Can
you believe it? They put a man on the moon!
Between 1968 and
1972, manned missions to the Moon were conducted by the United States
as part of the Apollo programme. Apollo 8 was the first manned
mission to enter orbit in December 1968, and was followed by Apollo
10 in May 1969. Six missions landed men on the Moon, beginning with
Apollo 11 in July 1969, during which Neil Armstrong became the first
man to walk on the Moon. Apollo 13 was intended to land, however it
was restricted to a flyby due to a malfunction aboard the spacecraft.
But did NASA
really get too the moon and if they did, did they actually put a man
onto the moon? Or was it just a big hoax? And if it was a hoax then
why? In the US, the hoax claim was originated by libertarian writer
Bill Kaysing (1922-2005) with his 1976 book "We Never Went to
the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle". It is a
shame Kaysing is mostly remembered for that, because he also wrote
books on sustainable living, privacy, hot springs, homelessness,
cooking, and other topics. It is reported that Bill Kaysing was
originally requested by his publishers to write his book as a satire,
but he somehow became convinced of the truth. Kaysing alleged that
his own publishers were working with NASA to suppress the book after
he received a letter from his own editor saying that the manuscript
wasn't good enough for publication. Kaysing then self-published both
the book and the letter, creating a false Streisand effect.
The Apollo program
was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to
Earth. Six of the missions (Apollo's 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17)
achieved this goal. Apollo's 7 and 9 were Earth orbiting missions to
test the Command and Lunar Modules, and did not return lunar data.
Apollo's 8 and 10 tested various components while orbiting the Moon,
and returned photography of the lunar surface. Apollo 13 did not land
on the Moon due to a malfunction, but also returned photographs. The
six missions that landed on the Moon returned a wealth of scientific
data and almost 400 kilograms of lunar samples.
The Apollo mission
consisted of a Command Module (CM) and a Lunar Module (LM). The CM
and LM would separate after lunar orbit insertion. One crew member
would stay in the CM, which would orbit the Moon, while the other two
astronauts would take the LM down to the lunar surface. After
exploring the surface, setting up experiments, taking pictures,
collecting rock samples, etc., the astronauts would return to the CM
for the journey back to Earth.
Apollo
Lunar Landings (1969 - 1972)
Apollo Launch Landing EVA time Traverse Sample
mission Date Date Landing Site Latitude Longitude (hours) (km) Return (kg)
------- ------ ------- ------------ --------- --------- -------- -------- -----------
11 16 Jul 1969 20 Jul 1969 Mare Tranquillitatis 0.674 N 23.473 E 2.53 0.25 21.7
12 14 Nov 1969 19 Nov 1969 Oceanus Procellarum 3.014 S 23.419 W 7.75 1.35 34.4
14 31 Jan 1971 05 Feb 1971 Fra Mauro 3.645 S 17.471 W 9.38 3.45 42.9
15 26 Jul 1971 30 Jul 1971 Hadley Rille 26.132 N 3.634 E 19.13 27.9 76.8
16 16 Apr 1972 20 Apr 1972 Descartes 8.973 S 15.499 E 20.23 27. 94.7
17 07 Dec 1972 11 Dec 1972 Taurus-Littrow 20.188 N 30.775 E 22.07 35. 110.5
Above NASA has listed
six Luna landings, they have provided dates, coordinates and a map of
the moon showing where the missions were. That s easy to say though
the moon is a long way away! How can the average person stuck here
on Earth be sure they actually happened? Can you see from earth the
Luna landing sites?
As you're well aware, no telescope on Earth can
see the leftover descent stages of the Apollo Lunar Modules or
anything else Apollo-related. Not even the Hubble Space Telescope can
discern evidence of the Apollo landings. The laws of optics define
its limits.
Hubble's 94.5-inch mirror has a resolution of
0.024″ in ultraviolet light, which translates to 141 feet (43
meters) at the Moon's distance. In visible light, it's 0.05″, or
closer to 300 feet. Given that the largest piece of equipment left on
the Moon after each mission was the 17.9-foot-high by 14-foot-wide
Lunar Module, you can see the problem.
So individuals doubting the authenticity of the
moon landings will chalk that one up in their favour, we can't see
any evidence from Earth. However no one denies that NASA has not
been to the moon !
Missions to the Moon have been conducted by the
Soviet Union, United States, European Space Agency, Japan, India and
the People's Republic of China. The Moon has also been visited by
five spacecraft not dedicated to studying it; four spacecraft have
flown past it to gain gravity assists, and a radio telescope,
Explorer 49, was placed into selenocentric orbit in order to use the
Moon to block interference from terrestrial radio sources.
If the moon landings had been faked, none of the
above nations would have found any evidence on the moon and the US
have been quite open about leaving objects behind on the surface of
the moon, not a good idea if they were faking the landings. We can
see the landing sites in very good detail too from satellites
orbiting the moon mapping it's surface.
NASA'sLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which
can dip as low as 31 miles (50 km) from the lunar surface, close
enough to image each landing site in remarkable detail. LRO is a
robotic mission that set out to map the moon's surface. Images of
the landing sites can be found by clicking on the below link.
So far all the evidence has been coming from the
US/NASA but the they are not the only ones to have satellites
orbiting the moon, the Soviet Union, Japan, China, and India all have
there own space programs, building their own space probes which are
launched on their own launch vehicles, and have their own deep space
communication networks that are completely independent of NASA no
NASA facilities were used, and there was no NASA funding.
In 2008, the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) SELENE lunar probe obtained
several photographs showing evidence of Moon landings. Comparing two
photos taken on the lunar surface by the Apollo 15 astronauts August
2, 1971 during EVA 3 at station 9A near Hadley Rille And one in 2008
a reconstruction from images taken by the SELENE terrain camera and
3D projected to the same vantage point as the surface photos. The
terrain is a close match within the SELENE camera resolution of 10
metres.
As with SELENE, the Terrain Mapping Camera of
India's Chandrayaan-1 probe did not have enough resolution to record
Apollo hardware. Nevertheless, as with SELENE, Chandrayaan-1
independently recorded evidence of lighter, disturbed soil around the
Apollo 15 site.
China's second lunar probe, Chang'e 2, which
was launched in 2010 is capable of capturing lunar surface images
with a resolution of up to 1.3 metres. It claims to have spotted
traces of the Apollo landings, though the relevant imagery has not
been publicly identified.
Space craft can also be independently tracked and
monitored by radar from Earth. The Sovie Union monitored the
missions at their Space Transmissions Corps and the missions were
also tracked by radar from several other countries on the way to the
Moon and back.
So it would seem then that NASA did get too the
moon and was able to leave items behind on the surface and as you
will read below was able to retrieve rocks but did they actually put
a man on the moon?
Not only did NASA leave behind their trash on the
surface of the moon but they also brought back samples of rocks and
soil from the moon! In this they are not alone, the Soviet Union
conducted unmanned missions that deployed rovers and returned samples
to the Earth. Three rover missions were launched, of which two were
successful, and eleven sample return flights were attempted with
three successes. So both the US and the Soviet Union have samples
from the moons surface and to the best of my knowledge no one is
disputing that the Soviet moon missions were also faked.
Moon rocks on Earth come from three sources:
those collected by the US Apollo manned lunar landings from 1969 to
1972; samples returned by three Soviet Luna unmanned probes in the
1970s; and rocks that were ejected naturally from the lunar surface
by cratering events and subsequently fell to Earth as lunar
meteorites.
I have heard the argument that the rocks held by
NASA are samples of moon rocks found on earth or are just rocks found
on earth that they think resemble moon rocks.
Almost all lunar
rocks are depleted in volatiles and are completely lacking in
hydrated minerals common in Earth rocks. In some regards, lunar rocks
are closely related to Earth's rocks in their isotopic composition of
the element oxygen. The Apollo moon rocks were collected using a
variety of tools, including hammers, rakes, scoops, tongs, and core
tubes. Most were photographed prior to collection to record the
condition in which they were found. They were placed inside sample
bags and then a Special Environmental Sample Container for return to
the Earth to protect them from contamination. In contrast to the
Earth, large portions of the lunar crust appear to be composed of
rocks with high concentrations of the mineral anorthite. The mare
basalts have relatively high iron values. Furthermore, some of the
mare basalts have very high levels of titanium (in the form
ofilmenite).
Moon rocks can only come from the moon and cannot
be forged. Samples are held by the US and Russia taken directly from
the moon, also president Nixon gave away 135 samples to 135 country's
and 50 states. Most of these have ether been lost or stolen, but
what is important is that the US gave away samples of moon rock to
135 country's!
Following the money trail …
Landing men on the Moon by the end of 1969
required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the
largest commitment of resources ($24 billion) ever made by any nation
in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people
and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and
universities.
If as suspected by many the moon landings were a
hoax employing 400,000 people and 20,000 firms and universities, it
would have been impossible to keep this secret. Someone would of
talked!You can't pull the wool over the eyes of that many people and
companies all of them working together to build the Apollo space
craft, if it was not possible to reach and/or land on the moon
someone would have said as non of them would want their part of the
project to be the part that failed. Also $24 billion has to be
accounted for, money is constantly being chased for by every
government department, $24 billion is too large a sum of money to
finance a hoax too many people in congress would be wanting some of
that money, too many independent eyes watching where the money is
being spent.
The Apollo program costs $20.4 billion if we
simply added yearly spending of its 15 year-lifespan (1959–1973),
or $109 billion in today’s money. Since 11 Apollo piloted missions
were flown, that amounts to $9.9 billion per flight. That’s way
over Mercury and Gemini mission costs, reflecting the complexity of
going to the Moon. And if we consider these $109 billion resulted in
six lunar landings, each of these missions costs some $18 billion!
These figures are difficult to calculate.
First, we need to find how much NASA spent each year on this program,
and then add these dollars taking into account inflation. We couldn’t
add 1970s dollars to 2000s dollars. For example, if we simply added
Apollo programs fiscal spending during its fifteen-year existence, we
obtain $20.4 billion. That’s the usual program cost reported.
However, doing the same maths using constant 1975 dollars give $29.3
billion. And using 2010 dollars give us $109 billion. We thus could
say that the Apollo program cost $20 billion in then-year dollars,
$30 billion in 1970s dollars, or $110 billion in today’s money.
The first challenge NASA leaders faced in
meeting the presidential mandate was securing funding. While Congress
enthusiastically appropriated funding for Apollo immediately after
the president's announcement, NASA Administrator James E. Webb was
rightly concerned that the momentary sense of crisis would subside
and that the political consensus present for Apollo in 1961 would
abate. He tried, albeit without much success, to lock the presidency
and the Congress into a long-term obligation to support the program.
While they had made an intellectual commitment, NASA's leadership was
concerned that they might renege on the economic part of the bargain
at some future date.33
Initial NASA estimates of the costs of Project
Apollo were about $20 billion through the end of the decade, a figure
approaching $150 billion in 1992 dollars when accounting for
inflation. Webb quickly stretched those initial estimates for Apollo
as far as possible, with the intent that even if NASA did not receive
its full budget requests, as it did not during the latter half of the
decade, it would still be able to complete Apollo. At one point in
1963, for instance, Webb came forward with a NASA funding projection
through 1970 for more than $35 billion. As it turned out Webb was
able to sustain the momentum of Apollo through the decade, largely
because of his rapport with key members of Congress and with Lyndon
B. Johnson, who became president in November 1963.34
Project Apollo, backed by sufficient funding,
was the tangible result of an early national commitment in response
to a perceived threat to the United States by the Soviet Union. NASA
leaders recognized that while the size of the task was enormous, it
was still technologically and financially within their grasp, but
they had to move forward quickly. Accordingly, the space agency's
annual budget increased from $500 million in 1960 to a high point of
$5.2 billion in 1965.35 The NASA funding level represented 5.3
percent of the federal budget in 1965. A comparable percentage of the
$1.23 trillion Federal budget in 1992 would have equalled more than
$65 billion for NASA, whereas the agency's actual budget then stood
at less than $15 billion.
Out of the budgets appropriated for NASA each
year approximately 50 percent went directly for human space flight,
and the vast majority of that went directly toward Apollo. Between
1959 and 1973 NASA spent $23.6 billion on human space flight,
exclusive of infrastructure and support, of which nearly $20 billion
was for Apollo.36 In addition, Webb sought to expand the definition
of Project Apollo beyond just the mission of landing humans on the
Moon. As a result even those projects not officially funded under the
Apollo line item could be justified as supporting the mission, such
as the Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, and Surveyor satellite probes.
For seven years after Kennedy's Apollo
decision, through October 1968, James Webb politicked, coaxed,
cajoled, and manoeuvred for NASA in Washington. A long time
Washington insider- -the former director of the Bureau of the Budget
and Undersecretary of State during the Truman Administration--he was
a master at bureaucratic politics, understanding that it was
essentially a system of mutual give and take. For instance, while the
native North Carolinian may also have genuinely believed in the
Johnson Administration's Civil Rights bill that went before Congress
in 1964, as a personal favour to the President he lobbied for its
passage on Capitol Hill. This secured for him Johnson's gratitude,
which he then use to secure the administration's backing of NASA's
initiatives. In addition, Webb wielded the money appropriated for
Apollo to build up a constituency for NASA that was both powerful and
vocal. This type of gritty pragmatism also characterized Webb's
dealings with other government officials and members of Congress
throughout his tenure as administrator. When give and take did not
work, as was the case on occasion with some members of Congress, Webb
used the presidential directive as a hammer to get his way. Usually
this proved successful. After Kennedy's assassination in 1963,
moreover, he sometimes appealed for continued political support for
Apollo because it represented a fitting tribute to the fallen leader.
In the end, through a variety of methods Administrator Webb built a
seamless web of political liaisons that brought continued support for
and resources to accomplish the Apollo Moon landing on the schedule
Kennedy had announced.
Funding was not the only critical component for
Project Apollo. To realize the goal of Apollo under the strict time
constraints mandated by the president, personnel had to be mobilized.
This took two forms. First, by 1966 the agency's civil service rolls
had grown to 36,000 people from the 10,000 employed at NASA in 1960.
Additionally, NASA's leaders made an early decision that they would
have to rely upon outside researchers and technicians to complete
Apollo, and contractor employees working on the program increased by
a factor of 10, from 36,500 in 1960 to 376,700 in 1965. Private
industry, research institutions, and universities, therefore,
provided the majority of personnel working on Apollo.
To incorporate the great amount of work
undertaken for the project into the formal bureaucracy never seemed a
particularly savvy idea, and as a result during the 1960s somewhere
between 80 and 90 percent of NASA's overall budget went for contracts
to purchase goods and services from others. Although the magnitude of
the endeavour had been much smaller than with Apollo, this reliance
on the private sector and universities for the bulk of the effort
originated early in NASA's history under T. Keith Glennan, in part
because of the Eisenhower Administration's mistrust of large
government establishments. Although neither Glennan's successor, nor
Kennedy shared that mistrust, they found that it was both good
politics and the best way of getting Apollo done on the
presidentially-approved schedule. It was also very nearly the only
way to harness talent and institutional resources already in
existence in the emerging aerospace industry and the country's
leading research universities.
In addition to these other resources, NASA
moved quickly during the early 1960s to expand its physical capacity
so that it could accomplish Apollo. In 1960 the space agency
consisted of a small headquarters in Washington, its three inherited
NACA research centres, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Goddard
Space Flight Centre, and the Marshall Space Flight Centre. With the
advent of Apollo, these installations grew rapidly. In addition, NASA
added three new facilities specifically to meet the demands of the
lunar landing program. In 1962 it created the Manned Spacecraft
Centre (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Centre in 1973), near
Houston, Texas, to design the Apollo spacecraft and the launch
platform for the lunar lander. This centre also became the home of
NASA's astronauts and the site of mission control. NASA then greatly
expanded for Apollo the Launch Operations Centre at Cape Canaveral on
Florida's eastern sea coast. Renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Centre
on 29 November 1963, this installation's massive and expensive Launch
Complex 34 was the site of all Apollo firings. Additionally, the
spaceports Vehicle Assemble Building was a huge and expensive
36-story structure where the Saturn/Apollo rockets were assembled.
Finally, to support the development of the Saturn launch vehicle, in
October 1961 NASA created on a deep south bayou the Mississippi Test
Facility, renamed the John C. Stennis Space Centre in 1988. The cost
of this expansion was great, more than 2.2 billion over the decade,
with 90 percent of it expended before 1966.
So we have seen what independent witnesses have
said and what NASA has said and it seems at this point that it adds
up, the US did acquire the funding needed by NASA. NASA built the
rockets and delivery system and lunar lander. We saw them launch,
the Russians and others tracked them on their way too the moon and
NASA left behind evidence that has been independently verified and
brought back samples from the moon which they handed out samples of
too 135 country's. Their are two more things I'd like to discuss and
that,s the film and photo's taken during the Apollo missions and the
laser ranging retroreflector experiment.
The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment was
deployed on Apollo 11, 14, and 15. It consists of a series of
corner-cube reflectors, which are a special type of mirror with the
property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the
direction it came from. A similar device was also included on the
Soviet Union's Lunakhod 2spacecraft. These reflectors can be
illuminated by laser beams aimed through large telescopes on Earth.
The reflected laser beam is also observed with the telescope,
providing a measurement of the round-trip distance between Earth and
the Moon. This is the only Apollo experiment that is still returning
data from the Moon. Many of these measurements have been made by
McDonald Observatory in Texas. From 1969 to 1985, they were made on a
part-time basis using the McDonald Observatory 107-inch telescope.
Since 1985, these observations have been made using a dedicated
30-inch telescope. Additional measurements have been made by
observatories in Hawaii, California, France, Australia, and Germany.
Laser beams are used because they remain
tightly focused for large distances. Nevertheless, there is enough
dispersion of the beam that it is about 7 kilometres in diameter when
it reaches the Moon and 20 kilometres in diameter when it returns to
Earth. Because of this very weak signal, observations are made for
several hours at a time. By averaging the signal for this period, the
distance to the Moon can be measured to an accuracy of about 3
centimetres (the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is about
385,000 kilometres).
The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment has
produced many important measurements. These include an improved
knowledge of the Moon's orbit and the rate at which the Moon is
receding from Earth (currently 3.8 centimetres per year) and of
variations in the rotation of the Moon. These variations in rotation
are related to the distribution of mass inside the Moon and imply the
existence of a small core, with a radius of less than 350 kilometres,
somewhat smaller than the limits imposed by the passive seismic and
magnetometer experiments. These measurements have also improved our
knowledge of changes of the Earth's rotation rate and the precession
of its spin axis and have been used to test Einstein's theory of
relativity.
Secondly theirs the photos taken during the
missions. NASA had until recently refused to release them all and
there are a lot! This has played in to the hands of the people who
doubted the moon landings. They have accused NASA of a cover up and
suspect that these pictures contain evidence of the hoax. If this
was the case I'm sure NASA would have destroyed the photos. Instead
they have now released them all to the public here.
So what do people say who doubt the moon landings
happened? I will list here what some of them have said …
The American flag appears to wave in the
lunar wind.
Since there is no wind or atmosphere on the Moon, how
can the US flag be flapping in pictures of the first Moon landing?
This theory deals with the American flag. The picture that was sent
back showed this flag fluttering as if in a wind. This is proof that
this picture had been taken on earth and not the result of a moon
landing. The fact that the flag flutters in the wind when there is no
wind on the moon adds credibility to the belief that the moon
landings are a hoax.
If the astronauts had passed through the
Van Allen Belt the radiation would have killed them.
In order to reach the
moon, astronauts had to pass through what is known as the Van Allen
radiation belt. The belt is held in place by Earth’s magnetic field
and stays perpetually in the same place. The sheer levels of
radiation would have cooked the astronauts en route to the moon,
despite the layers of aluminium coating the interior and exterior of
the spaceship.
Multiple-angle
shadows in the moon photos prove there was more than one source of
light, like a large studio lamp.
On the moon there is
only one strong light source: the Sun. So all shadows should run
parallel to one another. But this was not the case during the moon
landing: videos and photographs clearly show that shadows fall in
different directions. This must mean multiple light sources are
present suggesting that the landing photos were taken on a film set.
In the sun's rays, the Moon's temperature
is 280 degrees F. The film (among other things) would have melted.
Over the course of a
full lunar day and night, the temperature on the Moon can vary
wildly, from around +200 to -200 degrees Celsius (+392 to -328
degrees Fahrenheit), so it’s natural to wonder how lunar astronauts
survived this huge temperature variation.
To leave a footprint requires moisture in
the soil.
If there’s no
moisture on the moon, then how come you can see footprints perfectly?
Because when you step in the desert where there’s no moisture in
the sand, all you see is a circle. But in the photographs of the
footprint on the moon, you see an absolute impression of the
footprint indicating that there is moisture in the soil which means
they’re not on the moon.
When the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM)
landed, its powerful engine didn't burrow a deep crater in the
"dusty surface.
Before the Apollo
landings, NASA scientists and artists thought that the engine firing
may create a blast crater underneath the lunar module. Pictures of
the site, however, showed no such crater, not even a big depression
in the surface, as though the module was just “placed there.”
There's no way that big moon buggy they
were driving could have fit into that little landing module!
The Lunar Rover was
too large to fit in the Lunar Module. If one takes the measurements
of the Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV) it does not fit into the Lunar
Module.
Space is littered with stars. Why then are
they missing from the photographs?
The sky is black and
without an atmosphere we should be able to see stars! On the moon
without an atmosphere in the way, the sky should be filled with
stars. Since there aren’t stars, it must be fake. In fact, it is a
really bad fake because NASA knew that they wouldn’t be able to
figure out where every star goes on their black backdrops for their
sets because other people would realize they are in the wrong place,
so they just eliminated the stars all together and made the backdrops
completely black.
Slow-Motion Walking and Hidden Cables
If you take the moon
landing footage and increase the speed of the film x2.5, the
astronauts appear to be moving in Earth’s gravity. As for the
astronaut’s impressive jump height, hidden cables and wires have
been used giving the astronauts some extra height. In some photos
outlines of hidden cables can be seen!
The “C” Rock
In Apollo photograph
AS16-107-17446 (Apollo 16, film roll 107, photo #17446), there is a
large rock in the foreground, a “C” is visible on the rock. This
is obvious evidence of a hoax because it’s a prop rock, the prop
man forgot to turn the rock over. NASA labelled all the prop rocks
to make sure they go where they’re supposed to.
Layered Cross-hairs
A cross hair, which is
burned directly into the image by the film plate, and so should
always appear on top of the objects in the photograph, appears behind
the object in some photos, clearly revealing a composite of two
pictures into one.
Oh! Your
finished? Well allow me to retort! ...
The flag they put on the moon has a metal rod
running along the top, and when Neil Armstrong pushed it into the
ground, he twisted it a little, which set the fabric into motion.
The fabric hanging down from the rod acts like a pendulum, moving
back and forth under its own momentum, restrained by the elasticity
of the fabric attaching it to the rod above. The result is that the
fabric undulates or ripples rhythmically, while the stiffness of the
fabric resisting deformation gradually slows it. On Earth, things
have to be relatively heavy or compact to swing like pendulums,
because air resistance stops anything, like a flag, that's too bulky
or too light to have enough momentum to push through it. But these
images didn't come from Earth. There's something counter-intuitive
about a flag swinging around like a pendulum, that's only because
we're not used to seeing things move around in a true vacuum or
under reduced gravity Intuitively, seeing a flag waving like this,
it's easy to jump to the conclusion that it must be due to wind
(because when flags move like this in our everyday life, it is
because of wind), but in this case, on the moon, it's not.
It's no secret that radiation exists in
space, and we know radiation can cause death, so, to the ordinary
person, the only conclusion is that space is deadly and will kill
any outbound astronaut. Unfortunately this is a very simplistic way
of looking at the problem. Radiation levels vary dramatically in
strength and intensity, with some being at dangerous levels and some
being at a harmless level.
Whether or not a human
will experience illness or death is related to the radiation dose
received. Observations from the ground and from spacecraft
demonstrate that the space radiation hazard of the Van Allen belt
could be kept small by use of low-altitude Earth orbits and rapid
transits to the Moon along trajectories with inclinations of about 30
degrees.
Only the solar flare
particle events presented a hazard for the moderately shielded
spacecraft. Also, secondary radiation was not significant for such
spacecraft. Most of Apollo's radiation protection activity was
directed towards providing protection against major solar flare
particle events that might occur while astronauts were in the lunar
module or on the lunar surface. The events, which start at the sun,
were detected by ground-based instrumentation and were measured at
the spacecraft by dosimeters and particle spectrometers. A prognosis
of the radiation dose was prepared and continually updated by
radiation environment specialists using a console in the Mission
Control Centre (MCC). Dose estimates were then provided for the use
of the medical officer, who advised the Flight Director of the
radiation effects to be expected.
Shadows on the
Moon are complicated because there are several light sources: the
Sun, and the Earth, as well as the astronauts and the Lunar Module.
Light from these sources is scattered by lunar dust in many
different directions, including into shadows. Additionally, the
Moon's surface is not flat and shadows falling into craters and
hills appear longer, shorter and distorted from the expectations of
the ordinary people. More significantly, perspective effects come
into play, particularly on rough or angled ground. This leads to
non-parallel shadows even on objects which are extremely close to
each other, and can be observed easily on Earth wherever fences or
trees are found. And finally, the camera in use was fitted with a
wide angle lens, which naturally resulted in subtle versions of
fisheye lens distortion.
All the trips to the Moon’s surface were
planned for lunar dawn, to ensure the surface hadn’t had time to
heat up fully to its daytime temperature. It is also important to
know how heat can be transferred to astronauts on the lunar surface.
There are three ways heat can transfer and only two are possible on
the Moon. The first is radiation, both directly from the Sun and
from the Sun’s reflection on the surface. The astronauts’
spacesuits were designed to reflect almost 90% of the light that
reaches it, so very little heat would have transferred to the
astronauts. The second is by conduction from the direct contact
their feet had with the surface. This is also an ineffective process
as regolith on the lunar surface doesn’t conduct heat well and the
astronauts’ boots were insulated, slowing down conduction even
further. This shows that even though huge temperature variations
occur on the Moon, lunar astronauts were never actually exposed to
them.
This was tested by the Mythbusters team and
below is their explanation.
The Build Team first
tested whether dry or wet sand made a more distinguishable footprint
by stepping in them with an astronaut boot. It was clear that the wet
footprint had more detail than the dry footprint. They then placed
sand similar in composition to the Moon’s soil in a vacuum chamber
and stepped on it with an astronaut boot, which made a clear print.
The reason provided for this was that the unique composition of lunar
soil allows it to behave differently than terrestrial soil.
The landing module touches down on solid
rock, covered in a layer of fine lunar dust, so there is no reason
why it would create a blast crater. Even if the ground were less
solid, the amount of thrust being produced by the engines at the
point of landing and take off is very low in comparison to a landing
on Earth because of the relative lack of gravitational pull.
The Lunar Rover
was folded and stored in quad 1 of the Lunar Module with the
underside of the chassis facing out. Deploying the Rover: One
astronaut would climb the egress ladder on the LM and release the
rover, which would then be slowly tilted out by the second astronaut
on the ground through the use of reels and tapes. As the rover was
let down from the bay most of the deployment was automatic. The rear
wheels folded out and locked in place and when they touched the
ground the front of the rover could be unfolded, the wheels
deployed, and the entire frame let down to the surface by pulleys.
The rover components locked into place upon opening. Cabling, pins,
and tripods would then be removed and the seats and footrests
raised. In short it's lightweight and compactly folded/stored and
assembled on the moon.
The lunar landscape is so bright that the
camera exposure settings to take a good lunar landscape photo are
not sensitive enough to image the fainter stars that are in the
lunar sky. If the camera was set to record the stars, the moonscape
would be washed out white and featureless. Stars are also never
seen in Space Shuttle, Mir, International Space Station and Earth
observation photos, or even sporting events that take place at
night. The light from the Sun in outer space in the Earth-Moon
system is at least as bright as the sunlight that reaches the
Earth's surface on a clear day at noon, so cameras used for imaging
subjects illuminated by sunlight are set for a daylight exposure.
The dim light of the stars simply do not provide enough exposure to
record visible images.
Thanks again to the MythBusters team for the
below.
Adam donned a replica
NASA space suit and mimicked the astronauts' motions while being
filmed by a slow motion camera. They also attached Adam to wires in
order to mimic the Moon's lower gravity. While comparing the new and
original footage, the MythBusters noted that at first glance, they
looked similar, but there were many small discrepancies due to
filming in Earth's gravity. In order to film in microgravity, the
MythBusters boarded a reduced gravity aircraft run by Zero Gravity
Corporation and filmed exactly the same movements. Adam noted that
the movements were more comfortable and made more sense in
microgravity, and the footage from the plane looked exactly like the
original film. The MythBusters concluded that the Moon landing film
is authentic.
One picture does seem to show a letter C. But
this particular picture is a third generation copy after the
original negative has been through a photographic enlarger - prone
to dust and hair infection if not careful. Such items will show up
as a silhouette. Most of the published images seen in books etc are
not from the original film taken on the moon; they are priceless and
are handled to an absolute minimum. Images you see in print are
often 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th generation copies. The entire Apollo
film archive has now been digitised by high quality scanners to
remove this problem of contamination by dust & hairs and
decreased quality. Such facilities were not available when this 'C'
Rock picture was published.
In photography, the light white colour (the
object behind the cross hair) makes the black cross hair invisible
due to saturation effects in the film emulsion. The film particles
that ought to have been black were exposed by light from the
adjacent brightly lit particles. This saturation effect would not
happen if the cross hairs were drawn on after the photo was taken,
and so is evidence of genuine photos. Attempting to alter photos
that already have cross hairs would make the compositing process far
more difficult. Also prints were often cropped and rotated, which
causes the illusion of reticules occurring off-centre or "not
straight.
At the end of the day it is up to each person to
make up their minds on this topic. For myself the moon landings are
too big and complex a task, and too open to scrutiny by interested
party's, to name a few the press, other nations (Russia),
organisations like the military who were in competition with NASA for
funding and the general public, to fake. The moon is not the US's
exclusive playground other nations have been their and will go their
again who have and will continue to confirm NASA's presence their.
