I never thought I'd actually meet a...

[azdazer]

Hi All,
I'm new here and thought I'd write to let you know why I joined the board and have been scanning the Clavius site.
I have been an amateur astronomer for a number of years, sparked off by watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on tv, and recently bought my first really good 'scope. I invited a friend around to take a look at the night sky and he happened to bring an acquaintance with him.
I was already observing the Moon when they arrived, the crater Maskelayne in fact, and happened to say Apollo 11 landed just to the north of there. This guy then actually said "You don't believe that hoax do you". Now this guy has a college education. He does appear to have all his mental faculties. I have never met anyone with this "hoax" delusion before and was speechless. It was like meeting someone who actually believes there are fairies living at the bottom of the garden.
I just hope in my lifetime we go back to the moon to make the Apollo sites historical monuments. Or construct a telescope with enough resolution to image the sites. When we do the hoax theorists will have to go back to looking for fairies.
BTW I'm a UK resident and 54years old.
Gee I still can't believe he said that.
Dave.

[LunarOrbit]

Yeah, I thought HB's only existed on the internet. I think I've only met a couple in the real world, and one of them wasn't too strongly convinced it was a hoax.

[gwiz]

Welcome aboard.

There's plenty of ammunition on clavius and Bob B's site to debunk all the hoax believers' usual arguments, but reading back through the threads shows that some of their beliefs can be pretty impervious to the evidence. Depends whether your friend's friend is a true believer or just someone who saw a TV programme once.

[echnaton]

Welcome to the board, azdazer. The husband of an old friend of mine is a generic believer in many odd things. He is highly creative but non focused. His primary method of expressing his beliefs is to wonder about things he doesn’t understand. When I have explained some things to him, he politely listens, but I get the feeling that anything he absorbs simply becomes a source for an increase in speculation, rather than a reduction.

If you want to learn more about the Apollo program and how to debunk the hoax proponents arguments, this is the right place. The major poster here can answer almost any question you may have, they are a tremendous resource. And please contribute any special knowledge you have to the discussions here.

[Bob B.]

Hi azdazer, welcome to the forum. Although I've met a few people with some kooky ideas, I'm happy to say I've never actually met a moon landing hoax believer face-to-face. All of my exposure to the HB crowd has been via the Internet.

I'm curious, what did you do when this person exclaimed he was a hoax believer? Did you try to talk sense into him? Did it have any affect?

[Retrograde]

admin said:

Yeah, I thought HB's only existed on the internet. I think I've only met a couple in the real world, and one of them wasn't too strongly convinced it was a hoax.

It occurs to me, do you think this guy might be one of the posters here? He lost his job a while back, so he must have a lot of free time, and he talks just like some of them.

N

Edit - welcome azdazer!

[snakeriverrufus]

Welcome azdazer!
I work for a large aerospace company and am constantly amazed at the number of people that work here and are willing to believe that Apollo was a hoax. a surprising number of whom should have the technical background to see through the HBs silly stories.

[Fnord Fred]

I didn't think I'd meet one either. Then I found out a couple of close friends of mine both thought it was a hoax. Scary thing is, one of them's going through college to be an electrical engineer. I really hope he's taken a second look at things.

[gonzo]

Yes, I was fairly 'relaxed' about the existence of easily dismissed hoax theories, until I found myself in the pub with some, relatively intelligent, work colleagues. I was a bit taken aback by the ferocity of their convinction that the Apollo programme was hoaxed. When I asked why, I got he usual 'temperature destroys film/ radiation kills people/ converging shadows/ Armstrong said "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies" and never discusses the subject etc etc".

The scary thing from my point of view was their unwillingness, despite their professions requiring a high degree of technical competence, to engage in ANY technical discussion or research to deal with these issues. So despite them being relatively easily debunked, they wouldn't make the effort.

And this is what worried me. Their opinion, to paraphrase was that their belief was as valid as any other, and that's a common misconception these days; that simply to hold a belief makes it unquestionable. I pointed out that when a belief relates to testable facts, then one belief is clearly not necessarily as valid as another.

This is why I believe this subject to be more imprtant than the Apollo record's perceived validity. We have people in technical professions disbelieving that spaceflight is possible, and yet happily turn on their GPS system or satellite TV. They then celebrate and are encouraged in wilfull ignorance. That's a picture of an unhealthy society to my mind....

[voyager3]

A while ago I was out with some friends in Belfast and I was introduced to "a friend of a friend," we somehow ended up talking about the Moon landings and this guy had seen that awful Fox show and believed every word of it! He wasn't a hardcore HB'er, just impressionable. He kept saying "Ahh but, shadows, radiation etc. and I replied to everyone "Look up badastronomy.com" (I didn't know about Clavius at this time!).

A few weeks later I met him again and he had taken up my suggestion and was now happy that the landings had taken place! ;D

[frenat]

The sad thing is many people believe almost anything they see on TV. That Fox show was how I orginally found BA. I referred my brother in law to it a few years later. The hoax arguments sound convincing if you don't think too much and the refutations take longer to get the point across. It is much easier to spew BS than it is to clean it up.

[BertL]

frenat said:

It is much easier to spew BS than it is to clean it up.

That, IMHO, is the saddest thing of all.

[Sticks]

I thought I had mentioned here of an accounter I had at a barber shop where someone said in an authorititve tone, the the moon landings never happened.

My observation now is that it is those who maintain that the landings did hapen are the ones who are accused of believing in faires at the bottom of the garden. (Well America is the great Satan and everything they say is a lie ) We get the "How can you be so naive and stupid", "you seem to swallow everything", "You shouldn't believe everything you read"

The hoax seems to be becoming more and more mainstream, especially as America is seen as a pariah state more and more That's gratitude for you

[Ranb]

I work as a radiological control technician for the Navy. One day a guy at work downloaded a list of reasons why the moon landings were faked. He thought they made sense. One of the items on the list was the "six feet of lead required to protect the astronauts." I asked the guy if he remembered how the submarines were shielded against neutrons, when he said water, he realized that anyone who wants to shield particle radiation with lead is out to lunch.

Ranb

[PhantomWolf]

You would'nt get me in a lead shielded spacecraft if you paid me the moon. It has to be one of the dumbest and ill thought of ideas the HB's have in their entire agrument. It proves that they know absolutely nothing about space radiation and if they built a spacecraft the crew would end up dead with them wondering why it happened.