Lame claims

[ka9q]

Has anyone else noticed that the conspiracists are often their own worst enemies when it comes to how they concoct their hoax claims? They really could have done a lot better with many of them.

For example, the classic claim regarding non-parallel shadows alleges that more than one light source was used. This creates the immediate problem that multiple light sources usually cast multiple shadows - that we don't see.

But they could have formulated a slightly different claim. Allege a single artificial light source placed so close to the subject that its light wasn't collimated, causing single sets of shadows that diverge.

Now it's true that in many of the pictures there was no place for a single light source close enough to cause diverging shadows without itself being in the picture. But that would take at least another minute of thought to rule out, instead of immediately because of the lack of double shadows.

I mean, these guys just aren't very bright, are they?

[PhantomWolf]

Except that in the most obvious images the shadows are converging, not diverging. This is how we know that for most of the issues it is a case of perpective and a wide angle lens that is creating the effect.

[Bob B.]

A close light source would also produce a significant penumbra, not the sharp edged shadows we see in the Apollo photos.

[ka9q]

A close light source of significant size would produce a penumbra, right.

You're right, some of the shadows do converge. They could have just ignored those and cited only those in which the shadows diverge. I mean, they're not exactly consistent in the claims they do make anyway...

[Glom]

What gets me more is the way they vomit ill-conceived allegation after ill-conceived allegation without actually considering whether such a concept makes sense. For example, the crosshairs bit. They claim the object apparently in front of the crosshair was pasted on in post-processing. But why? What kind of moronic conspirator, allegedly in possession of a state of the art sound stage, is going to start doing composite work when he could just set up the shot properly?

[dwight]

So far the lamest I have come across is recently over on BAUT. The Apollo 16 jump-salute is being analysed via a low-res version. I used a DVD I have from JSC of 1st generation from tape material. I have been accused of being a swindler because the beloved HB can't get his head around how a video signal from a 200 line camera could be made into a DVD compatible MPEG2 file with 480 line resolution.

[tedward]

I had a look over at the Pravda forum after that thread and it would appear that they have it as game set and match.

For some reason, cannot fathom why.

[dwight]

I have trouble fathoming the level of outright stupidity and wilfull ignorance over there. They are like bees swarming around a honey pot. Nothing matters as long as they get their H-O-N-E-Y.

[ineluki]

Feb 28, 2010 22:26:19 GMT -4 ka9q said:

I mean, these guys just aren't very bright, are they?

It they were, they wouldn't be HoaxBelievers...

Like most other conspiracists they never stop to question if their claim is internally consistent.

[kallewirsch]

If you want to have real fun, then ask them about what they think what happend instead of the moon landing

* they never made it into earth orbit
well, where have thay been instead in this time?
3 people who drove to the starting pad. Where and when did they come back from the pad? Who drove them back? Why didn't the starting crew in the white room notice? To whom did the starting crew in control room talk to? How flipped the switches in the CSM? Where were they in those days during the moon landing? Who feeded them? Who did their laundry? Why didn't the guys at the next Wallmart notice that a guy looking very similar to Neil bought some frozen Pizza?

So this scenario will not work. To much problems. The astronauts had to be in the CSM launch with Apollo

Which brings us to scenario 2
* they launched, but spent their time in earth orbit
Hmm. A lot of people watched the orbit. It realy isn't hard to do. Just go outside in the dawn and look at the evening sky. In todays days I bet that one will see a satellite within 10 minutes. In the days of Apollo, satellites were not that common. So if one knows what to look for, the remaining Apollo stack was an easy object. Hard to miss.
But then, one cannot take away the Apollo stack without a trace. If they stood in orbit, people watching the evening sky at the right time, would have noticed, that there is an object in orbit, which should not be there. On the other hand, there were sightings, which showed an object on track to the moon, just as the CSM+LM should be. There were radio transmissions emitting from this object. Controllers in the control room watched their numbers and saw that everything was right and the numbers showed that their objetc to look at indeed travels to the moon. If those controllers were spoofed by themselfs, then who exactly controlled the Apollo Stack in earth orbit? Where is the second control facility who did this and who run the simulation which fooled the offiial controllers?

So the simplest thing that NASA could do is: Send them to the moon. There simply is no other way. If they launched from the pad, they had no other choice as to actually go to the moon.

Scenario 3:
Make it to the moon, but don't leave moon orbit

...
I'l stop here. It simply is that way: No matter what scenario one assumes, it either immediatly breaks down because of physical reasons or because of enormous problems or it doesn't make sense. For each and every alternative scenario it seems the problems with faking are much bigger than doing the actual landing.

[Bob B.]

Mar 1, 2010 3:58:17 GMT -4 Glom said:

What gets me more is the way they vomit ill-conceived allegation after ill-conceived allegation without actually considering whether such a concept makes sense.

I couldn't agree more. It's like, anything I don't understand = hoax. They don't pause to consider why one thing should necessarily lead to the other. They're just so anxious to get the goods on NASA that they really don't care if it makes sense.

[ka9q]

Mar 1, 2010 9:07:41 GMT -4 kallewirsch said:

If you want to have real fun, then ask them about what they think what happend instead of the moon landing

* they never made it into earth orbit
well, where have thay been instead in this time?
3 people who drove to the starting pad. Where and when did they come back from the pad?

One guy (straydog02) claims they spent the entire mission in that bunker below LC39. His "proof"? Every single manned NASA launch before Apollo had live video from the cockpit. But not Apollo! That way we wouldn't be able to tell that the astronauts weren't really on board! What other possible reason would there have been for building such a bunker when Mercury and Gemini didn't have one??

The mind boggles. When pressed on the issue of live cockpit launch video (in reality, ASTP was the very first time) he simply won't budge. He still insists that his parents saw live video of Gus Grissom during his MR-04 flight. That there's absolutely no record of such video, and that Gus flatly stated in his post-flight press conference that there was no TV, doesn't faze him a bit.

Suppose there was live cockpit video for each of the Apollo missions. Anybody think that would have made one bit of difference to the HBers?

[Grand Lunar]

YouTube user Nasafakedit (aka, HumanMonkeys) makes some of the lamest claims.
And he doesn't even bother to back them up.

For instance, he repeats that the LM's computer was a "pocket calculator" with it's 4KB of RAM.
Yet he refuses to bring up why this is insufficent.
He also can't support his claim of the LM being a "toy spacecraft"; he simply refers to "20 layers of gold foil" amongst other things.

I'm beginning to think he's not interested in any sort of discussion, but rather throws out any claim he can come up with, even if they are claims that have been debunked time and again.
In short, he's just a troll.

[Bob B.]

Mar 1, 2010 10:45:46 GMT -4 ka9q said:

He still insists that his parents saw live video of Gus Grissom during his MR-04 flight. That there's absolutely no record of such video, and that Gus flatly stated in his post-flight press conference that there was no TV, doesn't faze him a bit.

There were movie cameras in the Mercury cockpits, but the film, of course, wasn't recovered until after the flights were over. And since Grissom's capsule sank, we don't have any film record from his flight. It is likely people have a memory of seeing cockpit film, but if they think it was live TV or from Grissom's flight, they aren't remembering correctly. Human memory is very unreliable.

The cockpit films served an engineering purpose. The films were studied to determine which instruments the astronauts were looking at during different times in the flight. This provided data for future improvements in instument layout.

[JayUtah]

Mar 1, 2010 11:21:34 GMT -4 Grand Lunar said:

In short, he's just a troll.

Hence why I don't waste my time at YouTube. Unusable SNR.