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Post by inconceivable on Aug 13, 2007 17:46:40 GMT -4
If you had come across something that definitely proved that the Apollo moon landings were hoaxed, would you come forward or would you take it to your grave?
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 13, 2007 18:00:24 GMT -4
To answer your question directly, the first duty is to the truth. Therefore if I have evidence that Apollo was hoaxed, I would not sit on it.
I've already done a bit of that. For example, people offer speculation on how the flight controllers might be fooled by bouncing fake telemetry signals off of secret or supposedly derelict satellites. In fact you wouldn't have to go to that length to give the MOCR a synthesized data stream. The MSFN was designed to be "unplugged" from MOCR in such a way that computers could feed a synthetic telemetry stream to the MOCR consoles for training purposes. MOCR was its own simulator, depending on what data source it was connected to. A few people told me I shouldn't have given that away. But it's the truth, and the truth is not always what we want to hear.
Now unfortunately the subject of your thread taints the content a bit. You allude to a "smoking gun" when in fact historical research doesn't really work that way. Conspiracists often point to what they say is a "smoking gun" -- usually the supposed radiation hazard or some piece of photography -- and say that this bit of evidence proves the whole case once and for all. Unfortunately it does not; the "smoking gun" ploy is a strategy to get around having to deal with all the actual evidence.
By compelling the reader to believe the fakery hypothesis very early on, the conspiracist can put the cart before the horse and say that if you accept that the missions were fake then you don't have to come up with any of the detailed scenarios required to explain all the other evidence. If the missions were fake, say, because the radiation would have been too severe, then "obviously" the pictures were fake and "obviously" the moon rocks were fake, even if you can't come up with a plausible scenario for how that was done.
That method is the antithesis of historical research. You can't simply explain large amounts of evidence away by saying it "somehow" must have been faked.
So while I will certainly be honest about the evidentiary state of affairs, I don't accept the "smoking gun" philosophy. Any case that proves Apollo missions to have been fake would not only have to show why they can't have been done, but would also have to explain by specific hoax means how the rest of the evidence came into existence that we now accept as proof.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 13, 2007 18:08:02 GMT -4
I would not sit on it, but it would have to be pretty fanatastic evidence in order to "definitely prove" the landings were a hoax. It would have to include detailed descriptions of how all the evidence that we have was really produced, along with some significant evidence that these methods were actually used. In short it would have to be stuff several levels of magnitude above what any hoax believer has ever produced to this date.
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Post by sts60 on Aug 13, 2007 23:42:10 GMT -4
If you had come across something that definitely proved that the Apollo moon landings were hoaxed, would you come forward or would you take it to your grave? Easy question. Of course I would come forward.
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Aug 14, 2007 4:22:29 GMT -4
inconceivable,
What you have to bear in mind is that, just like there being no one piece of evidence that can be pointed to as proving (by itself) that Apollo happened, there can be no one piece of evidence that proves it was a hoax (if that were to have been the case).
For example. If someone were to prove that one of the Apollo photographs were absolutely fake, that does not prove that the landings didn't happen. In fact, the entire crop of Apollo photos would have to be shown to be fake (and explained) to even place a major question mark over it. If even one of the photos could be shown not to be fake, the clearly at least one landing happened.
There are also those (including Richard Hoagland and David Percy if memory serves) who believe that the entire Apollo photographic record is fake not because the landings themselves were fake, but in order to hide what the astronauts really found on the moon.
Thus, even if you prove all of the photos to be fake, it would still be necessary to explain (and prove):
* Where the hundreds of pounds of moon rock came from, or how they were manufactured.
* How NASA produced the hours of uncut video showing astronauts, and the moon surface, and other objects, behaving in ways that they cannot behave in Earth gravity or an atmosphere.
* How the spacecraft, and their communications, were tracked all the way to the moon, on the moon and back again by nations all over the world.
And that is just for starters.
Even if Neil Armstrong came out and publicly stated that the landings were faked, the evidence is against him. He would have to explain how the landings were faked in order for the scientific community to take him seriously.
A single piece of evidence shown to be manufactured only starts the process of unraveling Apollo not ends it. At present, NASA claims to have been to the moon six times, with a seventh mission failing along the way. They have produced mountains of evidence, all of which backs up, and confirms, their story. Unravelling that is not simply a case of providing a smoking gun.
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Post by sts60 on Aug 14, 2007 9:06:14 GMT -4
The question does presuppose the existence of some "magic bullet" (or the magic smoking gun from which it had been fired), and that's how I answered it, but Jay and Mr. Gorsky are right. It's like the "What if Dwight Eisenhower said the D-Day landings were faked?" scenario; there's no single discovery that could overturn the vast preponderance of evidence by itself. To expand on the D-Day analogy a little bit, not only would the D-Day landings have to have been faked, but all the stuff that came afterwards as a result of the landing would have to have been faked. If you conjecture that about 5,000 ships and large numbers of aircraft didn't show up at Normandy that morning, then how do you explain the presence and advance of the Allied armies across Europe? (Well, RustyLander would say that they swarmed up from underneath Paris. ) It's the same thing with Apollo and the intensive unmanned and manned exploration campaign that preceded and accompanied it. If Apollo was faked, where did all the new lunar science come from? Where did the management and scientific and technical achievements that are now standard practice in the space field come from? And even the simple answers aren't so simple. For instance, Jay mentioned how fake telemetry could be fed to the mission controllers. But I've been part of simulations at JSC that used just such fake telemetry. Then, as now, that telemetry was generated onsite. You haven't sent the fake data from some remote SPECTRE-like island hideaway, or some deep basement in Washington; you've generated it in the same building, using people who are friends and neighbors of the people they're fooling. How sustainable a scenario is that? And what about the MSFN operators who are supposed to be getting telemetry from the Moon? Won't they get suspicious when JSC is reporting one data stream, but they're decomming something different (or nothing at all)? What about data captured to tape at one location and later sent to JSC? Do you just hope no one ever notices any discrepancies? It goes on and on. It would have been far harder to fake the missions than to actually do them. In fact, it was simply not possible.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 14, 2007 13:01:29 GMT -4
I'm an amateur historian. Assuming that there were some way that I, -7 at the time of Apollo 11, could have known that there was something that even gave strength to the argument that Apollo was faked, it is my obligation to my beliefs to tell it. There is no question there. Intellectual honesty is important, kids, possibly one of the most important things there is.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 14, 2007 19:27:00 GMT -4
There are also those (including Richard Hoagland and David Percy if memory serves) who believe that the entire Apollo photographic record is fake not because the landings themselves were fake, but in order to hide what the astronauts really found on the moon. Hoagland actually helped write a page debunking the Moon Hoax theories because he considers them so whacky that they damage "legitimate" thoeries like his. I haven't seen any of his work claiming that the Apollo photos were faked, though he may believe that some of them were manipulated or airbrushed to hide things.
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Post by JayUtah on Aug 14, 2007 19:43:45 GMT -4
Hoagland's early work involved identifying evidence of artificial constructions in Apollo photographs, mostly "enhanced" lens artifacts and so forth. So a lens flare or patch of scatter became a "crystal palace."
Subsequently Hoagland has accused photographic contractors and interpreters connected with NASA of manipulating Mars etc. photography dishonestly, chiefly in the regions of Cydonia and the alleged face. He also accused NASA of misrepresenting the colors photographed on Mars. I am not aware that he has accused anyone of manipulating Apollo or other lunar photography.
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furi
Mars
The Secret is to keep banging those rocks together.
Posts: 260
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Post by furi on Aug 14, 2007 19:44:09 GMT -4
Like many others, if weight of evidence came down on the side of shenanigans I would have to change my viewpoint, however I feel (as has been pointed out earlier) that this is a loaded question, the sort that ends up with an a repost and thread linky stating "see even these lot say it could have been faked if the evidence proved it" so as such you can probably sense my hackles raising and a sense of ... yeeeeeesssss and the follow up question is?
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Post by svector on Aug 14, 2007 19:50:28 GMT -4
The question raised by this thread is an interesting one, which reveals on some level how ABs are different from HBs. The hoax believer clearly wants, or even needs the hoax myth to be true, for whatever psychological reason. From that frame of reference, he naturally assumes those on the other side operate in the same manner -- needing/wanting one version of events to be true, when in fact we prefer to simply follow an evidentiary trail, regardless of where it leads.
It's interesting how, almost to a person, ABs would not hesitate to reveal information not necessarily beneficial to their arguments, if it served the greater goal of dissemination of basic truths. I wonder what percentage of embedded hoax believers would come forward with information damaging to their positions, in contrast to the percentage who would simply sweep it under the rug, or concoct some convoluted scenario to force-fit it into the framework of their artificial reality. I'm willing to bet that percentage is an extremely low number.
Therein lies the difference. True skeptics (the vast majority of ABs) embrace facts, regardless of whether they appear on the surface to support their stated positions. HBs embrace only that which can be molded to work within a predefined set of ideological boundaries. Whether or not a concept is supported by evidence, or possesses any semblance of credibility, is merely a technicality to an HB.
To them, whoever yells the loudest and longest, wins.
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Post by Ginnie on Aug 14, 2007 20:04:19 GMT -4
If I found out it was a hoax I would tell as many people as I could.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 14, 2007 20:59:58 GMT -4
It's interesting how, almost to a person, ABs would not hesitate to reveal information not necessarily beneficial to their arguments, if it served the greater goal of dissemination of basic truths.
I have, even on this board. Sometimes it's a serious challenge to make the descision to openly admit information that you know will undermine a pro-Apollo argument and give the HB's a "victory" but in the end, the truth is the far better course of action. One that springs to mind right now is when I discovered that Luna 24 was capable of taking a 2.5m deep core sample. Previous to that the argument had been that the Apollo missions had core samples and it wasn't posible to do that with a probe. This is still true, the Apollo core samples were far thicker than Luna 24's, and in some cases longer as well, but the fact that the Soviets got a long thin core sample showed that it is theoritically possible for NASA to have done the same. Of course there is so much other overwhelming evidence that an unmanned probe couldn't have retrieved the variety of samples that Apollo did, the revealing of the Luna's ability really doesn't harm the Pro-side overly, and in the end it's better that we reveal the truth than the other side find it and claim that we were trying to cover it up.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 14, 2007 21:08:12 GMT -4
Hoagland's early work involved identifying evidence of artificial constructions in Apollo photographs, mostly "enhanced" lens artifacts and so forth. So a lens flare or patch of scatter became a "crystal palace." Subsequently Hoagland has accused photographic contractors and interpreters connected with NASA of manipulating Mars etc. photography dishonestly, chiefly in the regions of Cydonia and the alleged face. He also accused NASA of misrepresenting the colors photographed on Mars. I am not aware that he has accused anyone of manipulating Apollo or other lunar photography. I have to admit that I'm not totally clued up with his totality of work, hence my reserved statement based on what he does claim about Mars.
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Post by AtomicDog on Aug 15, 2007 0:20:48 GMT -4
I wonder what percentage of embedded hoax believers would come forward with information damaging to their positions, in contrast to the percentage who would simply sweep it under the rug, or concoct some convoluted scenario to force-fit it into the framework of their artificial reality. I'm willing to bet that percentage is an extremely low number. We don't have to wonder. Remember this post from showtime in this thread? Missing Planetoid apollohoax.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=1176976875&page=3From showtime "..I apologize to the Hoax believers for leading them down the path to possible proof , although it's debatable.." He apologized for producing evidence that confirmed the existence of Venus in an Apollo photo, (after trying and failing to handwave it away,) then he pulled his account and slunk away.
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