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Post by AtomicDog on Jul 26, 2006 10:43:33 GMT -4
If the video of Apollo 12 was a prerecorded fake, when Al Bean burned out the TV camera why didn't the "director" simply say, "cut!" stop the shoot, bring in another camera and continue shooting?
Millions of people who had stayed up all night to see the Apollo 12 Moonwalks (including me!) wouldn't have been disappointed and NASA would have spared themselves another (albeit minor) black eye.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 26, 2006 11:13:31 GMT -4
The conspiracy theorists claim that the burnout itself was a scripted part of the action. That is, it was planned from the start that the camera would "burn out" and thus deprive the audience of live television from that mission. This is alleged to be the second step in an escalation of visibility. Apollo 11's television coverage was very poor. Apollo 12's was expected to be better, but failed because of overexposure. Apollo 13 never landed on the moon, and finally by Apollo 14 we had high-quality television coverage from the lunar surface. Conspiracists say this was so the fakery techniques for live television could be worked on progressively, easing them into public acceptance.
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Post by AtomicDog on Jul 26, 2006 11:33:19 GMT -4
The conspiracy theorists claim that the burnout itself was a scripted part of the action. That is, it was planned from the start that the camera would "burn out" and thus deprive the audience of live television from that mission. This is alleged to be the second step in an escalation of visibility. Apollo 11's television coverage was very poor. Apollo 12's was expected to be better, but failed because of overexposure. Apollo 13 never landed on the moon, and finally by Apollo 14 we had high-quality television coverage from the lunar surface. Conspiracists say this was so the fakery techniques for live television could be worked on progressively, easing them into public acceptance.  It seemed to have the opposite effect. By staging a string of failures, we get cries that "NASA can't do anything right!" (I know - I heard them) and mission cancellations. To me, that's called shooting yourself in the foot. |
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 26, 2006 12:43:26 GMT -4
I agree. The claim that NASA staged different kinds of failures for various reasons (to hide the hoax methods, to generate interest, to whack people) falls flat when you realize that each one attracted criticism for and skepticism toward NASA, including attention from people who wanted nothing more than to see NASA done away with (e.g., Senators Proxmire and Mondale).
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Post by dwight on Jul 26, 2006 17:15:25 GMT -4
To make matters worse, the Westinghouse investigation upon the a12 crews return deemed the camera was _still operational_. If you have the DVD sets, there are moments where Pete Conrad can be seen after the burnout. What stopped usable footage being seen (Conrad is very dark) is the ALC control (automatic light level control) stopping down the image. When the ALC was disabled, Westinghouse found the surviving section of the pickup tube gave acceptable picture.
My hypothesis is that had the astronauts known this and could have cut the wire, the tracking stations may have been able to reconfigure the image by zooming in on the usable area. This would have meant a dramatic loss of quality, but given that choice, and no TV at all, i think it would have been acceptable.
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Post by simon39 on Jul 27, 2006 18:30:27 GMT -4
Whatever happens the CT's will make up some rubbish, for instance if the cameras had worked properly on each flight that would have been a sure sign of a cover up as something must surely have failed - too perfect they would say with a wink.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 27, 2006 19:13:22 GMT -4
Yes I agree. The conspiracists always have some conjectural explanation for all possible outcomes, all of which mean a hoax:
1. Perfect video all the time = evidence of a fake because something should have broken if it were real.
2. Lousy video all the time = trying to degrade picture intentionally in order to cover persistent flaws.
3. Lousy initial video followed by improvement = gradually easing into fakery techniques and becoming bolder.
4. Perfect initial video followed by degradation = tapering off quality to hide inability to keep up with escalating expectations.
5. Perfect video at beginning and end with degradation in the middle = breakdown of technique, degradation required to buy time to fix it.
6. Lousy video at beginning and end with improvement in the middle = introduction of techniques slowly followed by gradual breakdown of credibility requiring degradation to hide it.
And so forth. Any increase in quality can be "explained" by improvment in the fakery technique. Any degradation can be "explained" by needing to hide flaws in the fakery technique. Of course this type of tautological reasoning is utterly useless when trying to get to the bottom of something. If all roads lead to the same conclusion then how does the choice of road validate the conclusion?
A good approach to such argumentation is to turn the tables and put the burden of proof back where it belongs. If the quality of the video is "anomalous" then what would have been the characteristics of authentic video and why?
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It seemed to have the opposite effect. By staging a string of failures, we get cries that "NASA can't do anything right!" (I know - I heard them) and mission cancellations. 