The Moon Landing Conspiracy
(or How To Get A Slot On Prime-Time TV Only To Show The World Why We Are Laughed At By The Rest Of The Scientific Community)
The other night on FOX, the network aired a show called “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon?” Now, I would like to comment on the show. In watching the show, I was impressed by their slick photos, and arguments. I’ll admit that, despite my years of studying science which developed my critical thinking skills on such matters, some of the evidence presented by the conspiracy theorists had me questioning whether men landed on the moon. That is, the first time I watched the show, for you see, since I only get Pauper-View (no cable) I asked a friend in my lab to tape the show for me. In watching the show again, that was when I noticed glaring errors in the items that were in question to me. What I shall now do is highlight ALL of their arguments and explain either a) what is wrong with their argument, and/or b) a more reasonable explanation for what was seen. However, all I intend to do is level the playing field so-to-speak, given the fact that the evidence and theories presented were one-sided and well, wrong.
Argument 1 – In the photos and images from the moon, there are no stars in the background.
There are several perfectly reasonable explanations for this. The first is that, the images were very grainy and noisy, which Bart Siprel (who will be referred to in the rest of this document as “Annoying Crackpot”) was more than happy to admit. Then in the same breath the conspiracy theorists say that there are no stars in the background. Well, my question is this: How the hell can you tell the difference in those pictures between noise and a star? Yes some of those images appear to have been touched up, but imaging technology can only go so far, it cannot distinguish a star from random pixel noise.
The other night on FOX, the network aired a show called “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon?” Now, I would like to comment on the show. In watching the show, I was impressed by their slick photos, and arguments. I’ll admit that, despite my years of studying science which developed my critical thinking skills on such matters, some of the evidence presented by the conspiracy theorists had me questioning whether men landed on the moon. That is, the first time I watched the show, for you see, since I only get Pauper-View (no cable) I asked a friend in my lab to tape the show for me. In watching the show again, that was when I noticed glaring errors in the items that were in question to me. What I shall now do is highlight ALL of their arguments and explain either a) what is wrong with their argument, and/or b) a more reasonable explanation for what was seen. However, all I intend to do is level the playing field so-to-speak, given the fact that the evidence and theories presented were one-sided and well, wrong. – In the photos and images from the moon, there are no stars in the background.There are several perfectly reasonable explanations for this. The first is that, the images were very grainy and noisy, which Bart Siprel was more than happy to admit. Then in the same breath the conspiracy theorists say that there are no stars in the background. Well, my question is this: How the hell can you tell the difference in those pictures between noise and a star? Yes some of those images appear to have been touched up, but imaging technology can only go so far, it cannot distinguish a star from random pixel noise.
If you are not happy with that explanation I’ll offer another. The fact is, the moon surface is a very bright place, and I’m not convinced that any cameras today have the dynamic range in order to image both the bright surface and the relatively dim stars (in comparison). An example of this is the human eye, which has a better dynamic range than any camera. In the arctic, where the snow is very bright in the light of day, people have to wear special goggles to minimize an effect called “snow-blindness” which is really an overload of the optic nerves that causes an inability to see things.
Argument 2 – The American flag was waving.
As Bill Keysig (who will now be referred to as “Head Crackpot” – the guy who said that “back in the 60’s the odds of landing a man on the moon were something like 0.0017%”. Okay, I’ll ask it: Where the fuck is he getting these numbers from?) was quite cheerful to point out – there is no atmosphere on the moon (which actually is not quite correct, scientists detected a very weak atmosphere on the moon during a lunar eclipse in the early 90’s, but let’s not split hairs). My point is this – since there is a VERY weak atmosphere on the moon, there is also no air friction, and therefore any small perturbation in the stem of the flag (ie. the astronauts moving it) there would be quite a large response in the motion of the flag.
Argument 3 – The Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) did not cause a blast crater on the surface.
I’m not convinced that it should for two reasons. One is that there’s no way that the LEM was designed to slam into the surface, there was people aboard. And two, the thrust required to land softly would’ve merely kicked up dust. Head Crackpot then questions, “then why is there no dust collecting on the pads?” One explanation is that the exhaust was turned off just before landing, which is entirely probable, since a hot exhaust bouncing off the surface and onto the LEM is not a desirable scenario. But wait! The show mentions that “even according to NASA’s scientific illustrations, their should’ve been a blast crater” – at which point the show displayed an artists conception. AN ARTIST’S CONCEPTION FOR FUCK SAKES! This is hardly evidence.
Argument 4 – Other LEM problems
The conspiracy theorists site that the LEM was far too unstable a craft, while citing early LEM test videos. Okay, number one, those were early tests, and number two, those were on the earth where factors such as wind are factors.
Head Crackpot also mentions that the noise from the LEM landing would have made it impossible to hear the astronauts talking, since as he states that the noise level would be on the order of 150 db. If this were true, then we would also never be able to hear pilots in the cockpits of fighter jets, since this the approximate noise level involved in fighter jets.
The conspiracy theorists also mention that the LEM had no exhaust plume in the ascent off of the moon, while in fact, the exhaust plume is clear. It blasts the LEM of the pad. Yes, the blast is not continuous, and the reason for this is simple, there is no air friction and therefore, no need for continuous thrust.
Argument 5 – 20% of the population believes men never landed on the moon.
So what? People once believed the world was flat too, that never made it right.
Argument 6 – Footage from the 70’s movie Capricorn One (in which a mission to Mars was faked) is similar to the Apollo 11 Mission.
So what? Is it possible that the people saw the moon landing and mimicked the footage from the Apollo mission for their movie to have a sense of realism? Or maybe that it’s a frickin’ landing, and how different should they look?
Argument 7 – Area 51! ARRGGGH!!
Extrapolating from the stories of all conspiracy theorists, Area 51 must be busier than fucking McDonald’s after a 2-year beef quarantine. You know, what with all the aliens, and alien spacecrafts, and now apparently the moon landing props and well, everything secret. The conspiracy theorists here say that the moon landing must have been faked at Area 51. Their arguments are these:
- Satellite photos show warehouse-like buildings similar to Hollywood soundstages.
o Yes, soundstages, they couldn’t be, you know, hangers for test aircraft, no no no.
o I highly doubt that NASA people are trained in movie making, therefore they would’ve had to have hired others to make them, and what are the odds that they would keep quiet?
- There are craters in the region surrounding Area 51 in the Nevada High Desert, which are similar to those on the moon.
o Well of course they’re similar, they’re fucking craters. What the hell should they look like? Giant silhouettes of Queen Elizabeth II?
o My test to the the conspiracy theorists is this: If you can find me a set of craters from the moon pictures, and a matching set from the Nevada high desert, then this argument may have a little validity. Until then, sorry, I don’t believe it.
Argument 8 – Gravity problems in the moon videos.
The conspiracy theorists show that if you speed the videos on the moon up to twice the speed it looks like said things are occurring on earth. The problem with this argument is that the conspiracy theorists are making a terrible assumption about how the astronauts are running. It appeared to me that the astronauts were taking short quick steps, and where not pushing off the ground very hard. The conspiracy theorists are making an assumption that the astronauts are pushing off the ground with the same force as they would on earth, which is just wrong.
Argument 9 – Discrepancies with the still photos.
The conspiracy theorists cite several discrepancies with the still photos as taken on the moon. I will highlight these.
- Thousands of photos were taken with crystal clarity, despite the “awkwardness” of the camera equipment.
o So what? How many photos were taken? Probably many more, this is something that is not mentioned.
- Lighting in the shadows was problematic, for example people and objects that were in shadow were highly visible, despite being shrouded in shadow
o What the theorists neglect to notice, the moon is a very bright place, and the surface itself scatters a lot of light in all directions, which is why we see the moon so well at night, the objects that are shrouded in shadow were lit by the ambient light of the moon.
- There are two photos with a mountainous background, one of which has the LEM in it, the other does not.
o On closer inspection, one may note that the two photos may be looking at the same mountain range, they are not taken from the same location, one of the pictures has a rough patch in the foreground (the picture with the LEM missing) and the other picture does not. What does this say? It says that one of the photos was taken from between the mountains and the LEM; the other was taken with the LEM in between the mountains and photographer. So why does the background look identical? Simple. They are mountains, and are very far away, so (forgive the technical terms) the parallax angle subtended by the mountains did not change enough to notice any difference. What I mean here is, well, you can try it for yourself. If you live in the city, look at the buildings in downtown from very far away, such that the buildings are off in the distance. Now walk 100 feet towards those buildings. Now, from your perspective, do they look any different? Of course not, they’re too big and too far away.
- Shadows in the photos do not run parallel which implies more than one (the sun) light source
o Now, if one examines the photos in more detail, it looks to me like someone is trying to fool us. The objects that were highlighted as casting different shadows were the ONLY ones, that were discrepant, all the rest were not.
- The cross hairs which were etched on the camera, which should have been on top of all the images, were in some cases, behind some of the objects
o There is a very simple explanation for this. Saturation. One may notice that in all the instances of objects being overtop of the crosshairs, the object was ALWAYS bright white. This tells me that the film (in the case of chemical film) or pixel elements (in the case of CCD cameras) were saturated and caused smearing onto other areas of the image. This is a phenomenon which all photographers and people that use imaging equipment know about, in fact it is the reason why you’re not supposed to open your camera when the film is not done, since it will ruin the film. Basically put, when one photographs a really bright source, it causes a smearing effect around the bright source. I’ll make an analogy. Let’s pretend that the camera film is made of many pixels. Now I’ll make an analogy, let’s pretend that each pixel is a thimble, and you have a series of thimbles that make up the photographic plate. Now, take a bucket of water (which represents a lot of light), and dump it on one of those thimbles. As you guess, the water will spill into other pixels, even though the water was aimed at just the one pixel.
Argument 10 – The Van Allen Belt radiation is very dangerous and deadly.
This is hardly true, for those of you who have not taken a course on nuclear physics, the show refers to radiation, which in space is largely of 3 kinds: Gamma, Beta, and Alpha. Gamma radiation is highly energetic light (more so than X-rays), beta radiation is highly energetic electrons, whizzing along at close to the speed of light, and alpha radiation is highly energetic helium nuclei (helium without the electrons). Now, the Van Allen Belts (the little known phenomenon that Annoying Crackpot refers to, did I mention that he’s an Investigative Journalist, and therefore a top authority on the Van Allen Belts) is mainly comprised of alpha radiation, since the relatively sluggish alpha particles are the only form of the three aforementioned radiations that would be sufficiently trapped in the Van Allen Belts. Now, with alpha particles, minimal shielding is required. Tin foil is sufficient shielding against that form of radiation, since alpha particles are relatively large and sluggish.
Another fact here is that the Van Allen Belts are 10’s of thousands of miles thick, and the distance to the moon is 250 000 miles. And now, since the astronauts got there in 4 days, they would’ve whizzed through the Van Allen Belts in a matter of hours.
The conspiracy theorists also mention that the solar wind radiation would also be very dangerous. You know, there are a lot of plasma physicists out there, but I don’t hear any mention about this from them. And yes, our atmosphere here on earth shields us from the solar wind, but if the solar wind were strong enough to kill them in 4 days, we would notice a much larger ambient background radiation here on earth than we actually do, and we (as a species) would’ve evolved to tolerate it.
Argument 11 – Untimely deaths
The conspiracy theorists mention (distastefully, in my opinion) some untimely deaths as being “intentional”. One of which was within a test rocket. Another, who was an inspector for NASA, was killed when a train crashed into his car (now really, a train crash – could there be any more of an accidental death?! Oh wait, no, being struck by a meteor is more accidental, I apologize). In fact they cite that 10 astronauts (more than half of NASA’s astronauts – although, I’d like to see how, if at all, those statistics vary from those of test pilot deaths) were killed in an untimely fashion. News flash guys, they were dealing with very dangerous, untested rockets. Now, this is nothing new, but a rocket is really just a powerful controlled explosion. Of course something could go wrong, those things are hardly the safest form of transportation.
Final Word
There is one piece of evidence that the theorists are missing. On the moon mission Apollo 15, the astronauts left a series of Retroreflectors on the surface. A retroreflector is type of mirror that, rather than reflecting light in the usual fashion, they reflect light back onto itself, here’s a diagram to make it more clear:
The purpose of this was so that the distance from the earth to the moon could be determined accurately using a laser by shooting the beam at the moon.
And remember, in order for the conspiracy theorists to validate a theory like this, it better be damn fucking solid, and their “evidence” is by no means solid. In fact one can present a much easier explanation for all that they presented, as I just have.