Hoaxesssss innnnn Spaaaaaace

firemansam4

Think op has been banned for trolling?
But thread stays open. See a few posts back post #231

firemansam4

So it looks like the OP was probably just on the windup with his off the wall ideas.
But there has to be a large section of the population who believe the moon landings were faked, I've talked to people who believe this and there is no shortage of people on social media commenting as much when there is anything posted about moon landings.

I would hazard a guess that they just simply think this because it happened so long ago and the fact nobody has been back to the moon since.
I doubt many have really looked into the evidence that is there which debunks many of these conspiracy theories. It would be nice to see a good documentary doing just that, involving experts and maybe people who worked on the moon landings.

I imagine it must be very frustrating for anyone who was involved in the moon landings being labeled as liars by these people and belittling the achievements they were involved in.

firemansam4

firemansam4 wrote: »

It would be nice to see a good documentary doing just that, involving experts and maybe people who worked on the moon landings.

You're dealing with a certain kind of "thick" here. If you went to the trouble of putting together a top notch documentary and get top/high profile people involved... this would be "proof" that concerted effort was needed to keep people on message.

SlowBlowin

I don't think its "thick", I just think some peoples desire to be a "know it all" or be ahead of the pack with their ability to see the "real" truth, Billy Liar style.

I think even if Elon Musk lands Starship next to a landing site and recovers a rover or something else, the same deniers will say it had been prepared and stowed in Starship and the video footage faked.

There is a chap I know who believes virtually every conspiracy theory, I was mentioning how excited I was to see Spacex develop starship and fly to the moon or mars and he responded with, its not possible because of the Van Allen belts. The worst thing is that he is a really nice guy, but just believes every theory on YouTube.

We can go blue in the face but as the OP has demonstrated here, they wont read the science, listen to the logic, or discuss in any reasonable way.

King Mob

firemansam4 wrote: »

I would hazard a guess that they just simply think this because it happened so long ago and the fact nobody has been back to the moon since.
I doubt many have really looked into the evidence that is there which debunks many of these conspiracy theories. It would be nice to see a good documentary doing just that, involving experts and maybe people who worked on the moon landings.

I don't think there's any full length documentaries like you're describing, but there's bits and pieces on youtube addressing parts of the conspiracy:
Vintage Space has a few videos on the conspiracy theories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r45Q-MT2vfc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxoSnXZTtr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdfSoWb6W54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyH4Zaz3mEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BEylTGOlQ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLtgS2_qxJk

And she has a few addressing the concerns of some of our resident conspiracy theorists regarding navigation and computers.
The difference being that she actually knows what she's talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-O3Uu4DuLw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8S_T772H1c

She also just does great videos on different aspects of the space program in general.

There's also this great primer from Curious Droid who also does great ones on engineering and aerospace:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT3ferYrmgU

This one was posted earlier, but it's worth posting again as it's one of the few debunks that directly proves part of the conspiracy theory is impossible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYFMU7XfyzE
With the follow up where he addresses a response from a well known moon hoax youtuber:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TelJ75pzP4

The Mythbusters also did an episode on it, and while it's fun and accurate, I don't think it would be convincing to most conspiracy theorists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPj60sy9Cfw

M5

There's an attraction in all these theories. You know something that everyone accepts to be true, isn't. It makes you feel superior, woke.

Driving factor for the lot imo and why you see conspiracy theorists usually subscribe to several theories. Some lose this high and naturally progress to the bat**** ones.

firemansam4

King Mob wrote:

I don't think there's any full length documentaries like you're describing, but there's bits and pieces on youtube addressing parts of the conspiracy: Vintage Space has a few videos on the conspiracy theories.

Thanks for going to the effort of posting these links, I'll have to have a look through them when I get a chance later...

Overheal

Relevant: 1970s NASA intern bought a pallet of film reels from surplus when he was there, now made off with over a million dollars because some of them had the Apollo 11 EVA on it

https://gizmodo.com/former-nasa-intern-scores-1-82-million-for-moon-landin-1836579509

mickdw

knucklehead6 wrote: »

mickdw wrote: »

I don't think the maths involved in an IT qualification would be at the highest level but even so, if I wanted to employ someone to carry out a complex task, I'd hire you before the majority of the random population.
To take a simple example, prior to my Engineering Degree, I was 1 of 2 who took higher maths in a class of 60 at secondary school. That simple fact in itself strongly suggests that I would mathematically be ahead of a large portion of the population.

You must’ve been to a very strange school. Only 2 students took higher level maths??

We had a year group about the same size and from memory there was 18 of us.

It was common enough around the time I did it for very very few to do higher maths although I do know people who went to other schools and I was surprised at the results they achieved so yes maybe we had crap maths teachers.

The J Stands for Jay

mickdw wrote: »

To take a simple example, prior to my Engineering Degree, I was 1 of 2 who took higher maths in a class of 60 at secondary school. That simple fact in itself strongly suggests that I would mathematically be ahead of a large portion of the population.

That just suggests:
1. You went to a small school.
2. Either the level of the maths teachers in the school was poor, or the students were poor.
3. You believe that small sample sizes are valid, and/or that anecdotes equal evidence.

mickdw

You are nit picking.
Maybe our maths teacher was poor or the students were poor but the fact remains I wasn't poor even if faced with all those disadvantages so surely only strengthens my point. Anyway I went on to get a Civil Engineering degree where I dare say my maths were above average within that group of students too.

M5

M5 wrote: »

There's an attraction in all these theories. You know something that everyone accepts to be true, isn't. It makes you feel superior, woke.

Driving factor for the lot imo and why you see conspiracy theorists usually subscribe to several theories. Some lose this high and naturally progress to the bat**** ones.

Funny how the main conspiracy theorists on this thread ALL volunteer their claims that they are/have above average intelligence/qualifications.

Interesting how it ties in the the psychology of conspiracy theories I eluded to above.

King Mob

mickdw wrote: »

You are nit picking.
Maybe our maths teacher was poor or the students were poor but the fact remains I wasn't poor even if faced with all those disadvantages so surely only strengthens my point. Anyway I went on to get a Civil Engineering degree where I dare say my maths were above average within that group of students too.

Ok.
So any chance you'll be going back to address the points made to you?

Particularly, could you detail what about the navigation technology was impossible based on your research on the topic?
Perhaps you can explain the nature of your research? What documents did you read and what plans did you analyse?

Overheal

mickdw wrote: »

You are nit picking.
Maybe our maths teacher was poor or the students were poor but the fact remains I wasn't poor even if faced with all those disadvantages so surely only strengthens my point. Anyway I went on to get a Civil Engineering degree where I dare say my maths were above average within that group of students too.

This does nothing to contribute to the central debate though. Is the argument "trust me, the moon landings are fake because I was good at math in secondary school?"

The J Stands for Jay

Overheal wrote: »

This does nothing to contribute to the central debate though. Is the argument "trust me, the moon landings are fake because I was good at math in secondary school?"

I note there was no mention of the result of the exams, merely that they were sat at higher level.

tigerboon

M5 wrote: »

There's an attraction in all these theories. You know something that everyone accepts to be true, isn't. It makes you feel superior, woke.

Driving factor for the lot imo and why you see conspiracy theorists usually subscribe to several theories. Some lose this high and naturally progress to the bat**** ones.

It goes back a lot further than this current "woke " thing. Moon landing theories go back a long way and were possibly originated by the USSR to discredit US achievement. They spread the theories, in the 70s and 80s, through commie sympathiser left wing college educated "useful idiots" who, as you say, feel superior for knowing these things and not accepting what "the man" says. It's where the English Labour anti Semitic problem comes from originally. The old Jewish rulers of the world theories are so ingrained in the left psyche. It's all anti West propaganda originating in the Kremlin.

Westernyelp

tigerboon wrote:

It goes back a lot further than this current "woke " thing. Moon landing theories go back a long way and were possibly originated by the USSR to discredit US achievement. They spread the theories, in the 70s and 80s, through commie sympathiser left wing college educated "useful idiots" who, as you say, feel superior for knowing these things and not accepting what "the man" says. It's where the English Labour anti Semitic problem comes from originally. The old Jewish rulers of the world theories are so ingrained in the left psyche. It's all anti West propaganda originating in the Kremlin.

Do you not see the irony in your post?

tigerboon

Westernyelp wrote: »

Do you not see the irony in your post?

I do

CoBo55

Westernyelp wrote: »

Do you not see the irony in your post?

Woosh.




At the speed of light..

Westernyelp

CoBo55 wrote:

Woosh.

Doubt it

mickdw

Overheal wrote: »

mickdw wrote: »

You are nit picking.
Maybe our maths teacher was poor or the students were poor but the fact remains I wasn't poor even if faced with all those disadvantages so surely only strengthens my point. Anyway I went on to get a Civil Engineering degree where I dare say my maths were above average within that group of students too.

This does nothing to contribute to the central debate though. Is the argument "trust me, the moon landings are fake because I was good at math in secondary school?"

To be fair, others were nit picking. I mad a simple and very much true comment and others have kept bringing it up. Going so far as pointing out that the students or teachers must be poor. When I pointed out that perhaps that might strengthen my argument re being about average at maths, I get silence.
For info, B2 was the result.

Dohnjoe

mickdw wrote: »

To be fair, others were nit picking. I mad a simple and very much true comment and others have kept bringing it up. Going so far as pointing out that the students or teachers must be poor. When I pointed out that perhaps that might strengthen my argument re being about average at maths, I get silence.
For info, B2 was the result.

You believe the moon landings were faked, correct?

Do you also believe that the ISS isn't manned?

King Mob

mickdw wrote: »

To be fair, others were nit picking. I mad a simple and very much true comment and others have kept bringing it up. Going so far as pointing out that the students or teachers must be poor. When I pointed out that perhaps that might strengthen my argument re being about average at maths, I get silence.
For info, B2 was the result.

So in what way did your math skills allow you to deduce that the navigational systems in Apollo were inadequate?

mickdw

Dohnjoe wrote: »

You believe the moon landings were faked, correct?

Do you also believe that the ISS isn't manned?

The ISS is there and is manned, no doubt. There is a hell of a difference between going to the moon and going to the space station.
The space station is within touching distance compared to the moon. Are you aware of the distances involved?
Nasa have lost 2 shuttles in my memory just going to space.
Im no expert but for them to be able to fly a primitive rocket 1000 times past the space station distance, navigate it into moons orbit, do a controlled landing with all the unknowns that go with it, be able to blast off the moon again, hook up with the main craft and take it all back to earth, well it just seems many steps beyond what they would have been capable off IN MY OPINION.

With a now established space station, I would have thought that this would be a help in planning a journey to the moon but nope, it seems harder than ever to get there. That doesn't sit right with me.

Could America afford to fail back in 69? I don't think so.
Could they afford to fail so publicly in front of every man woman and child in the country if not the world? Certainly not. For that reason, there is a certain
sense in faking the landings.

King Mob

mickdw wrote: »

The ISS is there and is manned, no doubt. There is a hell of a difference between going to the moon and going to the space station.
The space station is within touching distance compared to the moon. Are you aware of the distances involved

Why would the distance be the factor that makes it impossible?

mickdw wrote: »

Nasa have lost 2 shuttles in my memory just going to space

Neither of which were due to navigational issues and neither of which were due to anything applicable to the Apollo missions.
Also one was lost on launch, and you had discounted the Apollo 1 fire as it wasnt in space. Bit hypocritical there...

mickdw wrote: »

Im no expert but for them to be able to fly a primitive rocket 1000 times past the space station distance, navigate it into moons orbit, do a controlled landing with all the unknowns that go with it, be able to blast off the moon again, hook up with the main craft and take it all back to earth, well it just seems many steps beyond what they would have been capable off IN MY OPINION

And what is this opinion based on? What research on Apollos navigation methods did you do?

mickdw wrote: »

With a now established space station, I would have thought that this would be a help in planning a journey to the moon but nope, it seems harder than ever to get there. That doesn't sit right with me.

As opposed to the Moon which changes it orbit randomly?

mickdw wrote: »

Could America afford to fail back in 69? I don't think so.
Could they afford to fail so publicly in front of every man woman and child in the country if not the world? Certainly not. For that reason, there is a certain
sense in faking the landings.

Why didnt the Russians blow the hoax then?

Overheal

Let's roll back to the original subplot of how we got stuck on your credentials, and set that aside,

mickdw wrote: »

I didn't say impossible just not with 1960s tech.
Why completely stop going there if they could manage it so readily in the 1960s?
Surely we would have constructed a station on the moon if it is accessible like you believe.

I mentioned to you privately, there is a big difference in the dynamic systems math that a computer today uses to automatically control things that happen autonomously, vs. many of the things that these Air Force yahoos did with heavy reliance on manual control and ridiculous schedules of practice. Take for example, the Harrier Jet.

The Harrier Jet made its first flight in 1967, and it entered deployment a few months after Apollo 11. Development started in 1957 with the prototype P.1127 - which started hovering in tests as early as 1961.

These are real aircraft, they hover on thrust vectoring, and they had relatively limited computer control to do that at the time; most of it was pilot finesse, often those assigned to it were seasoned helicopter pilots and the like. That's largely why the Harrier line on principle runs on a 4-point hover: it's easier to control manually (though still a bitch, which you'll hear about in most documentaries). The F-35B in contrast uses a hella modern fly by wire computer control system to only over on 2 points: the rear vectored thrust and a vertical turbofan behind the cockpit. No that's impressive. Spared no expense.

Now, maybe I'm shooting from the hip here, but if a Brit can land a jump jet in 1969, maybe a Yank can land a lunar module on the moon in 1969, too. Buzz didn't have to deal with atmospheric disturbance, either.

It's not that we don't 'have the technology' to build a moon base - it's that we fundamentally lack the resources or the purpose. Play some Kerbal Space Program, they get you into the mindset fairly ****ing RIGHT. See how hard it is just to get to the moon, vs. orbit, much less build a base there, and how much rocket power you need. In short, getting to earth orbit is much less energy intensive than to get to the moon, and for all the extra thrust you need, you need extra fuel, and extra weight, and it's a compounding nightmare of logistics. That's not to say we're not going back but I'll get to that in a minute.

We just say Soros is gonna fund the whole thing, spare no expense, POOF, moonbase, let's pretend we do all the steps in between, and we wrench up a base on the moon, and we fill it with air, and potatoes - what do we accomplish up there right now? Without water, and lots of it, the mission's ****ed. And lunar water is to this day (heck, extra-terrestrial water in general) still a massive engineering bugbear: how do we get to it, extract it, and how much energy do you require to even get to the point of electrolysis where you can a) continue to supply oxygen to your crew and b) extract enough hydrogen as a fuel source to fulfill the purpose any moonbase would need to fulfill. And c) how the **** do you guarantee a steady stream of import/export to your moonbase for non-renewable supplies and crew transfers?

To date, that's a much, much bigger problem than most people give it credit for. Not helped by the fact that world priorities have changed, and you're talking about something that would be a hugely expensive undertaking: maybe if we didn't have a massive nuclear proliferation, and Korea, and Vietnam, etc., maybe people would have felt justified in spending what today would be trillions of dollars to send a dozen people to the moon to extract paltry amounts of fuel to send missions further out into the solar system - which would be much the only objective we have at the moment, is proofing out prolonged life in space, and onset missions. Except we learned rather quick that as you alluded to, advanced in computers made it possible to develop missions in the 80s that launched in the 90s that got us to Mars and Jupiter and Saturn etc. using Probes instead of people - MUCH more cost effectively. Curiosity is a blockbuster success, but not the first mission to Mars, and those were not all successful (thanks, metric system). But the thing is: as far as NASA in the 1970s was concerned, the moon was a ball of dust, there isn't anything there to leverage for survival/base building. And there was just dwindling justification and/or willpower to send people back, when as we mentioned disaster could be around every corner like Apollo 13, all for the sake of another bag of rocks.

Don't forget though: we still had no data about the long term effects of living in space - the answer of course culminated in over a decade of design, and construction, of the ISS, which we've gotten some heckin science out of since. But the first space station - also happened in 1969, Soyuz. Reagan greenlit development in 1984. And now, we of course know a lot more...

Oh, and the other other politics: Energy. Electrolysis in the 70s, right. You'd only be doing that with nuclear power. I don't know if Irish people recall the Cassini Probe, or the hysteria leading up to its launch, but I lived in Florida at the time, and I do: people were freaked the hell out that the probe is equipped with an RTG - 'holy **** that's nuclear' 'if it explodes on the way up on the launch we're talking nuclear winter folks' - the public would have lost their ever loving **** if we tried to launch an actual nuclear reactor to the moon to power the mission up there. Solar efficiency 40 years ago, can you imagine how bad it was compared to todays panels? Woof.

This all said: we're going back.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1155967/nasa-lunar-base-orbiting-moon-lunar-orbital-platform-gateway-space-news

Some genius ****ers who were, in all honesty probably playing Kerbal Space Program, came up with how we're going to build basically another ISS in orbit above the moon: It's going to have a crazy off-center orbit, that will allow it to send and receive materiel to/from the surface and to high orbit to send/receive materiel to/from Earth, without requiring tons of waste delta-V to transition from orbital to surface exchanges. Keep in mind now: this is not a moon 'base', it's a space station. Now that the ISS has been in orbit for 20 years, and we've been learning something new from it everyday, we now are seemingly ready to take the next step, which is move an ISS like structure to the Moon and start to do things like, hopefully, build science habitats on the moon. The station will also by design have the distinct honor of being the fueling/kitting and launching point for a Mars transition vehicle that will one day, likely decades from now, send scientists to Mars with the knowledge we've replicated at the lunar gateway and the knowledge we learn from figuring out how to live on the surface of the moon.

So the tl;dr of why we didn't build a moon: It's enormously expensive, the long term risks/rewards were entirely unknown, and we've been doing more economical science in the intervening decades that has graduated us to the point where learning to do long term survival on another stellar body is becoming the next crucial step.

Beast4mdaeast

The truth is out there !!!

Overheal

mickdw wrote: »

The ISS is there and is manned, no doubt. There is a hell of a difference between going to the moon and going to the space station.
The space station is within touching distance compared to the moon. Are you aware of the distances involved?
Nasa have lost 2 shuttles in my memory just going to space.
Im no expert but for them to be able to fly a primitive rocket 1000 times past the space station distance, navigate it into moons orbit, do a controlled landing with all the unknowns that go with it, be able to blast off the moon again, hook up with the main craft and take it all back to earth, well it just seems many steps beyond what they would have been capable off IN MY OPINION.

The math, while complicated, not infeasible at all. Just requires precise burns of thrust at precise times, which they coordinated with mission control, and the navigation was good enough to tell them where they pointed.

Once Apollo was in orbit around the moon, getting the lander crew back to it is a matter of MC calculating when exactly they need to do their ascent maneuvers to get back the same orbit as the command module. Then it's just manual control once you're close. You'll see it if you try to dock something in KSP, just a loooot of patience and tapping the RCS thrusters to get you back together. Mission control could calculate the burns/maneuvers they need to get back in the ballpark of one another.

The shuttle disasters are unrelated to any of that: one was related to an O-ring seal on the liquid boosters, which wasn't rated for the cold temperature of the launch day, but they were under political pressure to push the launch. The other was the result of unforseen damage to the heat shield from ice that broke off the primary booster during launch. Neither of them had to do with 'math'.

With a now established space station, I would have thought that this would be a help in planning a journey to the moon but nope, it seems harder than ever to get there. That doesn't sit right with me.

Could America afford to fail back in 69? I don't think so.
Could they afford to fail so publicly in front of every man woman and child in the country if not the world? Certainly not. For that reason, there is a certain
sense in faking the landings.

See my above post, now that we have decades more actual knowledge yes we're going back to the moon with a lunar station. It's a matter of time. The ISS indeed helped get space travel to this point. The only thing that's harder today is as someone mentioned earlier in the thread this isn't merely the Air Force with pocket protectors, this is rocket scientists, and not just the culture at NASA has changed but science in general has changed, safety considerations have changed, and only grown dramatically, systems have only grown in complexity along with their capability, the less simple you make something the more overhead there is for it. As you alluded to: when people died in those space shuttles, it puts a chill on progress. You have to stop and do a thorough postmortem, think about your thinking, think about your program from the ground up, and now that they're designing Orion and beyond it's all under the microscope, every contingency, everything that's been learned in the last half century, and even before that.

mickdw

King Mob wrote: »

Why would the distance be the factor that makes it impossible?

Neither of which were due to navigational issues and neither of which were due to anything applicable to the Apollo missions.
Also one was lost on launch, and you had discounted the Apollo 1 fire as it wasnt in space. Bit hypocritical there...

And what is this opinion based on? What research on Apollos navigation methods did you do?


As opposed to the Moon which changes it orbit randomly?

Why didnt the Russians blow the hoax then?

You don't think that the distance would be of any relevance? Can you tell me what study you have done to come to that conclusion?

Nasa still having rockets fail at launch and on re entry again not relevant in your book. Would they not have nailed this stuff down at that stage if they were successfully hopping onto the moon as they wished 30 years before?

What research on Apollos navigation have you done? Anyone can blindly spit out the official line. Have you an understanding of space flight, rocket flight and directional control? use of navigational correctional aids in flight etc.

King Mob

mickdw wrote: »

You don't think that the distance would be of any relevance? Can you tell me what study you have done to come to that conclusion?

I didnt say that it was of no relevance. I asked you why it made the problem impossible for Apollo.
You didn't answer that question, please try again.

mickdw wrote: »

Nasa still having rockets fail at launch and on re entry again not relevant in your book. Would they not have nailed this stuff down at that stage if they were successfully hopping onto the moon as they wished 30 years before?

I didnt say that either.
And again the shuttle accidents were due to thing that were not applicable to the Apollo missions.
Also, comparing the failure rate of Apollo missions: 2 out of 12.
To the failure rate of shuttle missions: 2 out of 135. (140 including test flights).
I'm sure you can put that into a percentage.

So yea the shuttle was far more reliable.

mickdw wrote: »

What research on Apollos navigation have you done? Anyone can blindly spit out the official line. Have you an understanding of space flight, rocket flight and directional control? use of navigational correctional aids in flight etc.

None, beyond watching a bunch of documentaries. I'm not an engineer.
Could you answer the question directly please?

Also could you explain why the Russians didnt expose the hoax?

Could you just answer the questions directly without being chased down on them?