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The NASA Moon Landings, Fact or Fiction?

The moon landings. There has been a bit of controversy lately about whether or not NASA actually went to the moon or not in 1969 and the 70's. It occasionally rears its head whenever some broadcaster runs out of show ideas, and decides to bug NASA with this.

I think it's totally bollocks, there is no doubt in my mind, at all, that the Apollo missions where real!

Most of what you read about on the internet and see on those TV shows is so lacking in actual scientific fact that it is laughable. The way it is presented, and if you really don't know a Newton from a meter, then it may confuse you.

I'm not going to sit and debunk all the stupid ideas people have come up with, that apparently prove the landing were fake. But I will mention the one problem most have. That is, they are trying to apply what happens on earth to what happens on the moon! This is why, I think, so many people are fooled by what they say, because people know how items react on earth, and being told that it didn't do the same thing on the moon, seems to make sense?!

Others are just simple physics. You hear a lot about the big powerful main engine on the lander.  Then the theorists (I use that term very loosely) go on to show pictures of the landing with very little dust swirling around! How could that be? Where is the big crater the blast would have created? Such a powerful motor, with all the moon dust on the ground and hardly any is unsettled? Obviously the lander was on ropes! Sounds pretty convincing!?

Of course the answer is: the dust won't swirl around to start with, because there is no air on the moon to disrupt the flow of the dust, it simply shoots of in a nice parabolic curve until it hits the moon surface again (you can see this nice parabolic curve of dust in photos of the moon buggy driving around and throwing it up off the wheels). Also, it doesn't matter how powerful the main engine is, it certainly wasn't running at full power! The engine was designed to push the lander off the surface of the moon, if it was at anything but a very low power setting on landing the lander would shoot back up!

Another one they often pull, is that there are no stars in any of the photos, which with no atmosphere or blue sky to interfere, you should be able to see the entire milky way! Of course, as anyone who knows film at all, knows that film has a limited range of light intensities it can capture. So if you have a short exposure to capture the image of the moon's surface, which is quite bright, you cannot expect faint stars to be exposed on the film at all. If you did try and expose the stars correctly, the moon would be an overexposed washout. Try it yourself with your camera, get a lit up building and the sky in the background, how many stars show up?

NASA and the astronauts did fine work doing what they did, a mighty achievement!

Please, don't take my word for it, I've collected a few different sites to look at, and make up your own mind. Just think of how things are different on the moon, and think for yourself!

For Real Landings:
http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/
http://www.apollo-hoax.co.uk/
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/News/2001/News-MoonLanding.asp
http://student.fortlewis.edu/~rdgebhardt/moon.htm

For Fake Landings:
http://moonhoax1.tripod.com/MoonHoax/index.html
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/3543/apia.htm
http://www.geocities.com/nasascam/

Multimedia Archives:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/40thann/videos.htm
http://lava.larc.nasa.gov/BROWSE/apollo.html

Posted on Tuesday, 21 October 2003 5:40 PM

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