Why the Moon Landing COULDN'T Have Been Faked

[Psihala]

I don't care if those who can't get over insisting the moon landings were faked will never change their minds over a short video like this, but *I* needed the giggles:



~Psihala
(*Sigh* Down the rabbit hole...)

[crocoduck_hunter]

The moon landing was faked.

But the government hired Stanley Kubrick to shoot it and he insisted in filming on location.

[ChasFink]

The shadow arguments which take up the bulk of this video are not particularly convincing to skeptics because an uneven surface can make parallel shadows seem not so parallel. In fact some die-hard it-was-faked believers use such non-parallel shadows in some pictures as proof it was faked.

I recently saw Operation Avalanche, an independent fiction film that has some guys who work in the CIA AV department go semi-rogue to fake the Moon landing and save face for NASA and the US. It's an okay film, but the most amusing part is when they sneak into the set of 2001 to get ideas from Kubrick. To make this happen, the real filmmakers used computer graphics and other tricks to simulate Kubrick's simulated Moon set.

[Hans Off]

That’s quite an amusing video, but a serious rebutttal needs to be more “Show, Don’t tell”!

[Richard W]

I knew somebody who believed that NASA had gone to the moon but that they'd faked the photos anyway...

[crocoduck_hunter]

What, did they think that the real photos didn't look good enough, or that NASA didn't have a camera capable of operating in space then?

[ChasFink]

Originally Posted by Hans Off

That’s quite an amusing video, but a serious rebutttal needs to be more “Show, Don’t tell”!

Mythbusters did a show about it that was very much in this vein, including the inconsistent shadows I mentioned.

I wrote to Adam Savage about the red "command stripe" he proudly displayed on his Neil Armstrong model - pointing out that such stripes were not part of the first few Apollo missions. He said a LOT of people pointed that out!

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

What, did they think that the real photos didn't look good enough, or that NASA didn't have a camera capable of operating in space then?

I think he thought that astronauts wouldn't be able to take such good pictures while wearing heavy space-suit gloves, or something...

[ChasFink]

Originally Posted by Richard W

I think he thought that astronauts wouldn't be able to take such good pictures while wearing heavy space-suit gloves, or something...

Well the Apollo 11 video feed was rather crappy, but the film photos were VERY good, as were so many NASA photos at the time. I don't think the heavy gloves, etc. would be a big problem considering the cameras were built or adapted specifically for people in spacesuits on the Moon! In fact, most of the time the camera was mounted on the suit's chest area, adding stability and aiding in ease of use.

[Hans Off]

Originally Posted by ChasFink

Mythbusters did a show about it that was very much in this vein, including the inconsistent shadows I mentioned.

I wrote to Adam Savage about the red "command stripe" he proudly displayed on his Neil Armstrong model - pointing out that such stripes were not part of the first few Apollo missions. He said a LOT of people pointed that out!

Fantastic. I am a massive fan of Savage. I’m obsessed with his podcasts!

[GenYus234]

The issue with this argumest is that they could have easily gotten non-divergent shadows by shooting the fake moon landing outdoors.

[ASL]

Not possible. The earth is closer to the sun, so the rays would be divergent. That’s why it’s warmer here.

[Psihala]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

The issue with this argumest is that they could have easily gotten non-divergent shadows by shooting the fake moon landing outdoors.

They probably blew their budget on the huge black backdrop used in the Lunar Rover wide-shots.

When I was watching a Moon Machines documentary episode on the Rovers, there was an interview with a Grumman engineer in whose voice one could still detect the annoyance all these years later that NASA went with a one-time use vehicle rather than sending their autonomous/remote controlled machine* to the moo.. er, movie set instead.

~Psihala
(*I mean, never mind it required a separate Saturn V launch just to get it there.., but, hey, its amazing what one can do with models...)

[Mouse]

Originally Posted by ChasFink

Well the Apollo 11 video feed was rather crappy, but the film photos were VERY good, as were so many NASA photos at the time. I don't think the heavy gloves, etc. would be a big problem considering the cameras were built or adapted specifically for people in spacesuits on the Moon! In fact, most of the time the camera was mounted on the suit's chest area, adding stability and aiding in ease of use.

In any case, probably only the good photos were released to the public. The astronauts may have taken ten times more photos than we know, but they weren’t released to the public because there was no real reason to do so. Maybe someone in the field of astronomy or engineering could benefit from shots where the astronauts had their thumbs in front of the lenses or are such a blurry mess that who knows what it was supposed to be a picture of, but generally the public probably wouldn’t have much interest in them.

[ChasFink]

Originally Posted by Hans Off

Fantastic. I am a massive fan of Savage. I’m obsessed with his podcasts!

I was actually amazed he responded to my email within minutes - although I did include a picture of me with my OLPC laptop that he signed.

[Psihala]

The head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency has said that a proposed Russian mission to the moon will be tasked with verifying that the American moon landings were real.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wi...dings-59387682

*sigh*

[Psihala]

Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry said he doubts whether humans ever landed on the moon. He made the comment during a podcast released Monday and it caught the attention of NASA, which offered to show him moon rocks at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and educate him about the mission.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stephen...enter-houston/

[Mouse]

The amount of work you’d have to put in, combined with the number of people you’d have to keep quiet, it would be easier to actually go to the moon than try to fake it.

[DawnStorm]

Several years ago, a local handyman company riffed on that conspiracy with a commercial the recreated the famous one small step...moment, when Armstrong stuck the flag in the lunar soil. The "astronaut" could not stick the pole in the lunar soil no matter what. Suddenly a handyman appears out of nowhere and drills a hole into the surface, thus enabling the astronaut to stake the flag. Cue the company's theme song.

[crocoduck_hunter]

That's a good one.