Key question for hoax believers

[gwiz]

Someone at BAUT has just posted this link, a debunk of the Fox TV programme that I hadn't come across before. What caught my attention was the "note to visitors" at the start, asking anyone promoting the hoax theory to provide an answer to:

What evidence would it take (available now on earth) to prove we really went to the Moon?

If the answer is "none", the hoax theory is unfalsifiable and thus unscientific, so there's no point in continuing the debate.

I think we should apply the same test here. Answer or be banned.

[gwiz]

...and before some HB comes along and asks what it would take to convince me it was a hoax, the answer is I'd need either the hoaxers coming forward or some documentation from the period with details of how it was done. This would need to cover:
1. Moon rock fabrication. How were they able to make them consistent with subsequent Soviet samples and lunar meteorite finds.
2. How the scientific instruments were deployed on the moon.
3. How the communications were faked well enough to fool the Soviets and others world-wide.
4. What hardware produced the rocket exhausts and other phenomena photographed by professional and amateur astronomers, again world-wide.
5. How they obtained pictures of the far side of the moon consistent with those subsequently obtained with unmanned probes.

Edit. OK, delete 5 as they could have flown the SM cameras in lunar orbit without a landing, not that a lot of HBs don't claim that Apollo never got to lunar orbit, either. At Count Zero's suggestion, replace with:

5. How they got the dust to behave the way it did in the lunar surface TV. It appears consistent with both low gravity and vacuum conditions and is not possible to fake even with current CG techniques, as a recent film, Magnificent Desolation, demonstrates.

[tofu]

gwiz said:

Answer or be banned.

A nice sentiment, but I doubt it will happen. Consider the example of Moon Man, a person who actually thinks that maybe on a bright sunny day, he wont cast a shadow. A person who asks, "when it's sunny on Earth, is it also sunny in space?" By all rights, the requirement of him should be, "get an 8th grade science education or be banned (or at least accept the judgement of people obviously smarter than you)" If you guys wont say that to moonman, then I don't see how you'd say so some other HB, "answer or be banned."

[gwiz]

Answer or be held up to mockery? Answer or be reminded at regular intervals that you don't have a valid theory?

[linuxboatr]

gwiz said:

...and before some HB comes along and asks what it would take to convince me it was a hoax, the answer is I'd need either the hoaxers coming forward or some documentation from the period with details of how it was done. This would need to cover:
3. How the communications were faked well enough to fool the Soviets and others world-wide.

This is my first post here but I have been following the Moon Man threads here and on BAUT as a lurker. My thanks to the many educated responses. I learned a great deal (especially on thermodynamics).

I highlighted this item because it seems to me a lot of HBers gloss over this issue as a "launch a satellite to fake the transmissions". Other than the obvious explanation that "to fake it, you might as well just do it", a little thought on the HBers part would explain why faking these transmissions is a practical impossibility without going to Moon.

The reason is two-fold. One, and most obviously, to fake a transmission from the Moon, the transmission to any and all tracking devices (ground stations, Ham operators, etc) has to appear as originating from the Moon. The only way to do this is to be at the Moon!

No HBer has ever explained the orbital mechanics (they merely make a statement of 'fact' as if it was done) involved in a fakery satellite because to do so is to demolish their own argument. The only way a satellite can fake a transmission as appearing to come from the Moon is for the satellite itself to be in geolunar orbit relative to the Earth. As I understand orbital mechanics (and please correct me if I'm wrong so I don't sound like an idiot in the future), you couldn't put a satellite into orbit at any altitude save that of the Moon itself in order to match the Moon's orbital rate around the Earth and thus have the fake transmissions appear to orginate from the Moon itself. The satellite would have to be in orbit around the Moon. If you tried to place a satellite in a lower (read: cheaper to hoax) orbit to fool the clueless ones down below, you would not be able to place it into an orbit that could match the Moon's orbital rate where the orbit could be maintained. The only viable orbit for faking transmissions from the Moon is the Moon's orbit. No other will work. It is, in fact, easier to fake alien transmissions from another star (i.e as in "Contact") than it would be to fake a transmission from the Moon.

Which brings me to the second point: How did they launch the fakery satellite? It was a practical impossibility in the USA at the time (and today) to hide a rocket launch. Even if you launch from Vandenberg as a military launch without the public nearby, the public within 50 miles is going to know something went up. You can't hide a contrail from a rising rocket. The Corona spy satellites were launched with the public's knowledge that a rocket was going up. They lied about the payload but they had to provide a cover story as to why these rockets were boosting because there was no way to hide that evidence.

Every rocket launch that has gone up is documented. Even military payloads (which the only acknowledgement you get is one went up). But even for military launches (especially on the East Coast), anyone with a boat and a good pair of binoculars can see rockets being prepped in their gantries. Someone, somewhere is going to know a Thor, Atlas, Delta, Titan, etc, lifted off.

And how did the hide the design of such a highly specialized satellite? Such a spacecraft is going to have configuration needs to reach and operate in the lunar orbit environment that a typical Earth orbiting satellite would not. This doesn't even address how the transmissions were faked from the surface of the Moon. A satellite can't do that! And as I understand it, the position of the astronauts on the surface could be determined by knowing where the antenna picking up their transmissions was pointing.

I brought up this as my response because I've always encountered these detailed launch and mission logs for unmanned launches over the course of the space program. Even for classified launches, you can still learn the launch vehicle, configuration, announced payload (i.e. military satellite) and the mission outcome as announced by the PR office (successful, failed to orbit, crashed into the sea, exploded in flight, etc). And since Apollo was done in the public eye, there was no way to hide a secret payload on a Saturn I, Ib or V test launch. As a tangent (which the HBers never address), the Saturn test flights often had cameras inside the cryo tanks to observe propellant behavior in zero-G before and after ullage maneuvers. The film from these experiments would be literally impossible to fake even using CGI technology today (simulating the exact behavior of liquid fuel in a zero-G environment and under acceleration is a daunting task by any standard of computation). It would not have possible in the 1960s. I don't even think you could pull it off with the best CGI and supercomputing technology today and have the result be believable to an engineer. Given that level of attention paid to test launches for data gathering, would HBers honestly have me believe that no one noticed a live upper stage and a payload in the payload shroud (not to mention the payload umbillicals) that didn't match the stated configuration for the test launch? So you either hide a fakery satellite on a Saturn launch (impossible) or you launch it independently (highly unlikely). It might have possible but the odds are really long that it was done.

Anyway. that is my introductory two cents. Clearly, I'm a believer and look forward to reading educational responses to the frustrating entertainment the HBers provide.

Matt

[gwiz]

Welcome to the fun.

Agree with you all the way, only method to do it that I can see is to have a manned spacecraft land on the Moon. That's why it's one of the demonstrations on my list.

On second thoughts, no.5, far side mapping, is the weakest item on the list at present, as the only data that confirms Apollo comes from the US Clementine mission. I suppose we're waiting for the Japanese/Chinese/Indians to do their stuff before we really have a good test here.

[Bob B.]

Welcome, Matt. Good first post.

linuxboatr said:

Even if you launch from Vandenberg as a military launch without the public nearby, the public within 50 miles is going to know something went up.

Vandenburg doesn't work for another reason. Because of over-flight restrictions, all launches from Vandenburg are on a southerly heading. Vandenburg is used strictly for high-inclination orbits, such as polar or sun-synchronous orbits. Therefore, an Apollo-type trajectory could not possibly be attained with a launch from Vandenburg. Conversely, all launches from Canaveral are restricted to generally eastward azimuths, thus only low-inclinations orbits are possible from Canaveral. It is because of these restrictions that we have the two launch complexes.

[Count Zero]

Hi Matt! Welcome to the board. Excellent first post. A couple of notes:

linuxboatr said:

As I understand orbital mechanics (and please correct me if I'm wrong so I don't sound like an idiot in the future), you couldn't put a satellite into orbit at any altitude save that of the Moon itself in order to match the Moon's orbital rate around the Earth and thus have the fake transmissions appear to orginate from the Moon itself. The satellite would have to be in orbit around the Moon. If you tried to place a satellite in a lower (read: cheaper to hoax) orbit to fool the clueless ones down below, you would not be able to place it into an orbit that could match the Moon's orbital rate where the orbit could be maintained. The only viable orbit for faking transmissions from the Moon is the Moon's orbit. No other will work.

This is exactly right.

It is, in fact, easier to fake alien transmissions from another star (i.e as in "Contact") than it would be to fake a transmission from the Moon.

This is incorrect. The same principles from the first part of your argument apply. If your satellite transmitting fake alien messages at the Earth is orbiting the Sun, or on a solar escape trajectory, it still has orbital motion and therefore moves against the background stars. Even if you had it moving directly away from the Sun (which would take a helluva lot of thrust), the Earth revolves around the Sun and the parallax would be readily apparent. The only way to damp out these motions would be to...

(wait for it)

...have transmitter in a different star system!

[Count Zero]

gwiz said:

5. How they obtained pictures of the far side of the moon consistent with those subsequently obtained with unmanned probes.

#5 is really weak. Apollos 4 & 6 had cameras on them that took some pretty nice photos of the Earth. Presumably they could do a similar job in Lunar orbit.

I think that the behavior of dust, as seen in the video record, is a far stronger argument for authenticity.

[tofu]

countzero said:

The only way to damp out these motions would be to...

(wait for it)

...have transmitter in a different star system!

Sorry to threadjack but I have to ask. In the movie Contact, the Senator grills her about the signal being a fake and she doesn't really respond. How is this handled in the book? Wouldn't she just make the same statements that you just made?

[Bob B.]

tofu said:

Sorry to threadjack but I have to ask. In the movie Contact, the Senator grills her about the signal being a fake and she doesn't really respond. How is this handled in the book? Wouldn't she just make the same statements that you just made?

I've read the book but I don't remember this being addressed. The scene may have been created only for the movie.

[Count Zero]

bob said:

tofu said:

Sorry to threadjack but I have to ask. In the movie Contact, the Senator grills her about the signal being a fake and she doesn't really respond. How is this handled in the book? Wouldn't she just make the same statements that you just made?

I've read the book but I don't remember this being addressed. The scene may have been created only for the movie.

You are correct. They did not address it in the book. In the movie, the Snearing Villain^TM first interrupts her when she starts to say it's impossible, then he makes such a bizzarre accusation that her head explodes. At least, that's how I remember it.

[Edited to add: I don't believe the filmmakers understood why such a hoax would be impossible, no matter how much money was available]

[linuxboatr]

It is, in fact, easier to fake alien transmissions from another star (i.e as in "Contact") than it would be to fake a transmission from the Moon.

This is incorrect. The same principles from the first part of your argument apply. If your satellite transmitting fake alien messages at the Earth is orbiting the Sun, or on a solar escape trajectory, it still has orbital motion and therefore moves against the background stars. Even if you had it moving directly away from the Sun (which would take a helluva lot of thrust), the Earth revolves around the Sun and the parallax would be readily apparent. The only way to damp out these motions would be to...

(wait for it)

...have transmitter in a different star system! [/quote]

I was kind of being tongue-in-cheek in that in the sense getting a satellite to orbit at the Earth's rate (geostationary) in sidereal time would be an easier exercise than sending a Moon fakery satellite to the Moon. But you are absolutely correct. In addition to the parallax issue, the satellite would have to have the exact same doppler shift as observed in the star's light to compensate for any proper motion of the star itself (i.e. if the star had a measure motion toward or away from the Sun) and would give such hoaxers fits if it had a large wobble component to it, well, the hoaxers are pretty much screwed. It
is really tough to fool radio telescopes and those smart folks who run them!

Matt

[gwiz]

countzero said:

gwiz said:

5. How they obtained pictures of the far side of the moon consistent with those subsequently obtained with unmanned probes.

#5 is really weak. Apollos 4 & 6 had cameras on them that took some pretty nice photos of the Earth. Presumably they could do a similar job in Lunar orbit.

I think that the behavior of dust, as seen in the video record, is a far stronger argument for authenticity.

Thanks for the suggestion, I've edited my list to include the dust. #4 doesn't prove a moon landing either, but it does bring it independent witnesses, so I'm leaving it in.

[gwiz]

Just kicking this thread. I'd really like replies to the OP from Moon Man and Margamatix.