badhatharry: badhatharry: Here is one for you. Why no pictures of an astronaut with the Earth in the background. If you went to Paris on vacation, what would you take a picture of? You would probably stand in front of the Eiffel tower and have someone take your picture.

Nevermind, I found one. They must have thought about that in the studio.

Whoops... didn't refresh. Sorry about that, Harry.

OrbitalFerret: These are all newly scanned from the original 2-inch negatives at super high res. Keep a drool bucket handy.

You ain't kidding. Bookmark page!

Fark yeah.

Tofu: hudef:
/all you true believers that said that there's no point in talking to people like me, do me a favor: shut the fark up and put me on your ignore list.

I either enjoy talking to people like you or I'm a gluten for punishment. Either way, I keep coming back to this thread and I'd be happy to take a lot of time explaining to you whatever you don't understand.

However, something tells me that you will never see this post and never respond to me. That'll be par for the course.


I am amazed at the great compositional talents of all the astronauts, considering that they had no viewfinder.

Hoax believers like you bring this point up all the time. It is easy for me to refute it. Out of every 10 photos taken by the astronauts, 8 or 9 of them are crap. There are lots of photos with heads cut off or photos that don't show anything, even a rock. There are photos that are sun-struck, there are photos that are all black. And all of them - every single last one of them is available on NASA's website. But you, in your arrogant self confidence, have never bothered to go look. Instead, you occasionally are shown a photo that was selected out of all those crappy photos by a PR guy. And then you just assume that they're all like that.

How amusing.

If I thought there was any chance that you'll ever come back to this thread, I'd be happy to link you to dozens of bad photos.

The old issue of "why no stars?" still nags.

Show me a photo taken on Earth without the use of a tripod and long exposure time that shows stars. For example, a photo taken at a night football game. If you were there, you'd be able to see the stars with your eyes, but they don't show on film.

But the light from the stars would register, however faintly, on the film stock.

I'm going to have ask for a citation for this. Because I think you're blowing smoke.

BTW, a hoax believer much smarter than you who used an astronomy program and determined that Venus was above the horizon on at least one of the apollo missions. He went to apollohoax.net and asked where it was in any of the photos. Guess what, someone went out, found a photo taken in the right direction, bumped the contrast, and sure enough, there's venus.

If I thought there was any chance that you'd ever come back to this thread, I'd go find that discussion for you. But I doubt you will. If you cared enough to hang around then you would have also cared enough to research all of this on your own.

Yet it never once occurred to the astronauts or their scientist bosses to place the camera on a tripod, point the camera skyward and take some longer exposures????

I love how you phrase that - "it never occured" as if the missions where farking trips to the beach and the astronauts stood around in their space suits trying to think up something to pass the time. Clue: every last second of their time on the moon was scheduled. You can read it in the transcripts where mission control often tells them they have skip something or they need to move their asses. Bottom line, legions of scientists had input on what experiments the astronauts would perform. And actual scientists, with actual PhDs, decided that the most important use of their time was, you know, studying the farking moon. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you should ask a scientist instead of another hoax believer.

That said, believe it or not, there was at least one astronomy experiment carried out: they took ultraviolet and spetroscopic images of a few stars. If I thought there was any chance that it would do any good, I'd go look it up. But I know it wont do any good, because I've had this discussion on fark before and it's always the same way. You'll never be back. You're not here to have a conversation.

Thanks Tofu, for your considered response.

Why would I not return to see the damage? I actually thought the thread was already dead, but felt like taking a piss into the wind.

As you can see, I am not very well versed in the space arena, and just raised a few random questions as they came to mind. You have succeeded in shooting most of them down. But I believe, that if you were to check with the people at Kodak labs, they would confirm my point about the possibility of enhanced scanning extracting "hidden" information in the underexposed areas of the emulsion.

I am generally disinclined to subscribe to conspiracy theories. Neither am I obsessed with deciphering "forbidden truths". I don't much care who really killed the Kennedys. But I am also not a gullible person.

So how did I come to doubt that man has been to the moon? There are three main reasons. All are dismissable for falling into the "gut-feeling" category. But I will mention them just to help the understanding of those that "cannot conceive why anyone with a brain could doubt that man has walked on the moon".

1) Whenever man has explored new realms on this planet he has invariably discovered the unexpected and the novel. Yet when attaining to another world for the first time, nothing unexpected or remarkable was found. Everything was just as we expected it to be. Just some dust and rocks described as almost identical to those found in Arizona.

2) In recent years scientists have learned that the existence of life is not dependent on a narrow chemical or environmental parameter, as previously assumed. Life flourishes abundantly, even if inconspicuously, in even the most unlikely environments on Earth. Huge tube-worms derive sustenance from corrosive sulfuric geysers under the pressure of miles of ocean. Bacteria thrive in Icelandic geysers at hundreds of degrees and buried miles deep inside solid granite. Recently I read that UV resistant bacteria have been found high in the ionosphere. Thus I can see no reason why there would not be a form of life adapted to the moon's peculiar habitat.

3) If Nasa was able to hop over to the moon seven times using a pocket-calculator equivalent computer and an untested, flimsy, tinfoil-wrapped lander, why is it such a daunting task for them to return using modern technology a thousand times advanced? Why have billions been spent on building a floating trailer home, when a permanent base on the moon would have been feasible?


There are many other reasons to be skeptical of the Apollo claims but these are mine. As to why such a hoax was perpetuated, I can only guess. I would "follow the money".... Perhaps the billions were necessary to develop secret defense systems. There are many plausible reasons such as one mentioned in the comments on this (new window) page:

#
ray willow said,

April 19, 2008at 12:23 pm

"I suspect that the Apollo missions did no more that just orbit the moon and that the only people who were aware of this were the astronauts themselves, the president and his close advisers. I do not believe that
any of the so called evidence supports this hoax theory though. I just believe that the missions were so complex and the chances of a disaster were so high that common sense dictated that it just wasn't worth the
risk. American astronauts crashing into the moon,failing to take off again or failing to rendezvous in orbit would have been the certain outcome and that would have been very bad for American prestige. As the
president had already pledged to go to the moon a hoax landing was the only logical solution to the problem. The missions therefore left earth with a full mission payload for a landing plus a bag of rocks from the
desert and some exposed film from a film set. The landing payload was jettisoned into space for the return trip and the rocks and film were handed over as evidence of a successful mission."

I considered the hoax theory after seeing the video of the first press conference after returning from the Moon. Neil, Buzz, and Michael just seemed really nervous and secretive. I now think they were just not used to that kind of thing at all being test pilots. Plus, there was a lot of secret stuff that they couldn't talk about.

If I may:

1) Whenever man has explored new realms on this planet he has invariably discovered the unexpected and the novel. Yet when attaining to another world for the first time, nothing unexpected or remarkable was found. Everything was just as we expected it to be. Just some dust and rocks described as almost identical to those found in Arizona.

That's not true. The dust that comprises the regolith is quite different from anything on Earth. 1) It is not weathered at all, in fact the grains are best described as "spiky" 2) It is chemically reactive with free oxygen; the astronauts mentioned a "gunpowder" smell when they tracked it into the lander, which went away after a few hours as the reactive minerals oxidized 3) It contains a small but detectable amount of Helium-3 from the solar wind, which is absent on Earth. There are others, but those are the ones I can pull from the top of my head.

2) In recent years scientists have learned that the existence of life is not dependent on a narrow chemical or environmental parameter, as previously assumed. Life flourishes abundantly, even if inconspicuously, in even the most unlikely environments on Earth. Huge tube-worms derive sustenance from corrosive sulfuric geysers under the pressure of miles of ocean. Bacteria thrive in Icelandic geysers at hundreds of degrees and buried miles deep inside solid granite. Recently I read that UV resistant bacteria have been found high in the ionosphere. Thus I can see no reason why there would not be a form of life adapted to the moon's peculiar habitat.

All of these forms of life require liquid water. The Moon has not had liquid water on its surface for at least four billion years. How do we know this? The minerals we collected are all silicates and aluminates that form in waterless conditions. In fact, this goes back to #1, in that rocks in Arizona have all been weathered to some extent by liquid water. Also, if the Moon was formed in a large impact event, much of the existing water in the precursor body would have boiled off and not returned.

That's not to say that something couldn't evolve that could survive in present lunar conditions. But it would need time to get started. It took approximately 1 billion years for definitive evidence of life on Earth to emerge, and the Moon was dry as a bone before that.

3) If Nasa was able to hop over to the moon seven times using a pocket-calculator equivalent computer and an untested, flimsy, tinfoil-wrapped lander, why is it such a daunting task for them to return using modern technology a thousand times advanced? Why have billions been spent on building a floating trailer home, when a permanent base on the moon would have been feasible?

Power. It's not that cheap to get out of Earth's gravity well. We may have faster computers and better materials, but we don't have a booster as powerful as the Saturn V any more. The shuttle can make it to low Earth orbit. Communications satellites can make it to geosynchronous orbit. The moon is about 200,000 miles higher than GEO, and a manned mission is much heavier than a communications satellite. Plus, a permanent base on the Moon is a thousand times more complicated than a go-and-return mission. The Moon has no water. The Moon has no atmosphere. The Moon has no oil, gas or coal. The Moon has no open skies and virgin lands to plow and seed and harvest. You have to take everything with you, and make sure it doesn't run out.

theorellior:
3) If Nasa was able to hop over to the moon seven times using a pocket-calculator equivalent computer and an untested, flimsy, tinfoil-wrapped lander, why is it such a daunting task for them to return using modern technology a thousand times advanced? Why have billions been spent on building a floating trailer home, when a permanent base on the moon would have been feasible?

Power. It's not that cheap to get out of Earth's gravity well. We may have faster computers and better materials, but we don't have a booster as powerful as the Saturn V any more. The shuttle can make it to low Earth orbit. Communications satellites can make it to geosynchronous orbit.

Thanks for your elaborate response. This place is closing in a few minutes, but I am curious what you mean by "we don't have ..any more". Has the technology been lost? They did not "have" these rockets back in the 1960's.... until they built them. Eh...so if we want to travel to the moon we have to build a rocket to go there. Am I missing something?

hudef: Thanks for your elaborate response. This place is closing in a few minutes, but I am curious what you mean by "we don't have ..any more". Has the technology been lost? They did not "have" these rockets back in the 1960's.... until they built them. Eh...so if we want to travel to the moon we have to build a rocket to go there. Am I missing something?

The Saturn V was a huge rocket, with three stages. We only have two-stage boosters right now. It took a lot of material and money to assemble, fuel and maintain. And once you use one, most of it is gone forever. To get back to the Moon right now we'd have to cobble something together out of spare shuttle parts or try to clean off the pigeon crap and algae off of the Saturn V shell outside of JSC in Houston. And even then we'd only be able to send up three people in two tin cans.

To return to the Moon, we'd need a better rocket, using the better technology and materials we have now, to send more payload. I think that's what the Ares V project (referenced above) is all about.

hudef: Has the technology been lost?

In some ways, the technology has been well-known since the time of Newton. After all, it's just a matter of throwing mass out the back end of the rocket. The little details (like how they kept the bell of the F-1 engine from melting) are tough to get right, and that's why every new rocket is expensive to design - just like every new airplane is expensive to design.

The apollo project cost $140 billion in 2004 dollars. For that same year, NASA's budget was only $13 billion. So by that measure, if NASA put everything it had into another moon program, it would take them ten more years to duplicate it. But the catch is, they can't possibly put 100% of their budget into going to the moon. For one thing, congress is full of farking pork-snuffing politicians and they attach line items to NASA's budget like, "designate 1 million to build a science lav in Mrs. Crabtree's 8th grade class." Seriously, there's bullshiat like that in every agency's budget. For another reason, they have commitments like the shuttle and the ISS. So NASA can only put a little amount of money each year into this program. And what little they do commit, they have to deal with idiots saying, "omfg we should solve all of Earth's problems first!!" It actually makes me pretty angry.

But wait! Shouldn't it be cheaper this time? Why, exactly? What has improved, technology-wise? Computers are faster, but computers aren't the problem. If you paid attention in high-school physics, you learned everything you'd need to plot a hoffman transfer orbit to the moon. Computers don't take you to the moon, rockets do. Should it be cheaper today to design a rocket than it was 60 years ago? Well consider this, Boeing spent more money developing its newest airplane, the 787 than it did on the 747 (adjusted for inflation). The tiny prop-powered Cirus SR22 cost more to develop than the P-51 did.

Why? Did we lose P-51 technology? Why can't we just take parts from a P-51 and use them to make a new airplane at half the cost? I guess the answer is just that it's more complicated than that.

So NASA had a perfectly good rocket that could go to the moon, and they would have been more than happy to keep flying them. By the way, look at what NASA was planning for: the vertical assembly building will hold FOUR Saturn Vs. NASA built TWO launch pads for them, and two crawlers. NASA was planning to launch Saturn V's like once a month. What happened?

Nixon happened. Vietnam happened. They canceled the program. They bought the shuttle instead. Then they never gave them enough money to build a replacement, so NASA kept flying shuttles until they're about to fall apart.

Tofu: NASA was planning to launch Saturn V's like once a month.

*Sniff* Sorry, I got something in my eye.

Oh, another thing:

Tofu: The apollo project cost $140 billion in 2004 dollars.

In other words, the Iraq war would have paid for eight Apollo programs. At bare minimum, throwing out all the buildup and prototyping and cobbling-from-scratch that happened before the actual Moon landings and just doing a simple multiply-the-figures-out, that would have meant fifty-six manned Moon missions. Fifty-six. At once a month, that would have been manned Moon missions for four and a half years straight. 168 astronauts. Incalculable science.

Instead, we got shock and awe and a shiatton of depleted uranium littering Mesopotamia. This is the sort of thing I think of when people complain we shouldn't spend money on space, we should spend it on Earth. Yeah, good luck with that.

looks like a closeup b&w picture of a crappy drywall job
/thought the same thing about those pics of mercury
//yeah, whyTF aren't there pics of the Apollo landing site?

Tofu: The Bad Astronomer: I tried years ago to get NASA to do an Apollo landing site imaging campaign for the Orbiter as part of their public outreach, but got nowhere. I expect they'll do it eventually, hopefully soon!

Yeah, we need that kind of public outreach, especially considering the fact that we'll never be going back to the moon. Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I feel that Obama is about this close *holds up two fingers* to canceling Ares V.

Everyone is saying, "omfg Ares I is so expensive" but nobody is saying, "yeah there's a good reason it's expensive: they are building in commonality with Ares V." In other words, a lot of things that you're going to need on Ares V anyway, like the six-segment SRBs and the J2E engine. If you build Ares I, then you can just bolt those parts onto Ares V. But if you don't build Ares I, then you *still* have to pay to develop those parts.

So, everyone is saying how much money we'll save if we go with the Delta IV, but I don't believe it, because I don't see people taking Ares V into account. What I think is going to happen, is that we'll cancel Ares I, we'll end up paying just as much for the Delta IV (surprise surprise, Boeing was overly optimistic in its cost projections). Then someone will say, "oh BTW Ares V is now double the cost LOL SORRY!" and they'll cancel Ares V.

Result: we'll have something even less useful than the shuttle and for the next 50 years, no US astronaut will leave LEO. And when the ISS is thrown away in 10 years or so what are we going to do? What possible use will there be for Orion without a space station or a way to go to the moon?

I'm sorry that I sound angry, but this is my cynical prediction. Enjoy your LRO pictures of the moon because you're not going back because nobody is willing to pay for it.

You just made a small child cry, and probably also killed a puppy...