Why it WAS a hoax

[hoaxrabbit]

I know you all will be waiting to read this post. But first, let me introduce myself: I am Hoaxrabbit. Pleased to make your acquaintance.

Before I delve into the matter at hand, it behooves me to address the labeling of those who disagree with the idea that the Apollo moon landings were real as "conspiracy theorists" or, as you all lovingly refer to them, "CT's". Lumping together those with dissenting views and branding them with a name you can shake a finger at serves a larger purpose relative to the cohesion of any group. But, let's speak freely - without the bonds of peer pressure or mob mentality.

First of all, I will not claim to be a rocket scientist or an expert at anything other than the following: Gullibility.

Secondly, I will assume that we do not count with many rocket scientists in this forum or, for that matter, the American population in 1969 or since.

The larger point is that, though we all have our pockets of knowledge on this or that, when confronted with an event of the magnitude of the Apollo moon landings, we're pretty much in the hands of those who will tell us the tale. Whether we believe it or not has more to do with our own set of experiences in the world than with any information the story-tellers might use to convince us. For the most part, people are willing to believe a thing as awesome as man walking on the moon simply because it's so cool.

The question, "Why would they lie?" is the basic obstacle when dealing with unbelievable scenarios. You don't go see a David Copperfield show to see how he does the tricks. You go to be amazed. You WANT to believe and even though deep down you know he didn't really make the Statue of Liberty disappear, the simple fact that you don't know how he did it, allows you to believe it anyway.

The moon landings are comparable, if on a much larger and important scale.

For those of you nearing 50 years of age or more, the possibility of a fake moon landing is simply unacceptable and borders on the treasonous. It is an affront to everything that makes you an American and those who would dare bring it up must be obliterated by "the evidence", hence sites like the one that spawned this very forum.

The reason for such passion does not come from the 'reality' of the moon landings, since not being rocket scientists ourselves, this "evidence" is not something we can fully comprehend, rather, the reason behind such euphoric defense postures comes from the fact that the promise of men walking on the moon was made by an America that was betrayed. The moon landings were JFK's vindication, the proof that a bullet could not kill an American spirit that an assassinated president, race riots, RFK's dead body, murdered King(s), Vietnam and countless more social ills that had rocked to its very core. The moon landings were the opposite of all that.

How opportune.

Had the moon landings not "happened" there would have been a revolution in this country, and without TV there would have never been a "moon landing". Motive and opportunity.

Go ahead, call me what you will, but all governments conspire to control the populations of the countries they govern. That's what they do. And they just did it again a few years ago... I know you all saw THAT on television as well.

don't believe anything unless you have to,

Hoaxrabbit

[dwight]

G'day hoaxrabbit, the problem with your rationale is that it overly generalizes things in a post-Watergate distrust of anything the government does. It also projects the CT mindset of a passionate desire to absolutely have to believe in the landings to be real otherwise our world would collapse around us. Which I can assure is not the case. I do also have other things which preoccupy my time more than whether my existence would be thrown into jeopardy if something I am passionate about was shown to be falsified.

Had there not been a moonlanding there would have been other events which would have garnered the populace's attention. How quick the people became blase about missions to the moon. While TV cameras were integral to the mission planning as early as 1961, the moonwalk and associated telecasts were never viewed as essential nor crucial to the mission - right up to the 11th hour. Deke Slayton was quite happy to have the missions covered solely by radio. kind of puts a dent in the "it was all done for the cameras" argument. In fact this internal debate was covered significantly in TV guide in the May 1969 issue.

If NASA really was prepping the whole thing for the TV cameras, they would have followed the recommendations of WEC to have color TV on the lunar surface, and they would have invested better TV tech into covering the missions from the start of the fully bandwidth capable Block II CSM missions.

[PhantomWolf]

First of all, I will not claim to be a rocket scientist or an expert at anything other than the following: Gullibility.

Well I'd have to agree as you seem to have managed to fall for the hoax line quite well.

Secondly, I will assume that we do not count with many rocket scientists in this forum or, for that matter, the American population in 1969 or since.

Well you know what happens when you assume... Just for your edification, there are numerous engineers on this forum, and even 2 or 3 rocket scientists, which for the active members of the forum, about 20 or so, is quite a bit of the population.

So... do you actually have any evidence, or is this just a "I don't believe it so they didn't do it?"

[AtomicDog]

Hello, Moon Man.

[dragonblaster]

Jun 23, 2009 1:18:17 GMT -4 @hoaxrabbit said:

I know you all will be waiting to read this post. But first, let me introduce myself: I am Hoaxrabbit. Pleased to make your acquaintance.

Greetings, Hoaxrabbit.

Jun 23, 2009 1:18:17 GMT -4 @hoaxrabbit said:

IIt is an affront to everything that makes you an American

I'm British. And I'm not a rocket scientist, but I worked as a quality engineer in the space industry for ten years. No, I never worked on Apollo-Saturn (I wish!), but I worked with some very nice people who said they did.

So I DO take it as an affront to say that those nice people are all knowing liars who cavilled at murder. And that I'm a gibbering fool for believing them.

That's pretty f&*%ing insulting, my friend, however you slice it.

[tedward]

With all due respect but certain life experiences can set you up to understand a lot of what happened without ever going there. At least I have found from my experience with this. I was happy to accept it until I stumbled upon the hoax side of things. Surprised me really. So I examined the hoax claims and find issues. I examined the landing and find none.

How is that then? Well, when I was in school I chose the science route, then got a job of a technical nature. I have always been interested in such so for example I know why a rocket works. I cannot design one or explain all the bit but at some point neither can you explain how a TV works from studio to your MK1 eyeball and its inner working (I assume). So by the time I add all this together I have a space program that run for years to get to Apollo. I have it from various experts that the rockets are viable, I understand how they work and can see that. I know that to get to the moon you aim for where it will be. It has gravity and that will affect things in a particular way. They can land and they can take off. The equipment for landing and takeoff can be examined and the capability to live in space for a human is known. Thing is I can examine most of it without resorting to TV. I can find no issues.

The TV part actually gives a hoaxer more issues to explain. This is one of the ways where TV trips up the hoax in a big way, if you understand how that works. I also try to look at it from the hoax point of view, think it through. Guess what? The more I examine them the bigger the stumbling blocks.

[drewid]

Hello hoaxrabbit.

I can quite see the why the US government might have made up such a thing for propoganda value, In fact when I first came upon the hoax hypothesis, some ten years ago , I was quite open minded about the idea. So I started researching,

I looked at HH claims, and studied the source material. The thing is, I studied photography (as well as physics) at A level, and I work in an area which uses a lot of photography, CG, and video and physics suimulation, so I know what I'm looking at.

None of the photo evidence presented for the hoax stood up to any sort of scrutiny at all even by my modest standards, most of it was based on elementary errors. Some of it had obviously been manipulated and presented in such a way as to support the hoax theory, when the original material didn't.

So I started looking at the physics based claims and found the same holes and elementary errors.

Even so , when I heard about the possibility of the chinese space walk being a fake (From the same sources mainly) I approached that with an open mind again, after all the Chinese government keeps a tight control on the media, is always keen for good propoganda, hates to lose face, and has been caught "cheating" on a couple of occasions recently, (though it's hard to call the olympics fireworks cheating when they told all the broadcast media in advance that they were CG).

I studied the footage, studied the HH claims, and found the same basic errors of understanding, self contradiction, and boneheadedness.

I try to be patient and open minded in my discussions with hoax believers but the bottom line is there is a mountain of evidence that supports the event of the moon landings, and none that contradicts that. None. Like I say I've been looking for it for ten years.

[Space Rat]

If the argument is, the US government had the incentive to pull off a hoax, therefore they did, then you may as well apply it the other way as well. The US government had the incentive to pull off a real moon landing, therefore they did.

[Bob B.]

Jun 23, 2009 1:18:17 GMT -4 @hoaxrabbit said:

The reason for such passion does not come from the 'reality' of the moon landings, since not being rocket scientists ourselves, this "evidence" is not something we can fully comprehend...

You underestimate us.

[Kiwi]

Hi Hoaxrabbit.

You do indeed sound a lot like former member Moon Man.

I'm a New Zealander who fully believes the moonlandings were real, the same as PhantomWolf above, so how do you categorise us? You've also been addressed by other non-American ABs (Apollo-believers) in this thread, so what about them? We don't have to believe anything we've been told by the American "gubmint."

I also have the advantage of having studied the space race right from when it first started -- when I watched Sputnik 1 pass overhead on the night of 9 October 1957 -- and having followed all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions and their incremental progress, their disasters and successes, so I am perfectly confident that the moon landings happened. Would I be right in guessing that you don't have that same advantage?

Many of us here have expertise in various fields that can be applied to the space missions or the "hoax." Mine, both as a hobby since 1968 and a profession for 15 years, was photography. Almost every argument I have seen about photographs supporting the idea of a hoax is nonsense, and often just a display of the HBs' ignorance of the subject. In fact, I get rather annoyed at self-appointed "photo-analysts" who mouth off when they obviously know little or nothing about the subject, just as you probably would if some ignoramus lectured you about how wrong you are in whatever field it is that you have expertise.

And like others here too, I was absolutely thrilled when first told the moon landings had been faked. Besides marvelling at NASA supposedly fooling me all those years and wondering how they managed it, here was something new to study and learn about. Alas, the very first "hoax" book I picked up showed me, within about three minutes, that the author (William L. Brian) was ignorant about Apollo and the moon and had that same ignorance of photography I've already mentioned. It took me a few years to understand his other argument about the "neutral point" but I eventually satisfied myself that Brian was equally ignorant about that. He was supposedly an engineer, yet made some amazing elementary blunders.

So, you've given us your ideas, but do you have some evidence for a hoax that can actually stand up to scrutiny by experts? If you have, please thrash out one subject at a time and don't use the usual scatter-gun technique that is so common to the more lowly HB. And before proceeding, if indeed you do, it might be a good idea to ensure you are familiar with logical fallacies, because committing any will automatically blow your "arguments" right out of the water.

P.S. Bob B. has been typically modest in the post above. You might like to investigate his web site Rocket & Space Technology (see also the link in his signature or at the bottom of every page here), and see if somebody who is not, by profession, a rocket engineer, can in fact become expert in the subject.

[Bob B.]

Jun 23, 2009 1:18:17 GMT -4 @hoaxrabbit said:

Why it WAS a hoax

Why did you choose the above as the subject title for this thread since your post does not delve into this issue? Unless, of course, you mistakenly believe “people are gullible” constitutes some sort of proof that the moon landings were a hoax.

Jun 23, 2009 1:18:17 GMT -4 @hoaxrabbit said:

First of all, I will not claim to be a rocket scientist or an expert at anything other than the following: Gullibility.

What makes you an expert on gullibility?

[scooter]

Jun 23, 2009 1:18:17 GMT -4 @hoaxrabbit said:

First of all, I will not claim to be a rocket scientist or an expert at anything other than the following: Gullibility.

It would seem you argue from a position of gullibility. I have watched countless hours of hoax "evidence", and studied up on the sciences of spaceflight. Have you even tried to study and understand both sides of the debate? I suspect not.

You seem to be the gullible party here. Without knowing anything about spaceflight or the space program, you find it "convenient" to simply accept the side of the hoax theorists, while assuming that the ills of government will fill in the holes. Unfortunately, the holes in the hoax theory are enormous, and it baffles everyday observers as to how such elementary mistakes could be so readily accepted as "fact".

One doesn't need to be a "rocket scientist" to understand the reality of Apollo. Just taking the evidence, and looking at it with the basic science and physics (which have no political slant), it is readily apparent that it was entirely plausible to have gone to the Moon.

Just because some things appear "odd" in the visuals just strengthens the evidence that these men were indeed in a very alien environment.

So, what is your "evidence", aside from your political and philosophical musings?

[hoaxrabbit]

Hello everyone and thanks for enjoining me in this conversation.

I don't have any evidence, as you also have no evidence. What you have is a choice to believe what was presented or not.

I would like to first address dwight's comments:

the problem with your rationale is that it overly generalizes things in a post-Watergate distrust of anything the government does. It also projects the CT mindset of a passionate desire to absolutely have to believe in the landings to be real otherwise our world would collapse around us.

I will concede that my life experience does, in fact, make me distrust the general motivations of modern-day governing bodies. However, it is not that your "world would collapse" if the moon landings were 'exposed', but rather that the world - read: the government's world, i.e. social cohesion - WAS collapsing and the hoax was necessary, in their eyes, to steady the ship. Whether or not it actually worked this way in the end is another matter. I do not, to address Kiwi,...

so how do you categorise us? You've also been addressed by other non-American ABs (Apollo-believers) in this thread, so what about them? We don't have to believe anything we've been told by the American "gubmint."

...catagorize anyone. Individuals are free to change their minds and decide to go down any road they deem will get them where they think they want to go. Institutions, on the other hand, are not individuals and are directed by policy decisions; decisions that are made by particular groups who manage to get themselves in position to execute them.

If the argument is, the US government had the incentive to pull off a hoax, therefore they did, then you may as well apply it the other way as well. The US government had the incentive to pull off a real moon landing, therefore they did.

Space rat narrows it down. But power in this world is not attained with good deeds. What incentive would the government have, then, to effect a real moon landing? Why would they carry out this completely unnecessary act which has not been repeated since?

Real or fake, were the moon landings an exercise in social manipulation or was it about scientific space exploration? I believe there is little justification for the latter and overwhelming circumstances that beg us to understand it as the former, which, in my book, is the larger issue.

As I said, I am not a rocket scientist, and though glad to find that we are among a few in this forum, we can all agree that none of us have any real evidence of the moon landings one way or another.

What makes me an expert in gullibility, Bob? I'm a human being, and being gullible is the only way to make it through most of my day. Interactions with the other members of this race requires a compassionate dose of innocence, but by the same token, I am well aware that there are those who will take advantage of that. I have no recourse against them except to know when to grant them my powers of belief or not.

[Jason]

The motivation for the moon landings was certainly national prestige, but that doesn't mean it must have been faked.
I think anyone who examines the Apollo record in detail with an open mind will eventually come to the conclusion that really going was easier than faking it with the level of evidence that the Apollo program provided would have been.

[echnaton]

hoaxrabbit, we call people Conspiracy Theorists because that is what they are. People who come here and proclaim the government conspired to make up some event or hide a truth or both. Then they propose a "theory" about what really happened and why secrecy was needed, mostly centering on motivation. Calling someone a CT can be an accurate description but can readily be shown to be incorrect by a response with verifiable facts and other evidence. This kind of response is quite rare.