosshairs were permanently etched have to appear on top
of every image. But in this photo, a crosshair is behind a part of the lunar rover. This
situation is impossible and has to be the result of technical
manipulation and doctoring of
the image.”
The cross hairs are called reseau-lines and were produced by a glass plate within the camera,
between the lens and film. They cause a black cross on the film where they block the light from
reaching the film directly below them. If, however, you are taking a photograph of a really bright white
object, the white, over-exposed part of the film 'bleeds' into other parts of the film. This is
particularly the case if the adjacent part of the film is black. This is what is happening where the thin reseau-lines meet a bright, reflective part of the photograph and is not unusual. It happens on photographs with reseau-lines on Earth too.
BASIC PHOTOGRAPHY.
Here's the crosshair in front of the flag. Note that the crosshair fades
to near invisibility in front of the
white stripes.
The crosshair in front of the lander disappears against the bright reflection from the lander leg.
• So there's no editing and no fakery at all, merely the well known photographic effect that thin dark lines disappear when photographed against very bright backgrounds.
Do you pull into a parking space at 70 mph?
Of course not. You “throttle down”, using gas/brake pedals.
As they approached the lunar surface...
• They cut power from 10,000 lbs to 3,000 lbs
• Rocket nozzle has 2,300 square inch surface area...
• That comes down to about 1.5 psi...you can duplicate that by pushing your fingertip firmly into your desktop. Try it!
• Did you make a crater?
The exhaust stream was not powerful enough or centralized enough to displace the regolith and blast out a crater. In this Apollo 11 photograph one can see some discoloration and a general lack of dust, which was mostly blown away. After the dust was removed a hard surface was exposed.
Fox Claims....Non- parallel
shadows
You are looking at a 3D scene projected onto a 2D photo.
That causes distortions...If this photo was taken from above, the shadows would be parallel
FOX suggested that the non-parallel shadows were caused by multiple light sources (stage lights)...
...there’s only one light source in this photo, too....
perspective causes shadows to appear non-parallel when seen on film.
In this example the astronaut on the right is standing on a small rise. The sloping ground has caused his shadow to elongate and appear at a different angle than the shadow
of the astronaut on the left. Also note, if two spotlights produced the shadows then each astronaut would have two
shadows.
Fox Claims....Unbalanced lander
It wasn’t the same lander(just an Earth practice model...)
• Armstrong practiced with a sturdier, heavier lander...built for Earth gravity (6x the Moon’s)
• It had stronger jets (to deal with Earth gravity)• Not designed to fly in air with crosswinds, etc...• ...it was the worst possible design for a flying craft
on Earth...but it was perfect for the Moon!
Fox Claims....• Waving flag
...watch the demo...
• NASA knew the moon was wind-less...
• For the historic picture, they designed a special flagpole with a horizontal top bar.
• The astronaut twisted the pole as he tried to stick it in the hard lunar surface...
• ...that made it look like the flag was waving!
Fox Claims....Van Allen radiation
belts
“Any human being traveling through the van Allen belt would
have been rendered either extremely ill or actually killed by the radiation within a short time
thereof.”- Bill Kaysing, FOX stooge
The truth is:
• They traveled through the Van Allen Belt too fast to absorb much radiation.
• The metal hull of the spacecraft blocked most of the radiation that was present.
• The dose they did receive (it was a risk they knew about & accepted) was from 0.16 to 1.14 rads (different for each Apollo mission), far below the acceptable level set by the NRC for all U.S. nuclear plant workers.
Fox Claims....Dust on lander
There’s STILL no air on the Moon...• Blowing dust around on the Moon is a a lot
different from doing it on the Earth...
• If you dumped a bag of flour out onto the table and blew straight down into it, it WOULD end up everywhere, like FOX says...it gets carried away by moving air.
• But if you did that on the Moon, where there’s no air to carry it away, the only dust that gets moved are the particles that get struck by the rocket blast.
Fox Claims....Quiet rockets, not
heard on tape
Three things...• Thing #1: The main rocket was barely on at landing.
• Thing #2: One last time...there’s no atmosphere on the moon....sound requires a medium (air) through which to move... in space, no one can hear you scream...
• Thing #3: They were using pilot mikes; they are designed to pick up the voice of the wearer and exclude other sound. Do you hear engine noise when an airline pilot speaks over the loudspeaker, even though it's plainly audible in the passenger compartment. The blast noise goes mostly out and back. The proximity of the microphone to the speaker's mouth means that voice will drown out whatever engine noise there is.
Fox Claims....“Perfect” photographs
They practiced a lot...
• The Apollo astronauts took around 17,000 photographs on the lunar surface. There's plenty of not-so-great photographs that NASA simply have never publicized. Over or under exposed, quint angles, accidental exposures. But those that the public are most familiar with are the best ones!
• Do you show all your bad pix to your friends?
Lighting and Shadow Discrepancies
The astronaut should have been merely a silhouette. And so he should, if he weren't surrounded by brightly-lit ground. If the full moon can brightly illuminate the earth from 250,000 miles away, just imagine what it can do to an astronaut standing on it.
Laser Reflectors
Laser beams are routinely fired at these reflectors through telescopes at McDonald Observatory in Texas and near Grasse in southern France.
Timings of these reflected beams are used to measure the Earth-Moon distance to an accuracy of one inch
How about looking with a telescope?
• The best the Hubble Telescope can do is see things on the moon 20-30 meters across, about ten times too large to see the Apollo equipment.
The Rocks
• The Rocks
The Rocks
Earth Rock
Moon Rock
No water bearing minerals
No alternation due to wind or water