Help with a Hoax Believer

[thequestion]

Hello. I joined this site because my best friend this last year has been running around youtube and other sites soaking in the hoax stories and now is teaching his kids which I believe will cause great harm. I would like to ask some questions and then go back to him with your educated answers:

The first questions I need to debunk:

1) The spacesuits were not real. The suits could not stand the pressure in space and the radiation.

2) The Russian and the Chinese never go past the Van Alan belt because of the radiation therefore proving that the USA created a film about the landing.

3) Why if we have the Hubble Telescope we cannot simply point it to the moon and see where the ship landed. When they show a picture online from a satellite, it is a small dot.

Any help would be appreciated.

[scooter]

www.clavius.org/

I believe Jay has these covered on his site...and ,many, many other arguments as well.

The recent LRO shots show the landers, but LRO is not yet in it's low orbit. Future pictures are expected to have 2-3 times better resloution.

[Jason Thompson]

Jul 20, 2009 10:55:59 GMT -4 thequestion said:

1) The spacesuits were not real. The suits could not stand the pressure in space and the radiation.

If the pressure is a problem then your friend must contend that all space activity is fake, since spacesuit design has been basically unchanged for fifty years.

As for radiation, that's a more complex issue, but short of delivering him a lecture on radiation types and intensity in cislunar space I don't see an easy fix, except to say that probes from several countries have studied that radiation and have not found it inimical to manned visits to the Moon as carried out by Apollo. Important point: NASA does not have a monopoly on information about space.

2) The Russian and the Chinese never go past the Van Alan belt because of the radiation therefore proving that the USA created a film about the landing.

You might want to point out to him that the Soyuz spacecraft was originally designed as the Russian lunar vehgicle, and it doesn't have any more shielding than Apollo. It never got there because their space programs were horribly fragmented and they never got a suitable heavy lift booster to work. Tell him to look up the N-1.

The Chinese haven't even tried it yet, so it's a bit premature to say they 'never' do it when they have only made a few manned space flights at all.

3) Why if we have the Hubble Telescope we cannot simply point it to the moon and see where the ship landed. When they show a picture online from a satellite, it is a small dot.

There is a great misconception about Hubble as an incredibly powerful telescope. There are actually far larger telescopes down here on Earth. Hubble's advantage is its position above the distortion of the atmosphere and the ability to look at one part of space for days on ead if necessary.

The problem is apparent size. Even the many small galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image appear significantly larger than the landers left on the Moon. We need the Hubble telescope to see them because they are too faint, not because they are too small. The landers on the Moon are too small: far below the limit of resolution of the Hubble space telescope.

[Kiwi]

Welcome, thequestion. I won't get very specific about your enquiry, but here are some general comments that might be useful.

One thing your friend may have seen is the radiation boogey-man. Hoax promoters love to show burn victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to kid you that's what all radiation does in a flash. Yeah, right! For a week out in space it's usually not the problem many laypeople think it is.

Clavius is excellent and highly recommended, but for a shorter and quicker approach, look up the hoax page at fellow member Bob B's web site, Rocket & Space Technology -- link at the bottom of every page here.

And here's a very brief debunking of the Fox TV programme:
www.bautforum.com/conspiracy-theories/6040-fox-special-rescreening-nz-24-june-2003-a.html#post102901
Look at the post below that too.

I appreciate you being concerned about a friend and also the difficulties it's possible to have with one. You may need to particularly avoid any "I'm smarter than you" behaviour.

My biggest gripe about some of the dedicated hoax-believers is that they study a lot of the hoax material, which is fine, many of us here do that too, but they've studied none from the other side of the fence. One on a New Zealand message board tonight said, "I've watched five hoax DVDs," but I guarantee he wouldn't have spent the same time watching Nasa documentaries or reading documents. He's one of those blokes to whom you give a fact and then listen for the sound of his mind slamming shut. I also remember one HB who was too paranoid to go to a Nasa web site because he believed they would hack his computer.

Over and over I've advised HBs to read the first document in the Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal (link below too), but I doubt that many of them have. It at least gives a tremendous picture of the technical aspects and difficulties of simply getting from lunar orbit to the surface, which isn't simple. The ALSJ is also brilliant for the latest high-quality scans of lunar surface photos, some orbital ones, and detailed captions for many of them. Look up the Image Libraries there for each mission.

There's a thread about how to access thumbnails at the top of the "Reality of Apollo" section here, and "Apollo By the Numbers" links to heaps of technical info for each Apollo mission. The Mission Summaries and the Timelines are probably the most useful.

As your friend watches videos, consider buying or hiring or gifting him the two marvellous movies, "For All Mankind" and "In the Shadow of the Moon." Then there are all the very cheap sets of Nasa movies about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions on DVDs. Fellow member Ginnie has bought some of them, and I have 28. Many of them are of poor technical quality, being taken from old films -- nobody seems to have done quality reproductions for DVD. But hey, if they don't have to pay Nasa royalties, which money-making enterprises would want to do that when they can recycle old stuff? Some movies have the usual documentary-makers' muddling of film clips of different times and events, so they mustn't be taken as the gospel truth, but in general they are still very informative. Because of their age, some are downright quaint. The point about this is that its hardly possible to understand Apollo if you know nothing about Mercury and Gemini and how everything was progressive, with plenty of near-misses and a few disasters along the way.

The films are up to 30 minutes each and a good selection is:
Freedom 7 (Mercury 1)
The Voyage of Friendship 7 (Mercury 3)
Four Days of Gemini Four
This is Houston, Flight (Gemini 8)
Legacy of Gemini
The Apollo 4 Mission
The Flight of Apollo 7
Debrief: Apollo 8 OR Apollo 8: Go for TLI
Apollo 9: The Space Duet of Spider and Gumdrop
Apollo 10: Green Light for a Lunar Landing OR Apollo 10: To Sort Out the Unknown
Eagle Has Landed: The Flight of Apollo 11
Apollo 12: Pinpoint for Science
Apollo 13: 'Houston... We’ve Got a Problem'
Apollo 14: Mission to Fra Mauro
Apollo 15: In the Mountains of the Moon
Apollo 16: Nothing So Hidden
Apollo 17: On the Shoulders of Giants

[BertL]

The "spacesuits is not real" argument always makes me wonder what the HB thinks about the other space travel achievements (like the ISS), as pretty much the same suits are used for those missions.

[Czero 101]

Jul 20, 2009 10:55:59 GMT -4 thequestion said:

1) The spacesuits were not real. The suits could not stand the pressure in space and the radiation.

First off, your friend has it backwards. There is no pressure in space. That's why its called a vacuum.

Second, the suits only had to be able to hold roughly 3 to 5 pounds of atmospheric pressure (if memory serves), more than sufficient to allow an astronaut to breathe.

Third, and this goes mainly to the Lunar EVA suits, they were designed specifically to be flexible at the joints - waist, knees, elbows - to allow as much mobility for the astrionauts as possible.

In all cases, the suits were designed with varying levels of radiation protection, with the Apollo EVA suit and their modern variants having the most. People get hung up on the idea that the only way to protect against radiation is through huge amounts of heavy metals like lead. While lead DOES provide protection, it is also very heavy and not always necessary to protect from the types of radiation one encounters in space. Aluminum works great as do some plastics and composite materials. Fabrics can be woven from these materials which, along with the incorporation of other insulating and protective materials, give the space suit sufficient protection from radiation exposure.

Here are some links:

www.ilcdover.com/products_ad_spacesuits.cfm (ILC Dover designed and produced the Apollo space suit)
science.howstuffworks.com/space-suit.htm
ssoar.org/research/space-suits/history/apollo.htm
www.fi.edu/pieces/hiley/history.htm
apollomaniacs.web.infoseek.co.jp/apollo/spacesuite.htm

2) The Russian and the Chinese never go past the Van Alan belt because of the radiation therefore proving that the USA created a film about the landing.

The Russians had a sufficiently technologically advanced space vehicle in the Soyuz. The fact that is it still inoperation today and is the basis for the Chinese Shenzhou capsule speaks volumes for its reliability and safety.

So while the Soviets (at the time) were good at designing and building space capsules and launch vehicles, they were REALLY bad at management. So bad, in fact that their N-1 booster program basically imploded due to mismanagement. By the time Neil and Buzz were at Tranquility Base, the N-1 had flown a grand total of twice. This first vehicle exploded after 69 seconds of flight and the second exploded after 23 seconds of flight.

Read about it here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

3) Why if we have the Hubble Telescope we cannot simply point it to the moon and see where the ship landed. When they show a picture online from a satellite, it is a small dot.

The simple fact of the matter is that for an Earth-bound telescope or one in low Earth Orbit (aka the HUbble) to have sufficient resolution to make out the Apollo artifacts, it would need a reflecting mirror on the order of 200 meters in diameter. We simply do not have the technology available currently to make optics that large and as precisely as would be necessary.





Cz

[gillianren]

And, again, if the Soviets knew you couldn't pass the Van Allen Belts, wouldn't they have made a bigger deal when the Americans claimed to have done it?

[laurel]

Also, the Soviets sent Zond 5 around the Moon, through the Van Allen belts, and it contained biological specimens (turtles and insects) that were returned to Earth alive.

[Data Cable]

Jul 20, 2009 13:24:07 GMT -4 Czero 101 said:

Jul 20, 2009 10:55:59 GMT -4 thequestion said:

1) The spacesuits were not real. The suits could not stand the pressure in space and the radiation.

First off, your friend has it backwards. There is no pressure in space. That's why its called a vacuum.

I took that to mean "could not stand the [internal] pressure [when] in space," not that there was external pressure in space itself.

[Czero 101]

Jul 20, 2009 14:38:06 GMT -4 Data Cable said:

Jul 20, 2009 13:24:07 GMT -4 Czero 101 said:

First off, your friend has it backwards. There is no pressure in space. That's why its called a vacuum.

I took that to mean "could not stand the [internal] pressure [when] in space," not that there was external pressure in space itself.

Fair enough... Iits possible that I interpreted it incorrectly. I'm at work currently so that means reading / posting between phone calls...



Cz

[mtpascoe]

Jul 20, 2009 13:27:56 GMT -4 gillianren said:

And, again, if the Soviets knew you couldn't pass the Van Allen Belts, wouldn't they have made a bigger deal when the Americans claimed to have done it?

I agree and this is my main argument why I feel we have been there. The Soviets would have called foul if we claimed to put a man on the moon. There is no way they would have let us get away with it.

[thequestion]

Thank you very much Scooter, Jason, Kiwi, BertL, Czero101, gilliaren, laurel, Data Cable, mtpascoe. I appreciate the time you took to answer my first questions. It has helped me greatly in casting some doubt in his mind and your arguments & points have made his mind clear up a bit but he's still in the grip of the hoaxers and won't let go just yet. This is a friend that I grew up with, and in the last year has thrown all logic out the window.

I relayed your answers and got these questions/statements:


1) The spacesuits could not have protected them from the radiation level on the moon. The pressure in their spacesuits, specifically their gloves would have kept them from opening their camera to change film which would have exposed the film to radiation and destroyed its images. How could they have changed the film of the cameras on the moon if the radiation is so high?

2) The radiation in the Van Allen belt is deadly. The Russians did not go to the moon because they determined that an astronaut had to be in a led suit 4 feet thick to survive the radiation on the moon. The Chinese kept sending animals into the Van Allen belt and they kept coming back dead.

3) Finally we have a satellite orbiting the moon now and it took pictures of the landing sights. All they have shown us is pictures with dots & arrows pointing to them. We have satellites that can take pictures of men on earth and that's the best they can do?

[gonehollywood]

Hi thequestion:

Why don't you try something a bit different than "instructing" this person. As we all know, a movie or visual medium could be better. Ask around the internet and get a copy of "The Truth Behind The Moon Landings" directed by Virginia Quinn and other such documentaries. These things are hard, but I think if this person is shown both sides of the hoax theory, it could help.

In this manner, the opinion would not be yours. Outsiders discussing this very topic.

FYI - I am not related in way, shape or form to this documentary. I think it is interesting.

[laurel]

Ask your friend if the International Space Station is fake. It regularly traverses a part of the Van Allen Belts called the South Atlantic Anomaly.

[gillianren]

Jul 20, 2009 19:21:48 GMT -4 thequestion said:

2) The radiation in the Van Allen belt is deadly. The Russians did not go to the moon because they determined that an astronaut had to be in a led suit 4 feet thick to survive the radiation on the moon. The Chinese kept sending animals into the Van Allen belt and they kept coming back dead.

First, you're quite welcome. As I keep saying, what else do I have to do with my time?

Second, this is flatly wrong. The Soviets didn't go to the Moon because their heavy lift vehicle, the rocket needed to launch a Moon lander into orbit, had this untidy habit of blowing up. (This is an exaggeration. What is not is that they never had a successful test.) As is mentioned above, they sent and retrieved live specimens through the belts. I don't know about the Chinese, I'll admit.

Besides, again, if they knew you couldn't send living things through the Van Allen Belts, why didn't they say so? Why have they still failed to publish that information?